2014-07-30

More fun with musical sexism.

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A few months ago I looked at the balance of male and female voices at a local radio station and was disappointed. I thought that maybe one of the other radio stations I listen to might have better stats. So this time, I pulled the information from 8am to 2pm on July 29 from Live 105 and KFOG (but not BIG 103.7, which only tells you the last twelve songs---they did have 25% female voices though which makes them above address). I also added Alice which Top Hat suggested might do better. I don't listen to Alice all that often because it's on the second layer of the car's presets and because the music just ain't as good as KFOG. You'll see.

First, just the overall numbers (percentages rounded to the nearest half percent):


(All these can be clicked on if you want to view them more legibly.)

As you can see, Top Hat was right. They play lots more women as a percentage. Still not near half, but, you know, closer. As you can see however, they tend to play the same people over and over again. Here are the actual artists (first chart is total songs by artist, the second list is simply artists played regardless of repeats):


KFOG and Live 105 had virtually the same male/female breakdowns, but the variety of women played by Live 105 is laughable. Let's look at Live 105's charts first:


KFOG, by my reckoning, has the most listenable mix. And unlike Live 105 they even play women back-to-back sometimes. But it's still pretty pathetic. Does the average radio listener really have that low a tolerance for the female voice? Frankly, I doubt it.

Anyway. Let's look at their breakdown:


And here I thought HAIM was supposed to be the next big thing.....

3 comments:

  1. .

    I would like to believe my samples just aren't large enough, but I'm afraid I can't do that. I'm pretty sure that within a reasonable margin of error, this captures fact. So no, I don't take it as a bright side that Live 105 seems to have gotten better since March.

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  2. Wow, that's a lot of work, but thanks, though! This is all very interesting. And yeah, Alice does a lot of repeats and it's mostly pop and not particularly musical, but my kids like it.

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  3. .

    I just need to get Spotify in my car. I do like KFOG a lot, but there's a simple means to making me like them more. (See above.)

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