The GRAMMY Submission Process

a newsletter by Radio Edit

Whether you’re an artist or industry professional, fully understanding and engaging with the various music awards organizations can often feel both mysterious and unapproachable. Timelines fall to the periphery and deadlines seemingly pop up at the last moment.

To help bridge the education gap between these awards shows and anyone who wants to understand or participate in them, Awards Edit is a dedicated information hub covering awards shows like the AMAs, Billboards, GRAMMYs + more. 

Strategically hitting your inbox around their respective timelines, Awards Edit will be be your source for: 

• Overviews of each stage of their respective processes

• Engagement opportunities & strategy

• Key date reminders

• Voter guides

  + more 

Subscribe here to make sure you (and your artists) are maximizing your potential to participate in, and hopefully, take home one of these awards. 

As a preview, check out our breakdown of the GRAMMYs’ online submission process below:

Welcome to Awards Edit, a dedicated newsletter for music’s various awards show processes and how to engage with them. 

In this issue, we’ll be going over the eligibility and submission process for the 67^th GRAMMY Awards, complete with: 

• A calendar of key dates to be aware of

• Instructions on how to submit a project for GRAMMY consideration

• Basic eligibility rules and guidelines

KEY DATES

HOW TO SUBMIT

As of this morning, the Recording Academy has begun taking submissions for the 67^th GRAMMY Awards, which are scheduled to be held on February 2, 2025. 

One of the common misconceptions about the process is that oftentimes people think the Academy just chooses who is on the ballot. In reality, each entry on the ballot comes from a submission by either an Academy member or a registered media company (labels, management companies, etc.), but more on that below. What’s more, an entrant can make a submission for anyone they wish, regardless of whether or not they’re affiliated with them in any personal or professional capacity. 

NOTE: Both Professional and Voting members are eligible to make GRAMMY submissions.; each of which is entitled to five courtesy entries. 

Media company registration

Apart from being a Voting/Professional member of the Academy, the other route to submitting a project for GRAMMY consideration is by registering as a media company. This option is primarily for record labels and other business entities who help multiple artists commercialize their music. The application window typically opens up a couple weeks before submissions start and comes with a registration fee of $180. Regardless of whether or not you’ve been approved in previous years, all companies must submit an application for the new awards cycle each year.

Media Company registration is currently open and can be accessed here through August 23^rd at 6pm PT. 

Making entries

Whether you’re making submissions as an Academy member or registered media company, they will have to be entered via the Academy’s Online Entry Process portal, which can be found be logging into your dashboard on grammy.com.

To help get all of your ducks in a row, here is the basic information you’ll need to include for each submission:

• Artist

• Submission Title

• Recording Type (Single / Track / Album)

• Category Name

• Release date (Month / Date / Year)

• Recording Dates ( Month / Year)

• UPC

• PDF or Word doc of label copy/liner notes/credits

• Streaming link (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Tidal)

While streaming links will suffice for most categories, note that some Craft categories still require you to send in physical product to complete your submission process. Each category requires a different number of physical copies so the portal will generate a packing list of what you’ll need to send in when you finalize your submissions. 

Entry Fees

Since the Academy charges a fee for each entry, it’s recommended to start planning out your submission strategy as far in advance as possible to take advantage of their discounted rate windows. While the Academy does offer 5 courteous entries to each active member, any member who feels that they would be burdened by these entry fees can contact the Awards department at [email protected] and request that they be waived. 

ELIGIBILITY

Eligibility guidelines

The eligibility window for the 67^th GRAMMY Awards is September 16, 2023 - August 30, 2024. 

To be eligible, recordings must be commercially available from any date during that window through at least the final round voting deadline. These recordings must be distributed nationally; full-catalog subscription streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music are eligible. 

Types of recordings

To be eligible, a submission must be what the Academy considers a “new recording.” Essentially this just means that (1) the specific recording was not previously released and (2) was recorded within 5 years prior to its release date. 

There are three primary types of recordings that are considered. They are: 

1. Albums - defined as a collection of at least 5 tracks with a minimum playing time of 15 minutes (or any number of tracks if the playing time is at least 30 minutes). Each album must contain 75% playing time of newly-recorded material.
   
   NOTE: An album can be in one genre field while tracks from that album can be in others. 
   

2. Tracks - recordings that are released as part of an eligible album.
   
   Tracks have a two-year shelf life so even if the album they’re on came out in the previous year, they are still eligible this year as long as they’ve never been submitted. For example, all tracks from Foo Fighters’ album But Here We Are (released June 2023) are eligible in the 67^th Awards cycle excluding “Rescued” as it was submitted last year.

   
   Conversely, even if a song from an album released this eligibility period initially came out in the 66^th , it’s still eligible this year as long as it wasn’t submitted last year as a single. So if you’re LANY, “Love At First Sight” is eligible as a track because even though they released it as a “single” before the current eligibility window (June 2023), it was never entered into the GRAMMY process. 

3. Singles - recordings that are released independently from an album

   
   As far as the Academy is concerned, a ‘Single’ doesn’t necessarily mean the song has to be an “official” single. It just refers to any song that isn’t part of an eligible album. For all intents and purposes, singles and tracks are judged the same way by the voters. 

Points of Confusion

While we’re noting the difference between a Single and a Track, this is probably a good time to break down two other common points of confusion. 

1. The difference between Song and Performance categories
   

   Each of these categories recognizes different contributions to a recording. Simply put, Performance categories recognize the artists performing on the recording, while Song categories acknowledge the underlying composition.
   
   To illustrate the difference, “Last Night” by Morgan Wallen was nominated in Best Country Song last year. Since Morgan isn’t credited as a songwriter, he is not considered a nominee for this specific category. However, had the track been nominated in Best Country Solo Performance, only Morgan would have received a nomination. 

2. The difference between Song of the Year and Record of the Year
   

   These two categories are basically just versions of the performance/song dynamic mentioned above, with the only difference being that Record of the Year is basically a Performance category on steroids. While the performing artist(s) is nominated in Record of the Year, the category also recognizes the contributions to the recording from credited producers and engineers. 

NEXT

The GRAMMY Screening process- a look at why they exist and how they operate.

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All information found in this guide is publicly available and can be found in the GRAMMY Awards official rules and guidelines. Please contact the Recording Academy directly with any questions or clarifications regarding the GRAMMY process as Awards Edit has no affiliation with the Recording Academy whatsoever.

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