Since 1958, The Recording Academy, formally known as the Academy for Recording Arts and Sciences, has been a driving force in supporting exceptional talent in the music industry.

And for the past 64 years, the GRAMMYs have recognized and celebrated that talent. Over 20,000 industry professionals have been nominated for a GRAMMY, and the annual awards show serves as a venue for members of the Academy to recognize and elevate their peers’ accomplishments.

With a back catalog of over six decades of music industry history, the Recording Academy sought to transition to a content management system which could support those archives, as well as a dynamic digital experience before, during, and after each annual show. The CMS also needed to support a comparably deep experience for the Latin GRAMMY’s, multilingual support, The Recording Academy’s corporate site, MusiCares - a non-profit organization supporting recording artists, and The GRAMMYMuseum.

Five sites, 60-plus years of archives, live updates during a show broadcast to millions… and a redesign paying tribute to a well established brand, refreshed for a new generation of performers.

Beginning with an audit of the information architecture of the existing websites, Chamjari’s UX team first developed a set of comprehensive interaction designs, to capture the intended behavior of each site across a range of desktop and mobile display formats. Low-fidelity, dynamic and interactive designs allowed our UX team to collaborate quickly and efficiently with development, design and key client stakeholders to assess, capture and approve the sites’ intended function and display behavior.

As each discrete section of the site was assessed for technical feasibility and business requirements adherence, our visual design team moved seamlessly to find creative expression for the Recording Academy’s multiple brands. While balancing the detailed requirements of their brand guidelines with the need to present a fresh, compelling, and modern visual experience, we also worked to keep pace with an aggressive development schedule. With a television airing date set months in advance, our teams focused on timely delivery of assets with an eye on the clock.

In February 2022, the launch of GRAMMY.com marked the debut of the Recording Academy’s new digital presence. And on April 3rd, 2022, the 64th Annual GRAMMY awards aired, while a new headless CMS provided seamless navigation and content distribution across:

• A simultaneous stream of minute-by-minute updates of the show performances, presentations, and acceptance speeches on Live.GRAMMY.com
• A comprehensive, presence-of-record on GRAMMY.com 20,000 recording artists’ awards nominations and wins, music-related news, updates, and videos.
• Regularly updated news, articles and music history organized across 22 genre-specific sections.
• The Latin GRAMMYs website, featuring translated and original content and additional music-genre categories
• MusiCares, which provides financial assistance to artist members of The Recording Academy.
• Recording Academy members-only access to registration, geographically-specific Chapter information and resources, GRAMMY awards voting access and more.

One year later, the websites are still going strong, supporting over 1.5 million visitors during 2023's 65th Annual GRAMMY awards.