Recording Academy To Adopt Task Force Suggestions

The Recording Academy has announced it will implement recommendations outlined by the Recording Academy Diversity & Inclusion Task Force, which were detailed in a report released Thursday.

Those recommendations include restructuring its Board of Trustees to ensure that music creators from the broadest range of ages, backgrounds, genders, genres, crafts and regions are fully represented within the organization’s leadership.

The Task Force, led by Tina Tchen, offered a report outlining several recommendations relating to the Recording Academy’s operations and internal policies, to organizational structure, nominee committee procedures, voting procedures and nomination qualifications.

Tina Tchen

One of the key Task Force recommendations is that the Academy implement a ranked choice voting system to determine Grammy Award nominees and winners in key categories including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. A ranked choice system allows voters to rank candidates on a ballot in order of preference and is designed to ensure as many voters as possible will help elect a candidate they support.

The Task Force also recommends the Academy better engage and involve the Professional Members in Academy operations and governance. As the Grammys are the only peer-based award in the music industry, Professional members–including long-time music industry execs who do not themselves create music–do note vote on the Grammy Awards. Professional members can only make up 20% of the Governors in a given Chapter and are not eligible to serve on any National Committee other than the Membership Committee (and on that committee can only be one of three additional members) and cannot hold a number of key leadership positions at the Chapter and national levels. However, the Professional Members are more demographically diverse than Voting Members. In October 2019, while female only made 22% of the Academy’s voting members, females make up 38% of the Academy’s Professional members. The Professional Membership is also more racially diverse.

The report stated that in 2018, shortly following the formation of the Task Force, only 20% of Recording Academy voters were female. The racial diversity numbers were only slightly better, with significant under-representation in the Asian-American and Hispanic communities. 40% of the academy’s voting members are producers and engineers, while the percentage of female producers and engineers that are also academy voters is 12 percent. As of October 2019, 22% of the Recording Academy’s voters are female.