I don't think the Academy would deny basing their nominees on record sales. It's pretty obvious.

Actually, they would deny exactly that... From their web site..


"The GRAMMYs are the only peer-presented award to honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position. "


Now, we all know that if you haven't sold any records, nobody, not even your peers in the music industry, will have heard of you, hence, you won't get nominated. But they claim that it's not part of their formula.

Like, think about it. Let's pretend that the nominees are picked based on 50 random individuals from the music industry (artists, producers, whatever) writing down their favorite albums of the year on little pieces of paper. Do you think an act that's only sold 10,000 records has a chance of being liked by more than, say, 3 or 4 of them?

Commercial success doesn't make an album good, but it does show that it strikes a chord with more listeners. Thus, I don't know how you can completely remove commercial success from ANY kind of award.

Having said all this, I never watch the grammys, and will continue to not watch them this year.