Neil Portnow will step down as longtime president and chief executive of the Recording Academy and MusiCares when his contract ends in July 2019, the home of the Grammy Awards announced Thursday.
Until then, the 16-year veteran of the job _ whose tenure was recently marred by a male-heavy awards show and a follow-up comment about women needing to "step up" in the music industry _ will work on a transition plan while finishing out his term as active leader of the academy.
"When I had the honor of being selected to lead this great organization in 2002, I vowed that on my watch, for the first time in our history, we would have a thoughtful, well-planned and collegial transition," Portnow, who is also chair of the Grammy Museum board, said in a statement Thursday.
"With a little more than a year remaining on my current contract, I've decided that this is an appropriate time to deliver on that promise."
Before becoming president, he was on the Recording Academy's board of trustees, and on Portnow's watch, the organization has established the Grammy Museum, strengthened its voice in Washington, D.C., and expanded MusiCares into a multimillion-dollar charity.
Portown also signed a 10-year deal with CBS to keep the Grammy Awards on that network through 2026 and is credited with building up the academy's finances and brand _ but the controversy around female inclusion at the Grammys and elsewhere in the music industry that started in January has continued to roll on.
It was fueled in part by the #MeToo and Time's Up movements. When asked in an interview about the lack of female representation at January's awards, Portnow told Variety, "It has to begin with women who have the creativity in their hearts and their souls, who want to be musicians, who want to be engineers, who want to be producers, who want to be part of the industry on an executive level, to step up."
Amid a backlash, Portnow issued a statement: "Regrettably, I used two words, 'step up,' that, when taken out of context, do not convey my beliefs and the point I was trying to make."
With the debate expanding to women at higher levels in the music industry, female executives issued a statement calling for his resignation. The Recording Academy issued a letter to its members acknowledging Portnow's "poor choice of words" and brought attention to a study showing a remarkable dearth of female Grammy nominees among the hundreds nominated each year since 2013.
This month, the academy announced members of a new task force on inclusion and diversity.
Nonetheless, the academy was complimentary in its announcement.
"Neil has been instrumental in evolving the Recording Academy to address the needs of our creative community in a changing music landscape," academy board chair John Poppo said in the statement, adding that the board was indebted to Portnow, the longest-serving president in the organization's 60-year history.
"[A]s we thank him for all he's done, we also look forward to finding the right person to build on our solid foundation as the Recording Academy continues its work to ensure that music and the recording arts remain a thriving part of our cultural heritage."
