charts discussion Artists with the Most Weeks charting on the Billboard 200

[swissman]

9 hours ago, onewillowsilk said:

 

While I do agree that there's misogyny in the music industry and that affects female musicians in various ways, I don't think it's fair to blame listener preferences on misogyny. Most women listen to more male artists than female artists, not because there's a shortage of female artists to listen to or because they're forced to listen to male artists - they choose to do so. You can't blame that on misogyny.

To this I'd just say that women clearly can have internalized misogyny and biases they have learnt and taken from society that has long upheld men as the most important, worthy, talented, intelligent gender.

 

9 hours ago, onewillowsilk said:

I will agree on (some) female acts having to be sexualized in some way to be successful but we also know that historically, there are several female artists who have seen massive success in music without needing to be overly sexual in their music and the women who are overly sexual in their music today do so because they want to and they find it empowering owning their sexuality and expressing that in their art. No one is demanding they do so. They're choosing to. The thing with any artist being successful in music all boils down to your music connecting with many people. Once that happens, it doesn't matter whether you're sexualized in your music or not or whether you're being massively marketed or not, it'll show in the numbers. 

Well to be clear I didn't ever mention sexuality in female acts. I talked about beauty and the objectification of it being a stronger factor and element of the most popular female artists more than in their male counterparts where several are heartthrobs but most are not, if ever, written about or regarded for their physical appearance outside of costumes and style.

 

9 hours ago, onewillowsilk said:

Interestingly enough, female acts most definitely get more visibility and are marketed a lot harder than male acts. In today's world, you see female artists cover more magazines, perform at more award/late night TV shows and generally get more visible looks granting them exposure to the masses than you'll do with male artists so it's not a problem of visibility. The most visible artists in music today are women. If the masses are still going out of their way to engage with and support the music of male artists more even with that then you can't blame it on misogyny or the industry trying to hold women back in some way. That's just people choosing to do what they want to do. 

This is true, but then why even with all that promotion and visibility are there so few female artists with the same level of success as the men? If we know misogyny exits, that men are afraid of seeming "feminine" or "gay", that women too can be affected by gender bias, why is it not at least quite possible that the 94% rate of male success on the Billboard 200 has SOMETHING to do with misogyny.

 

Does the fact that most of them are white have nothing to do with racism? In America? I mean...

 

Edited February 19, 2022 by swissman

[swiftie13]

It’s really easy to see that society has its biases. Things like this highlight that society (American and otherwise) favors masculinity and whiteness. Dismissing this as a “feeling” is not only harmful but factually wrong 

[swiftie13]

27 minutes ago, swissman said:

I really don't think we can just call it preference and leave it at that.

 

To have a stat like 94% of the most successful charting artists on the Billboard 200 are men and then shrug it as just innocuous preference and not yet another CLEAR example of bias of men over women is really odd. This seems to want to uphold the system of misogyny we KNOW is present in the world, and which continues to be problem because people are unwilling to question it and even see it for what it is.

 

In 2020 the UN did a study that found about 90% of people exhibited gender bias. The number was slightly lower in women, but only slightly. That pretty much matches the stat we have here regarding the percentage of artists in the 1000+ weeks category.

 

I am not asking for a 50/50 split. As I said, even if it was 70/30 then okay, we can question if it's just how the numbers played out or a real bias. But the number is 94%...that's an emphatic preference for male artists over women. And even if we don't see this as the "evil" misogyny that is being claimed it is not, it is emphatically evidence of a bias for male artists over female. You cannot argue against that. And in fact you are not. You're just using the word "preference" over "bias".

 

Misogyny need not be some viciously cruel, wholly evil thing. It is present even in simple stuff like word choices, etiquette, etc.

if you think that it's just "natural" that men should have more success on charts, that sounds like misogyny but okay, fine but this disregards the many ways misogyny affects us: from simply thinking women are not as good at doing things than men, that what they have to say is not important, that any man who is "feminine" is gay/wrong/shameful, etc. etc. etc. Do these things NOT exist in society? And if they do, why is the music industry and people's buying "preferences" exempt from them?

 

 

You’re doing the lords work ?

