One Man's Take on Women in the Audio Industry

 I am a member of several audio related groups on Facebook and one topic recently caught my eye: the topic of women in the audio industry. I wrote a semi-related blog for a class over the summer discussing inclusion in video gaming and I have my own thoughts on the topic. As a man in the music industry, I have seen some abhorrent behavior from my male counterparts, but at the same time I have been relatively sheltered from a lot of this type of behavior because I personally have chosen not to surround myself with those type of toxic males. I wanted to relay some of my experiences so please keep reading if this topic is something that interests you.

First I want to talk about my experience with Ashfield. We were a semi-professional band in Denver, Colorado from 2004 to 2014. I can say that I had some of the best experiences of my life on stage with the other 4 members and we easily played several hundred shows to small and large crowds alike. Our fans were evenly mixed of male and female and I was never aware of any discriminatory treatment from our fan base to anyone else within our fan base. That said, we did play a show where we opened for a fairly well-known national touring act and one of the other opening bands had a female lead singer. She was a fairly close acquaintance of ours which is to say we were friendly but we didn't hang out regularly and this was the first and only time we ever shared a stage with her band. The lead singer of the touring act, who was male, spent a good portion of their set making lewd comments about our friend's chest. Needless to say, this act grew tired real quick and I'm happy to say that the crowd, made up of a lot of our fans, quickly turned on the touring act. Still, our friend was quite shaken and, despite our efforts to console her, ended up leaving the venue. A small number of us confronted the offensive singer after the show and he attempted to play off the situation as a joke. The situation did not escalate further, we said what we felt needed to be said, and the touring act left without incident. This was the only time I witnessed such disgusting sexism on stage though I'm sure it happens much more frequently than I am privy to.

I also want to relay my experience in the recording studio as a performer. Ashfield spent significant time in the recording studio and again, we were fortunate to work with some very good engineers. My personal feeling about our recording sessions were that they were private affairs so that the band could focus on the work and the creative process. However, other members of the band would bring their girlfriends on occasion and this was never an issue for me or for the recording engineer. In many cases, their feedback was welcomed as the perspective of someone who would be buying and listening to our songs. Obviously they were not there in a professional capacity, but no one ever looked at them as "groupies" or people just hanging out with the band. I believe there was only one time in the history of the band where all 5 of us were in relationships at the same time and there is a picture featuring all 5 of our girlfriends tricked out in Ashfield merchandise. This is one of my favorite promo shots that we ever got to use.

Finally, let me talk about my experience as an audio student and hopeful audio professional. When I started my coursework at California State University, Chico, my group of Recording Arts students included 35 people. Of this 35, only 4 were female. Of those 4, 2 dropped the program by the second semester. In a study published in 2019, 3 creative roles were highlighted regarding diversity: artists, songwriters, and producers. The study revealed that 21.7% of artists, 12.3% of songwriters, and only 2.1% of producers were female. So clearly there is an issue with diversity and inclusion here. I cannot say why there were so few females in our program to begin and I cannot say why 2 of them dropped, but clearly there is an opportunity to do better. The stories of women being harassed in the studio are sickening. I can tell you from my perspective that I do not care if a male or a female is recording me. Whatever is being done to give us the best possible sound is all I care about.

If you've read this far, I hope that you do not interpret this as a tone-deaf response to a real issue. I want to be a part of the solution as this is an industry in which I am trying to create my opportunity. Really this is just my response to a post that I felt was very thought provoking and I wanted to share my relevant experience. Thank you for reading.

Final Course Reflection

I have really enjoyed being a part of this Technology and Communication course. One thing I have enjoyed about taking summer classes previously at Shasta College and now at CSU Chico has been that, with the abbreviated timeline, you never get bored. That said, there were definitely some units that I appreciated more than others. My father worked for Pacific Bell when he initially moved to California from Toledo, Ohio and remained with AT&T following the breakup of the Bell system in the 1980's. He remained with AT&T for the remainder of his professional career until he retired. When I spoke to him on Father's Day I told him we had just finished a unit on telephony and he was very interested in the material we had covered. Humorously, I did not have as significant an interest in the telephony unit as he did and we were able to share a laugh about that.

