| The industry has to move from expressing concern... to taking real and concrete steps to address bias and ensure access for the talented women who are already in this industry to the positions and spaces that remain closed to them. |
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“The industry has to move from expressing concern... to taking real and concrete steps to address bias and ensure access for the talented women who are already in this industry to the positions and spaces that remain closed to them.”
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Exclusion in the Recording Studio
There were 198 producers credited, in total, on the 100 songs that made the year-end BILLBOARD HOT 100 in 2020. Only 2 percent of them were women and only one of them was a woman of color—MARIAH CAREY, who did that particular piece of production 26 years earlier, when she recorded "ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU." There are 100 reasons to be angry about these numbers, but here's the one that gets me: An entire generation of women of color has been born, grown up and trained in music production since Mariah co-wrote, co-produced and sang her Christmas masterpiece, and not a single person responsible for any of the 100 most popular songs of last year could find a single one of them to work behind the boards on it.
These numbers are from the USC ANNENBERG INCLUSION INITIATIVE's annual report on "Inclusion in the Recording Studio?," which would, as in past years, make no sense without that question mark at the end. One more startling behind-the-boards statistic: In 2019 the RECORDING ACADEMY, facing its own series of embarrassments in its treatment of women at the GRAMMY AWARDS, launched its Women in the Mix pledge, which asked anyone hiring producers and engineers to consider at least two women before making a hiring decision. More than 650 people and companies signed the pledge, and 38 of them were involved in year-end Hot 100 hits last year. None of them used a female producer, and only one hired a female recording engineer—ARIANA GRANDE, who hired herself to help record her JUSTIN BIEBER duet "STUCK WITH U."
"Pledges aren't enough," the report's lead author, DR. STACY L. SMITH, told the New York Times.
The report shows little progress in recent years for women's presence in pop as artists, songwriters or producers, and there was some backsliding in 2020. There was a smaller percentage of women artists and songwriters in the year's most popular songs than in previous years. There was one notable area of progress—the Grammys, where the number of women nominated in five major categories Annenberg has been tracking over the past decade has been steadily increasing. Four times as many women are nominated for Sunday's Grammys for Artist, Record and Song of the Year, Best New Artist and Producer of the Year than were nominated in 2013. The RECORDING ACADEMY has been making an effort to diversify its voting membership, an effort that could and should be more aggressive. The first graphic in the Annenberg report makes it plain for anyone who hasn't quite got it yet: "Women Are Missing in Popular Music."
In one attempt to move beyond pledge to concrete action, mastering engineer EMILY LAZAR on Monday launched WE ARE MOVING THE NEEDLE, with the goal of boosting the number of women working as engineers and producers via scholarships, grants, internships and entry-level jobs. BRANDI CARLILE, SAD13, LIZ PHAIR, SONOS and UNIVERSAL AUDIO are among the artists and companies who've signed on as advisers and partners.
Groundhog Days
MORGAN WALLEN's DANGEROUS has been #1 on the BILLBOARD 200 for eight street weeks, a longer run at the top than any country album has had in more than a decade and one of the longest ever (though it still has 10 twangy weeks to go to catch GARTH BROOKS' ROPIN' THE WIND). I could offer a rather obvious sociopolitical theory for Wallen's current rule. I could also point out that, sociopolitics aside, it's a really well made album. But there's this, too: OLIVIA RODRIGO has had a simultaneous eight-week run atop the HOT 100 with the equally well made "DRIVERS LICENSE," and the WEEKND's "BLINDING LIGHTS," at #3 this week, has just become the first song ever to spend a full year in the top 10, in continuing defiance of the industry insiders who snubbed it for a Grammy nomination. It's as if the pop charts have frozen, deciding, perhaps, that if no one's going to tour anymore, why should we bother? Billboard adds that for the last three weeks, no new album has debuted anywhere in the top 10. That wouldn't be unusual if it was January, when no one's releasing new albums, but the last time that happened in any other month was 21 years ago. What's going on? Is everybody else sitting on the sidelines waiting for the pandemic to end? Have we collectively stopped trying? Will 2021 be the lost year of music, movies and TV that some were predicting when the world started locking down a year ago this week? Are we calcifying into a world of a select few winners and, commercially speaking, a lot of non-winners? Is it just a strange lonce-in-a-generation bubble that will start bursting next week when DRAKE drives right by Rodrigo with "WHAT'S NEXT"? What else is next? Anyone got any ideas?
Rest in Peace
LG PETROV, frontman of Swedish death metal bands ENTOMBED and ENTOMBED A.D.
