Spotify 'Equalizer' (Male vs Female artist plays)

What are your listening habits like when comparing male vs female artists??

http://smirnoffequalizer.com/

For me, 79% Men vs 21% Women

Seemed interesting enough to split off onto its own thread.


According to the site I listen to 100% male artists. I’m not sure how far back into their records they are going but I imagine most of what I listen to these days is made by dull boys. And the way I used Spotify might, I suppose, mean that I only listen to female artists on Bandcamp/Bought MP3s except that I distinctly remember listening to the The Weather Station’s album a number of times near the end of last year before I decided to buy it.

In recent weeks I’ve only used Spotify to play my Discover Weekly or Daily Mix playlists so that implies that really Spotify should be doing more :smiley:

Anyway 100% male frankly makes me massively distrust their data.

When you add into that this is their suggested playlist which appears to take zero account of any of the music genre choices I make it’s a rum old world:

1 Like

I admit to having a problem with this kind of “equalizer” (sic). I don’t consciously listen by gender, but I probably listen to more music made by males, and I think this is mostly a refelction of (a) the numbers of males and females in the business, and (b) the kinds of music that males and females choose to make. For example, females are heavily under-represented in the realm of progressive rock. I’m not sure why - it may be because there are industry barriers to women, or it may be that women just feel less inclined to make this kind of music. If the former, then that’s the responsibility of record companies, concert promoters etc, not of the listeners. Either way, I am not going to decrease the amount of progressive rock I listen to simply to balance the genders.

Likewise, it’s a fact that certain kinds of music tend to favoured much more by white musicians, and some by black musicians. I’m sorry but I am not going to check on the colour of someone’s skin before deciding whether or not to listen to or buy their music. Make music that appeals to me and I will listen to it and buy it, I don’t care if your skin is purple with lime green polka dots.

ffs

9 Likes

Coincidentally after my latest post I saw this item on today’s news:

Except record companies make those decisions in part due to what they believe the listeners want, which is determined by listeners’ (including your) listening habits.

1 Like

The Smirnoff site for it claims that each playlist is personalised to the listener, but I just had a go and had a similar experience. Just a list of people - male and female - who make music that make no sense based on my largely ambient/drone/noisy listening habits. With the exception of Missy Elliott, who I already listen to because she’s fucking great.

(Bark Psychosis stream listeners own).

This is a good exercise in theory, because there is 100% a gender imbalance in music and this helps highlight that, but I think their data’s a bit broken if you listen to stuff that isn’t that popular in terms of numbers of streams.

IIRC from my own experience getting things onto Spotify you don’t have to say what gender you are, which may be why all the recommendations for female artists are of much more famous pop people because their gender is clearly known and often commodified as a key selling point. So maybe that says more about the business of big, major label music (yay capitalism!) than anything else. Dunno.

Anyway, I’m gonna go listen to Mary Lattimore and Grouper and Kelly Lee Owens now. So in some ways, maybe this was a success after all.

1 Like

Yeah I had Missy but I think she’s in that category along with Prince or Bowie where you have to side eye the person who can’t see the value in their music

2 Likes

This told me I listen to 100% men, which is definitely wrong.

7 Likes

Website has just stopped for me

Tim Ganss can fuck off as well

1 Like

tried it on my phone and laptop and it wont work what the fuck

1 Like

Yeah, this is just a crappy marketing ploy to piggyback IWD in order to benefit Smirnoff, Spotify & major label content

7 Likes

I got 81/19, which is supposedly means I listen to more female artists than average. And yeah, the recommended playlist is an absolute joke. Not touching any playlist that features The Wombats and The Kooks.

won’t work

4/10 of my last played bands are female, I’d say that was roughly right. Been getting into Japanese electro stuff again or it would’ve been about 6/10 female.

58% men 42% women.

2 Likes

same, it’s a load of shite

when I finally got it to work, it said I listen to 67/33 Men/Women.

how did you finally get it? it’s eating at me now