The Grammy Awards breaks new ground for future ceremonies. The Recording Academy has announced its plans to increase the number of nominees for its four general fields (Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist) from five to eight. The new ruling, which is effective immediately, will impact the nominations for the 61st annual award ceremony.
President and CEO of the Recording Academy Neil Portnow commented on the drastic shift, which could improve diversity and inclusion.
“Throughout the year, we team up with music people across all genres and disciplines to consider revisions and subsequently make amendments to our rules and entry guidelines to ensure we’re keeping up with our ever-changing industry and meeting the needs of music creators,” he said in a statement.
“This creates more opportunities for a wider-range of recognition in these important categories and gives more flexibility to our voters when having to make the often challenging decisions about representing excellence and the best in music for the year. We look forward to celebrating all of our nominees when they are announced later this year.”
Unless there was a tie, the nominations of the four General Field categories has been capped to five since the Grammys started in 1959. The other 80 categories will not be affected and will remain at five nominees.
The change doesn’t come at a surprise after, Portnow who will be resigning in 2019, made an insensitive comment about how women in music should “step up” to be recognized at the award show.
The Recording Academy will decide on nominations for the 61st annual show later this year.
