New Grammy Rule Amendments Announced - What’s Changing?

The Grammy Awards are back in the news today as the annual music event has announced some amendments to their voting and nomination rules. Effective immediately, these amendments aim to update the nomination and voting process and make it fairer for everyone involved.

There are five basic fixes the Recording Academy has announced: 1. the implementation of online voting, 2. including songwriters in the Album of the Year category, 3. adding more review committees, 4. expanding the definition of an album and 5. letting alternative versions of songs be nominated for visual media.

Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, has decided to take a closer look at these Grammy changes. Here is what our blogger thinks about the amended rules and whether they will make any difference in this year’s process.

1.       Online Voting: This makes sense for 2017, to be quite honest. Aside from making it easier for touring artists to cast their ballots, as was one of the academy’s intentions, it will also make it easier to keep track of votes. As for whether this will stop block voting, the academy’s other intention, will remain to be seen. I personally do not think it will help because people will vote with whatever allegiances they have either way.

2.       Songwriters Being Recognized for Album of the Year: With this rule change, songwriters who are credited on at least a third of the album will also earn the award, giving them their due. Given that it is not usually one person who writes an album, especially if you take a look at a lot of the pop music that comes out, this is a good idea. Credit should be given where it is due. 

3.       More Review Committees: This amendment creates committees to review who gets nominated in the categories of rap, contemporary instrumental and new age music so they do not become “popularity contests.” This is something the academy has been doing for the last 25 years in various other categories to even things out. Such is probably why you see that one indie artist nominated for Album of the Year every year that makes much of the public scratch their heads. But while this might give a slight boost to underground artists who deserve to be nominated, it doesn’t really seem to make much of a difference in the end. After all, the other four nominees for Album of the Year are almost invariably those that had the most popular selling albums of the year, not necessarily the best.

4.       What Defines an Album: Aimed at making it easier for classical, jazz and dance albums to be nominated, the academy is expanding what constitutes an album. Before this year, an album had to be at least 15 minutes long and feature at least five songs, which would mean a five-song rock EP would count as an album but a single-opus classical album would not. The new rule takes this into account, expanding the definition of an album to include something with a 30-minute play time, even if it only has one song on it. This seems fair, as more artists will have the opportunity to be nominated because of it.

5.       Visual Media: The first part of this amendment says that “the film version of a track” can be entered in the Best Song Written for Visual Media category, “even if a different version of the track is submitted in other categories.” This seems a little inconsequential; however such a change means that the academy is making a distinction between soundtracks and albums, saying that the soundtrack version of a song is its own entity.  The second part requires that a compilation soundtrack for a documentary or biopic needs to be more than 51 percent newly recorded music to qualify for a Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media nomination. This makes sense, since the Grammys are about new music.

While I do have mixed feelings about some of these changes, they are steps in the right direction to making the Grammys a fairer platform for honoring music and artists. Extra input from experts and an easier, more streamlined voting system, while not a panacea, will help to get more voices included in the discussion. The only way to know how well these changes work will be when Grammy nominations are announced on November 28 and winners are revealed on January 28, 2018 at Madison Square Garden.

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