The trend that I was most invested in was the future of the music industry which we covered during week 2. As I'm sure I've shared multiple times in my blogs and in my discussion posts, I am a musician and my goal in returning to school is to be involved in the industry in some fashion now that my performing days are likely behind me. That said, any information pertaining to the future of what that industry will look like as I am trying to find my "in" is of great interest to me both personally and professionally. As music sales trend further and further towards streaming and away from physical and digital sales, I think it's important to understand where revenue is generated and how that revenue is distributed among the people responsible for a record. This includes the writer, publisher, artist, and record label (if any). Also, it will be interesting to see how the Music Modernization Act affects how that revenue is generated and distributed. That is a trend that I look forward to following.

The theoretical approach I enjoyed the most was in our unit discussing photo manipulation. I know that the blog we wrote was supposed to be targeted more towards using altered modeling photos, but I went off in a different direction citing the altered photos used by Fox News of the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle. I think this underlies a fundamental problem with news in general. I believe that many people in an older generation will look at news anchors like Walter Cronkite, for example, and say that he was more trustworthy than news anchors today. While I believe that is probably true, I think you have to consider the times we live in when making this generalization. In those days you only had 3 or 4 stations delivering the news for 30 minutes per night at a prime time slot. However, beginning with the launch of CNN in 1980, you now have numerous news channels delivering news 24 hours a day. The reporting has become more sensationalized because the news channels have to attract viewers with interesting content that the anchors in the 1960's and 1970's did not. I think the drive for ratings has diminished the values of truth and facts.

The policy that interested me the most had to be Net Neutrality. I think this concept was the one I was least familiar with even though it had been in the news almost immediately after Trump had been elected. As I posted in our discussion, my understanding is that it protects us, the consumers, from internet service providers limiting our access to content due to conflicting interest with content that may benefit the provider. The most curious thing to me is how this became a partisan issue. I really enjoyed John Oliver's analogy that President Trump wants to press CMD-Z on everything that President Obama did while he was in office. It's unfortunate that it actually appears to be true. I'm also very glad that the state of California has their own Net Neutrality policy in place as I believe it is in the best interest of anyone who uses the internet to have protection against price gouging by unethical ISP's.

The social issue point was one that I was torn about. I was equally invested in two of the social issues we covered in class. The first being how the gaming community treats women and the second being the digital divide. As a gamer myself, the inclusive gaming topic really shocks me because I have not personally observed, nor taken part in any excluding behavior based on gender. That said, I don't play games online so I think I have insulated myself from that environment. I will say that the "women as trophies" trope does become more clear to me now that I am more conscious to it. As a male I don't think I really paid any attention to these things as being bad. I just took them as part of the game. Here is where my music and audio background connects. There is a significant underrepresentation of women in the music industry with only 2% of music producers and 3% of audio engineers being female. That's even fewer than the gaming industry in which 21% of game developers are female. Now that I'm actively pursuing a career in the music industry, I feel I am much more cognizant to this lack of inclusion and it really does bother me. In the recording arts program at CSU Chico, we only had 4 women in a class of 35 during my first semester. In my second semester that number dropped to 2 out of 30.

The second social issue point, the digital divide, I think is very relevant as we see racial tensions in our country right now. The example from class with the Coachella Valley school district I think really illustrates how the digital divide and racial divide are connected. Coachella Valley is a district that is a majority Hispanic. The ideal that everyone has the same opportunities regardless of race or color is disproved simply by looking at that example. You have a poor, rural community with students who either cannot get or cannot afford internet service which affects their ability to study and do classwork. They are being put at a disadvantage immediately through no fault of their own. While it is by no means an absolute solution to racial inequality in our country, I think closing the digital divide will at least maybe bring us a few steps closer to actually living in a place where we have the same opportunities to succeed regardless of race or color.

Thank you for an exciting and informative 4 weeks!!!!

FOMO

FOMO: What is it? Well, other than a song by pop-punk group The Bombpops, it is Fear Of Missing Out. This can show up in a variety of ways but is most associated with what we see on our friends' social networking sites. This idea that people are out there living their best lives while you're stuck at home scrolling through Facebook or Instagram when you could be out at the beach or riding your bike or literally doing anything else. While FOMO is a real level of anxiety, the truth is that it doesn't have to be. When you realize that most people are editing the content of their sites to show only the best things that they're doing or the best sides of their relationships, you start to see that those people are just like you. And like you, they probably spend a significant amount of time scrolling through other people's feeds wishing they were doing the things they see in those pictures just like you.

