Women in the music industry remain underrepresented across the field, the latest report by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has revealed. In performing, producing, songwriting and engineering, women continue to be minorities, with even less representation for women of colour.
The latest report was supported by Spotify and is based on the year-end Billboard Hot 100 chart for 2024 and the latest Grammy nominations in key categories.
Artists
Female artists made up 37.7 per cent of artists on the Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart in 2024, which is a slight improvement from 35 per cent in the previous year, and a major improvement from 2012, when the figure sat at 22.7 per cent. 38.9 per cent of individual artists on the year-end chart were female, compared to 40.6 per cent in 2023 and 35.8 per cent in 2012.
At this year’s Grammys, four of the eight nominations for best new artist are female solo artists.
Songwriters
Female songwriters made up just 18.9 per cent of the artists on the year-end Hot 100 chart in 2024 (a slight dip from the previous year’s 19.5 per cent), with over fifty per cent of those songs featuring at least one female songwriter.
Four of the five nominees for songwriter of the year in the non-classical category at the Grammys this year are women: Jessi Alexander, Amy Allen, Jessie Jo Dillon and RAYE.
For song of the year, the number of female songwriters who are nominated jumped from eight last year to nine this year, and they include Sabrina Carpenter for “Please, Please, Please,” Chappell Roan for “Good Luck, Babe!” and Beyoncé for “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM.”
Producers
Female producers comprised just 5.9 per cent of the producing credits on the Hot 100 year-end chart, a reduction from 6.5 per cent in 2023 and 2.4 per cent in 2012.
Of the total 14 female producers on the year-end chart in 2024, only two were women of colour. Since the study began 13 years ago, a total of 93.3 per cent of songs did not have any female producers.
Only one woman was nominated for the Grammys producer of the year, non-classical award — Alissia. She is just the second woman to be nominated in the category since the study began documenting nominations.
Diversity
The percentage of artists of colour (or “underrepresented artists”) on the year-end chart last year dropped 61 per cent in 2023 to 44.6 per cent, though the report notes that the percentage correlates to the proportion of the US population that are persons of colour.
The drop in artists of colour was steeper for women, with 46.9 per cent of men and 40.8 per cent women. The year prior, 64.9 per cent of women on the popular charts were women of colour.
According to a report commissioned by the House of Commons in the UK, women remain underrepresented in several sectors of the industry on a global scale. While women musicians reach incredible feats both in Australia and globally, women represent less than a third of top-selling artists in music and only 14 per cent of songwriters internationally.
In 2022, there were just 187 women and non-binary people credited as a producer or engineer on the top 50 streamed tracks. This is compared to 3,781 men.
Vicki Gordon, the founding executive producer and program director of Australian Women in Music said that in Australia, the music industry is “a vast and complex eco-system which sadly in 2024 continues to promote festival line-ups dominated, sometimes entirely by male artists, male musicians, male techs and male led bands.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source womensagenda.com.au ’
