Final Round Voting for 2023 Grammy Awards Has Begun

Grammy voters, it’s time to do your due diligence and vote in the 65th annual Grammy Awards. Final round voting opened on Wednesday (Dec. 14) at 9 a.m. PT and continues until Jan. 4, 2023 at 6 p.m. PT. That may seem like a long voting window, but there are some major holidays in there that will compete for voters’ time and attention.

The 2023 Grammys telecast will be held on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2023 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, formerly (and more gracefully) known as Staples Center.  It will mark the first time since 2020 that the Grammys have been back in the venue that has hosted all but four Grammy telecasts since 2000.

The Grammys’ three-week voting window in the final round is significantly longer than the Oscars’ five-day voting window in the final round (March 2-7, 2023). Advantage: Grammys. But final-round Grammy ballots are due a little more than a month before the big show, whereas final-round Oscar ballots are due just five days before the show, which is set for March 12. Advantage: Oscars.

As a result of these deadlines, the first Grammy votes will be submitted and locked (after which no changes are possible) on Dec. 14, a full seven weeks before the winners are revealed. By contrast, the first Oscar votes will be submitted and locked on March 2, just 10 days before the winners are announced. That allows voting in the Oscars to be timelier. Oscar voters have more of a chance to check out that movie they’ve been meaning to watch, for example.

There are five new Grammy categories this year, the biggest one-year spike in the number of categories in 28 years. The new categories are songwriter of the year, non-classical; best alternative music performance; best Americana performance; best score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media; and best spoken word poetry album.  There are 91 categories this year, the most since the Grammys purged 31 categories in 2011, dropping from a bloated 109 categories to a lean-and-mean 78.

Recording Academy voting members can vote in up to 10 categories across up to three fields on their ballot, in addition to all four categories in the General Field, better known as “The Big Four” – record of the year, album of the year, song of the year and best new artist. To help ensure the quality of Grammy voting, members are asked to vote only in their areas of expertise – but they are on the honor system to do so. There’s nothing to prevent a traditional pop enthusiast from voting in rap – or vice versa.

As they cast their votes, voting members will have the ability to stream nominated recordings on select streaming services, a welcome voting innovation in recent years.

The eligibility period for the 65th Grammy Awards was Friday, Oct. 1, 2021 – Friday, Sept. 30, 2022.

The 2023 Grammys will broadcast live on CBS – the Grammys’ network home since 1973 — and stream live and on-demand on Paramount+ from 8-11:30 p.m. ET / 5-8:30 p.m. PT.