One place I have personally seen FOMO show up in is in relationships. There is a recent developing in dating called "cushioning" where someone will begin a relationship but will continue texting other individuals or flirting. The idea here is that they are allowing themselves a cushion just in case the new relationship doesn't work out. I think this is a great example of FOMO in that the person is unwilling to commit to the new relationship just in case a better option presents itself. What if they commit and they miss out on this other person? I have had it done to me on a few occasions and as a result I think it has shifted my behavior to start cushioning myself. You can call it a trust issue perhaps, but I prefer to look at it as, "I have seen this before and I refuse to be blindsided by it again." I am not proud of it and I really do want to be in a place where I can have a relationship built on mutual trust and communication, but in the present time it seems that is becoming more and more rare.

In this way, I think this is where FOMO personally affects me. I understand that most of the pictures posted on Facebook or Instagram of people in relationships are just the best parts of that relationship. They don't show the fights or the random bouts of depression from one or both partners. They don't show the times one of you laughed so hard that you spit water out on the other person or when you found out that one of you snorts when you laugh. But that's just it. Even though you're only showing the best parts and editing out the not so great, you still have the not so great and I wish I had that. I've been back in California for nearly 4 years now and while I've been in school for most of that time, I've still managed to go on hikes, bike rides, and participated in numerous concerts for both band and choir. Only once during that time, for a brief period, have I even had someone to talk to about my experiences let alone share my journey with. As I get older I fear that my window to eventually meet someone to be a partner is closing quicker with each passing year. My birthday is next month and while I do expect the generic happy birthday posts on Facebook, it would be truly something to actually be able to spend it with someone special. Maybe next year.

Photo Manipulation

I do believe that the U.S. should have similar laws to France concerning photo manipulation. I know that much of this unit has been focused around beauty and how photos of models can create stereotypes about body image. But I believe these laws should encompass a much larger breadth of content. Just this week, Fox News removed multiple photos from its website depicting the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone protest area in Seattle, Washington after it was revealed that these photos had been digitally altered. The danger here is that a "news" network is altering images to fit a narrative they are delivering to their particular audience to sway opinion of a cause. While standards of journalism require photo illustrations to be clearly marked, there is no law that states this is required and no penalty for "news" networks that violate these ethics. Ideally, we should see journalistic objectivity with faith in facts rather than values. Going back to the topic at hand I do believe that photos that have been altered should be labeled, but I believe that the issue should be much larger than only addressing modeling photos.

As for the Getty Images policy, I agree with it. I think altered pictures of models have helped create impossible body images for all of us to try and strive for or live up to. Magazines have long told us what the ideal body should be and always have quick methods to shed pounds or gain muscle. What they rarely include is the time, energy, and often the teams of support personnel it takes to achieve those results. I could look like one of the actors from 300 if I had several hours every day to work out, top professional trainers paid for from a movie studio, and personal chefs keeping track of my calories and metrics. Also, even those images weren't real as Zack Snyder digitally airbrushed the actor's abs in post-production. So again, yes I do agree with the Getty Images policy.

Inclusive Video Games

As a male, I don't think I've ever had to worry about inclusion in gaming. When I was a kid there was no online gaming so if I was playing with a friend, that friend was there in the room with me. Now, when I was in elementary school most of my friends were male. Whether I was playing games with Marc or Nathan or Jason, it was just the boys. Then when the Nintendo 64 was released in 1996, and especially when GoldenEye was released in 1997, suddenly our gaming sessions became much more of a big deal because you could connect up to 4 controllers instead of the standard 2. As I was in high school, my circle of friends was becoming larger than just those that lived in the same neighborhood as me and girlfriends started becoming a regular mix into the gaming group. This was perfectly OK.

Whether we were playing GoldenEye or Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros., we never excluded anyone simply because of their gender or for any other reason. My first semester in college I lived in the dorms at Shasta College and we would regularly gather in the Commons to play WCW/nWo Revenge and there was always a mix of male and female ready to mix it up. Later, when I bought my first Xbox and started playing Halo, we were also an inclusive group. This continued when I moved to Denver and met many new groups of friends. Whether it was the karaoke crowd meeting at Burtt's house to play Halo or Mortal Kombat, or work friends meeting at Tim's house to play Soul Caliber 2, there was always a mix of male and female in the room and playing the games. Again, these were always couch multiplayer sessions and everyone was in the room together which I think usually inspires people to be polite.

