A new report has been looking at gender diversity through the lens of what gets onto the radio airwaves in the UK.
The report, by Linda Coogan Byrne and Women in Ctrl, analysed the 20 most-played British artists on 31 UK radio stations between June 2019 and June 2020, as well as the top 100 radio airplay chart in 2020. The figures are… well, they show there’s a lot of room for improvement.
The top 20 artists analysis found that men routinely accounted for well over half of the rankings, including 85% on BBC Radio 1, and 100% on stations like Kerrang! Radio, Absolute Radio and Radio X. Meanwhile, for the radio airplay chart analysis, 51% of the top 100 were male artists, 19% female, and 30% were collabs. For songwriters, it was 80% male, 19% female and 1% non-binary; and for producers it was 97% male and 3% female.
Note, the analysis focused on British artists: it would be interesting to know whether the percentages change much if all nationalities were included – i.e. are American female artists getting more airplay than their British equivalents?
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