On Friday, the Recording Academy announced that the Grammy Awards will no longer use anonymous judging panels to determine nominees. This decision was made after the awards fell into great criticism regarding their transparency.
Most notably, The Weeknd, who received zero nominations despite his hit single spending 40 weeks in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart and an album that topped the chart in its first week, voiced his opposition. Other recognized artists, such as Zayn Malik also criticized the awards in the past. Now these have acted.
Previously, a panel of about 20 people selected the top eight nominees from the artists* who made the top 20 in four of the biggest categories: Best Album, Best Song and Best Record of the Year, and Best New Artist*. The majority of nominees for other awards were also selected by judging panels of varying sizes. Now, however, the nominations will be based on the votes of 12,000 Academy members.
The Academy also announced that it has changed the number of categories in which Academy members can vote and added two new awards to “reflect its ongoing commitment to evolve with the music landscape and ensure that the rules and policies of the GRAMMY Awards® are transparent and fair.” As such, the categories of Latin American Music and World Music were added.
Artist The Weeknd has not yet publicly commented on these additions.
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