For me, inclusion has always been about being allowed to be a part of something. In my circles of friends, no one has ever been excluded from participating and I hope that no one has ever felt excluded based on actions or words from other people in the group. However, after discussing video games in our unit in class and reading the article on Medium, I have to think that inclusion means so much more. Inclusion can also mean being able to relate and connect to characters in games because they look like you. Most video game protagonists have been white males and women in particular have been objectified in video games or treated like trophies. In the original Mortal Kombat arcade game released in 1992, there was only one female character, Sonya Blade. You could also argue that there was only one Asian playable character in Liu Kang. Granted there were two ninja characters in Scorpion and Sub-Zero, but both characters were portrayed by Daniel Pesina who is an American-born martial artist of Mexican decent. While other female characters were added in later releases, the objectification of their bodies was prominently on display in the rebooted Mortal Kombat (2011) with their body proportions and skimpy costumes. This has seemingly been addressed with the last two releases, Mortal Kombat X (2015) and Mortal Kombat 11 (2019).

Inclusion can also mean healthy and friendly in-game chat experiences. I think with the growing popularity of online gaming, unhealthy in-game chats have become alarmingly normal particularly towards female gamers. I do not personally game online. It has never been something I have been interested in and as I am a casual gamer, I likely do not possess the skill level that many online gamers have from hours and hours of practice. I am also not a huge fan of First Person Shooters which make up a large portion of online games. That said, I have not witnessed nor had to experience some of the toxic comments that are regularly directed at female gamers. I'm not sure how or when I became aware that this was happening but it has definitely been reinforced by some of the material we have discussed in class. I personally think it's disgusting that a person would say some of these things to another person. I would like to reiterate a comment I made in a discussion post. I think the more we interact with people online, the more it dehumanizes the people we interact with. People see them not as an individual but as a profile or an avatar. In much the same manner as cyber bullying, they fail to make the connection that the things they are saying are not in a vacuum and that they are being directed at another person. As there are currently not a lot of consequences for this type of behavior, there is no incentive for them to stop which emboldens them further. In some cases I think it almost becomes a challenge to see how much they can get away with.

In 2017, only 21% of game developers were female but 42% of gamers were female. In 2019 females made up 46% of gamers. This means that the number of women making games is disproportionate to the number of women playing games. I think we need to do a better job at closing that gap. As we are seeing more and more female protagonists in games with Horizon: Zero Dawn, Tomb Raider, and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy released over the last few years, and The Last of Us Part 2 releasing later this month, I would hope that this would inspire more women to not only play games but also to be a part of the industry making those games.

Digital Divide

I think the Digital Divide is a real thing and as the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots" grows larger than it has ever been, this is an issue that really needs to be solved in short order. As we continue to see growth in the income inequality in the United States, there is a true need for internet for everybody. In school districts such as Coachella Valley, having access to the internet means having access to resources such as research and books that they might not otherwise have access to. Superintendent Darryl Adams states that over 95% of the students live below the poverty line and many cannot afford internet at home. This begins a domino effect that sets the students up for failure. The school may not be able to attract teachers, and due to low test scores the school may not have access to state funds meaning that their materials and resources (e.g. textbooks) cannot be kept up to date, meaning that the students are not receiving the level of education that a wealthier school district receives.

It is also important to note that Adams states a majority of the student body is Hispanic, so there is no way we can talk about the Digital Divide without also addressing the issues of race inequality in the United States. Given the current tension in our country surrounding race relations, I don't want to pile on, but some white Americans that I know have stated that all Americans are on a level playing field regardless of race or where you were born. Educational studies and stories like the one about Coachella Valley clearly show that is not the case. Simply because these students happened to be born in a rural and poorer area of the country should not mean that they have any less opportunity as anyone else, but the facts show that they DO have fewer opportunities. Adams' innovation of mobile Wi-Fi hotspots using busses does seems to be working to close the gap, however, as the graduation rate in Coachella Valley is up 8%.

