There's an art to an awards campaign. While the typical Oscar or Emmy race involves the requisite menu of FYC events, press screenings, billboards, trade ads, and gift baskets — typically focused on the voting hubs of Los Angeles and New York — Grammy campaigning is constantly evolving to find the most effective means to reach a more diffuse electorate. By their nature, Grammy campaigns tend to be broader. The Recording Academy has more than 13,000 voting members, most of whom are everyday working musicians who are more difficult to congregate in just two cities like the screen awards bodies do.
The demise of TV...
Grammy campaigning also had to adapt to a post-pandemic reality. Pre-COVID, labels could focus on TV appearances, which is why we would see artists like Billie Eilish and Lizzo stopping by almost every show imaginable. While effective, this type of campaigning had some drawbacks. With only a finite number of shows, there are fewer openings available. Once all the Saturday Night Live and late night slots are booked, there weren't great fallback options. Consequently, smaller or more genre-bound artists have a more difficult time getting exposure in front of wider audiences. And with TV viewership declining and fragmenting, the strategy is not realistic long-term. While Bad Bunny and Sabrina Carpenter have had hyped SNL gigs in recent weeks, which will undoubtedly boost their profiles among voters, they are the outliers.
... And the rise of Tiny Desk
Since 2020, fewer artists have had access to televised appearances, forcing them to rely more on social media and the internet as a whole. NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts have become the main beneficiary of this shift. While the program has always been a great way to create buzz for an artist, it has become a mandatory stop for a successful Grammy campaign, especially for the newer artists hoping for nominations in different genres. Artists like Omar Apollo, Wet Leg, and Fred again.. have parlayed Tiny Desk appearances into nominations. And it's not just newcomers: the NPR show has served as a platform for such A-listers as Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, and Harry Styles. This year, General Field contenders have crowded around the Tiny Desk, including Bad Bunny, Leon Thomas, and the Marías, as well as more genre-specific artists who could surprise with big noms, like PinkPantheress, MJ Lenderman, Clipse, and Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso. The latter have one of the biggest sets ever, currently the ninth-most-watched Tiny Desk Concert on the show's YouTube page.
The Recording Academy itself provides a venue for artist showcases via its Los Angeles-based Grammy Museum. Additionally, each of the 12 chapters of the Recording Academy across the country hosts various events throughout the year, allows musicians of all stripes to reach a geographically diverse range of voters.
Digital delivery
Live appearances can only go so far, which means artists still rely on disseminating their music as widely as possible. For years, this was achieved through physical media sent via mailers but that old-school approach has undergone a transformation. Billboard’s annual Grammy preview issue is now delivered electronically to voters, meaning more global voters now have access to it. While there are still some artists who send FYC packages with vinyl or personalized merch, that's no longer a common tactic when voters can stream music on Spotify from virtually anywhere, as opposed to spinning a single on their record player.
Flooding the zone
Perhaps the best way to get attention in a crowded field is by putting out more music. This can be traced back to Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next,” the virality of which likely and unintentionally helped Grande bag a Best Pop Vocal Album win for Sweetener — her previous record. Two years later, Taylor Swift cleverly released her Evermore just days after the opening of Grammy voting, in which her previous release, Folklore, was a top contender for Album of the Year. That’s not to say that Swift would not have won without the former, but having a new, critically acclaimed and commercially successful album fueled the narrative of 2020 being “the year of Taylor Swift,” which was impossible for voters to ignore.
In the past two years, we have also seen a proliferation of reissues and deluxe versions. Last year’s most noteworthy entry was Charli XCX’s Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat, but there were also new editions from artists like Grande, Lizzy McAlpine, Tyla, and Sampha. This year, for example, PinkPantheress, and María Zardoya from the Marías have dropped new releases with Fancy Some More? (a remix project) and Melt, respectively. For both, it might be working: Melt is María’s highest peaking album ever, surpassing the Marías’ last two records; and Fancy Some More features the viral TikTok hit “Stateside” featuring Zara Larsson.
This year, the introduction of randomized ballot adds another layer of complexity and uncertainty, with voters being asked to more thoughtfully consider their selections, and presumably sample the work of a wider array of artists, rather than defaulting to name-checking those in the upper part of the slate. It should produce some unexpected results when the Grammy nominations are announced in one week, when we'll get a better idea of whether these new approaches to campaigning helped the contending artists.
