Analysis of Shifting Dynamics and Music’s Gender Gap

Think women are dominating pop music? This new analysis of shifting dynamics and music’s gender gap may surprise you and show where the industry is actually headed.

Analysis of Shifting Dynamics and Music’s Gender Gap

by Bobby Owsinski via Music 3.0

I’ve heard many people (mostly males) complain recently about how pop music seems to be dominated by female artists. That’s never actually been the case, and the latest report by Chartmetric called Make Music Equal proves the point.

Here are some of the key points from the report:

• Out of 1M+ artists in the Make Music Equal dataset, about 728,000 are solo acts. Among them: 79% use he/him, 18% use she/her, and 3% use they/them or other pronouns

• Among the top 100 artists by Chartmetric Score, 33% now use she/her, up from 26% in 2020

• TV syncs are nearly balanced between men (29%) and women (26%), while film and video games lean more male, with 15% and 6% of releases coming from women, respectively 

• Festival slots for women rose 3% since the pre-pandemic era, partially driven by a decline in band bookings

• Band-released tracks also dropped nearly 8%, making room for solo artists—especially women (+2%) and men (+5%)

• Women are underplayed in genres like country and hip-hop, but dominate in R&B and soul, outperforming men by millions of radio airplay spins

• Female fandom is fueling success, particularly among top-performing artists

Here’s what jumped out to me.

Where Are The Bands?

73% of artists in the dataset are solo artists. That means that bands make up just 27%, which has to be a low point in the last 50 years (looking for the data on this). 

Speaking of bands, the number of tracks released dropped by 8%, which means that bands are having a harder time finishing music.

None of this should be a surprise. It’s a lot harder to be in a band than be a solo artist, given the time involved, inter-personal politics, and level of musicianship required.

Many solo artists complain that it’s so difficult to finish their music, given that there are so many alternatives, and it takes time to explore even a portion of them.

That concern is multiplied by band dynamics, as now you have to schedule multiple people for recording, play the song well (since they’re not playing to loops and samples), decide on a direction, then come to a mutual decision as to when the song is finished (and more). That’s a lot more complicated than recording in your home studio by yourself.

I think that all the musicians who played in a band growing up were given the tools available to everyone today for such little money, they’d choose to be solo over being a band as well.

The point here is that the music business has always been dominated by males, but the report shows that women are catching up fast. The fact of the matter is that regardless of your gender or if you’re in a band or not, making a living in music remains difficult, and it’s not getting any easier.

Bobby Owsinski is a producer/engineer, author, blogger, podcaster, and coach. He has authored 24 books on music production, music, the music business, music AI, and social media.