On Thursday (Oct. 3), one day before first-round voting opens for the 67th annual Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy released its 2024 Membership Report. The most eye-popping statistic: 66% of the current Grammys electorate has joined since the Recording Academy introduced its new membership model in June 2019. Under that model, the academy invites large new member classes to join, with an eye on boosting the numbers of women, people of color and people under 40 in the academy.
Thus, the voting membership that delivered album, record and song of the year to Adele in 2017 and those same three awards to Bruno Mars in 2018 is much different today. We started to see a shift in voting patterns in February 2019, even before the new membership model was introduced, when Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” became the first hip-hop hit to win record or song of the year. (It won both.) That same year, Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour won album of the year.
Since 2019, approximately 8,700 creators have become voting members of the Recording Academy. Of that total, more than 2,000 joined just this year. There are now more than 13,000 total voting members, according to the Academy.
Other key takeaways from the report include:
Boosting Numbers of Women
In 2019, the Recording Academy set an ambitious goal to add 2,500 women voting members by 2025. With a year to go, the Academy has already surpassed this goal, adding more than 3,000 women voting members. Since 2019, the percentage of women voting members has grown by 27%.
Increasing Racial Diversity
The Academy reports that the percentage of people of color has grown by 65% since 2019 among voting members. Since 2019:
- The percentage of Black or African American+ members has grown by 90%.
- The percentage of Hispanic or Latin+ members has grown by 43%.
- The percentage of AAPI+ (Asian American or Pacific Islander) members has doubled, reflecting a 100% increase.
The current voting membership, counting the new voting members added this year, is 49% white or Caucasian; 38% people of color; and 13% prefer not to disclose or unknown. That “people of color” slice breaks down like this: 19% Black or African American+; 10% Hispanic or Latin+; 4% Asian or Pacific Islander; 2% prefer to self-describe; and other smaller slices.
The current voting membership is 66% men; 28% women; 6% prefer not to disclose/unknown; and other, smaller slices.
Too Much Jazz. Not Enough Country
By genre, the current voting membership is 27% pop; 19% jazz; 17% R&B; 17% rock; 13% American roots; 13% alternative; 12% classical; 10% global music; 10% Latin music; 10% other; 10% rap; 9% dance/electronic; 9% country; 8% gospel/Christian; 8% visual media; 7% contemporary instrumental; 5% new age; 4% children’s; 4% musical theatre; 3% reggae; 3% spoken word; and 1% comedy. (Members could select more than one genre.)
Jazz and classical are overrepresented, relative to their share of the music market. Country lags behind its share of the music market.
By area of specialization, the current voting membership is 46% songwriters/composers; 33% producers; 33% instrumentalists; 32% vocalists; 19% engineers; 12% arrangers; 6% other; 4% music video; 3% album packaging; 3% album notes writers; 2% music supervisors; 2% conductors; 2% spoken word.
In a letter accompanying the release of the report, Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, said in part: “The Recording Academy membership has never been more reflective of the music community than it is today. It has more women, more People of Color, and a broad representation of diverse genres and crafts. But we’re not just celebrating numbers. Our organization has been fundamentally transformed by this extraordinary infusion of new talent, making us an unquestionably better, stronger, more successful, and more impactful organization.
“And we’re not done yet. Even though we’ve made huge strides towards creating a diverse and representative membership body, there is still much work to be done. We want to recruit more young voters, because the future of music is in their hands. We want to see an increase in the percentage of women and people of color, because our goal must always be to accurately represent our community.
“And as we globalize our mission, we want a membership body that reflects every corner of the music world.”
Mason added some specifics in an interview with Billboard this week. “It’s been a very intentional effort to try and make sure that our membership is the most relevant, the most diverse. …We’re not just trying to build numbers. We’re looking at, what is the music community made up of? … A big goal for us is to make sure that we’re matching or coming close to the community that makes music. That’s not the same as the general population of our country. We know that R&B/hip-hop is roughly 33%-34% of all music created and consumed. We know what the numbers are for Latin music, women, and other groups. We have a rough idea of what the numbers feel like.”
On July 26, Mason sent a pointed letter, via email, to the Academy’s voting members, “It’s about the current year and the quality of the work, period!,” he implored. “There should be no other rationale for voting. If you are taking into account an artist’s older work, or their reputation, or race, or gender, what label they are on, who their manager is, how many friends participated in the project, or anything else like that, you’re not doing your job.”
Talking to Billboard, Mason expressed a little more sympathy for members who may be inclined to take other factors into account, though he again said he hoped the focus would be on the music. “Voters have their own ideas around how they vote and what they chose to vote for and we want to give them some latitude to be able to do that but it’s my hope and I believe it’s the Academy’s desire that our voters will evaluate the music based on the merit of that music exclusively. It’s not about past sins [of the academy]. It’s not about genre representation. It’s really about the quality of the music. My hope is that people listen to the music and evaluate it based on the merits.”
At another point in the conversation, he said “The whole idea of this membership [drive] is not just to hit numbers, it’s to try to get the right results and the right outcome.”
Asked to be more specific about that statement, Mason said, “I’m not saying the positive result is any specific album or genre winning any specific award. I’m just looking for accuracy and relevance and making sure the outcomes are reflective of what’s happening in music. I don’t care what genre that is. I’m definitely not looking at making reparations [for past Grammy outcomes]. I’m just saying the outcomes for our academy … are all driven by our membership and if we have the right membership, we’re a better organization.”
First-round voting for the Grammy Awards opens on Friday Oct. 4 at 9 a.m. PT, and closes on Oct. 15 at 6 p.m. PT. Grammy nominees will be announced on Nov. 8. Final-round voting will be held from Dec. 12 to Jan. 3. All voting members, including those welcomed in the 2024 new class, are eligible to participate in the voting process. The 67th annual Grammy Awards will be held on Feb. 2 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The host has yet to be named. Trevor Noah hosted the last four Grammy telecasts.
The 66th annual Grammy Awards were held on Sunday, Feb. 4. Ben Winston, Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins were executive producers. Hamish Hamilton directed. The show received a Primetime Emmy nomination for outstanding variety program (live), but lost to The Oscars (which was also executive produced by Kapoor). The Recording Academy has yet to announce the host, producer or director of the 2025 show.
