Grammys’ voting process to be more transparent; Declares new changes
After facing a huge backlash, the Recording Academy finally declared significant changes to the Grammy Awards voting process.
It really means to seek out the secret committees” and terminate their functioning.
The “secret committees,”,supposedly an organisation of unidentified voting members who select the nominees for the different genre, were first disclosed to the public eye in 2020 after Deborah Dugan,the former Recording Academy CEO filed a complaint against the Recording Academy.
“The Grammy voting process is ripe with corruption,” Dugan alleged in her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint, pointing particularly to instances in which “members of the board [of trustees] and the secret committees chose artists with whom they have personal or business relationships.”
The differences include a 10-category and three-field limit for the Recording Academy members (earlier they could vote on 15) and ascertained of more than 90 percent of members to have “the requalification process by the end of this year, ensuring that the voting body is actively engaged in music creation.”
“As an Academy, we have reaffirmed our commitment to continue to meet the needs of music creators everywhere, and this year’s changes are a timely and positive step forward in the evolution of our voting process”, the Academy’s chief awards officer,Bill Freimuth said to Rolling Stones. “We rely on the music community to help us to continue to evolve, and we’re grateful for their collaboration and leadership.”
In a first,the Recording Academy confirmed two new Grammy categories — Best Global Music Performance and Best Música Urbana Album — added to extending the eligibility deadline for the 2022 Grammys an extra month to September 30th, 2021. They added that these changes will take force immediately for the 64th annual Grammy Awards, set for January 31st, 2022.
