Many existing categories will be merged, while some will be dropped outright with contenders from different musical genres required to compete in new, all-purpose categories.
The top awards -- album, record and song of the year, and best new artist -- will remain untouched.
Among the changes, the separate awards for male and female vocal performance will now be combined into a new pop solo performance category.
Similarly a new award, rock performance, replaces the separate awards for rock solo vocal performance and rock performance by a duo or group with vocals.
The two metal and hard rock categories have also been merged.
In the pop, rock and country fields, the prizes for instrumental performance have been dropped.
The contemporary R&B album award has also been dropped, and contenders will be moved into the existing award for R&B album.
The R&B field suffered one of the biggest cuts, with the number of awards halved to four. The three R&B vocal performance awards for males, females and groups have been merged into a single R&B performance award.
Rap escaped relatively unscathed, with the number of awards cut to four from five with the merging of the solo and group performance races into a simple rap performance category.
In a move likely to draw howls of protest, the awards for Hawaiian, Native American and Zydeco or Cajun albums have been dropped. In their place is a new category, regional roots music album.
Grammy officials said the restructuring evolved from a "comprehensive evaluation" that was launched in 2009.
In another change, a category will be cut for the awards year if it receives fewer than 25 submissions during the eligibility process. If this continues for three consecutive years, the category will be dropped permanently.
If a category receives between 25 and 39 entries, only three recordings would receive nominations that year. Usually each category has five nominees.
The Grammy Awards usually take place in February. A date for the 54th edition has not yet been announced.
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