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| Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative |
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| Inclusion in the Recording Studio? [PDF] |
| by Dr. Stacy L. Smith, Dr. Katherine Pieper, Hannah Clark... |
| Gender and race/ethnicity of artists, songwriters & producers across 900 popular songs from 2012-2020. |
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The New Yorker |
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| Genre Is Disappearing. What Comes Next? |
| by Amanda Petrusich |
| As record stores close and streaming algorithms dominate, the identities that music fandom supplies are in flux. |
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Music Business Worldwide |
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| Why Spotify’s ex-Global Head of Music Publishing thinks streaming services should be paying songwriters more money |
| by Adam Parness |
| Adam Parness explains why he believes his ex-employer should fork out more cash to songwriters and indie publishers. |
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Billboard |
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| Director Stacey Lee on Dance Music’s Continued Gender Reckoning: ‘We Women All Shoulder This Imposter Syndrome’ |
| by Kat Bein |
| We've all heard that the music industry is sexist, but what does that actually mean in practical terms? What does it look like to be sidelined? How does it feel to speak and not be heard? |
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Consequence of Sound |
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| Bad Reputation: An Oral History of the 'Freaks and Geeks' Soundtrack |
| by Andrew Buss |
| Judd Apatow, Paul Feig, Michael Andrews, and the cast and crew turn things up to 11. |
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Okayplayer |
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| Drakeo The Ruler is Gonna Give You The Truth Whether You Like It Or Not |
| by Anthony Malone |
| If LA was the Wild West, Drakeo the Ruler would be the outlaw whose voice never raises above a raspy whisper and whose visage is seen on Wanted Dead or Alive posters. |
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Cabbages |
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| The Latin Drill Wave Is Already Here |
| by Gary Suarez |
| If the name Jon Z sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because of “Go Loko.” The YG-led track with the vestigial Tyga feature put this curly-haired Puerto Rican rapper in front of a sizable audience of hip-hop listeners in 2019. |
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Bloomberg |
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| Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey Want to Fix the Music Business. Can They? |
| by Lucas Shaw |
| Square moving into music makes a lot of sense. Buying Tidal? Not so much. |
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Pollstar |
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| Brilliant Corners' Jordan Kurland: Musical Activism From The Bay To The White House |
| by Ryan Borba |
| For the founding partner in Brilliant Corners Artist Management, the pandemic provided some time for related personal passions: “It meant a lot more time to work on political initiative stuff, the music compilations we did that raised more than $500,000 for voter’s rights organizations, things I normally might not have had time to do.” |
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The Guardian |
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| Bang the drum for change: why do orchestras have so few women percussionists? |
| by Emily Gunton |
| In London’s orchestras alone, there are more men called David with jobs in percussion than there are women. Why are back rows still so male? |
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5 Magazine |
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| Space Oddity: the weird history of the Soviet ANS synthesizer |
| by Terry Matthew |
| The sound of Tarkovsky's "Solaris," "The Mirror" and "Stalker" was generated by a strange machine that created sounds with drawings. |
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Apple Podcasts |
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| Whose Song Is It Anyway?: Imogen Heap, artist |
| by Hayleigh Bosher and Imogen Heap |
| Imogen Heap is a singer-songwriter and we can certainly also describe her as an entrepreneur and pioneer! In this episode Imogen talks about what drives her in creativity and innovation, and shares with us her latest endevours with blockchain, artificial intelligence, mycelia and The Creative Passport. |
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InsideHook |
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| How a Guitar-Playing British Retiree Became a YouTube Sensation |
| by Bonnie Stiernberg |
| Frank Watkinson's covers of songs by Bright Eyes, Neutral Milk Hotel and Death Cab for Cutie have earned him over a quarter million followers. |
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The Scotsman |
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| Singer wins campaign to persuade Spotify to recognise Scots language for first time |
| by Brian Ferguson |
| An award-winning singer has claimed victory in her campaign to persuade music industry giants Spotify to recognise Scots as a language. |
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The Guardian |
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| Fans and artists must have Covid vaccine before attending music festivals, say some organisers |
| by Vanessa Thorpe |
| Government should insist everyone be jabbed in order to get in, say worried festival directors. |
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Level |
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| How the American Government Co-wrote the Tragedy of Billie Holiday |
| by Bonsu Thompson |
| The film ‘The United States vs. Billie Holiday’ illuminates Lady Day as an activist the U.S. government was determined to silence. |
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The Ringer |
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| ‘60 Songs That Explain the ’90s’: The Notorious B.I.G., 'Juicy,' and the Genesis of a Legend |
| by Rob Harvilla and Jon Caramanica |
| Exploring the man and the myth of Biggie Smalls with help from "New York Times" pop music critic Jon Caramanica. |
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NPR |
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| Semler, With 'Preacher's Kid,' Writes Music Of Faith For A Real World |
| by Michel Martin and Gemma Watters |
| In February, an album topped the iTunes Christian album charts unexpectedly -- it was "Preacher's Kid," in which Grace Semler Baldridge addresses the depths and limitations of Christian culture. |
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Tone Glow |
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| Interview: Jane Siberry |
| by Nick Zanca |
| On a Zoom call with Jane reflecting back on the past four decades of her career, we also discussed walking, the natural world, meditation, microbiology, dance classes, decommodification, bad poetry, the periodic table, the avoidance of self-indulgence and self-promotion, the artist-to-audience connection, and the cultivation of community. |
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American Songwriter |
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| Widespread Panic, The Legendary No Hit Wonders |
| by Holly Gleason |
| They’ve weathered the death of bandmates, years of relentless touring, side projects, the record for most sold-out shows at Denver’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre and now the pandemic lockdown. |
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| Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech |
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“REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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| Jason Hirschhorn |
| CEO & Chief Curator |
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