How the Grammy's Work

The Grammys can be confusing, most people have no idea how it works. Well here's the run down. Once a year there is a red carpet event similar to the Oscars and Emmys, except these awards are for music only. Usually, it is held in February of every year at the Staples center in Los Angeles. There are many kinds of music that can be awarded, from the best movie theme of the year to Best Jazz album of that year. Truth be told there's about 108 categories. 97 of the awards are given out before you see it on television.

The GRAMMY^® Awards were derived from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. All members of the academy must be in the music industry. "The Recording Academy has two membership levels -- associate and voting. All voting members are producers, performers or engineers on six or more tracks of a commercially released album." Now these members nominate people by mail or online. In Order to be eligible you must have distributed content in the United States during the time stated which is, October 1 to September 30 of that year. After the votes are cast the top five of the nominees are selected to appear at the awards. Ultimately, the one with the most votes wins the award, sounds simple enough right? Well it's a little bit more complicated than that but, I feel it's very ambiguous and extremely redundant so we don't have to go there.

Now how is it determined which category they are placed in? Well that's to be determined by the work that went into a song. So if you are nominated for album of the year its most likely its because your awarding the singer and the production team. Now if you were awarded the Grammy for song of the year you are just awarding the performer for his/her work on one song.

Things like this can be very confusing even just reading the info about the questions you have can be mind boggling. So I have included a few links you could check out if your curiosity is beyond what I have to offer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award#Nomination_process

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/grammys1.htm