Seven Kickstarter-financed tracks get Grammy nominations

This year, seven of the Grammy-nominated recordings were financed through Kickstarter, the global crowd-funding platform.

These seven tracks are:

— Antonique Smith’s track “Hold Up Wait a Minute (Woo Woo)” off of her first album, Speechless, which was nominated for Best Traditional R&B Performance.

– Back At The Controls, the latest album from the legendary Lee “Scratch” Perry, was nominated for Best Reggae Album.

– Shine For All The People by Mike Farris was nominated for Best Roots Gospel Album.

– The Legacy, a traditional Cajun French album by Jo-EL Sonnier, was nominated for Best Regional Roots Music Album.

– Jeremy Fox was nominated for Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals for his song ”All My Tomorrows”from his big band and jazz orchestra album With Love.

– Brady Rymer and The Little Band That Could’s record Just Say Hi! was nominated for Best Children’s Album.

– Dreams and Prayers by A Far Cry is nominated for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.

According to an article by speakeasy, an online publication, the crowd-funded nominees’ recordings were not in the main categories of the recently concluded 57th annual GRAMMY Awards.

“Don’t expect these crowd-funded nominees to upset Iggy Azalea or Sam Smith in the record of the year race — they’re mostly sprinkled among the secondary and tertiary categories, including best roots gospel album (Mike Farris’s “Shine For All the People”)and best children’s album (Brady Rymer’s “Just Say Hi!”). But having them in the mix at Sunday’s ceremony serves as yet another reminder that DIY is the new default in the music industry,” states the.

“This year, in terms of institutional acknowledgement, we’re definitely on a new level,” says Yancey Strickler, chief executive and co-founder of Kickstarter, citing the Grammy nominees, along with Kickstarters by such legacy artist’s as TLC. Music has more successfully funded projects (more than 18,500) than any other category on Kickstarter, with a total of $135 million.

Still, it’s not like a winning Kickstarter is a guarantee of broader music success – let alone a Grammy nomination. “We are one piece of a larger puzzle,” Strickler says.