Music’s biggest night drew 15.4 million viewers on CBS Sunday night.
That’s down 12% from last year’s Grammys, which brought in 17.5 million viewers on CBS, per Nielsen Live + Same Day ratings. (The 2024 Grammys marked a 34% increase from the year before.)
Those figures do not include streaming and online viewership from Paramount+, CBS.com and the CBS app.
CBS claims that the music awards telecast was “the most social television program ever,” racking up 102.2 million interactions online. Still, marketing efforts for this year’s show were scaled back due to the wildfires in Los Angeles. As the ceremony focused on fundraising efforts and the resilience of the city, the Grammys raised nearly $9 million to aid wildfire relief efforts in California on Sunday night, and an additional $15 million over the weekend.
Sunday’s ceremony was the best Grammys in years, declared Variety‘s Chris Willman in his review of the telecast. The show featured a healthy dose of snubs and surprises (Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish were shut out, Beyoncé finally won album of the year and Kendrick Lamar took home both song and record of the year for the larger-than-life Drake diss “Not Like Us”), as well as impressive performances from Doechii, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and Charli xcx.
The ceremony also featured a tribute to Quincy Jones, with Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, Cynthia Erivo, Lainey Wilson and Janelle Monáe (in full Michael Jackson attire) paying homage to the late music legend. Opening the show, which highlighted the resilience of Los Angeles after the devastating wildfires, were Dawes with a cover of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” and Billie Eilish performing “Birds of a Feather” in front of a screen showing the San Gabriel Mountains.
Trevor Noah hosted the Grammys for the fifth year in a row. Fulwell 73 produced the show for the Recording Academy, while Ben Winston served as executive producer alongside Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins.
