Like a number of music companies, Deezer was celebrating International Women’s Day yesterday. Its announcement included a less-than-celebratory stat however.
The streaming service’s own analysis has revealed that only 23% of the artists in its Top 100 charts are women – and that this has actually fallen by a percentage point since 2020.
Deezer’s efforts to reverse that trend include a new ‘Women’s Impact’ channel, which launched yesterday and will remain in its app for the rest of the year, with a mixture of women-focused playlists. There is also a ‘mood option’ for Deezer’s radio-style Flow feature called ‘100% Women’.
This is all good, although the 23% / Top 100 stat reflects wider challenges in the music industry in terms of signings, live bookings and festival slots, and other obstacles facing women artists that we’ve written about before.
Streaming services can certainly have an impact with their programming strategies, but some of the reasons for man-heavy charts are out of their direct control.
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