Grammys For Streaming-Only Albums

The Recording Academy has announced that they will start recognizing albums that are available for streaming only starting next year.

With albums like Kanye West‘s The Life Of Pablo and Chance The Rapper‘s Coloring Book making history as streaming-only albums, it was only a matter of time before the Recording Academy had to adjust and recognize.

After popular petitions and urging from Chance himself, there will now be Grammys awarded for music that is streamed online.

Per statement from Grammy.com:

The Recording Academy has completed its annual Awards review and established new amendments and key dates guiding the 59th Annual GRAMMY Awards process. Among other changes, the updates allow previously ineligible streaming-only works to be considered and limit the number of categories in which members may vote. The new guidelines go into effect immediately in the current-year Awards cycle.

This means that the 2017 Grammys will mark the first time that streaming-only recording will receive awards. Up until now, Grammys were only given for music that was sold through legitimate retail outlets through “general distribution” that the Recording Academy defined as, “sales by label to a branch or recognized independent distributor, via the internet, or mail order/retail sales for a nationally marketed product.”

The new rules expands that definition to include “applicable streaming services,” meaning services that have paid subscription models, full catalogues and on-demand streaming/limited download options. These platforms will also have to have been in existence from at least one full from the the submission deadline.

Kanye West

Apple Music, TIDAL, Spotify and Google Play are the major players in streaming and music on those channels qualify. However, free music on popular Hip-Hop sites such as DatPiff and LiveMixtapes do not qualify because they are not subscription based. Recordings that are released exclusively via Pandora are not eligible either since they are not on demand. Recordings that are on Soundcloud Go will not become eligible until the 2018 ceremony since the service just launched in March 2016. Youtube recording are also ineligible.

“We think that [language] is actually a key to making this work for us and should really accomplish that goal of making sure that the artists who, I guess primarily for philosophical reasons, are releasing through streaming only, that they’re eligible while excluding still most, if not all, the amateur recordings,”Recording Academy SVP of Awards Bill Freimuth tells Billboard.

To break it down further, Future‘s Purple Reign mixtape will not be eligible. However his EVOL album will be. So now, your favorite rapper’s new mixtape will likely not win a Grammy. Nor will your favorite mixtape DJ.

This is the latest and perhaps biggest breakthrough in streaming since the RIAA announced they would start counting streams towards gold and platinum albums. Drake’s Views album has seen the biggest payoff from the allowance as his album has topped 1 billion streams.

Photo: WENN.com