Six Month Update on Equal Play

Jada E Watson, JULY 26, 2020

The results of this report echo the 2- and 4-month updates, highlighting positive moments, with caution for the future:

• There has been an increase in spins from the 10.1% average in 2019, to a high of 17.6% in June and ending on 14.5% by mid-July. The largest increases occurred in the midday, evening and overnight periods, with little improvement in the morning and afternoon periods when audiences traditionally are most likely to tune-in.

• There has has been an increase in support (in form of spins) for current singles by female artists, but little-to-no improvement for recurrents. While the #1 songs by Morris, Barrett, Andress and Pearce continue to receive airplay in recurrent status, there has been no attempt to fill the gap by re-introducing gold songs by women that audiences know and love (see the appendix for more on songs in recurrent status).

• There had been an increase in the number of songs in the top 20 positions of the chart — including nearly double the #1 singles by women in the first 7 months of 2020 than in all of 2019. That’s the highest number of #1 songs for female artists since 7 songs hit the top of the chart in 2010 – a decade ago.

• However, the bottom 30 positions had a significant deficit of songs by female artists. As a result of fewer songs by women entering the chart between March and June, there are just 2 songs by women in the Top 10, one at #13 and gap until #32 … the chart is again heading toward culturally unhealthy levels of representation.

The findings on diversity are perhaps most striking in this report. In this 6-month period, white artists received 91.4% of the format’s airplay, with the majority of the spins for non-white artists divided between two Black solo men: Kane Brown and Jimmie Allen. Only 5 of the 189 solo country artists are artists of color and just 1 is a female artist – and her songs have received little-to-no airplay. While artists of color are very much underrepresented, Black female artists seem to be shut out of opportunities at having their songs heard – despite the lengths they have gone to in order to make their music accessible.

To read the full article from Jada Watson at Songdata.ca, click here.