A New Report Just Revealed How Much The Music Industry Hates Women
Don’t be fooled by Taylor Swift. The music industry is not kind to women.
Back when I was in college, I was huge into music — especially goth music. I’d listen to all my favorite bands, like VNV Nation and Echo and the Bunnymen. While my library kept growing, I couldn’t help but notice something odd.
Aside from a handful of major names, most of my music was sung by men. It was strange, because I enjoyed singing along to musicians. It gave me a little stress relief and gave me a way to pretend I was in a music video.
As a girl, I assumed there weren’t many women in my music collection because women just didn’t have enough talent. Or, perhaps, they just didn’t want to see their names in lights.
Little did I know that I was just starting to notice a pattern that would become a center-stage issue in my life.
Getting married to a DJ was an eye-opener.
Have you ever had a moment where your perception of things did a slow 180? I did. Marrying someone working in EDM changed my perception of music people — and their sexism.
As someone who works as a marketer, I know how to get the word out about people. I would offer his friends advice. Without fail, his music buddies would blink at me and wave me out of the room as if I were an idiot.
My husband would look at them with an annoyed expression on his face. He sometimes would pull them aside and tell them to be a little less rude to me.
It was then I realized most of the music pros I knew only liked me for my looks.
My role in the scene quickly faded from a single woman capable of being a fling to no one when a ring got placed on my finger. Even people who I knew for over a decade stopped talking to me. It got to the point where I stopped attending parties because I felt so lonely there.
My husband mentioned that one of our friends was feeling low about his career. So, I messaged him. When I offered encouragement to him, he asked me, “Why are you talking to me?”
When I’d offer advice, I’d watch people blink and go back to talking. Moments later, a man would say the same thing. Everyone would applaud him for the brilliant idea. Eventually, I stopped bothering with advice.
The discrimination isn’t just directed toward me. Female performers had an even larger target on their heads. If I had a dollar for every time I heard a salty DJ accuse a female DJ of “flings for a gig,” I’d have at least enough for dinner at Per Se.
Recently, I hit my breaking point and openly admitted that I no longer want any involvement in my husband’s career or with his EDM friends. I couldn’t take the disrespect and exclusion.
What’s wild is that I wasn’t even a professional in the field. I just wanted to be part of the same crowd that used to like me.
My story is not a rarity, but rather, the rule.
If you’re a woman who wants to be the next Taylor Swift or Ariana Grande, I have bad news for you. Skoove, a digital piano teaching company, recently released a report exposing the sexism in the music industry — and it was an eye-opener.
The report revealed several shocking statistics that few people seem to want to admit, including: