The governing body of the Grammy Awards voted on Friday to change its nominating process, eliminating a step that has recently come under fire — the use of anonymous expert committees to decide who makes the final ballot in dozens of categories.
Each year, the Recording Academy convenes music professionals to serve on its nomination review committees for 61 of the Grammys’ 84 categories. They whittle down the initial nomination choices by the academy’s thousands of voters to determine the ballot, and their work is intended to protect the integrity of the awards process.
The committees began in 1989, but in recent years they have come under intense criticism from artists, music executives and even Grammy insiders as examples of an unaccountable system rife with conflicts of interest and mysterious agendas.