Advocating for ethical pay and professional protections for musicians by providing realistic recommendations presenters, agents, music industry organizations, and arts funders can implement immediately in their work
September 2023 - As we exit summer festival season and head into fall touring, Whippoorwill Arts announces the latest of its releases in a multi-phase, multi-year research initiative they continue to conduct in collective with organizations, industry professionals and researchers to encourage fair pay and to improve working conditions for musicians.
The paper covers topics including Ethical Pay and Professional Protections for working musicians, and utilizes case studies to illustrate measure that can be taken by presenters to follow recommendations pertaining to these issues. Further, it explores the notion of Music as a Social Good, and suggests the music industry landscape be expanded to encompass community spaces, not just commercial spaces.
Our founder, Michelle Conceison, has been happy to contribute to this study at multiple intervals over time. Her role on this new paper included stewarding Whippoorwill Arts’ conversations with the Advisory Committee that reviewed the results and provided feedback and guidance on drafts of the report throughout the writing process, and for editing and writing the final version of the report (in cooperation with Whippoorwill’s team).
Setting benchmarks so we can measure progress as we strive for equity in Americana radio
September 2022 - Heading into Americanafest 2022, after over a year of collaboration, Michelle Conceison and Dr. Jada Watson released a research report: Representation in the Americana Radio Chart (2018-2021) with a sincere hope to engage in meaningful dialogue about what can be done to strive for inclusion and equity in music.
At Americanafest the researchers were glad to participate in multiple levels of discussion:
Wednesday, 14 September 2022 Radio Summit: Conceison was invited to visit with Americana radio programmers and promoters, and was interviewed by WXPN’s Bruce Warren
Thursday, 15 September 2022 panel: ”Striving for Systemic Change in Music: What We Are Learning in Americana Radio”
Friday, 16 September 2022 Label Summit: Conceison organized a gathering of labels on behalf of AMA
Click image above to download PDF
Building on research that’s been done to stimulate inclusion and equity in the music industry
May 2022 - Since 2012, many articles have been written by music journalists observing a lack of diversity and representation in the music industry. Structured research studies and papers have been written on this subject as well - primarily by academics and research firms, almost entirely focused on artists, the majority researching sales and radio charts of the top players in the industry.
In recent years, more research has been done about the music industry as a whole by music industry professionals, in partnership with academics and research firms. More researchers have attempted to address intersectional representation, focusing on multiple elements of identity and communities of people who have been marginalized.
While movements like Me Too and Black Lives Matter raised awareness for issues inside and outside the music industry, they also stimulated more research to happen in the music industry. At the same time, educators were compelled to make extreme efforts to survive the global pandemic and pivot to teach online. Keeping classes going and caring for students remotely monopolized the attention of most music industry educators in a time when an unprecedented amount of research was conducted that would usually capture their attention. It was hard for professors to keep up with all of the research announcements that happened in a two year period.
At the MEIEA conference for Music & Entertainment Educators in 2022, Michelle Conceison presented “Studying Diversity in the Music Industry” - a paper attempting to review some research studies conducted historically, how studies have changed over time, and giving an overview of the most recent studies of the last 5 years, in hopes of bringing colleagues up-to-speed. Conceison assumed if it was hard for her to keep up with new research on diversity, it might have been hard for others, too. It was for this purpose the paper was written - to help provide context around research that has happened in the hope that future research will build on what has already been done.
At MEIEA, there was a fruitful discussion of researchers’ and professors’ roles in change in the music industry. While the paper was written with that audience in mind, others might also find it helpful in the field.
Click image above to download PDF of paper as it appears in the 2022 MEIEA Summit Proceedings
Click video below to watch the presentation