RadioData

Commercial radio plays a vital role in the development of a genre’s cultural space, and significantly impacts broader industry decision-making practices. Radio influence how labels and publishers sign, produce and promote artists, and impacts the trajectory of the careers of artists (who depend on airplay exposure for other career opportunities). More critically, radio airplay often leads to chart success, and these charts are used as criteria for determining artists’ eligibility for industry accolades and/or events. While using charts as a criteria for determining a genre’s leading artists might seem to be a logical business decision, it is an increasingly problematic metric for industries built on a foundation of systemic racism and gender inequality. 

Gender representation has been at the fore of public debate about inequality within the popular music industry at large, and country music specifically. Within country music culture, this discussion has historically overlooked the absence of artists of colour participating in the industry, and in so doing advocates the inclusion of white women with no mention of Black, Indigenous, and Women of colour or 2SLGBTQIA+ artists who write, record, and produce country music. This is true of early SongData work, which focused solely on gender representation on popularity charts and airplay reports. As SongData’s work advanced through 2020, research on radio and charts has developed an intersectional approach to exploring the inequalities within the genre, exploring the ways in which industry practices have maintained and perpetuated a narrative of whiteness.

As much country music research has shown, the genre’s industry was developed in the 1920s on a musical colour line – one that segregated music not by musical style, but by race and geography. The categories chosen a century ago, “hillbilly” and “race”, may no longer be used today (replaced with “country” and “soul” or “R&B”), but they have reinforced the white racial framing of the genre throughout its history through the development of country radio, the recording industry and of the industry’s popularity charts, as well as the algorithms that underpin streaming services. This racial frame has also been perpetuated through continual discussion about “authenticity” that serves to create barriers for artists that are Black, Indigenous, and Musicians of Color who are put in a position of defending their place in the genre.

Growing out of the preliminary research findings of the two SongData projects, RadioData research has centred on exploring issues of equity, diversity and inclusion on the weekly and yearend reports generated by country format radio. This work was born out of conversations with the advocacy group Woman of Music Action Network, and led to the publication of three reports on the declining representation of female artists on the format with the group. In these reports, we documented a 66% decline in the number of songs by women within the Top 150 songs on the yearend reports between 2000 and 2018, coupled with a drastic decline in spins for those songs – to a low of 8.9% of spins for their songs by 2018. This report was followed up with a study of the time of day of airplay, which addressed the distribution of spins for songs by women across the five dayparts. These projects led to a partnership with CMT’s EqualPlay Campaign, an initiative that advocates for inclusive programming on country radio. Released in February 2020, the EqualPlay report advanced an intersectional framework to focus on radio programming in 2019, and demonstrated the cyclic relationship between radio programming, chart activity, streaming algorithms and nominations for CMA awards within the industry.

Projects currently under development include studies of Top 40, R&B, Rock and Adult Contemporary formats, as well as individual station playlists. Of particular interest are issues related to inclusion and diversity on Canadian radio formats, and how stations comply with Canadian Content regulations.

Acknowledgements

RadioData projects have been made possible by the SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2018-2020) and a professional development grant from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ottawa (2020). This work has benefitted from the knowledge and support of Woman of Music Action Network, who were consultants on the three of the first reports evaluating radio airplay.

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Projects by format

Data Journalism & Editorials

• Watson, Jada. 2025. “The results are in. Is Country Music Doing Any Better than Last Year?” Nashville Briefing, 26 February (pp. 27-31). [print issue]
• Watson, Jada. 2024. “Things Ain’t Right Round Here.” Front Porch Music, 11 September.
• Watson, Jada. 2024. “Women ruled 2023 everywhere… but on country radio.” To appear in Nashville Briefing, 26 February (pp. 36-39). [print issue]
• Watson, Jada. 2023. “Country Music Almanac 2023: In the Loop.” Nashville Scene, 19 January.
• Watson, Jada. 2021. “Grammys 2021 performer Mickey Guyton makes history – without country radio’s support.” NBC News Think, 14 March.
• Watson, Jada. 2020. “Country Radio Has Ignored Female Artists for Years. And We Have the Data to Prove It.” NBC News Think, 17 February.

Citations in Industry Reports

• Black Music Action Coalition. 2022. “Three Chords & The Actual Truth: The Manufactured Myth of Country Music & White America.” bmacoalition.org, 16 June.
• Recording Academy Task Force. 2019. Final Report of the Recording Academy Task Force on Inclusion and Diversity. Grammy.com, 12 December.

Citations in Legal Briefs

• 2018 Quadrennial Regulatory Review — Review of the Commission’s Broadcast Ownership Rules and Other Rules Adopted Pursuant to Section 202 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, JointComment of musicFirst Coalition and Future of Music Coalition prepared by Rachel Stilwell, MB Docket No. 18-349 (Apr. 29, 2019).

Update: In January 2024 the Federal Communications Commission agreed with the filings prepared by Rachel Stilwell for musicFIRST Coalition and Future of Music Coalition to preserve local AM/FM ownership limits and promote diversity, localism and competition on local commercial radio. Read more on Stilwell Law’s blog.

Documentary

• Women in Country: Through the Decades. Audio documentary for Absolute Radio Country, produced by Audio Always, March 2022. [Not available in Canada]
• “Country Music.” Episode of Vox Media documentary series Explained (distributed by Netflix). Produced by Elizabeth Rowley, 2021.
• “Women of Country: Country Music Radio Has a Problem — What’s at Stake?” episode in Southword series, produced by Red Clay Media, 17 February 2020.

Critics Poll

• Participated in the Nashville Scene’s 21st Annual Country Music Critics’ Poll. See The Results, the accompanying Data Mining article, and the Critics Comments.