Grammy Awards To Expand Nominees for Top Album, Song, Record & New Artist Categories

Grammy Awards To Expand Nominees for Top Album, Song, Record & New Artist Categories

The wind of change has hit the Grammy Awards, the first ever major change since the introduction of the Grammy Awards in 1959.

According to Billboard, the number of nominations in the record, song and album of the year and best new artist categories will now expand from five to eight, and this change takes effect immediately with the 61st Annual Grammy Awards in 2019.

Here’s what the Recording Academy president/CEO Neil Portnow in a statement shared with the music site:

“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.

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.”

The suggested changes were ratified at the Trustees’ meeting in May in Hawaii, and it echoes the expansion undertaken by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences in 2009 when it doubled the number of best picture nominees from five to up to 10.

The next Grammy Awards will be held at the Los Angeles’ Staples Center in 2019; this year’s was held at the New York’s Madison Square Garden. We can’t wait to see how this all pans out!