Two-thirds of the professional musicians who will decide the results of next year's Grammy Awards were not members of the Recording Academy in 2018.
That's one of the key findings of a report the academy released Thursday, a day before voting begins in the first round of the Grammys, during which the organization's roughly 13,000 voting members will determine nominations for the award. most prestigious in the music industry. Nominations for the 67th Grammy Awards will be announced on November 8; The ceremony itself will take place on February 2 at Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles.
The change in the academy's electorate is significant given criticism the group has faced for years that its voters are too old, too male and too white to adequately recognize excellence in modern popular music. According to the report, the proportion of academy members who identify as people of color has increased by 65% since 2019, while the percentage of women has grown by 27%.
In 2019, a year before the academy ousted its first chief executive, Deborah Dugan, amid an explosive scandal involving allegations of behind-the-scenes discrimination and vote rigging at the Grammys, the academy said it intended to add 2,500 female members by 2025. The new report says more than 3,000 women have been added a year ahead of schedule.
“What we are doing is looking at the membership that we have and comparing it to what is happening in our music community: who makes the music, what is their gender, what is their age, what is their ethnicity,” he said in an interview. Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. “And then we're trying to make sure that our membership is representative of that.”
In its public messages, the academy has long emphasized the idea that a Grammy is the highest music award because it is awarded by an artist's peers (as opposed to an American Music Award, a Billboard Music Award, or an MTV Video Music Award. Award, which are determined by fan votes or chart statistics). However, the electorate's older white male contingent has been widely blamed for high-profile losses in recent years by artists like Beyoncé and The Weeknd, who represent the creative power centers of the music industry.
Mason said the academy has been “very strategic” since assuming the role in 2019 in conducting outreach to communities that have traditionally been underrepresented in the organization. In 2024, 72% of those invited to join the academy accepted the offer, according to the organization, resulting in an all-time high of more than 2,800 new members. Of the new recruits, 45% said they were under 40 years old, according to the academy.
In addition to recruiting new members, the academy has gotten rid of Grammy voters who no longer meet the organization's requirements for membership: “voters who maybe had a hit record or song released in the '70s or '80s and they just kept voting,” as Mason said. put it. The group's goal, he said, is an electorate made up of “relevant musical people.”
When asked if some of those deemed irrelevant protested his ouster, Mason laughed. “There were some cases, of course, where people wanted to remain members,” he said. “But we really felt strongly that making sure everyone was requalified” – meaning a voter could submit registration credits from the last five years – “would have an impact on the results of our elections.”
Mason added: “We can celebrate the statistics. But my hope is that we can celebrate the results: better nominations, better awards, that better reflect what is happening in music.”
To that end, Mason sent a letter to voters in July imploring them to make an effort to listen to eligible recordings and judge them “with pride and purpose.” Many younger members have complained about the academy's cumbersome voting process, which Mason said the group has tried to improve with an app it launched last year and is promoting more heavily this time around.
“But it's not supposed to be easy,” he warned of the process. “It's not supposed to be something you do casually while watching TV.” The academy received more than 20,000 entries for the 2025 Grammys, he added, which must be narrowed down to just five to eight nominees in each category for the final round of voting, which will run from Dec. 12 to Jan. 3.
“My hope is that we can be very intentional in our voting,” he said.
As he looks ahead to next year's ceremony, does Mason remember the public rebuke the academy received from Jay-Z at the February show, where the veteran rapper said he couldn't understand why his wife, Beyoncé, had never won? the Grammy for album of the year?
“Oh, I remember,” Mason said. “At first, to be honest, I was a little discouraged, because I always want the artist community, especially artists who have a platform like that, to understand and appreciate the progress. And I felt like, 'Dang, he didn't understand what happened until now.' Maybe you don't have enough information. How can I share with him the things I am passionate about and that have changed in the organization?
“But that faded quickly and I realized that the Grammy is important to him. It's important to the people I was talking about. And it gave me hope to remember that this is such an ambitious award and that it really matters. And I will say: since then, I have had the opportunity to share more information and I hope to continue to be able to do so.”
Did you find that Jay-Z was open to that information?
“I'm not even going to comment on that,” Mason responded. “But I took it as an opportunity to learn from him and share information.”
