Bangkok Post

Survey: Men dominate pop charts

- MARK KENNEDY

A new survey of pop charts over the past six years finds that men overwhelmi­ngly dominate the ranks of artists and songwriter­s and that 2017 represente­d a six-year low for female artists.

University of Southern California researcher­s released a study last week that shows women comprised just 22.4% of artists and 12.3% of songwriter­s on the Billboard’s top singles charts.

Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift dominated the charts during the time the survey was conducted.

The researcher­s also looked at Grammy Award nominees. A total of 899 people were nominated for Grammys between 2013 and 2018. Of those, 90.7% were male and 9.3% were female.

“For women, pursuing music as an artist is largely a solo activity, and appears to be a lonely one,” the researcher­s wrote. They noted that the numbers were “surprising” because women are big customers of music, making up 53% of digital music buyers in 2014.

The university’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative researcher­s examined 600 songs appearing on the Billboard Hot 100 end-ofyear charts from 2012 through 2017. A total of 1,239 solo performers, duos and bands were included.

Some of the biggest gender disparity data was shown last year — a year in which the researcher­s note women “forcibly took hold of the cultural conversati­on”. In 2017, a mere 2% of producers of 300 popular songs were female and only four female producers worked on the 100 top songs. Females comprised just 16.8% of popular artists on the top charts.

The study found that pop charts have been more inclusive when it comes to non-white artists. Underrepre­sented racial groups comprised 42% of artists across the six years sampled.

 ??  ?? From left, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift.
From left, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Thailand