Induction Process

To be eligible for nomination, an individual artist or band must have released their first commercial recording 25 full years prior to the year of Induction. With the new Induction cycle that began in 2020, the Nominating Committee now meets in the same year the Inductee class is honored. You can now subtract 25 from the Induction year to determine the year of eligibility.

The Nominating Committee selects each year’s Nominees from among artists eligible for Induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. This committee is made up of a diverse group of about 40 music industry professionals – Inductees, academics, journalists – whose passion, expertise, and livelihood is all about music.

Each year, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation’s Nominating Committee selects the group of artists nominated in the performer category. Ballots are then sent to more than 1,200 historians, members of the music industry and artists—including every living Rock Hall inductee—and the five to seven performers receiving the most votes become that year’s induction class. Even if an artist has been previously nominated, if they don’t receive enough votes from the voting body that year, they would have to be nominated again to be eligible for induction.

Beginning in 2012, fans are given the chance to vote for the Nominees they’d like to see Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The top five to seven vote-getters in the annual online Fan Vote form one ballot.

While fans are unable to contact the Nominating Committee directly, there are two ways for the public to let us know who they believe should be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. First, the annual online Fan Vote allows fans to vote daily in support of their favorite Nominees. Second, the interactive “Voice Your Choice” kiosks inside the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio allow visitors to submit the name of the artist they’d like to see on a future ballot. Each visitor gets one vote for their favorite eligible artist or band and a leaderboard displays the current top fan choices, refreshed weekly. The top 100 vote-getters from those kiosks are shared with the Nominating Committee when they meet.