Are women in the music industry overlooked?

A study of women in music

Are women in the music industry overlooked?
Stars Insider

31/01/18 | StarsInsider

MUSIC feminism

At the 2018 Grammys, there were only four female singer-songwriters nominated in the four major categories. Not a single female producer was nominated for Producer of the Year. That’s not really a surprise, considering the fact that from 2013 - 2018, women made up only 9.3% of Grammy nominees.


This is despite the fact that there are a lot of women making great music out there.


Dr. Stacy L. Smith, Dr. Katherine Pieper, and Marc Choueiti spent more than ten years analyzing the presence of women in the music industry, and recently published the resulting study 'Inclusion in the Recording Studio?' Their findings were pretty astonishing.


The team found that only 16.8% of 600 songs played on the radio, streamed, or downloaded were by female artists. Working female producers only made up 2% of music produced, which means that there are 49 male producers for every 1 female. Women of color only made up two out of the study’s 651 working music producers. Working female songwriters wrote about 11% of music consumed in 2017.


Even worse, when the team looked at the contributions of unique songwriters, they found that nine male songwriters wrote almost 1 of every 5 songs included in the sample. That’s giving nine men a lot of influence over what messages are conveyed to the general public by music.


Dr. Smith told Billboard, "We would… be encouraged to see consumers taking action based on these findings – letting companies and artists know that females writing songs matter, posting and tweeting and asking who artists are working with when it comes to crafting songs and who are they asking for when it comes to being in the recording studio, starting to create that national conversation so that young women and young people of color are aware of inequalities that are going on and so they can be part of the solution."

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