 Hey guys, this is Chris. Welcome back to Song Builders TV. So today we're going to talk about the Grammys. Stay tuned. So this week there's a lot of talk about Grammy nominations and people's disappointment or happiness, and yeah, that happens every year around Grammy time. So I don't know if you knew this, but I'm a Grammy voter. Been a Grammy voter since 2002, and so I've actually seen the process change a lot and get a lot more fair. When things don't come out right these days, we're not talking historical, but as far as these days and the improvement and the evolutions that come in the rules, I think it's less about the corruption of the system and more about the laziness of the voter. And so let's go into the voting process actually. It's probably going to take more than one episode, but I decided let's go through the voting process, see how some of these mistakes and oversights can be honestly made through the perspective of a Grammy voter. In the weekend's tweet he was asking for transparency. Like I don't know the whole system, I'm just one vote, but hopefully these posts can bring some of that transparency that he's asking for. Now when he's talking about corruption, he's probably talking about Deborah Duggan, former Grammy chairman who spoke out last year about corruption. I can't speak to whatever corruption goes into how they spend their money or distribute their money, but when it comes to winners and nominees being selected she's saying certain committees and board members were able to get nominees from the voting pool and the preliminaries. In that preliminary round people vote for four or five nominees from that pool of like 20 people and then from those winners the nominees are chosen. So even adding an extra name to the preliminary process doesn't guarantee that they're going to make it to be a nominee and that definitely doesn't guarantee that as a nominee they'll get enough votes to become a winner. And on that same note there was controversy when somebody tweeted that Cardi B's team bought her a Grammy. I don't see that as being possible either. At the most labels just advertised to try to put their acts in the minds of the voters last minute. Like as voting season is beginning all the Grammy voters get this free billboard magazine. So like this year for instance, Dua Lipa has this big spread for your consideration and it works down her accolades. Over 16 billion streams don't start now and a free gift, a Dua Lipa record. I don't know who has a record player, but I do. So I'll play that record later. So Lady Gaga is the one who's actually on the cover of the magazine. So if you open this cover you have the weekend full page cover for your consideration so that while I'm voting I don't forget about it. Taylor Swift full page. Post Malone full page. Pop Smoke full page. Drake full page. Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber full page. Steel doesn't guarantee the vote. My internet is being a little slow right now. Alright cool. Okay let me log in. So we got this thing preserving the integrity of the Grammy awards process. Kind of a voter code of conduct. Top line reads Voters shall not allow their choices to be suggested, directed or influenced by anything other than their own analysis of merit including but not limited to personal friendships, company loyalties, regional preferences or sales volume slash popularity. It goes on to basically say you can't buy votes. You can't accept payment for votes. You can't make a vote for vote deal. You know trading votes for categories. Enter into any arrangements or pools. Okay I accept that. Gotta go through a bunch of verification steps to log in. Text email. Verify again. Finally I'm logged in. So you go into these categories. They used to just have the play button right there but now you can stream it from any streaming service. So as voters vote your stream should also be going up. That's cool. I actually look forward to the nominee thing because a lot of times I discover great music there. Even if it's an act that I heard of, a lot of times when I actually get a chance to flick on their album I see how banging they really are and it gives me a whole new appreciation that I've become a new fan of them. You hit the green button to make the selection. As you make the selections the votes are saved but the vote isn't cast until you finish that ballot and send it over all. You can change your mind. You can change your selection. You could have hit the wrong button and be like oops so you could walk away. Get back to it another day. Get back to it another week as long as you get it in before the deadline. If you're trying to make an honest vote then there's a lot of music to go through. And it gets time consuming especially when it comes to albums. Now I can do a few categories today based on what I have time to hear. General Phil. Nominees for the record of the year. Record of the year is an award to the artist, the producer, the engineer and the mixing or mastering engineers. Now see the reason why I even bother to read that is because each Grammy category only awards certain people with the actual trophy. You see what I'm saying? The record of the year is for the artist, the producer, the recording engineer and the mixer. It's not necessarily for the songwriter. So if your song wins record of the year yes you have a Grammy winning song. However, you don't walk away with that trophy unless you produced it, mixed it or mastered it or you're the artist. When your artist wins for best rock performance you as the producer don't get an actual physical trophy. Now here's the thing. Song of the year is only a songwriter's award. Now the producer is usually considered a songwriter so he has no problem getting that award. The mixing engineer though, he doesn't get that trophy. And the artist a lot of times doesn't necessarily have to get that trophy. Now a lot of artists are great songwriters but in these days most of the time the artist takes a piece of publishing anyway whether they wrote anything or not. Mainly because they're not going to miss the chance to walk up on the stage if they get song of the year. So everybody can vote in the four general field categories. Now after that I think you have 15 or 16 categories you can do max. According to the rules it says 15 categories in which you have expertise. So why limit the number of categories