Why should we care about the Digital Divide? Well, there is a strong link between digital access and income and race inequality in our country. This alone should be motivation enough for Americans to want to close the digital gap. The American Dream is the ideal that equality of opportunity is available to any American, allowing the highest aspirations and goals to be achieved. Greater opportunity should not be afforded to you simply because you were privileged enough to have been born in a particular county or a particular color or race. So if we have any hope of maintaining the ideal of the American Dream, we need to close the Digital Divide. Otherwise it is just words without meaning.

Future of the Music Industry

As a musician, the future of the music industry is one that is very important to me. I was a working musician in Denver, Colorado for close to a decade and I have returned to school to study recording arts. My goal is to work in a studio as a recording engineer and possibly open my own studio or production company specializing in smaller projects. This would also give me an opportunity (hopefully) to work with my former bandmates on songs that we've been working on separately and together since Ashfield disbanded in 2014. That said, will there even be a market for this when I graduate?

When Napster launched in 1999, I think it was a monumental moment in music as it was really the first sign that the future of music was digital distribution. The failure of Napster was that it allowed users to share copyrighted material with other users with no compensation for the artist. In essence, they were stealing. Obviously this led to multiple lawsuits from artists such as Metallica and Dr. Dre, but the seeds had been planted. Now the largest retailer of music is Apple (a computer company) through it's iTunes platform and many consumers get their music through streaming platforms such as Spotify who as of April, 2020 has 286 million active users.

The music industry is often broken down into 3 separate industries; the recorded music industry, the music licensing industry, and the live music industry. The move to digital really only affects one of these, the recorded music industry, which deals in recording and distributing music to consumers. Before Napster, distribution meant dubbing a recording onto a physical medium (LP, cassette, CD, etc.) and shipping it to a brick and mortar retail store where it was then sold to a music consumer. The issue here was that music companies were only interested in distributing those recordings that were going to turn a profit, so the selection of music if you were to go in to your local Best Buy or Wal-Mart was limited. While Napster was breaking copyright law, they did introduce a revolutionary system where more and more niche music was available to the consumer. You didn't need to hunt for that new Social Distortion record, you could just search on Napster and download it from someone who had already bought it.

As digital distribution became more common through online retailers such as Apple and Amazon, consumers were presented with another novel idea. They were now able to purchase music on a song by song basis rather than purchasing an entire album. While music companies were initially resistant to this, I think they've come around to the idea that if a consumer really likes the new Alkaline Trio single, they will more likely pay $1.29 to download that song rather than pay $9.99 for the entire album just to get access to the one song they really like. This also allows bands to release songs as singles ahead of full albums as promotional material. A Day to Remember has taken advantage of this by releasing 3 singles ahead of their full-length album, You're Welcome, set to release later this year.

So how do we tie this all to the future? Well, according to the IFPI Global Music Report, while physical revenue declined by 10.1% and download revenue declined by 21.2%, streaming revenue was up 34% which offsets the declines. So by this trend it is clear that streaming revenue is the future of the recorded music industry. But we still haven't talked about the other 2 industries in the music business. Obviously with the COVID-19 pandemic, the live music industry has taken a massive hit. I truly believe though that when venues are allowed to open again and bands are able to tour, the live music industry is going to explode like we have not seen. People are dying to get out and be with people and listen to live music, at least I am. Also, I think we've seen a way for more artists to get more music out to their fans with the rise in "bedroom concerts" live streamed on platforms like YouTube. I hope that trend continues even after we get to start going to live concerts again. One thing about the bedroom concerts is that the sound quality isn't always great. I think this is an opportunity to combine the live music aspect with professional live audio to create an immersive experience for fans from the comfort of their living rooms. The music licensing industry has likely taken a hit as well as movie production has been put on hold so music is not being licensed for films. But again, when films are able to resume production, I think the music licensing industry will return to normal.

So to summarize, I believe the future of the recorded music industry is streaming music. As we discussed in class, the royalties being paid to the artists from platforms such as Spotify are literally in the fractions of cents, but my hope is that the Music Modernization Act will help to make that more fair. I also hope that artists will build on the "bedroom concert" idea by incorporating more professional sounding audio to the live streams to create a more immersive experience for the consumer. And finally, my biggest hope as a musician and a recording arts student is that I get to be a part of it.