The L Magazine on the Male-Dominated Business of Indie Rock

The L Magazine has a great piece on the still male-dominated business end of indie rock, something that gets little attention but would probably surprise no one. I particularly liked Pitchfork's Lindsay Zoladz's interview about the lack of female music writers:

"There are fewer women writing about music because there are fewer women pitching articles about music. And there are fewer women pitching articles about music because historically music writing has been seen as a male-dominated—and in a lot of cases, actively misogynistic—domain. So the question becomes, 'How can we attack and challenge and rewire the culture until more women feel like this is a space where they are welcome?'"

She also talked about last year's Pitchfork's People's List and its lack of female contributors:

"The morning the list was posted, I emailed four of my close (female) friends asking them why they didn’t make a People’s List, and this incredible discussion just poured out of them, speaking honestly and anonymously about their experiences as female music fans. I edited down the conversation and then posted it on my tumblr. The common thread in their stories was that they’d all had frustrating experiences with men either assuming that they knew nothing about music or they didn’t value their opinions about music, and they’d all pretty much checked out of the music criticism conversation once and for all. So I think the question we can take away from that whole experience is, 'How do we bring people who’ve felt alienated back into the conversation? How can we better honor their opinions and thoughts about music?'"

From a fan's and one-time music writer's perspective (albeit on a site penned by women for women), this is pretty universal, but as I've aged I care less what other people think, and I'm pretty secure in my own judgement. I do like that she acknowledges that there are fewer women pitching articles about music, but how can that change when the majority of blogs and magazine are run by men? Some of the best music writing I read has come from feminist blogggers, which, sadly, get little press outside the feminist community, further marginalizing women's writing by forcing into the genre of women's writing. As valuable a tool as the feminist blogosphere is, it's an insular world, and rarely is feminist analysis of pop culture featured on mainstream blogs.

One more thing about the Pitchfork's People List, as a woman who made a list (and generally likes all things listicle): I'm more like my age group than my gender as a whole, at least according Pitchfork's distinction index which breaks things down by gender and age. I don't know what that says about me, or the process in general, other than I'm probably more outside Pitchfork's target audience by age than gender.