The highly anticipated 66th Grammy Award ceremony took place at the prestigious Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on Sunday, 4 February 2024.
Also known as the Grammys, the awards, regarded by many as the most prestigious and significant awards in the music industry worldwide, are presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize outstanding achievements in the music industry.
The star-studded event, dubbed “The Biggest Music Night”, showcased the best of the music industry, honouring outstanding achievements of different musicians in different categories.
This year’s award ceremony featured a total of 94 categories, from Album of the Year to Record of the Year, Best Global Music Award of the Year, among others.
With the awards selected and announced to its winners, here are the behind-the-scene processes involved in selection of the Grammy Award winners:
The process begins with submissions of works from record companies and artistes to the Recording Academy for consideration. The submissions are made online, accompanied by a physical copy of the work, which is sent to the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
The submission must meet several eligibility criteria for each category, including the release date, submission deadline, proper categorization and other Academy rules that must be adhered to. There are 150 industry experts from various fields who assess eligibility and decide which category submissions are nominated for. This is the first screening process.
Once this screening is done, the Recording Academy carries out the first round of voting. During this round, Academy members vote for their top choices in each category, and the nominations are determined based on the works that receive the highest number of votes in each category. The recordings with the most votes in each category are selected as nominees.
Then the final voting commences. Musicians, singers, songwriters, producers, engineers, and others who have made an impact in the industry make up the voting members, as they are often invited to become members based on their significant contributions in the music industry. Every voting member is entitled to cast their votes in the four general categories: Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist.
In other categories, voters cast ballots only in their areas of expertise like pop, rock, hip-hop, country, jazz, classical, etc, and in both voting rounds, Academy members are required to vote solely based on quality, without consideration for sales, chart performance, personal friendships, regional preferences or company loyalty.
Thereafter, Grammy winners are selected and announced at the Grammy Awards ceremonies, ensuring that fairness is maintained by keeping confidential the identities of these voting members to prevent external influence and bias.
This year’s Grammy saw African and Nigerian artists such as Asake, Olamide, Davido, Ayra Star, Tyla and Burna Boy emerge as nominees for Best African Music Performance, with Tyla emerging the winner, and also Burna Boy making history as the first Afrobeats musician to perform at the 2024 Grammy Awards.
