With the Grammys just days away, the big question is: who will walk away as the biggest winners? The odds of a woman taking home a golden gramophone in the top categories are relatively high: female artists claim six out of the eight nominations for both album of the year and record of the year. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter are also all up for record, song and album of the year.
Despite this, women make up only 22.7% of the entire nominations list this year. According to a new study on women in music from Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative (with support from Spotify), some positive upticks in representation across the industry were present throughout 2024, but there is still not much behind-the-scenes progress to report.
“The Recording Academy has demonstrated that it can recognize the contributions of women to the music industry—this is clear through the increase we observed last year and that it has continued into this year,” said Dr. Smith. “The challenge now is to continue that growth and to see more women receiving acknowledgement of their talent and effort through awards like the Grammys, particularly for women in producing roles.”
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The Inclusion study examines Billboard’s Hot 100 Year-End charts, taking note of the artists, songwriters and producers on 1,300 songs of the most popular songs of the year in addition to nominees in six major categories at the Grammy Awards: record of the year, album of the year, song of the year, best new artist, producer of the year, and songwriter of the year.
For women artists, the top three performers on the Year-End charts have been Nicki Minaj (27 songs), Ariana Grande (25 songs) and Taylor Swift (24 songs). Women comprised 37.7% of artists across the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End chart in 2024, which is no different than 2023 (35%) but is an overall improvement from 2012 (22.7%).
“Women artists in 2024 saw little change,” said Dr. Smith. “In fact, it is the number of men that has declined while the number of women in 2024 was consistent with prior years. This suggests that it is fluctuations in the number of men, not gains for women that is driving these findings. For those interested in seeing change in the music industry, this is not a sign of progress.”
As solo artists, women made up 38.9% of the chart which is a slightly lower tally than 2023 and no different from 2012. There were no duos or bands with women in 2024 on the list.
Looking to producers of popular songs in 2024, once again there was no increase for women. A total of 5.9% of producing credits were held by women, compared to 6.5% in 2023 and 2.4% in 2012. Of the 14 women producers in 2024, only two were women of color. Across all 13 years, 93.3% of songs were missing any women producers.
The percentage of women songwriters in 2024 was 18.9%, which was similar to the percentage in 2023 (19.5%) and significantly higher than the 11% of songwriters in 2012 who were women. Women are also largely confined to only two genres whereas men work across all of them.
A total of 26 songwriting credits on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-End chart went to underrepresented women writers. This is a significant downturn from 2023 (55) but an overall increase from 2012 (14). The number of white women songwriters, however, was at a 13-year high in 2024 (61). Meanwhile, women artists of color on the Billboard Hot 100, decreased from 61% in 2023 to 44.6% in 2024.
“The music industry is a mirror to the film industry—there is a lot of fanfare about supporting women, but little actual change among the most popular songs,” said Dr. Smith. “While there may be movement in the independent space, the songs and charts evaluated represent the agenda-setting music that has the greatest opportunity to launch and grow a career. Until the people in the executive ranks and A&R roles take seriously the lack of women in the industry, we will continue to see little change.”