Snub to the Weeknd shows the Grammys as unfit judges of music | Rebecca Nicholson

No wonder one of the world's biggest artists is turning his back on an increasingly irrelevant award

It's shocking, I know, but an awards ceremony with at least 683 distinct categories, which takes roughly four days to get through and almost certainly has a gong for best backing vocals on a rap-classical crossover in the Portuguese language, has again run into trouble amid accusations of an opaque and complex voting system that some artists claim damages the integrity of the process.

There were no Grammy nominations this year for the Weeknd, one of the world's biggest and bestselling pop stars, who headlined the Super Bowl half-time show in February for around 96 million viewers. After being left out, the Weeknd has announced that he will no longer submit his music for their consideration, blaming his exclusion on secret committees" and a lack of transparency. His announcement followed tweets from Zayn Malik, who criticised the awards for allowing favouritism, racism and networking politics to influence the voting process". Drake and Frank Ocean have also been critical of the Grammys in recent years; the New York Times points out that, staggeringly, the last black artist to win album of the year was Herbie Hancock, in 2008, for River - his tribute to Joni Mitchell.