The Grammys happened just over a week ago. If you were not aware, you’re not alone. Over the past few decades, viewership for “Music’s Biggest Night” has steadily declined. 14.4 million viewers tuned in to CBS on Sunday evening, a 6 percent drop from last year. Last year saw 15.4 million viewers, a 9 percent drop from the year prior.
For decades, a Grammy has been celebrated as the most prestigious award attainable for anyone in the music industry. However, this recognition no longer carries the same weight. Today’s listeners are not basing their music consumption on Grammy nods. The award show maintains its cultural relevance through everything but music, and should be recognized as such.
Since 1959, the Grammy Awards have been presented annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences to recognize “excellence” in the United States’ recording market. Throughout the show, over 75 golden gramophone statues are presented to winners across various musical genres, production fields, and sonic media categories. To be eligible for the 68th annual Grammy Awards, a recording or music video had to be released in the United States between Aug. 31, 2024 and Aug. 30, 2025. Media companies and artists pay for annual membership of NARAS, as well as for individual entries. These entries are screened by “genre experts,” according to NARAS, to ensure that they compete for the appropriate award. Voting members of NARAS then select nominees from the initial pool of entries and ultimately winners in the final ballot. All ballots are counted confidentially by a third-party accounting firm.
For over half a century, the Grammy Awards have been televised nationally by CBS. That said, fewer and fewer people are tuning in every year. Viewership statistics indicate a clear downward trend since 2000. The ceremony hit its all-time high in 1984, when 51.67 million people watched Michael Jackson sweep eight separate categories. The last time viewers even surpassed 30 million was 2012. Simply put, people are caring less about the Grammys. But why?
NARAS is not alone in its slipping hold on viewers. Many televised award shows are losing their audiences. For instance, the Golden Globes, which awards film and television shows, reached 8.7 million viewers this year, 6 percent down from last year. Last year’s Oscars drew 18 million viewers, an 8 percent drop from 2024.
These trends reflect a broader decline of engagement with long-form visual media. As short-form content platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts grow increasingly popular, viewers’ attention spans have contracted significantly. Songs themselves are shrinking in length, further driving impatient consumption. The Grammy ceremony is particularly long, with the main telecast lasting a mighty 3.5 hours. Host monologues, acceptance speeches, and commercials pepper the show, making it hard for audiences to stay engaged. Of much greater appeal is a free Sunday evening and a quick scroll through Instagram on Monday morning, flying through red carpet looks, celebrity interactions, and ruthless memes.
More and more, official news coverage of the Grammys touts its social reach over viewer counts because audience interaction has evolved past the television. CBS celebrates that this year’s ceremony was the “most social” television program of the past six months. It’s not clear what this superlative actually means, but online video views and “total interactions” seem to be the Grammys’ primary status symbol and priority in current pop culture.
CBS’s focus on “interactions” suggests that much of the entertainment value of the Grammys is now being derived from aspects other than the music awards themselves. Red carpet looks, interactions between celebrities, and hosting highlights and lowlights are arguably more entertaining than the rotation of trophies. It seems that they certainly spark just as much debate across the internet. Who won what? Who wore what? For a ceremony designed to recognize musical achievement, the latter question is just as contentious.
Another source of contention is the claim that the Grammys play God. Fans are growing increasingly skeptical of the Grammys as a monopolizing force of the music industry. Digital streaming, free audio tools, and online platforms like Bandcamp and SoundCloud have made both music making and music listening far more accessible than it was in the Grammys’ heyday. These opportunities have democratized the industry to the extent that a kingpin organization handing out gold stars feels outdated and irrelevant. Who cares what any singular entity thinks? The awards are decided by vote among NARAS members, yet the voting process is kept anonymous and secret from the public. Artists and listeners alike have no way of confirming that the voting process outlined in the Grammys’ rulebook is real, true, or honest.
Public distrust of the Grammys has accumulated over a notorious history of miscategorization and lack of racial representation. Artists and fans alike have criticized the ceremony for upholding institutional racism, as musicians in hip-hop, R&B, and other genres dominated by Black artists have rarely won the most coveted awards — Album Of The Year, Record Of The Year, and Song Of The Year. While performers like Drake and Frank Ocean have been recognized in the smaller category awards, the key Grammy picks remain divisive. In 2023, the 66th Grammy nominations ignored many Latin American performers. This year, it was country music’s turn; Zero country music artists were nominated for the four most prestigious Grammy awards. In the lineup of 25 performances throughout the 3.5-hour show, there was not a single dedicated country music performance.
Every year, the internet protests against the snubbing of one artist and the crowning of another. Over time, support for the Recording Academy has been replaced by fierce allegations of favoritism and “selling out.” In light of such backlash, it makes sense to question the value of NARAS’ musical verdicts. If audiences don’t trust the Grammys as an institution, why should they buy into the institution’s judgments on music? Music, like any art form, is inherently subjective. Music is also a pool of creation that is constantly changing. Declaring a single winner of this pool makes no sense and more importantly, makes no difference for the music.
The United States maintains the world’s largest recorded music market, generating nearly $18 billion in annual revenue according to the Recording Industry Association of America’s most recent report. The Grammys capture only a small fraction of music, its creators, and its listeners. Although winning a Grammy may certainly boost an artist’s visibility or sales, the award has become prestigious for its prestige. The Recording Academy boasts its power to bestow “music’s most coveted honor.” This claim to fame is an ugly contortion of music into a standardized battleground, and buries the rare, genuine honor of having someone listen.
—Staff writer Audrey H. Limb can be reached at [email protected].