If you’ve ever wondered whose voices dominate the global soundscape and why it’s worth looking at the data behind the songs. This week, music analytics company Chartmetric dropped its 2025 Make Music Equal Report, a sprawling, data-driven audit of gender representation in music. The numbers span over one million artists across 230 countries and territories, offering what may be the most comprehensive picture yet of how gender shows up or doesn’t in today’s music industry.
What this report reveals isn’t just a gender gap. It reveals where that gap is growing, where it’s narrowing, and who’s really driving success in the streaming era.
Let’s break it down.
Mapping the Music Landscape: How the Data Was Collected
Rather than assigning gender, Chartmetric takes a more respectful route: they track the pronouns that artists use in their bios across platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. This has evolved into a database of over 1 million pronoun entries.
“We avoid assigning gender because it’s a problematic method regardless of accuracy,” the company writes. “Instead, we rely on the language that artists and their teams use to describe themselves.”
From there, Chartmetric slices the data across genres, playlists, charts, sync licensing, and even regional breakdowns. It’s not perfect artists who don’t specify pronouns aren’t captured but it’s currently the most nuanced, scalable approach to measuring representation in a deeply fragmented industry.
The Global Picture: Still Male-Dominated, But Shifting
Among solo artists of which there are over 728,000 in the database 79% use he/him pronouns, compared to 18% who use she/her, and 3% using they/them or other pronouns.
That’s a wide gap, but the most encouraging progress is happening at the top. In 2020, just 26% of the top 100 artists (ranked by Chartmetric score) were women. Today, that number has climbed to 33%.
“It’s a sign that the upper echelons of music those most likely to influence culture, trends, and business are slowly opening up,” says Dr. Stacy L. Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. “But slow progress is not the same as parity.”
Sync Licensing: Where the Gender Gap Is Starkest
Music synced to film, TV, or video games is often a major source of income and visibility for artists. But here, gender representation varies widely.
- TV syncs are relatively balanced: 29% male, 26% female.
- Video games, however, are starkly imbalanced: 49% male vs. just 6% female solo artists.
This is more than an oversight it’s a missed opportunity. As video game soundtracks grow in cultural importance, the absence of women becomes more glaring.
“Gaming is the new frontier for music discovery,” says Cherie Hu, founder of Water & Music. “Leaving women out means reinforcing the same old hierarchies in a rapidly evolving medium.”
Festival Lineups and the Cost of Touring
One unexpected finding: gender shifts in festival and concert bookings may be linked to rising touring costs.
Between 2019 and 2024:
- She/her solo acts on festival lineups rose by 3%.
- He/him solo acts rose by 2%.
- Meanwhile, band bookings dropped significantly (from 50% to 40% for festivals).
Why? It’s cheaper to book a solo act. And if promoters are scaling back on band-heavy rosters, solo performers more likely to be female stand to gain.
“It’s economics and optics working together,” says Angela Ellis, a live music executive. “Festivals want more diversity, and they want to spend less. Solo women artists are often at the intersection of both.”
Where You’re From Still Matters
Geography continues to play a massive role in gender representation.
- Taiwan shows the smallest gap: 63% male, 34% female solo artists.
- Bangladesh shows the widest: 92% male, 6% female.
These disparities reflect deeper social, economic, and cultural divides ones that can’t be fixed by data alone.
“We need to stop treating representation as a Western problem,” says Dr. Keith Negus, music sociologist at Goldsmiths, University of London. “It’s global. And the solutions must be, too.”
The Hidden Engine: Female Fandom
One of the report’s most intriguing findings is who’s doing the listening.
Among the top 10 male artists by Chartmetric score, female fans outnumber male fans in all but three cases: Drake, Eminem, and Kendrick Lamar.
For female artists, the data is even more conclusive: female fans dominate across the board.
This reinforces a long-held but underappreciated truth women drive fandom. They stream more, share more, and build the kind of digital infrastructure that keeps artists trending.
“Female fans don’t just consume they evangelize,” says Taylor Crumpton, a music journalist and critic. “And that energy has real market power.”
Final Notes: Representation Is Visibility and Strategy
The 2025 Make Music Equal Report is more than a data dump. It’s a mirror held up to the music industry, revealing both how far we’ve come and how far there is to go.
If you’re an artist, label, promoter, or platform exec, this report isn’t optional reading it’s essential. Because what it really shows is this: gender representation isn’t just about fairness. It’s about discovering who we’re not hearing, and asking why.
The question isn’t whether the industry should change. The question is how fast it’s willing to.
Suggested Further Reading:
- Full Chartmetric Report (2025)
- “Inclusion in the Recording Studio” – Annenberg Inclusion Initiative
- “Where Are All the Women?” – Women in Music UK
