The Recording Academy hands out two separate Grammy Awards for a single film's music, and the difference between them turns on one word: original. Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media honors an album "comprised predominantly of original score," while Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media honors one built mostly from songs. In February 2026, the film Sinners won both.
What does "Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media" actually cover?
The category's official definition, published by the Recording Academy, recognizes "excellence in score soundtrack albums comprised predominantly of original score" that were "created specifically for or as a companion to a motion picture, television show, or other visual media." In practice that means the trophy goes to the composer's underscore — the music written to accompany scenes, cue by cue, rather than songs licensed or written separately for the soundtrack. At the 68th Grammy Awards, held February 1, 2026 in Los Angeles, the award went to Ludwig Göransson for his score to Sinners, Ryan Coogler's 2025 vampire drama. It was Göransson's second win in the category in three years; he had previously taken it for his score to Oppenheimer at the 66th Grammys. The category has a long memory of exactly this kind of composer: recent winners include Hans Zimmer for Dune: Part Two and Germaine Franco for Encanto, both credited as the film's sole or lead score composer rather than as one contributor among several songwriters.
The word doing the real work in that definition is "predominantly." The Recording Academy does not require a score album to be entirely free of songs, and it does not require every cue on a score album to have been written from scratch for that film; it requires that original score make up most of the record. That threshold is what keeps a soundtrack built mostly around a handful of original songs, with a few instrumental cues threaded between them, out of the score category even when a credited composer worked on it. It is also why the same film's music can be split across two separate albums — one built around the composer's cues, one built around everything else — and submitted to two different categories rather than one combined entry.
How is "Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media" different?
Where the score category rewards a composer's original underscore, the compilation category rewards the opposite kind of album: one "comprised predominantly of song or non-original instrumental compositions," created for or alongside a motion picture, television show, video game, or other visual media production, according to its own Recording Academy definition. This is the category built for soundtrack albums assembled from a mix of artists — needle-drops, original songs commissioned for specific scenes, sometimes a handful of score cues folded in around them — rather than a continuous original score by one composer. For 2026, the award went to the various-artists album for Sinners, crediting the film's broader soundtrack rather than any single songwriter.
That structure means a compilation-category winner rarely has one clear author the way a score winner does. The credit sits with the soundtrack album as a whole — the assembled work of whichever songwriters, performers, and music supervisors built it — rather than with a single name the way the score category credits its composer. A film can supply the material for both kinds of album at once without any contradiction, because the two records are, by the Recording Academy's own definitions, different objects made of different music.
How did one film end up winning both?
Sinners qualified for both because its music genuinely splits along that line. Göransson, who also served as an executive producer on the film, wrote the original score. Separately, the film's soundtrack includes original songs built for specific scenes, among them "I Lied to You," co-written and performed by Raphael Saadiq, who joined the production one day before shooting began, according to Saadiq's own account. Saadiq has described the track as a blues number written for what he calls the film's "most transcendent scene," one meant to carry the audience "to Africa and back while encompassing the entire genetic code of Black music." That song was submitted separately for Best Original Song consideration at the 98th Academy Awards, distinct from Göransson's score work — the same underlying split that let the Recording Academy award Sinners in two soundtrack categories rather than one.
Why keep the categories separate at all?
The split exists because a score and a song do different jobs inside a film, and the Recording Academy's own eligibility language tracks that difference precisely: one category is defined around originality of the instrumental score, the other around songs and outside compositions assembled to accompany the picture. A composer's underscore is written in direct response to picture — decided cue by cue, often in a spotting session, where director and composer sit down together and decide what gets music and what stays silent. A soundtrack song, by contrast, can be written or licensed with a specific scene in mind but still stand on its own outside the film, the way "I Lied to You" was eligible for a separate Oscar category built for songs rather than scores. Judging those two kinds of work by the same yardstick would flatten a distinction that composers, music supervisors, and songwriters treat as fundamental to how a film's music gets made in the first place.
Sinners makes the case unusually well because its two Grammy-winning records grew from the same set of ideas rather than from opposite ends of a production. Göransson has built his career on scores that borrow the vocabulary of the world onscreen rather than sitting apart from it, and Coogler's film is explicit about tracing a musical lineage — the "genetic code of Black music," in Saadiq's phrase — through blues, gospel, and beyond. A score built on that vocabulary and a blues song written for a single scene inside it are still two different pieces of craft, made under different constraints and judged by different rules, even when they come from musicians working a few feet apart on the same soundstage. The two trophies are, in a sense, the Recording Academy's own way of saying so.
Frequently asked questions
Can the same composer win both categories for the same film?
Yes, if that composer is also credited on songs used in the film's soundtrack album. It didn't happen that way with Sinners: the two 2026 wins went to different credited parties, Göransson for the score album and various artists for the compilation album built around the film's songs.
Does a film need songs to be eligible for the compilation category?
The Recording Academy's definition requires the album be "comprised predominantly of song or non-original instrumental compositions," so an album built mainly around a composer's original cues would not qualify there even if a few licensed tracks appear alongside it.
Is the Grammy score category the same as the Oscar for score?
No. They are separate awards from separate organizations, with separate eligibility windows and separate voting bodies. A film's score can be recognized by the Grammys, the Oscars, both, or neither — Göransson's Sinners score also won the Oscar for Best Original Score that same season, but that overlap is not guaranteed for any given film.
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Work | Sinners |
| Composer | Ludwig Göransson |
| Director | Ryan Coogler |
| Year | 2025 (theatrical release) |
| Studio/Distributor | Warner Bros. Pictures, a Proximity Media production |
| Grammy recognition | Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media and Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media, 68th Grammy Awards (2026) |
| Basis of coverage | Recording Academy category pages and official announcements; NPR interview with Raphael Saadiq; official film site credits |
For a related scores perspective, read A Black-and-White Score: how strings alone carry Psycho.