Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs posthumously won a Grammy award during a Special Merit Awards ceremony held over the weekend.
Eddy Cue, who heads iTunes, accepted the Trustees Award in Jobs' place, reports The Washington Post. According to the official Grammy website, the Trustees Award is given to individuals "who have made significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording." Up until 1984, recipients could include performers.
The Trustees Award was announced together with Lifetime Achievement Award and Technical Grammy Award during the Grammy's Special Merit Awards Ceremony. In addition to Jobs, Dave Bartholomew and Rudy Van Gelder were also honored with Trustees Awards.
In December The Recording Academy announced in a statement that Jobs would receive the award because his "innovations such as the iPod and its counterpart, the online iTunes store, revolutionized the industry and how music was distributed and purchased."
In his acceptance speech (see video above) Cue talked about how Jobs' love for music spawned products like the iPod and iTunes that would go on to revolutionize the music industry. CNET quotes Cue as saying:
Steve was focused on bringing music to everyone in innovative ways. We talked about it every single day. When he introduced the iPod in 2001, people asked 'Why is Apple making a music player?' His answer was simple: 'We love music, and it's always good to do something you love.'
This wasn't the first Grammy award honoring Apple's contributions to the music industry. In 2002 the company received a technical Grammy for being "the leading architect in bringing computer technology into the studio and revolutionizing the way music is written, produced, mixed, recorded and creatively imagined," reported CNET.
Past Trustees Award recipients include The Beatles, Dick Clark and Walt Disney.
Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011 after a long struggle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.