“One Man’s Opinion” by Gordon Curvey

I obtained a email from the Grammy’s aka the Recording Academy and I was blown away by the headline telling readers about a eye popping statistic. I just could not believe my eyes ladies and gentlemen. And here is the news.

I noticed another story online that says as part of the Grammy’s New Member Class of 2023, 50% of the new class are people of color and also 46% of the class are under the age of 4o. Also 37% of the class are women. This is shocking ladies and gentlemen. Shocking in a good way.

But it also makes me very happy to see the changes as far as the statistics go. It seems under the leadership of it’s president, Harvey Mason Jr. the Recording Academy is trying to have a more diverse membership that shows all sides of the music industry. That is a very good thing readers.

Since 2019 when the Recording Academy started to make big changes to its new member submission process, people of color has went up from 24% to 38%. And also the % of women members has increased from 26% to 30%. So as a result, the Recording Academy is now 98% of the way to reaching its goal of adding 2,500 women Voting members by the year 2025.

2,400 people have joined the Recording Academy new class of 2023. Also fully half of the new class is made up as people of color.

The Academy says “a demonstration of the Academy’s commitment to remaking its overall membership.” Also the Academy said that the 2,400 new members include 1,700 new voting members as well as 700 new professional members.

This brings the total current membership around 14,000, 11,000 voting members and almost 3,000 professional members. A professional member by the way means people who work in the industry but aren’t involved in the creation of recordings.

Found out that the Recording Academy membership is so called community driven and peer-reviewed to create a more diverse membership base.

Check this our readers, since 2019, people of color have gone from 24% to the current 38%. CEO Harvey Mason Jr said recently “Our commitment to diversity and inclusion, however, is an ongoing effort. While we celebrate our progress, we also acknowledge that there’s still more work that must be done. Our members play a crucial role in everything we do, so representation is integral to our mission of supporting and uplifting music makers.”

Finally, the new class is 50% people of color as I said earlier, of that 28% African American, Hispanic 10%, Asian or Pacific Islander 5%, South Asian 2%, Middle Eastern or North African 1% and Indigenous or Alaskan native less than 1%.

I can go on with more stats but the bottom line is the Grammys or the Recording Academy is making great moves to improve the diversity within the organization under the leadership of Harvey Mason Jr. That makes me happy.