The Academy Award for Best Original Song is one of the awards given annually to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
The award goes to the songwriters who have composed the best original song written specifically for a film. Hence it is the writers who win, not the song (there is no such thing as an "Oscar-winning song"). Similarly, the performers of a song cannot win the Academy Award unless they contributed either to music, lyrics or both in their own right.
The award category was introduced at the 7th Academy Awards, the ceremony honoring the best in film for 1934. Nominations are currently made by Academy members who are songwriters and composers, and the winners are chosen by the Academy membership as a whole.
