Ashley McBryde bemoans inequality in the music business

Ashley McBryde thinks there’s a lack of equality in country music. The 36year-old singer has bemoaned the double standards within the music business, and Ashley feels the inequality is particularly evident in terms of the division of radio play between male and female artists. She said: “When I first started doing a radio tour, I thought about the horror stories about the imbalance and was like, ‘Surely it’s not that bad? It can’t be that bad!’ “It is definitely that bad. It’s: ‘If you have a beard and a ball cap, here’s your record deal, here’s your No.1 - if you don’t, we’re barely going to recognize you even have a voice.’” Despite this, Ashley remains broadly optimistic about the future, acknowledging that the landscape is changing within the genre. She told Music News: “The things that need to happen for change are happening: there are stations in the States that have committed, in small chunks of time, to equal play between male and female artists for a week or two weeks.” Ashley also insisted she won’t allow her frustrations to influence the music she makes. The acclaimed country star - who is set to release her new album, ‘Never Will’, in April - explained: “One of the theories over here is that women don’t want to listen to women on country radio, which is asinine. “Really, the only solution for somebody like me is, again, don’t listen to the background noise, write songs that you believe in and perform them in an infectious way that brings people to the show. And, radio or not, they come.”