Dear Grammys: The Time Is Now for a Songwriter of the Year Award (Guest Column)

variety.com:

Nick Jarjour As we head into Grammy weekend, Harvey Mason Jr, the CEO of the Recording Academy, deserves to be commended for restructuring the organization to credit and support songwriters like never before.

Among the positive changes under his watch: establishing a songwriter wing and including writer credits on albums. Seeing as Harvey is a publisher and songwriter himself, music makers, and those who represent them, are looking to him to endorse a Grammy category for songwriter of the year.Its dumbfounding that the Grammys do not recognize songwriting as a craft.

After all, writers are indispensable to the creative process and embedded into the very core of music. As creatives, songwriters are consistently under-credited and largely under-compensated, receiving the smallest share of the streaming pie — Spotify and the labels take four times what the songwriter is allotted — and rarely allowed to participate in merchandise based on their lyrics or to share in master points for records.

As it turns out, neglected songwriters have existed since the dawn of popular American music. Luckily Canadian, British, Chinese and Swedish Grammy equivalents have implemented distinguished “Songwriter of the Year” categories for years to ensure that these songwriters can enjoy the same benefits and provenance such an award gives its recipients.The effects of the pandemic have rapidly transitioned the music industry into a song economy, and record labels are increasingly turning to hitmakers, like my client Starrah, to elevate the potential of their artists with chart-topping songs.