Social media monitoring firm Meltwater is circulating an infographic on who will win the key categories in Sunday night’s Grammy Awards based on what’s being said around the social media water cooler. I am perhaps not the person to reality-check such conclusions, but the concept has some merit: If you can reliably eavesdrop on enough conversations, you can pick up actionable clues. And even in the case of the Grammy’s, which are not picked by the general public, what the people are saying the like in unguarded moments is a reasonable bet on what actual voters will favor as well.

Meltwater’s analysis has Justin Bieber overwhelmingly winning Best New Artist. Since I’ve heard almost nothing recently except things about Bieber, that sounds about right. Album of the Year is a closer call, with rapper Eminem’s Recovery edging out bad girl Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream. And how could a song named “F**k You” not win? The social media meme is that Cee Lo Green’s touching ballad about lost love will win the coveted Record of the Year, per Meltwater’s analysis.

The company does this for a living, so it likes to strut its stuff on things that anyone can identify with so as to increase the odds that paying customers like brands will sign up to keep a watchful eye on how the social web, where fires start quickly and aren’t easily put out.

Before the Super Bowl Meltwater did a similar analysis for the pre-game buzz on advertisements (not the game result, of course, because nobody cares about that). Volkwagen’s “Darth Vader” ad was anointed No. 1, followed by Audi and Groupon. Perhaps not coincidentally, these ads (on the case of VW, portions) were released pre-game, so that maybe wasn’t such a difficult call. Groupon got all the wrong kind of buzz, and was pulled five days after the game.

But now we have three picks in a very competitive, unpredictable scenario. Fingers crossed, Meltwater.

Here is their self-described methodology:

Meltwater used its social media monitoring tool Meltwater Buzz to track social media conversations around the top three Grammy Award categories (Best Album, Song and New Artist) since nominees were officially announced on Dec. 1. They determined the ‘winners’ based on the volume of mentions and sentiment of the social media community across blogs, microblogs, social networks, comments, message boards, videos and Wikipedia.