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...I'll try to answer for you.
The first round is open to all voting members and the record companies. Put simply, all qualified entries are placed onto a preliminary ballot, and are voted on to establish the five nominees in each "field" on the final ballot.
(To be a voting member, you must apply for membership and supply the Academy with a minimum number of credits accumulated in the process of creating commercially available sound recordings. You must also, of course, pay the yearly dues to maintain your membership. I've been a member since 1992, I think.)
The final ballot is divided into two parts, Part One being: 1) Record of the Year 2) Album of the Year 3) Song of the Year and 4) Best New Artist. All voting members can vote for the nominees in Part One. The nominees/winners of these categories are what the TV broadcast generally centers on.
Part Two is broken down into 29 specialized fields, which may, in turn, contain from one, to several different categories. For example, Field 1 - Pop, has the following categories to select from on the final ballot: Female Pop Vocal, Male Pop Vocal, Pop Duo/Group w/Vocal, Pop Collaboration w/Vocal, Pop Instrumental Performance, Pop Instrumental Album, and Pop Vocal Album.
On this year's ballot, each voter was able to vote in up to eight Fields of the 29 (with a total of 92 categories within those 29 Fields), so that forces the voters to vote in the Fields they are most familiar with. For instance, I usually skip voting in Field 1 - Pop, Field 2 - Dance, and Field 3 - Traditional Pop, and start my voting in Field 4 - Rock (Solo Rock Vocal, Rock Duo/Group w/Vocal, Hard Rock, Metal, Rock Instrumental, Rock Song, Rock Album); Field 5 - Alternative (which has only one category, Alternative Album); Field 13 - American Roots (which contains categories such as Americana Album, Bluegrass Album Traditional Blues Album, Contemporary Blues Album, etc), Field 25 - Production Non-Classical (Best Engineered Album, Producer of the Year, and Remixed Recording), and so on.
As far as listening to everything that's nominated, NARAS has just last year set up a social networking site called Grammy365.com, where, if you're a NARAS member, you may join the site and listen to and communicate with the nominees and other NARAS members. The site members also "friend" each other and lobby on behalf of their projects, so due to that, I also received some CDs in the mail from some of the nominees, for my consideration come voting time.
So, as to your question regarding Best New Artist, no, there is no song or album or sampling sent out, you just have to vote for the Best New Artist as determined by your subjective opinion on the nominees, pretty much just like everything else on the ballot.
While it's not a "full time job," the whole process does take quite a bit of effort to do properly.
I was very happy for Arcade Fire this year.
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