The past few years have brought multiple concerns and stories about the Grammys, their workings and the problems with the voting process and eventual winners.

Looking to answer some of the questions surrounding the awards, WordPlay T. Jay has put in about 8 hours of research to come up with some information people may find useful or interesting when looking at the Grammys issue.

So, how do the Grammys work, what are the problem areas and how can improvements be made?

What is the Recording Academy?

The Recording Academy is an organization that represents music professionals and invests in maintaining the recording arts. They support music creators through nonprofit efforts and they celebrate artists with Grammy awards.

To join the Academy, you have to meet certain criteria, including having two strong recommendations; being in the music industry, as an artist, producer, engineer or working in labels, with at least 12 commercial credits in the past 5 years in the U.S.; and proof of your career via marketing, awards, online presence, press, etc.

Members may be voting members, as creators; professional members, as managers, agents or support staff; or Grammy U members, as student learners.

T. Jay became a voting member in 2016, looking to participate in the process because he would eventually like to win a Grammy. And his experience is from the outside and inside of the organization.

How does voting work?

Voting and professional members in the spring and summer submit recordings to be eligible for awards. Those submissions are then screened and categorized by about 350 experts in their musical fields, and nominee ballots are sent out.

About 12,000 creators vote on the nominees, and all may nominate up to 5 individuals in each category. For the larger categories, General Fields and Genres, Nominations Review Committees review the submitted nominees and select which will be sent out on the award voting ballots, which are voted on about a month before the Grammys event.

Where is the problem?

Unfortunately, there are numerous problem areas. But, they all ultimately rest on the voting members and the National Governance Committees.

The Committees are not diverse enough and have a large role in the decision-making process. Efforts have been made previously to change this, most notably by past CEO Deborah Dugan, who implemented a Diversity Task Force and wrote a 45-page detailing of corruption within the Academy.

In May of this year, Valeisha Butterfield Jones was hired as the Chief of Diversity and Inclusion. Her recognitions with Google and the Obama administration put her in the position, and she has largely been continuing to promote steps Dugan had started.

Diversity, however, still remains an issue. As of 2019-2020, there is a gender breakdown of 56% male to 44% female. About 46% of the body are people of color. The old review committee was 74% male, and there were no ethnicity statistics.

As far as the voting body, 59% are male, 39% are female and 7% are undisclosed. About 48% are under 40, and the other 49% are over 40, and the other 3% is unknown. Ethnically, 47% are Caucasian, 12% are African American, 8% are Hispanic, 4% are other and 3% are Asian American/Pacific Islander/Asian. But, 27 percent do not disclose ethnicity, so who are they?

while the voting membership is unknown, as the Academy does not publish names of voting members, but breaking down percentages would conclude about 5,600 members are caucasian, 3,200 are unknown, 1,400 are people of color and 1,800 are of other ethnicities.

Voting members are encouraged to vote within their expertise, but do they? What stops voting members from conspiring with each other to vote one way or the other? The lack of diversity doesn’t help reduce the chances of this conspiracy — it amplifies it.

So, what can we do about it?

The best options are:

• Remove the ability to do “For Your Consideration Campaigns”. Voting members should vote for their expertise and they shouldn’t be influenced in any way to vote for a specific person. “For Your Consideration Campaigns” can be held by anyone, but they mostly benefit the powerful, and those with the most power will make sure their nominees receive votes.

• Demand the Academy and their new head of Diversity & Inclusion publish the data on voting members.

• Require voting members to disclose their ethnicity so the goals of the Task Force can continue to make the voting members more diverse.

• Tag voters with the genre they work in and allow them to only vote for those categories. Create ballots that are category based. Voters can self-identify and their credentials can be verified before their allowed to vote.

• Guarantee the Nomination Review Committee becomes more diverse than it currently is and publicize the Age of these individuals and make sure that is diverse as well.

• Diversify the National Governance Committee so these members are more diverse.

• Popular artists could boycott the Grammy Awards until they make these changes.

• Popularize more diverse awards shows or start something new that is diverse from the start.

For more information about the Grammys, how they work and what changes could be made, check out the video below!