It is no secret the country music industry is male dominated. This doesn’t mean there is a lack of female artists; there is a lack of female artists represented in the industry.
Country radio is known to play a higher percentage of male artists’ songs. Mickey Guyton, a female country music artist shared an example of this on her Twitter after releasing her single ““Better Than You Left Me” in 2019. Guyton posted this to her Twitter page.
“The sad thing about this is when my song Better than you left me came out and was working and was going up the charts, I was told that country radio didn’t want to play 2 ballads by 2 females at the same time. So they played one girl and quit playing mine. It was heartbreaking.” — Mickey Guyton (@MickeyGuyton) December 19, 2019
This example shows radio was not willing to play female artists’ music and was very selective. They were not willing to go out of their way to support female artists and promote their music.
Over the 55 years of having the Country Music Association Awards (CMA’s), only seven female artists won the most influential Entertainer of the Year award. In the 2021 awards show, after promising to include gender equality, the Country Music Association had very few women nominated throughout all categories and none for Entertainer of the Year.
The country music industry is working towards representing women equally in the industry, but have a long way to go.
The Manitoba Country Music awards have multiple female artists nominated in almost every category. This is a great start for female representation in Manitoba, and I hope to see it continue and improve.
I hope that female artists not having equal representation in the industry isn’t a topic we are still talking about very soon. I will continue to watch the steps the industry takes moving forward for equal female representation.
Check out the blog next week, where we will unpack the Manitoba Country Music Awards virtual event.
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