The Recording Academy has implemented a few changes in the voting and selection process of the Grammys. The new set of rules were announced on Wednesday and went into effect immediately. These changes focuses on the online voting process and cyber security, Album of the Year, album definitions, and Music For Visual Media Field. Variety spoke with Academy SVP of Awards Bill Freimuth to get further explanation on these changes and why they were made. Below are what musicians and artists can expect: 1. Online Voting – Paper ballots will no longer exists. The 13,000 voting members will be able to go online to cast their vote, as long as they are in good standing. This change will grant voters more flexibility, do away with invalid ballots, and protect against fraudulent voting. Freimuth: “More than just convenience, the real benefits of this are being able to get more votes from musicians on tour who have trouble catching up with their paper ballots — and they can [fill out the voting forms] on their phone or pad, not just their desktop. It also increases participation from all voters: The Latin Grammys, our sister organization, implemented this last year and they found that voting participation increased significantly. Also, paper ballots would often be filled out incorrectly — people would vote in categories they weren’t [authorized to vote in] and things like that — and this way the software will not let them submit incorrectly. Finally, on the same site, voters will be able to listen to or watch all of the nominated recordings or videos, or look at the nominees for package design. It makes for more informed voting on the whole, than voting based on name recognition and popularity and charts and things like that.” 2. Album of the Year to Recognize Songwriters – Songwriters, producers, mixers, engineers, mastering engineers, and featured artists with at least 33 percent of playing time on Album of the Year are eligible for a Grammy. This is the first time songwriters are given the opportunity. Freimuth: “As you might guess, we heard a lot about this one from songwriters, and a couple of very highly regarded ones developed a proposal, and about a year ago submitted it to the Awards and Nominations committee, which meets every year to go over proposed changes. The initial response was that we need ed to look at it more deeply, so we formed a subcommittee, which met throughout the year and heard from more people, and it became obvious that it was something we should do. “It might seem like this will result in a lot more trophies being given out, but it probably won’t be that many more — the 33 percent participation requirement will limit that to a degree. We don’t get into publishing splits and all that, if there’s a credit on a track, that’s what counts. And 33 percent felt about right — this was discussed quite a bit over the year, we had a whole subcommittee working on it, with everyone from songwriters and producers and mixers and our trustees involved, [the percentage] swung back and forth, and ultimately 33 percent felt right. You can only get so scientific when you’re dealing with these kinds of issues.” 3. Nomination Committees Appointed For Rap & New Age – A nomination review committee will be created for Rap, Contemporary Instrumental, and New Age genres. The committees were initially created as an additional round of reviews to steer away from potentially showing bias for a certain artists and musical works. Freimuth: “These committees started with classical and jazz, and essentially when we hear from a musical community that the nominations are not reflecting what the general community believes to be the best in music in that field — and more often than not, that’s a result of name recognition and popularity and sometimes marketing. They wanted some kind of extra step between the first ballot and the announcement, so my predecessors came up with this concept of a nominations review committee, which is a very formally formed group — people have to prove their expertise, they get submitted by our chapter cities and then things are weighed by other experts and myself and [Academy Chairman] Neil Portnow and our board of trustees, and then it gets ratified by the national board. In most cases they’ll listen to the top 15 selections from the first ballot from the general voting membership, then they may discuss them or they may not, and then they vote by secret ballot. Those ballots are collected by a representative of Deloitte, our tabulators, their votes get tallied, and their votes directly determine the top five nominees. “The most recent [prior community] we heard from about this was Rock. People felt there was too much of a lean toward legacy artists and the softer side of rock, and this year we heard from Rap, Contemporary Instrumental and New Age. For Rap, and the other categories to a degree, a lot of their argument was kind of similar — it was going more to big-name folks and felt like more of a popularity contest. That’s not to say that someone who’s very famous can’t put out a fantastic track or album, but maybe some younger up-and-coming folks deserve that spotlight.” 4. Album Definition Expansion – To be considered for a Grammy, an album must have a minimum of 15 minutes playing time with 5 distinct tracks OR a minimum of 30 minutes playing time with no tracks. This amendment of the definition allows for creators like Jazz, Dance, and Classical to be included. Freimuth: “This was almost more of a housekeeping exercise. We did have that existing rule of five tracks and 15 minutes, but that rule was getting bent fairly often, primarily in jazz and dance music — if an album has one or two tracks and is 75 minutes long, we’re not going to disqualify it, and this is kind of codifying that and making it a harder, more black-and-white rule.” To read more about the Recording Academy new set of rules, click HERE. The 60th annual Grammy Awards will be held at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Jan. 28, 2018.
