Diversity in Music

We've heard it time and time again- Representation Matters. Music and media are about telling stories that evoke emotion, reflection, and impression. We want ourselves personified in what we watch and listen to because it makes us feel a sense of community. 

Like all human beings, underrepresented communities have found strength and solace in storytelling. We witness history through melodies about inequality, forbidden love, and calls for change. Lyrical emotional testifications such as 'Go Tell It on the Mountain' by Fannie Lou Hamer, 'This Little Light of Mine' by Sam Cooke, or Billie Holiday's 'Strange Fruit' are meaningful and prominent sounds of civil rights movements. Music is not only a safety net of broadcasting emotion, but it's also a message for the masses and a medium for growth. Having people who look like us, live like us, and sound like us involved in the media we ingest, encourages familiarity of experience. 

With a continuous growth in the population of LGBTQIA+ adults and younger generations in the US, it's more important than ever to uplift these voices by increasing the representation in music and media. According to GLAAD's Annual Accelerating Acceptance Study, "Non-LGBTQ adults who are exposed to the LGBTQ community in media are 30% more likely to feel familiar with LGBTQ people overall, compared to people who haven't been exposed to LGBTQ people in content or media (2023, GLAAD Accelerating Acceptance)." As we see increasing rates of violence and harmful legislation against this community, it's demonstrated that inclusive representation in the media influences the well-being of LGBTQ+ individuals. Studies show that increasing visibility and expression in music and media directly correlates to familiarity and comfort around underrepresented groups. Highly visible individuals in this community have the potential to make people feel accepted and the ability to change minds through something as simple as the lyrics in a song. 

According to USC Annenberg's Inclusion in the Recording Studio report that reviewed the gender and race/ethnicity of artists, songwriters and producers across 1,100 popular songs, we see the slow climb to equality in the charts. The report revealed that the ratio of men to women producers across popular songs was 34.1 to 1, corresponding with the percentage of women producers overall—2.8% of more than 1,700 producing credits noted to women. When looking at that percentage from a race/ethnicity lens, a mere 13 of the 50 women producers were women of color, or 26% of all women producers (USC Annenberg and Spotify, 2023). 

Unbound Sound is made up of individuals of LGBTQ+, women in music, and BIPOC communities. Year-long, we celebrate the underrepresented or disempowered individuals who came before us in history and the music industry. Because of that, we created an empowered space for queer, female, and BIPOC creators to be seen, heard, and acknowledged. We want to help the industry gain more significant levels of intercultural competency because it's through representation and expression that equality is created. 

Sources: USC Annenberg, and Spotify. “Inclusion in the Recording Studio?: Gender and Race/Ethnicity of Artists, Songwriters, and Producers across 1,100 Popular Songs.” USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, 2023, https://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-inclusion-recording-studio-jan2023.pdf.

(“Accelerating Acceptance 2023”) “Accelerating Acceptance 2023.” GLAAD, 2023, https://glaad.org/publications/accelerating-acceptance-2023/.