ACM tweaks categories

[HariAJFan]

From All About Country:

Category Changes For Next ACM Awards
Entertainer Of The Year & New Artist Categories
In what it calls a response to the changing COUNTRY music industry, the Academy of Country Music has made some category changes.

The Entertainer Of The Year category will, for the first time this year, include 8-nominees, rather than the customary 5. The ACM Professional Members continue to select the final slate of nominees for this category, but fan voting decides the winner.

In the New Artist categories, the ACM has chosen to respond to the proliferation of new duos and groups by realigning the New Artist categories (winners for all 3 chosen by fan voting) this way:

Top New Solo Vocalist combines Male & Female Categories
Top New Vocal Duo
Top New Vocal Group
ACM Executive Director Bob Romeo says, “One thing the Academy would like to say is that we’re open to change. And I think that every year we realize we have to revisit our criteria to reflect what’s happening out there. We realized that last year after the voting process started, when it came to Album of the Year and we had to tweak criteria to include digital downloads.”

[BIGHUSKERSRED]

Thank you for posting this, Harriet. It would be interesting to see how well it will work. I think allowing the digital downloads in the criteria might create a bit more of a problem there for two reasons. One is, fans of the artists pre-selected or chosen in the running for nominations at any of the categories will now jam music download sites to assure their favorite artist(s) gets nominated and possibly win the award(s) they're nominated for, which will put unfair disadvantage to the veterans, like Alan, who are still putting out great music out there, in more ways than one, the way country music these days are being geared to a much younger audience. The other is, the internet traffic jam it could and probably will create will leave a lot of fans feeling disgruntled at the new nominees selection system and will cry foul. Just my opinion. Wonder if CMA will follow suit.

BHR

[HariAJFan]

BHR, also I have a problem with ETOY being fan voted on the ACM's. Do the fans have the judgement to know who really is best? They will just vote for the artist they like best.

[nelle]

Harriet and BHR I agree with both of you 100%.     Take Care  nelle

[JeanB]

Thanks for sharing Harriet.  I agree with you ladies. Fans voting is good but it isn't the right way. Maybe the solution is to give the fans (votes in %. Not in quantity) ACM professionel members and, why not, the artists the possibility to vote.

Jean