POWER OF THE AUDIENCE: INFORMATION EXPOSURE IN THE MODERN MUSIC INDUSTRY
The music industry has long held a reputation of being a male-dominated industry. Surprisingly, in the time of a major media blitz on women empowerment, not much research has been done to evaluate the causes of this inequality.
Within the ecosystem of the entertainment industry, it is understood that media is often the driving force behind what becomes popular on the public agenda. However, to treat audiences as powerless receptors would be naive. They can assert a great deal of power by making careful choices in their information exposure. When we do not hold media accountable for their bias and consume information as is, we passively hand over the consent to perpetuate and promote gender norms.
Often, female music artists have lamented journalistic attitudes for being sexist. In media reports, gender roles of artists who are females have anteceded their image as musicians. They are addressed as “female drummers” or “female guitarists,” exemplifying how women empowerment is still an industry anomaly. Such peculiar-ization of female artists in media coverage is an obstacle to the normalization of women in music, especially in particular genres, such as rock.
Women are not only underrepresented in media coverage, but also framed along the lines of stereotypical archetypes, limiting their role in the music industry. As a result of this, 2017 marked the lowest point in the past six years in terms of female artists’ representation in popular content.
There are many instances which project media bias, such as, “The four questions Rolling Stone asked the band members of American rock band Sleater Kinney in a 2002 mini-feature (Brown, 2015):
1. Who were your musical heroes growing up?
2. Were there female musicians who were particularly influential on you?
3. How has parenting affected your song-writing, Corin?
4. Have things changed for women musicians during the last decade?”
In the above example, you will find no trickiness in the questions that were asked or objectification of these artists, but there is an underlying prejudice which guides the journalist’s decision to seek interest in the woman first and the artist later.
Is it a coincidence that female voices are limited to pop music only? Maybe not. The following example shows the frustration of Icelandic avant-garde music artist, Bjork, prefacing major lack of representation as well as a disapproval from the media. In an open letter on Facebook, she writes “If they change the subject matter to atoms, galaxies, activism, nerdy math beat editing or anything else than being performers singing about their loved ones they get criticized. Journalists feel there is just something missing … as if our only lingo is emo …” (The Guardian, 2016).
Pop singer Sky Ferreira, who signed her debut album with Parlophone in 2009 at the age of 14, was published in LA Weekly in an article titled, “Sky Ferreira's Sex Appeal Is What Pop Music Needs Right Now” on Friday, June 17, 2016. An excerpt from the article states, “Even in the candid photo of her nude in the shower, soaking wet, she looks natural, like she's shooting a home video, rather than being photographed by a creeper. She looks like a more cherubic Sharon Stone, icy but also sweet, like a freshly licked lollipop” (Tavana, LA Weekly, 2016).
The most noticeable pattern in media coverage is the way female musicians are framed. When media attention is spared for female artists, it usually either defines them as “objects of desire” or mentions them because they’ve done something which seems “peculiar” or “odd” for their gender role. Many seasoned and savvy media companies fall into the trap of complimenting women for defying traditionalism, completely overlooking their music. Female music artists also tend to be treated as fashion icons, a supplement to the existing stereotyping, overlooking their contribution to society through their art form.
Many dimensions of the music industry, such as touring, aggressiveness, and loudness are not generally associated with femininity. Consequently, women artists are framed for this contrast in media. Female artists that tour, sing and write about earthly issues other than love and relationships and do not follow set standards of physical appearance, have usually been termed as “Boyish Girls” or “Ladymen”. Ergo, defining and limiting femaleness in the music industry as opposed to expanding it.
In such a discourse, the spirit and talent of the artists get overshadowed by gender. During their foray into the lack of diversity in the music industry, Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, a think tank that uses data-driven approaches to tackle inequality, concluded that:
In 2017 women formed only 16.8% of the artists as opposed to 83.2% male music artists.
Of 2,767 songwriters only 12.3% were female and 87.7% were males.
Of 899 nominations for Grammy Award between 2013-2018, only 9.3% were females.
Taking into account the universality of the music industry, very little is known about the role of media in perpetuating and promoting gender norms in this field of work. The role of media in framing female musicians as fashion icons limits their role in the industry. Many are not only discouraged from trying their luck in the industry, but those who are already struggling to succeed are often excluded from the creative process.
Filling the gaps in research can leverage music companies into behaving more conscientiously towards artists, regardless of their gender. But we as the audience can also question our media sources about their bias. By becoming more media literate we can influence what is deemed as newsworthy, and affect how these issues are framed in the media reportage by selectively choosing our exposure.