A new study by the nonprofit initiative Fix the Mix has found significant statistics to confirm a lack of women and nonbinary representation across all genres of music.
The initiative was launched in 2022 by We Are Moving the Needle, a nonprofit that began Fix the Mix. They used the database Jaxsta in conjunction with Middle Tennessee State University and Howard University to determine the metrics.
Important numbers include that in the top most-streamed tracks of 2022, only 6.7% of the credited producers and engineers were women or non-binary.
Furthermore, among the top 50 songs across 14 different genres, metal, rap, and Christian/Gospel had the lowest percentage of women and non-binary people in technical roles. Electronic music had the highest representation at 17.6%, still an extremely low number considering how accepting the community claims to be.
The Grammys also had low representation because out of all winning albums in the “best genre” categories in 2023, 17 of them had zero credits towards women or non-binary people in key technical roles. Even more, across the eight categories honoring technical roles, only one woman was recognized among 30 men.
But the entirety of the music industry only further emphasizes these statements as the study found only 2.8% of music industry producers were women in 2022.
Emily Lazar, Grammy Award-winning mastering engineer and founder of We Are Moving The Needle said about the study, “The most important step is for artists and record labels to be able to hire from a more diverse pool of producers, mixers, and engineers, but it’s exceedingly hard to hire people when you can’t find them. We hope this report will give decision makers the motivation and tools they need to make real change in their hiring practices so we can achieve gender parity in production, engineering, and mastering roles.”
Featured image from We Are Moving The Needle
