These years, while hardly as celebrated, rank in commercial terms with pop's modern golden ages: the birth of rock in the 1950's and the 1960's flowering of the counterculture. And listeners responded, buying their favorites even if they resented everything else.
Openmindedness, rather than any single sound, was its great contribution: a lesson in diversity. Though it goes against received wisdom to say so, the 90's deserve to go down as the decade when the music industry opened its doors to all comers. There was so much music that most of us were too bewildered to remember to feel excited. It placidly welcomed into the big tent former punks, deliberately crude rappers and some of the blandest ballads ever recorded. The trend included older tunes repackaged for CD in a hitherto unimaginable variety. This decade wasn't the age of hip-hop, new country, alternative rock, or teen pop.
But what they represent, the Balkanization of American pop, makes it likely that there is far more of whatever you do care about than existed 10 years ago. You may not care about any of these 1990's hitmakers. The Dave Matthews Band fills stadiums playing sweaty jam-rock for collegiate preppies.
defying the expectation that rappers have short shelf lives, he has had hit records as a solo artist, with movie soundtracks and with a side band called Westside Connection. Ice Cube is an intense rapper who began as a teen with the Los Angeles group N.W.A. While we do not yet have the data to address a more inclusive approach to gender identity (the absence of such data is suggestive of a larger socio-cultural issue at play in programming), it is imperative that we acknowledge the underrepresentation of artists of color in this genre.GEORGE STRAIT is a middle-aged country singer with an easy grin about him even his boxed sets go platinum. Moss recently reported for Rolling Stone, this ongoing discussion centers on a white, cis-gendered perspective that leaves out queer and transgendered voices, and artists of color. It’s time to increase the 10 percent throughout the day and across all facets of the industry so that women can be heard and seen by country music fans.Īnd this is still only part of the story. It’s time for women to have access to the same opportunities as male artists.
The disappearance of women from main channels of dissemination - radio, streaming, tours, festivals - and near invisibility on the charts leads many to falsely assume that only a handful of women are participating in the genre or that women are not producing high-quality music. By limiting airplay for songs by women to less than 10 percent of the daytime spins, radio is not offering women the same platform for development and exposure as male artists, making their voices and stories unfamiliar to audiences. Kingston, Ontario’s Pure Country 99 program director Brittany Thompson recently admitted that country radio does “a better job establishing and promoting male artists.” Audiences respond more favorably to what they hear and know, and audiences know songs by men. These studies show that women are not receiving enough airplay - in any part of the day or night - to be discovered, to build fanbases, to become familiar with audiences. Second, airplay increases audience familiarity. Naturally, the declining presence of women on radio evolves into a sustained, industry-wide deficit.
Airplay and chart activity is crucial exposure for artists - especially new artists, as it is linked to other opportunities, including label and publishing deals, touring and festival opportunities, award nominations, fan clubs, merchandising and more. With just 10 percent of the daily spins in 2019, it should not be surprising to know that according to my calculations only 16.7 percent of the songs on the Billboard Country Airplay charts were by women, and songs by women are nearly absent from the top positions of the chart - with an average of 10 percent of the songs in both the top 20 and top 10 positions of the weekly charts. Why does this matter? First, there is a direct relationship between the amount of times a song is played each day and its ability to break into the weekly charts.