The Recording Academy sent invitations to more than 2,800 new voting members on Wednesday (June 21). That’s more than the 2,000 invitations to new voting members it sent out last year. Of those, more than 1,300 invitees accepted, according to the Academy. This is having a major impact on the composition of the Academy, which has more than 11,000 total voting members.
To participate in the entire 66th Annual Grammy Awards process, invitees must accept their invitations by July 14.
In addition, the Academy sent invitations to more than 850 professional (non-voting) members today. This is also more than last year, when it sent invitations to more than 600 professional members, of whom more than 500 accepted, according to the Academy.
The Academy currently has more than 2,700 professional members.
Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr. today sent an email to all members of the Academy saying: “Members are the foundation of the Recording Academy. And today, we’re privileged to extend invitations to a remarkable group of close to 3,700 creators and professionals spanning various genres, crafts, backgrounds, and regions to join our mission to cultivate a more enriching world for creators.”
Today at 11 a.m. PT, the Academy is hosting an Instagram Live with selected members of this year’s new class. They include Tony winner and Grammy nominee Myles Frost (MJ: The Musical), Emmy nominee Chrissy Metz (This Is Us) and rapper Rap-Unzel, who got her big break in 2017 when she competed on Jermaine Dupri’s reality TV series The Rap Game. The session will be moderated by Ashley Thomas, the Academy’s senior director of member outreach & systems.
In a recent video which was posted in the Academy’s site, Mason shed light on the fairly recent practice of actively reaching out to prospective new members rather than waiting for them to approach the Academy, which was the way it used to work.
“As of three years ago, we started going out into genres, into communities and saying ‘We need more banjo players, we need more rap artists, we need more women, we need more people of this genre’ and we started inviting people in. That’s how we started to change our membership. We’ve still got a long way to go. That’s how we’re going to get better results.”
The Academy will release data about the demographic breakdown of this year’s class of new inductees later this summer.
