Music industry's excluding approach towards women is just rude

It implies that the serious business of rock and pop appreciation is a male obsession

Iovine said girls need music for when they're 'sitting around talking about boys' (Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images)

What is it about women and our inability to appreciate music? Is it that our tiny ears can’t hear it like men do, or that our smaller builds make straining to see over those tall boys at gigs a pointless exercise?

Or is it simply that our reproductive hormones are paralysing our capacity to fully appreciate the creative genius of Neil Young? Whatever the reason, it’s clear we just don’t get it like the men do.

This, certainly, is the message conveyed to women by the music industry. The latest advert for Harman Kardon’s noise-cancelling headphones has the words “John, Paul, George, Ringo” between an image of the earphones, with the “Yoko” drifting out into the ether, cancelled by the noise. Another version places “Kurt” in the centre, with “Courtney” cast adrift. Never mind that the ad draws on lazy falsehoods about Yoko Ono and Courtney Love damaging their poor husband’s careers, it ignores the fact that both are significant, successful artists.

This latest daftness comes hot on the heels of former Interscope co-founder and Apple executive Jimmy Iovine’s assertion that women don’t know how to find music and that they’re likely to be found “sitting around talking about boys”. This, of course, will come as news to the many women whose jobs are to discover, develop and market new talent. It’s a similar slap in the face to the female fans who spend millions on music and concert tickets, and the artists whose popularity helps keep the industry afloat (hello Taylor! hello Adele!).

But then, since the birth of popular music, women have been overlooked, undervalued and marginalised. For consumers, it’s a question of authenticity and authority. Male fandom is, we are told, all about understanding musicianship and craft whereas female fandom is linked with desire. See the footage of young women fainting at the sight of the Beatles or crying and clamouring for selfies with One Direction, all evidence that true appreciation simply isn’t in our make-up.

These attitudes are reflected in festival bills that repeatedly favour male over female performers, and in serious music magazines that rarely allow female artists to grace their covers. A cursory glance at almost any current music publication shows male writers still vastly outnumbering females. The implication is that the serious business of rock and pop appreciation is a male obsession, even though the gig audiences clearly illustrate otherwise. Music radio doesn’t look much better – just look at Radio X, the relaunched XFM, with its overwhelmingly male presenters playing music mostly by men while still claiming an unbiased policy.

Such an exclusionary approach seems curious for an industry struggling to remain profitable. Men claiming ownership of music makes no business sense. But, most of all, it’s just rude.

Twitter.com/@FionaSturges