Daily Times

The Grammy Awards have been expanding the number of nominees in the top categories of music from the past six to eight years to increase diversity in the 60-year long history of awards.

The changes were announced on Tuesday and will come into effect for the 2019 Grammy Awards. The Recording Academy organizes the event and has also announced the changes.

The expansion focuses on the top categories of music like, best record, album, song of the year, and artist of the year. All these top categories will have 8 nominees and then the prize will be decided. All the other categories will have five nominees.

“This creates more opportunities for a wider-range of recognition in these important categories and gives more flexibility to our voters when having to make the often challenging decisions about representing excellence and the best in music for the year,” said Neil Portnow, Recording Academy President.

In 2018 Grammy Awards,  Bruno Mars stole the show by winning six awards for his album, 24K Magic.

Neil Portnow was criticised because for saying that if female musicians need to “step-up” if they want to get recognition. After the announcement of increasing diversity was made, Potrnow said that he will step down from his post.

The expansion of the nominees follows an almost identical decision made by Academy of Motion Pictures in 2009 which focused on increasing the number of best picture nods taken from Oscars.

Even though there’s just one winner from every category but people who are nominated for awards like Oscars and Grammy get record boosts.

Grammy is expected to take place in February 2019 and the nominees will be announced in fall.