Record companies are getting their employees to sing on Christmas albums, so they might qualify to vote for Grammys the LA Times reports.

I say we release a six song Blogcritics charity album with no xmas music (maybe we could call it 'We are the Blogcritics'), so we can vote in an attempt to keep so many crappy songs from winning.

Jeff Leeds writes:

Ever since Warner Bros. Records rounded up more than 100 employees to spend a hot summer day crooning Christmas carols, rivals have been buzzing about an alleged conspiracy to deck the company's halls with Grammy Awards by qualifying scores of insiders to vote for the coveted music prizes.

Warner's carolers insist they're just singing for charity — and the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences says label employees trying to crack the voter ranks will have to do more than warble about a partridge in a pear tree.

Still, some suspect that the recording session was just the latest example of a tactic used by record labels to boost their chances of snaring a Grammy. In the last few years, employees of Universal Records and Zomba Music have recorded holiday albums of their own.

"This has been a thorn in the side of the organization" for some time, said industry veteran Joe Smith, a former president of the Capitol and Warner Bros. labels who served as the academy's first full-time president in the late 1980s. "It is easy to manipulate voting by enrolling members of the academy who have no business being in it."

Success at the Grammys has become a bigger priority for many music executives over the years...

Critics of the annual music telecast have long ridiculed the program's credibility, saying Grammy voters have appeared to favor mainstream bestsellers over true artistic breakthroughs. But until now, few had suggested that record labels themselves might be stuffing the ballot box for financial gain.

Under the rules of the Santa Monica-based academy, any member who has technical or creative credit on six commercially released songs — from vocalists to liner note writers — can be eligible to cast his or her ballot in the competition...

In the case of Universal — where employees recorded a collection of tunes under the name Universal/Motown All-Stars — executives are unabashed about their efforts to sign up more Grammy voters from within the corporation's ranks.

Universal President Monte Lipman estimated that of the 100 or so staff members who chose to sing on his employee album, about 50 ultimately registered to cast ballots. He likened the labels' efforts to a political party's move to bus voters to the polls.

Asked whether employees are likely to vote for their labels' own artists, Lipman responded: "That's like asking Bill Clinton or any other politician whether they voted for themselves."

At the same time, Lipman suggested that it was entirely appropriate to have label staffers sing in order to vote. For one thing, he said, it helps marketing and promotion employees and others in the corporation better understand the process of cutting a record. Besides, he added, "people that work at a record company are creative," no matter which department they're in.

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