This was the year when both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones won Grammy Awards, but the old demographics that saw the show are wondering why rock music had such a low profile in television-style ceremonies .
Certainly, rock music had a presence in tokens during television broadcasts. The show began with an uplifting performance from Dose covering Randy Newman’s “I Love LA,” backed by an all-star band consisting of Brad Paisley, John Legend, Sheryl Crowe and Brittany Howard. And St. Vincent is a homage to the people of Los Angeles who are still trying to recover from the devastating wildfires in January. Also, Anthony Kiedis and Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers featured the best pop vocal album Grammy to Sabrina Carpenter on a short n’s sweet. And Chris Martin of Coldplay performed a ballad in the In Memoriam section.
However, awards such as Best Rock Album, Best Metal Performance and Best Album were relegated to the Afternoon Grammy Awards presentations in particular.
Why didn’t artists of that genre lock out during television? After all, rock music still rules the live show marketplace. Also, there are many ways in which different genres can be measured against each other, but the genre report for Luminate’s Audio Consumer Album Unit shows that rock music is the second largest genre at 22.3%. This is almost 2.5 times the Latin word, with a market share of 8.3%. And it’s a slightly larger country, more than twice the market share of 10.4%.
In the album unit, rock is 50% larger than pop music, which has a market share of 14.8%, but pop was featured prominently during the show. Like R&B/HIP-HOP, this remains the largest genre with a market share of 27.8%.
But while rock may have a large collective presence, there are some ingredients that make it difficult to include on television these days.
Age is a factor. It definitely plays a role not only in the demographics of the Grammy Show audience, but also in the feature of artists and music on television broadcasts. The release of the Luminate track is a release for two age groups. Current counts all sales and streaming activities in the first 18 months after the song or album is released. Catalogs count older than 18 months.
This is one of the biggest issues with locks. By catalog category – again using Audio Consumer Unit, subtracting activity from titles to genre titles, 25.5% of the market is comfortable number 2 in the industry, still lagging behind R&B/HIP-HOP. It’s there. However, with the current release, Rock has been releasing R&B/Hip-Hop (27.2%), POP (18.7%) and Country (14.8%), and Latin (10.6%), and R&B/Hip-Hop (27.2%). , POP (18.7%) and country (14.8%), slipping fourth behind.
And the Grammys are all about current music. In fact, music today is literally written in eligibility criteria that music releases can be considered for their awards. For the 2025 Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy only considered recordings released between September 16, 2023 and August 20, 2024. The show will be released in its current release.
However, there may be another more important factor as to why rock music wasn’t front and center during the part it aired. The sales and streams of candidates in the Rock category are different compared to candidates in other genres. Large sales and streaming activities clearly show widespread popularity, and TV shows are about attracting all viewers. And candidates in the rock category introduced the weakest collective performance in terms of sales and streaming activities for the genre highlighted in the show.
Of the albums nominated for Album of the Year, only Billy Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft could be considered rock. Other albums aren’t that many. Taylor Swift is Tortured Poets Division, Chapel Lawn’s “The Midwest Princess Elevation” and Carpenter’s short n’ Sweet Got Pop Cover. Charli XCX’s Brat represents electropop. Djesse Vol. by Andre 3000’s New Blue Sun and Jacob Colliers. Four are R&B and jazz, with funk smatta being thrown into it. In fact, Beyoncé’s country album, Cowboy Carter, is cited for incorporating other genres into the mix.
Collectively, the eight albums nominated for Album of the Year would have an average of 2.43 album consumption units in 2024, even if Andre 3000 albums reached 44,000 units and 33,000 units for Collier Album Lower alone. did.
Sales and streaming activities were also a distinguished factor in determining whether major awards in the Latin, pop, country and R&B genres were featured on television shows. Grammy Nod appeared on Carpenter’s Sweet album, earning 2504 million US album Consumption units. Collectively, the five candidates in that category are an average of 3.01 million album-consuming units, and Swift’s tortured poet led with 6.962 million.
On Best Rap Album, Doechii’s Crocodile Bite did not win a Grammy despite having the second lowest sales/activity of the nominees in the 133,000 album consumption unit. Collectively, five nominated albums include an average of 712,000 units that do not trust Future & Metro Boomin’s We Don’t Hot You with 2.046 million units, and an average of 101 million album consumption units, with Slim Shady (Coup de) He led the Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace) by Grace.
In Best Country Album, Grammy nominees collectively averaged 856,000 album consumption units, with 1,598 million units from Post Malone’s F-1 trillion units, and winner Cowboy Carter consumes 1.42 million albums New artists led the genres they acquired. unit.
Playing in historic role in bringing Latin music to the masses, Shakira, recognized, won the best Latin pop album on Las Mugerez Ya No Rolaran album with 306,000 album consumption units. did. Collectively, her activities averaged 171,000 album consumption units, combined with the other four candidates for Best Latin Pop Albums.
Even dance/electronic music, ranked 6th in US market share with 3.8%, made cuts of the airing portion of the show, as calculated by Billboard based on Luminate data. Although its overall market share is small compared to Rock, its collective album consumer units were strengthened by the Charli XCXS Brat album, which has won 1.59 million album consumer units. In total, five candidates in the category earned an average of 273,000 units of collective acquisitions.
In comparison, Rock is a different story. The Rolling Stones won the Best Rock Album Award for Hackney Diamond for 91,000 Album Consumer Units, while Green Day, the category leader, had 158,000 units. Collectively, on average, there were only 81,000 candidates in the Rock category.
There may be many reasons why Rock was relegated to a backburner at this year’s Grammy Awards. But the numbers certainly tell at least part of that story.