Spotify releases new feature for International Women's Day

Submitted by Mastodon on Thu, 2018-03-08 04:07

Article here. Excerpt:

'Spotify and Smirnoff have released the "Smirnoff Equalizer" - a feature that maps out a user's listening habits by gender and could change how you listen to music.

The tool has been released just in time for International Women's Day, which is Thursday March 8.

Like Spotify's percentage breakdowns of artists, songs and albums played, the equaliser reveals the percentage of music you listen to in terms of female versus male.
...
For people who listen to more male artists than female, Spotify will create a more gender-balanced playlist.

According to a press release, the idea for the equaliser stems from the fact that there was a lack of female representation in Spotify's 2017 Year in Music statistics.'

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Comments

I almost thought this was a joke news story.

So, the fix for low numbers of women recording types is not to tell them to, as Michelle O. chided men one Father's Day, to just "be better", but instead, they will forcibly re-arrange your playlist and push music on you you don't want to hear.

Anyone remember the great payola scandal that hit syndicated radio stations in the 70s? The original "pay for play"? Only this time, the pay is... what?

If I were in college today, my playlist would probably be the same today as it was back when I went: Pink Floyd, Led Zep, Rush, James Taylor, the Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, etc. Aside from Stevie Nicks, no women. Why? Because I just plain much prefer music from the foregoing bands over any body of work produced by one or more women. And the actual sex of the artist is utterly meaningless to me.

If I had my playlist on Spotify and they started foisting Beyonce on me, I'd go back to CDs. And tape cassettes. And 8-tracks. And actual vinyl records. Anything but Spotify.

Or is that "Bolshevik Spotify" now? "Listen to this, comrade, it's more balanced."

Oy.

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Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2018-03-08 04:31

Maybe if music made by female artists had a message other than "be my slave, men ain't crap, and girls are way better than boys--so throw rocks at boys", men might actually want to listen. These days, it seems rare for a female artist to come up with anything other than the themes mentioned.

If you're a man and don't like music that says that you are inferior and a second class citizen, it makes you sexist, apparently.

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Submitted by xtrnl on Thu, 2018-03-08 14:50

And most are from the 1980s or earlier. Here's a few:

Brenda Russell - Piano in the Dark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7u5GtSIC5k&index=25&list=PLFpIhsb1VDfsrMM90dykAUNTpFOBhhjNM&t=0s

Taylor Dayne - Love Will Lead You Back
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO6xhLtfwW0&index=27&list=PLFpIhsb1VDfsrMM90dykAUNTpFOBhhjNM

Gloria Estefan - Here We Are
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf9DYeePLJY&index=48&list=PLFpIhsb1VDfsrMM90dykAUNTpFOBhhjNM

Deniece Williams - Let's Hear It for the Boy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI7YHZVc7mM&list=PLFpIhsb1VDfsrMM90dykAUNTpFOBhhjNM&index=52

These ladies sang spirited songs about the male subject of their songs, and the tunes were rather pleasant to listen to. Now we've just got these auto-tune synthetic sounding songs where the women seem to revel in their supposed superiority over men.

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Submitted by mens_issues on Fri, 2018-03-09 02:17

Once a time women wrote and sang very nice songs of all kinds, at times about men. Now much of what they produce isn't worthy of mention. To be fair, much of what contemporary male "artists" produce is utter dreck.

Where are The Beatles when we really need them? Glad I can at least listen to them and other real musicians via the magic power of sound recording technology.

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2018-03-09 03:10