Grammy Awards embrace online voting

NEW YORK - The Grammy Awards are transitioning to online voting and have updated rules for its top category, album of the year.

The Recording Academy announced changes on Wednesday, including its official switch to online voting for its 13,000 members. Voting for the 2018 Grammy Awards will take place in the fall and will include songs and albums released between Oct 1, 2016, and Sept 30, 2017.

Bill Freimuth, the academy's senior vice-president of awards, says the academy expects to attract younger voters and touring musicians who are away from home during voting season.

"It is something that has been long-desired, long-talked about and long-investigated," he says of online voting, which comes a year after the Latin Grammys made the switch.

Freimuth says there were concerns about security issues, but adds that organizers have "done everything we can to make sure the integrity of the system will be preserved".

Another major change is the addition of songwriters to the nominees for album of the year, which was previously reserved for artists, producers and engineers. However, all participants in the album, including featured artists, songwriters, producers and engineers, must now be credited with at least 33 percent or more playing time on the album to be eligible for nomination. Before the new rule, all participants on an album would earn a nomination for album of the year even if they worked on one song.

The album of the year rule change would mainly affect pop, rap and contemporary R&B albums where producers typically vary throughout the project, as opposed to country and rock albums, where fewer producers are present.

Beyonce's Lemonade, Drake's Views and Justin Bieber's Purpose - all nominees this year for album of the year - each had at least 20 producers credited. Adele's 25, which won the top prize in February, had 11 producers. The fifth nominee was country singer Sturgill Simpson, who produced his album by himself.

"Does participation on a single track on a 12 - or 15-track album really signify that they really worked on the album? When it was put that way most people were saying, 'No, not really,'" Freimuth says.

If the new rule had been implemented at this year's show, Bruno Mars and Ryan Tedder wouldn't have earned Grammys for their production work on Adele's album.

The Grammy Awards have 83 categories. Nominees will be announced Nov 28, and the 60th awards show will take place at Madison Square Garden in New York on Jan 28, 2018.

Associated Press

Beyonce performs at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb 12. Reuters