Steve Jobs to Receive a Grammy

Steven P. Jobs was not a musician, and opinions are mixed about whether the invention of iTunes will be good for the recording industry in the long run, but his mark on how music is distributed appears indelible, and so the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has decided to give him a Grammy award in February.

Jobs, who died on Oct. 5, will be given a Trustees Award, which honors “outstanding contributions to the industry in a nonperforming capacity.” The academy’s national board of trustees decided to honor Jobs because he “helped create products and technology that transformed the way we consume music, TV, movies, and books,” the announcement said. “A creative visionary, Jobs’ innovations such as the iPod and its counterpart, the online iTunes store, revolutionized the industry and how music was distributed and purchased,” the announcement said. (The academy already gave Apple Computer Inc. a Technical Grammy Award in 2002 for contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field.) Jobs is the only industrialist receiving an award this year.