USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative Releases 6th Report On Music Industry Inclusion

Report On Inclusion

The USC ANNENBERG INCLUSION INITIATIVE has released its sixth annual report on inclusion in the music industry, with Dr. STACY L. SMITH analyzing the BILLBOARD Hot 100 Year-End Charts from the last decade, as well as GRAMMY nominations in five major categories and the newer Songwriter of the Year category, and finding some improvement for women but not for underrepresented artists.

In the study, “Inclusion in the Recording Studio?," SMITH found that 30% of artists on the chart in 2022 were women, up from the previous year's 23.3% and a new record, although the ratio of male to female artists is 3.5:1. Among songwriters, women make up 14%, flat from 2021; the ratio for writers is 6.8 men to each woman. Just 3.4% of producers were women in 2022 (26% of whom were women of color), and 5.2% of songs featured a woman producer.

“There is good news for women artists this year,” said SMITH. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves -- there is still much work to be done before we can say that women have equal opportunity in the music industry.”

As for artists from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, half of the artists on 2022's chart were from those groups, but that figure was down from 2021's 57.2%. Women of color comprised 65% of all underrepresented artists, up from 55% the year before, with men of color reduced from 58% to 45%. For songwriters, women of color outnumbered white women in 2022 but decreased from 2021.

The study also criticized the RECORDING ACADEMY's Women in the Mix Pledge, noting that only one of the industry members taking the pledge to commit to working with a woman producer or engineer on a song -- NICKI MINAJ -- worked with a female producer on a charting song in 2022, and that no pledge-taker worked with a woman engineer that year. “This industry solution has not proven effective,” said SMITH. “Until women and men artists hire women songwriters and producers the numbers will not move. It’s more than just allowing an artist to credit themselves on a song, it’s about identifying talent and hiring women in these roles. That’s the only way that we will see change occur.”

Analyzing the GRAMMYS, this year, 15.2% of nominees in the six categories studied were women, just ahead of 2022's 14.1%; over 11 years, 13.9% of nominees in the categories were women while 86% were men. Among the women nominated over 11 years, 51.5% were white while 48.5% were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. In 2023, underrepresented women represented 61.5% of the women nominated and 38.5% were white.

Read the entire report here.

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