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Sexism, Ageism and Lower Pay: Female Musicians Struggle for Equality in Male Dominated Industry
Mar 26 2021
Who run the world?
For Beyonce, the answer is "girls!" But, it doesn't feel like that in the male-dominated music industry where sexism and ageism reign supreme, according to a new report. Despite megastars like Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Madonna, women in the industry still feel it's difficult to climb the ladder of success and that it's causing women artists to quit.
<p>MIDiA Research, in collaboration with digital music company Believe and its subsidiary TuneCore, released "<a href="https://midiaresearch.com/reports/be-the-change-women-making-music" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Be the Change: Women Making Music 2021</a>," a report on female creators' experiences in the music industry. </p><p>While most female creators surveyed believe transparency and discourse about gender equality have improved, over 80% of the respondents surveyed said it's still harder for female artists to receive recognition than their male counterparts. </p><p>"The main challenges are sexual harassment and objectification," said Mark Mulligan, MIDiA's lead music analyst who worked on the report. "Those are two different things, but they're also causally linked… [and they] are amplified or magnified within the music business — so many female artists are presented in a way that male artists are much less so."</p><p>MIDiA surveyed 504 respondents — of which are 401 female creators — around the globe. These respondents are all part of the music industry, as singers, songwriters, DJs, artists and producers. They have different degrees of independence as well — some are independent artists, others are their own managers or are signed to labels.</p><p>The vast majority of the women surveyed find that the music industry treats women differently. Eight out of 10 women surveyed experienced sexual harassment at some point in their careers. </p><p>"The representation of women in music, even at the top of the charts, has not improved in the last decade ... in some cases it has actually gotten worse," said TuneCore Chief Revenue Officer Andreea Gleeson.</p><p>Over 90% of women experienced unconscious bias — one singer-songwriter was told another female singer-songwriter on the festival bill was her "serious competition," when there were plenty other artists on the lineup. A female sound technician says she was told she was unable to move up in her career by male counterparts who were no more skilled.</p><p>As a result of their experiences in the industry, many women choose to work alone or exclusively with other women. Dominique — a singer-songwriter that participated in a panel presenting the study's findings — said she decided to work alone after being brushed off by male producers.</p><p>"You don't feel like your ideas are being taken into account, and you always get shot down," Dominique said. "Regardless of how bad my music may come out, I want to be the only person working on it."</p><p>She wound up writing a hit song called "Girls Can't Produce," which went viral on TikTok; the song's title was taken from a snidely sexist comment posted beneath a video she made detailing her aspirations.<br/></p><p>These biases and attitudes toward women translate into experiences that make female artists uncomfortable, less confident, and ultimately, more likely to leave the industry, the report found. One anonymous respondent cited in the report said: "Why do women leave music or not go into it? For some, there's 'only so much sh*t you can take.'"</p><p>The study was partly inspired by TuneCore's examination of the artists that use its digital music distribution services. The company said it found only 28% of its artists are female. Although that percentage is higher than the 11% of female artists represented in the industry as a whole, TuneCore found it surprising, said Gleeson. Because its artists are pursuing a DIY distribution path by using their platform, they might expect a lower barrier of entry.</p><p>The survey asked respondents what urgent changes are necessary to improve the music industry for women. The most popular response was "more equality and opportunity." </p><p>"Now that might sound like a fairly self evident thing, but it's also really quite subtle," Mulligan said. "They just want to have the same opportunity to succeed — their male counterparts have the same aspirations, they work in the same industry — but the industry treats them differently."</p>
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SoundCloud is upending how musicians get paid on its platform, and some think it could lead to a new paradigm that provides better streaming deals for most artists.
The German company behind the platform that millions of musicians use to find their audience announced plans Tuesday for a new revenue model it's dubbing "fan-powered royalties."
