Sexist Music Lovers

Pandagon.net had a couple recent posts that caught my eye.

First was a general question about about "liberal dogma" and what parts of it one disagrees with. I think one of the reasons liberals are so successfully attacked in the current political climate is the fact that those right of center seem willing to cheerlead whatever talking point is currently being pushed by the Rove-Limbaugh-Drudge cult think. Liberals do not seem so easily led, at least not in my circles nor the blogs I read.

Rather than delineating my non-liberal dogmatic views here, however, let me disagree with a different Pandagon post regarding women and music.

Pandagon: Women like music?

"The situation is simple enough--male musicians can expect support from men and women, whether they are sexist or not. Female musicians can only expect support from non-sexist fans. Smaller group of people to draw fans from means less fans. Easy enough to understand."

First, it's a little hard to talk about the female artist struggle without any data regarding sales by gender or the average female record contract versus male. I don't doubt in sheer numbers that signed male artists vastly outnumber female artists; but I wonder how individual girl band sales compare to boy band sales.

I would make an uneducated guess that Britney Spears vastly outsold my beloved 'Mats, even if paid in '80s dollars. Other than live shows, where one was lucky to see Westerberg and the boys with a BAC level less than .1, I propose that Spears is making multiple dollars more per talent ounce than the Replacements ever earned.

Think I'm cherry-picking? Well, who says that mainstream recording artists' salaries are based on gender? Does Poe make more or less than Fun Loving Criminals? Doesn't the average music fan listen to whatever they think sounds good?

The struggle to me is between good music and bad, gender be damned. My 'Stang's radio rarely leaves the AAR station, because FM music stations appear to have playlists that number in double-digits at best and commercials that seemingly rival Warren Beatty's Reds in length.

Maybe I'm too old to relate to this argument. Sure, I experienced the birth of MTV and the rise of the music video. I don't doubt this phenomenon makes it hard on all artists, men and women both. Think Costello would get a break today with that mug?

Sexism? It exists, sure; but it's not the fanbase causing the problem. It's the bean-counters at MegaRecordCorp, incessantly reviewing the demographics and polling test audiences to see whether Aguilera in a teddy or bikini gives men a bigger hard-on.