Hear Me Roar (or Not)

Totally not breaking news: Adding to dreary statistics the ANNENBERG INCLUSION INITIATIVE has been reporting for several years, a new report released Tuesday by a coalition called FIX THE MIX reveals that the people making the world’s most popular records continue to not hire women to engineer and produce them. There are numbers upon numbers and percentages upon percentages in the extensive report whose lead authors are mastering engineer EMILY LAZAR (founder of the nonprofit WE ARE MOVING THE NEEDLE, which was created to try to fix this problem) and JAXSTA CEO BETH APPLETON, but maybe the most stark, simple and human one is this: Of 240 producers and engineers credited in the most popular songs across various genres on SPOTIFY, APPLE, AMAZON, YOUTUBE and TIKTOK in 2022, exactly 16 were women and non-binary people. Sixteen. People. That's pretty much a rounding error. It’s as if no one’s even trying. Except that people have been trying, some of them quite loudly, for several years, which suggests it’s more like the rest of the industry is actively resisting. It’s “not actually a complex problem if you want to solve it,” Lazar says. Which leads to one simple question for anyone in a position to be part of the solution: Do you, in fact, want to solve it?

The numbers are particularly bleak in metal (a genre in which, the report says, the top 50 streaming songs of 2022 had “0.0%” women and non-binary people credited in technical roles), hip-hop and Christian/gospel. The best genres for non-male producers and engineers were electronic (17.6%) and folk/Americana (16.4%). Kudos, you wielders of synthesizers and acoustic guitars. But as BEVERLY KEEL, a dean at Middle Tennessee State University and co-founder of the country-music women’s equity org CHANGE THE CONVERSATION, was quoted in Billboard as saying, “In any other industry, these low percentages of the genres that have the best gender representation would be an embarrassment, so I hope these ‘high achievers’ are not resting on their laurels.”

The report includes plenty of recommendations—many of which will look familiar to anyone who’s spent any time in a human resources department in any industry—including actively recruiting women for apprenticeship jobs behind the boards, diligently and accurately crediting the women who are already there for the songs they work on, and creating a database of available talent (because, as the authors ask, “Why would organizations search for whom they’ve learned to believe does not exist?”). And it calls on the three major labels to spend some of the $300 million they’ve pledged in recent years to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on getting women into control rooms.

Etc Etc Etc

CourtREDEF part 1: Artists vs. label... Part 2: Artist vs. artist... Part 3: Bandmates vs. each other... “Imagine a NETFLIX, but all metal”: It’s called THUNDERFLIX, and it costs—double bass drum roll, please—$6.66 a month... Does this sound familiar to anyone? From what the Atlantic describes as “The Pornography Paradox”: “Though PORNHUB alone gets more visits a month than either Netflix or TikTok, according to one online guide for budding porn entrepreneurs, a video garnering 1 million views will net its producer roughly $500.” Revenues come from ads and go mostly to site owners instead of performers, who are kept busy “creating new content... to supplement the content they’re barely being paid for.”

Rest in Peace

JULIÁN FIGUEROA, musician/actor son of the late great Mexican balladeer Joan Sebastian.