<p>It's a form of the often-debated but never-implemented "user-centric" payment system, which contrasts the dominant "pro-rata" model used by Spotify, Apple Music and others. </p><p>The move comes amid a broader debate over whether the economics of streaming are fair to musicians, who often earn as little as 13% of the money that streaming generates. </p><p>The gist of user-centric payment is that the money from a given user gets allocated directly to the artists whom that user listens to. Here's a simplified example: Say the money that comes in from user Tom is $10 per month (whether through advertising or subscription), and Tom splits all of his streams equally among three artists. At the end of the month, those three artists will equally split Tom's $10. </p><p>Pro-rata works differently. In that case, Tom's $10 gets pooled with the money that comes in from all users across the platform. At the end of the month, that pile of cash gets distributed to artists (more accurately, to rights holders) in proportion to the fraction of total streams across the platform that each artist saw over that month. So Tom's $10 gets split up into many tiny amounts, most of which go to artists he never listened to. </p><p>Critics say pro-rata models tend to favor bigger artists, especially those with a penchant for producing singles that make it into specific playlists.</p><p>Some industry observers argue the user-centric model could prove a better deal for the many musicians who aren't Beyonce-level superstars. SoundCloud said its new model will benefit independent artists with loyal fans.</p><p>Studies of the effects of user-centric models on leveling the playing field have broadly been inconclusive. Those studies have been limited, though, by low participation from rights holders, such as record labels, which are often reluctant to allow their tracks to be part of an experiment.</p><p>SoundCloud's move is a step toward a better understanding of the impact of a user-centric model. Yet it, too, will be limited. The new model will only apply to a subset of about 100,000 artists who use specific SoundCloud features, <a href="https://musically.com/2021/03/02/soundcloud-goes-user-centric-with-its-fan-powered-royalties/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">according to reporting from Music Ally</a>. And compared to streaming giants like Spotify, Apple and Amazon, SoundCloud brings in substantially lower royalty payments on the whole. </p><p>Over the last several months the UK government has been interviewing industry stakeholders as part of a formal inquiry into whether streaming's business model is unfair to musicians and whether changes are necessary. </p><p>At the UK government panel last week, which featured representatives from Spotify, Apple and Amazon, all three companies expressed willingness to experiment with new models. They stressed, however, that doing so would require compliance with the wider industry, including record labels, who control most of the relevant copyrights. As a platform that mostly caters to independents, implementing a new approach is a relatively lighter lift for SoundCloud.</p><p>The new model will launch on April 1st–and there are no indications this is an April Fools' joke. Seriously.</p>
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Universal Music Group has provided TikTok rights to its extensive music catalog in an agreement announced Monday that gives more muscle to the short-form video app that's been selling itself as a tool of music discovery.
One of the world's most popular social media apps, TikTok has catapulted artists like Lil Nas X Olivia Rodrigo into the mainstream. Under the agreement, the company has pledged to work with the UMG to build new features including "A&R insights and models" that will presumably help to identify songs and artists poised to break out.
<p>The news comes days after <a href="https://dot.la/triller-universal-music-2650335521.html?utm_campaign=RebelMouse&share_id=6255897&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=dot.LA" target="_self">the music group pulled its entire catalog from Triller</a>, a TikTok competitor, citing Triller's withholding of payments and refusal to negotiate a renewed deal. That means that, at least for now, while TikTok users will be able to make videos with songs by UMG's entire roster of artists – which includes superstars Drake, Eminem and Arianna Grande among numerous others – Triller users will not.</p><p>The agreement also has the potential to offer UMG valuable insights into the role social media is playing in promoting its artists. The deal covers songs associated with performing artists from UMG as well as songwriters from Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG). </p><p>"This alliance sets an industrywide example of social media companies acknowledging, respecting and compensating the music creators whose songs are instrumental to their platforms," said UMPG chief operating officer Marc Cimino in a statement. </p><p>David Israelite, head of the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA, of which Universal is a member), an advocacy group for music publishers and songwriters, said, "We've been pleased that with TikTok, they've made broad licensing deals with the music community, including an <a href="https://dot.la/tiktok-creator-fund-2646706624.html" target="_self">NMPA-brokered deal that involved a settlement looking backward</a>. With Triller, it remains a company that is largely unlicensed as of today." </p><p>Triller claimed last week that it didn't need a deal with UMG, but Israelite disagreed.</p><p>"Social media companies like TikTok and Triller absolutely need the permission and licenses of the copyright owners of the music that they use to build their businesses," he said. "What's been disappointing among many social media companies is that they will focus on building their business first and worry about licensing their music later, which is not a good way to do it." </p>
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