that one voter can vote in? Even if you're a musician with a wide appreciation there's still a limit to what they allow you to call yourself an expert in. Because if I was to go into Rod, Reggae or Latin since my knowledge of it isn't deep I might just vote for the name I know instead of the most deserving of the project. So remember there's classical musicians in that voting pool there's jazz musicians in that voting pool you got rock musicians along with the pop music makers the hip hop and R&B guys like me so with everybody voting in the general categories like what is pleasing that majority? And of that voting pool which of us are actually taking the time to listen to a lot of stuff and vote? And out of that voting pool which of us are going and creeping in other categories that we really don't have any business in? When too many tourists vote in areas that aren't their home base we've seen what can happen. Flipping the winner to be the most mainstream known name instead of who might have really been deserving in that category. Now Pete Thomas from Quality Control Music posted whoever's making decisions at the Grammys you are disconnected like a motherfucker. You don't speak for the culture, congrats to all the nominees hashtag my turn album of the year and if y'all don't know that's Lil Baby's album. So Pete I believe you but we gotta take the solution into our own hands I mean like think about this all hip hop managers and people with labels all your roster of acts your whole team uses a big stable of producers co-producers, writers, co-writers and engineers so how many of them joined the academy? How many of them became voting members? Now all you managers and label owners y'all can get what's known as a professional membership with that membership you can still get on these boards and committees and effect change in the policies we're in the industry it doesn't have to be a them thing we can get all up in there see when I log into this front page it says I can nominate two members every year I've gotten four young producers approved and in there in the past two years alone I've personally gotten several people in there for memberships over the years so there's a few types of memberships there's Grammy U which is associate membership you can be a student and be that type of member professional memberships which are your executives or attorneys then you have voting memberships which is supposed to be just the creatives just the people in the field the engineers, the producers, the songwriters the performers, the singers out of the membership pool you can vote on board members and those board members are in different chapters in different cities they decide on the guidelines and bylaws and what the categories end up being and I guess from like a pool of thousands and thousands of submissions they're the ones who pretty much form which submissions go into which category and then out of that which songs end up being in the pool of possible nominees for us to vote on so the only place where I come in is when they narrow it down to a pool of possible nominees so I don't know what decides the preliminary pool I imagine a lot of slick political stuff can be done there as far as if you really want to increase somebody's chances of winning making sure they're in a bluer ocean than a red ocean meaning like besides the main categories where the competition is going to be fierce you also want to kind of make sure they get into the more minor categories where the competition isn't going to be so stiff let's talk upsets it's like you guys want the Grammys to be the cool kids awards when it's always been decided by the bankeeks when it doesn't go our way I think it's less about voter fraud and more like voter flaws I think that has to do more with the human flaws like laziness, going with something familiar and people not taking their time to listen year after year I've been able to hear some really great stuff on there and like do the research and look on Spotify and see that this person doesn't even have a lot of listeners to me that's a great thing the fact that you don't need to be overly marketed overly promoted sell billions of records and you can still get recognized for having a great piece of work sometimes enough people actually hit play hear your music and think it's dope and go ahead and give you that vote a lot of times the reason why there's upsets broad audience as a whole hasn't heard a lot of these more eclectic less promoted, lesser known acts when it comes to somebody who had great chart success and great sale success that's your reward right there you know the Grammys is supposed to be judged by other people who do it so that they can appreciate something different than the average fan you see what I'm saying you gotta understand that the general audience of anything they're not judging on as high a level as those who really do it it's like a blockbuster movie versus an Oscar winning movie think of your Grammy winning song like your Oscar winning movie a lot of people didn't see those Oscar winning movies until they were nominated and even still they didn't do the box office like a blockbuster movie or a blockbuster music career where you sold millions of albums and got a cajillion streams I mean that success and that commercial success is it's own reward you pay enough people caught a big enough wave that boom blockbuster success Fast and Furious 7, McDonald's bottom line I'm saying the way to get more favorable Grammy results is get more voters in each of the genres voting in their genre I want to give it a fair vote so I'm going to take my time with it through the weeks ahead I'll listen to all these albums or at the very least give them a thorough skimming so I hope that brings more clarity and transparency to the process good luck to the nominees good luck to those who hope to be nominated one day I'll leave links to get more information on the academy itself and how you can join now I did a song builders deconstructed on Billy Eilish everything I wanted so y'all should check that out I heard it's pretty dope and check out my other song builders tv episodes and my deconstructed episodes hopefully they help you build better songs in your own catalog and don't forget to like and subscribe and keep voting I'm not going to read all these names anymore there's a list of nominees online how about that