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Music

The Grammys Are Waking Up to the Internet, Mixtapes Could Soon Be Up For Awards

The American awards show is "revising" its exclusion of freely-distributed music.

Ok people. Get your bucket hat on and your SoundCloud off private because, thanks to a Change.org petition by Max Krasowitz, the Grammys may have a free music category as soon as next year. Krasowitz created the petition titled as a criticism of the longstanding exclusion of freely distributed music from the Grammys.

Krasowitz, a fan of Chance the Rapper—who on principle releases all of his music free of charge, and who actually signed the petition—wrote that "ridiculously talented artists who are releasing free mixtapes and projects are not getting the recognition they truly deserve." The longstanding condition that to be eligible to be nominated for a Grammy, an artist must have distributed and sold their release, seems like more of a case of outdated semantics than decisive exclusion.

Since the petition's emergence, more than 30,000 people have supported it, and The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has said they are looking at revising the rule. A statement they issued said "The Grammy Awards process is fluid and, like music, continues to evolve." This news is timely for Chance the Rapper as his third mixtape The Coloring Book was released just last week. In summation, either Chance or the dude you buy your weed from could have a Grammy as soon as 2017. If anyone needs me I'll be downloading Ableton.

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