On an episode of the "Who Cares About the Rock Hall?" podcast, current and former Nominating Committee members Seymour Stein, Bob Merlis and Andy Paley lamented that dozens of 50's and 60's artists like The Clovers, Connie Francis and Ivory Joe Hunter still hadn't been inducted into the Rock Hall. When SEYMOUR STEIN, one of the four most powerful people in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's history, can't seem to even get those artists on the ballot after 33 years, what does that say about the system?

At the other end of the musical spectrum, last year the Rock Hall failed to induct Radiohead, a singular artist who stand head and shoulders above their peers. The Rock Hall Voting Committee either were too out of touch to recognize their significance (bad), or assumed they would get in so they didn't spend one of their five votes on them (worse). Either reason illustrates fundamental problems that the Rock Hall refuses to address.

This year, artists with undeniably Hall of Fame-worthy careers such as Outkast and Beck couldn’t even get nominated, and it seems like they weren’t even seriously considered. Imagine the Baseball Hall of Fame not finding room on its ballot for Derek Jeter in his first year of eligibility. It’s ridiculous. Getting inducted into the Rock Hall is great, but becoming a first ballot Hall of Famer is special. Exceptional artists of every generation should be inducted on the first ballot and get the honor of that distinction, but because the list of worthy candidates is so long, the Nominating Committee feels an obligation to try to keeping correcting past mistakes and in the process creates brand new ones.

Those are just a few of the symptoms of this arbitrary and broken system that everyone seems to complain about on the inside and the outside. Many of these problems are created by the induction process:

• The Nominating Committee selects an arbitrary number of nominees each year.
• Voters can only select up to five artists from the ballot, even if they feel more are worthy. This leads to voters who will try to vote strategically rather than based on qualifications. Seriously, why is this rule in place? Why not let people vote for everyone they feel is worthy?
• The yearly cap on inductees has put the Rock Hall hopelessly behind. Ideally, the Snub List wouldn't grow every year, but it does.
• The bulk of the Voting Committee membership is made up of Hall of Famers who tend to vote for their peers rather than those they have influenced.
• Every Hall of Famer gets a vote, but does it make sense that Parliament-Funkadelic members once had 16 times the voting power of a solo inductee?
• There are no term limits for the Nominating Committee or Voting Committee.
• There is a general impression (even on the NomCom) that the HBO broadcasts of the induction ceremony cause smaller induction classes with more populist artists.
• There is no official criteria provided by the Rock Hall to judge artists by. Each nominator and voter brings their own personal definition as to what constitutes a Hall of Famer. (On that Rock Hall podcast, Andy Paley kept emphasizing the Fame part in the name, even though the Rock Hall has previously made it clear that shouldn't be used as a qualification.)
• A large segment of the Voting Committee doesn’t believe that non-traditional “rock” artists should be inducted at all, despite the fact that the Rock Hall has always tried to include all branches of the rock and roll tree.
• Nearly every sub genre of rock and roll is underrepresented in the Hall of Fame. Prog, metal, hip hop, punk, R&B, pop, electronic, new wave, post punk, alternative.... it goes on forever.
• The Rock Hall Museum has an incentive to favor artists who do well in popularity polls rather than by their merits.
• The Nominating Committee has traditionally had a predominantly white male composition.
• Nominating Committee members are not required to recuse themselves when dealing with artists with which they have a financial relationship.
• The Rock Hall has honored marginal artists for questionable reasons which has significantly lowered the bar for induction, creating more confusion about what constitutes a Hall of Fame career.
• There’s no eligibility sunset, so the same old artists get considered every. single. year, and it feels like they win some sort of lottery when they randomly get pulled out from the hat and make the ballot.

This is just a short list of issues that the Rock Hall fails to deal with year after year. The men in charge of the process (Jann Wenner, Jon Landau and Joel Peresman) have been happy to maintain the status quo as the integrity of the Rock Hall continues to erode. Even when the Rock Hall tries something new (the Fan Poll, the Singles Category), they find a way to screw it up.

It’s clear that the Rock Hall needs new leadership to start fixing these problems, but apparently their complacency extends to the highest levels.

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The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation’s Board of Directors:

Jann Wenner (Chairman) Irving Azoff David Bonderman Lyor Cohen Chris Connor Allen Grubman Suzan Evans Hochberg Craig Kallman Jon Landau Rob Light Judy McGrath Doug Morris Benjamin F. Needell

Ronald O. Perelman Joel Peresman Bob Pittman Michael Rapino Robbie Robertson Barry Rosenstein William Rowley Curtis Schenker Seymour Stein Rob Stringer John Sykes Alec Wightman Dirk Ziff