Last summer, as protests roiled over the death of George
Floyd, the music industry began to take a hard look at itself with regard to
race — how it treats Black artists, how Black employees fare at music
companies, and how equitably money flows throughout the business.
اضافة اعلان
Major record labels, streaming services and broadcasters
pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, convened task forces and
promised to take concrete steps to diversify their ranks and correct
inequities. Artists like the Weeknd and BTS donated money to support social
justice, and Erykah Badu and Kelis signaled their support for economic reforms
in the music industry.
Everything seemed on the table. Even the term “urban”, in
radio formats and marketing — to some a racist euphemism, to others a signifier
of pride and sophistication — came under scrutiny. But there was still wide
skepticism about whether the business was truly committed to making substantial
changes or whether its donations and lofty statements were more a matter of
crisis PR.
The Black Music Action Coalition, a group of artist
managers, lawyers, and others, was created last summer with a mission to hold
the industry to account. In June, it intends to release a “report card” on how
well the various music companies have made good on their promises and
commitments to progress.
The report will lay out what steps the companies have taken
toward racial parity, and track whether and where promised donations have been
made. It will also examine the number of Black executives at the leading music
companies and the power they hold, and how many Black people sit on their
boards.
Future reports will take deeper looks at questions like how equitably
the industry itself operates, Binta Niambi Brown and Willie Stiggers, aka Prophet,
the coalition’s co-chairmen, said in an interview this week.
“Our fight is much bigger than just whether or not you wrote
a check,” said Prophet, an artist manager who works with Asian Doll, Layton
Greene, and other acts. “But the fact that you said you were going to write a
check, we want to make sure that money was actually given and that it went to a
place that actually hit the veins of the Black community.”
The report, to be written by Naima Cochrane, a journalist
and former label executive, will be modeled on the annual media studies by the
advocacy group
GLAAD. It is expected to be issued by June 19 — Juneteenth, the
annual holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.
The coalition’s public statements have made it clear that it
sees itself as a strict and unflinching judge of the music industry, which has
a history of exploiting Black artists even as Black music has long been — and
remains — its most essential product. Last summer, an online campaign called
#BlackoutTuesday brought out painful commentary that, even today, many Black
executives feel marginalized, subject to white supervisors who hold greater
powers and earn more money.
Brown, a label executive and artist manager, said the goal
of the report is not punishment but encouragement.
“We want to do it in a way that is more carrots than stick,
so we can continue to incentivize good behavior,” she said. “We want to hold
folks accountable, not cancel them.”
Most of the major music companies have hired diversity
officers and promoted some top Black executives to positions equal to those of
their white colleagues, although there are still only a handful of Black people
at the uppermost levels of leadership.
A number of studies have also been commissioned to examine
diversity within the industry, including one by the Annenberg Inclusion
Initiative at the University of Southern California and another, about women in
music, by the Recording Academy, the Berklee College of Music and Arizona State
University.
Yet there has been relatively little public discussion about
looking at artist contracts, including ones from decades past, and curing any
unfair terms.
One company, BMG, examined thousands of contracts and found
that, of 15 catalogs it owns that have rosters with both Black and non-Black
artists, 11 showed no evidence of racial disadvantage. Among the four that did,
the company found “a statistically significant negative correlation between
being Black and receiving lower recorded royalty rates” of 1.1 to 3.4
percentage points. BMG has pledged to take action to correct that disparity.
Those deeper issues about fairness in the music industry may
well be covered in future reports by the coalition. For now, they are limiting
their scope to whether promises have been kept.
“Racism is a 400-year-old problem,” Prophet said. “We didn’t
think it would be solved in 12 months.”
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