Proceedings of the Thirteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2019) Gender Differences in the Global Music Industry: Evidence from MusicBrainz and The Echo Nest Yixue Wang Emoke-˝ Agnes´ Horvat´ Northwestern University Northwestern University 2240 Campus Drive 2240 Campus Drive Evanston, Illinois 60208 Evanston, Illinois 60208
[email protected] [email protected] Abstract fields and beyond. While these gaps are well-documented in areas ranging from the workspace and wages (Blau and With digital music consumption being at an all-time high, Kahn 2000; Kuhn and Villeval 2013) to educational oppor- online music encyclopedia like MusicBrainz and music intelligence platforms like The Echo Nest are becoming tunities (Hausmann et al. 2009), entrepreneurship and cap- increasingly important in identifying, organizing, and rec- ital markets (Brooks et al. 2014; Kanze et al. 2017; Horvat´ ommending music for listeners around the globe. As a by- and Papamarkou 2017), as well as leadership (Ragins 1998; product, such sites collect comprehensive information about a Burke and Collins 2001), it is largely underexplored in the vast amount of artists, their recorded songs, institutional sup- case of the global music scene. port, and the collaborations between them. Using a unique Data about world-wide music production is becoming in- mash-up of crowdsourced, curated, and algorithmically aug- mented data, this paper unpacks an unsolved problem that is creasingly available in conjunction with the heavy use of key to promoting artistic innovation, i.e., how gender pene- music streaming services like Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, trates into artistic context leading to the globally perceived Amazon and Google Play.