For the second straight year, and third in the last four, the top honors in the Big Four Grammy categories were all split among different record labels, as Republic Records (Taylor Swift, album of the year for Midnights), Columbia Records (Miley Cyrus, record of the year for “Flowers”), Interscope Geffen A&M/Atlantic Records (Billie Eilish, song of the year for “What Was I Made For?”) and RCA Records (Victoria Monét, best new artist) all divvied up the major prizes.
This year, that breaks down into a split among the three major label groups, as both Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music Entertainment (SME) accounted for two each, while Warner Music Group (WMG) earned one. (The discrepancy between the four categories and five label wins is because Eilish’s win for song of the year is technically split; she is a Darkroom/Interscope recording artist for UMG, but the song appeared on the Barbie soundtrack, which was released by WMG’s Atlantic Records.) In 2023, the top four was split evenly across the three majors and an independent, with Columbia (Harry Styles, album of the year for Harry’s House), Atlantic (Lizzo, record of the year for “About Damn Time”), Verve (Samara Joy, best new artist) and indie label Redwing (Bonnie Raitt, song of the year for “Just Like That”) scoring wins.
Among the Big Four and the top seven genres by U.S. market share — pop, rock, R&B, hip-hop, Latin, country and dance — RCA and Atlantic picked up the most wins, tying for five apiece, as Monét (best new artist, best R&B album) and SZA (best pop duo/group performance, best R&B song, best progressive R&B album) led the way for RCA while Eilish (song of the year for her track on the Barbie album), Fred Again… (best dance/electronic recording with Skrillex and Flowdan, best dance/electronic music album) and Paramore (best rock album, best alternative music performance) paced Atlantic. Interscope, through Eilish and a trio of awards for acclaimed group boygenius (best rock song, best rock performance and best alternative music album) landed four, while Loma Vista/Concord, off a big night for Killer Mike (best rap album, best rap song, best rap performance), racked up three.
Aside from that, honors were largely evenly divided, with no other label picking up more than two awards. Swift led Republic’s pair of wins (she also won best pop vocal album), while Cyrus led Columbia’s two (she also earned best pop solo performance); a pair of victories for Chris Stapleton (best country song and best country solo performance) landed two wins for UMG Nashville; BMG got two for best pop dance recording for Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” and best country album for Lainey Wilson’s Bell Bottom Country; and UMG Latin earned best musica urbano album for Karol G’s Mañana Será Bonita and Juanes’ Vida Cotidiana, which came in a tie with Natalia Lafourcade’s De Todas Las Flores (Sony Latin) for best Latin rock or alternative album.
The rest were spread across a number of labels, including Def Jam (Coco Jones, best R&B performance), Warner Records (Zach Bryan, best country duo/group performance with Kacey Musgraves), Alamo (Lil Durk, best melodic rap performance with J. Cole), EMPIRE (PJ Morton, best traditional R&B performance with Susan Carol), Blackened (Metallica, best metal performance) Prajin/The Orchard (Peso Pluma, best Música Mexicana album), Cosmica (Gaby Moreno, best Latin pop album) and Ruben Blades Music (Ruben Blades, best tropical Latin album).
Overall, that gave Universal Music Group 11 of those victories, with indies racking up 10, Sony nine and Warner Music Group six.