[swissman]

2 hours ago, swiftie13 said:

It’s really easy to see that society has its biases. Things like this highlight that society (American and otherwise) favors masculinity and whiteness. Dismissing this as a “feeling” is not only harmful but factually wrong 

Yes! And I really didn't think I was bringing up anything controversial or surprising... I mean I thought we knew that male artists have a lot of privileges in the industry both in the kinds of successful artists they can be and the kinds of success they can achieve. Even how the genders are often split when discussing stats ["most streamed female artists", etc.] shows at least partial acknowledgement that the rates of success (especially compared to the amount needing to be done to achieve it) can very often differ.

 

Edited February 19, 2022 by swissman

[onewillowsilk]

7 hours ago, swissman said:

To this I'd just say that women clearly can have internalized misogyny and biases they have learnt and taken from society that has long upheld men as the most important, worthy, talented, intelligent gender.

 

Well to be clear I didn't ever mention sexuality in female acts. I talked about beauty and the objectification of it being a stronger factor and element of the most popular female artists more than in their male counterparts where several are heartthrobs but most are not, if ever, written about or regarded for their physical appearance outside of costumes and style.

 

This is true, but then why even with all that promotion and visibility are there so few female artists with the same level of success as the men? If we know misogyny exits, that men are afraid of seeming "feminine" or "gay", that women too can be affected by gender bias, why is it not at least quite possible that the 94% rate of male success on the Billboard 200 has SOMETHING to do with misogyny.

 

Does the fact that most of them are white have nothing to do with racism? In America? I mean...

 

I'm not saying misogyny doesn't affect women in music. It 100% does. I admitted as much. I'm just saying I don't believe it to be the MAIN or ONLY reason why women aren't doing better in music like you seem to do. There are simply too many factors to consider to just jump in and scream ''misogyny'' at every female musician who doesn't get to be as successful as a male counterpart. We know the world simply doesn't work that way. 

 

I'm a black woman and I know how reckless it is to blame any black female/male artist who doesn't do well on ''racism'' or being ''held back.'' It's like YES, 100%, we've always lived in a world that's hated black people (especially a cesspool like the US), but there have been hundreds/thousands of black musicians who have found ways to break through and get themselves heard. Some of them have even gone on to be the biggest, more revered musicians of all time. Now, I understand they were able to do so DESPITE the racism and pushback they faced and not somehow BECAUSE of it, but regardless, they managed to get it done.

 

We know for a FACT that being talented isn't enough for you to make it in ANY industry. If talent was all you needed to be successful, then the list of the most successful musicians of all time would look a lot different. Even talent + hard work isn't enough. There are dozens of musicians who never got to have fruitful careers simply because people didn't connect with their music. We CANNOT ignore how important that is to an artist blowing up. 

 

Many of my favorite musicians today make some of the best music in the industry but they're some of the least famous/successful. They work just as hard as the successful musicians and probably tour more than them but for whatever reason, their music doesn't connect on a mainstream level like the music of some other musicians do. That's just how the music industry works. 

 

I saw a tweet the other day of a Tinashe music video and the caption asked why she wasn't bigger/more successful seeing as she had what most would consider the tools to be successful in today's music marketplace (good singer + songwriter + producer, good dancer, works HARD, is very good-looking and light-skinned (which would make her appealing to some audiences) and the simple answer to that question is that people just don't connect to her music. There are other black female artists who don't work nearly as hard as she does and who I'd say aren't nearly as talented as she is who are more successful than Tinashe today. The difference isn't that she faces some dynamic brand of misogyny the other female musicians don't - the only difference is that people connect with their music in a way they don't connect with Tinashe's music. That's pretty much it. 

 

Today, the human world ratio of men and women is basically 1:1 (101 males to 100 females). I don't know if there are simply more men than women making music today but I know I've heard of label execs speak about how much harder it is to break women than it is men. The deal with that is that breaking ANY artist boils down to people connecting to their music. That's it. The biggest success stories in mainstream music of the last few years have all been women (from Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Olivia Rodrigo) and many others like SZA, Summer Walker, Saweetie, who are also making waves and I won't claim that they had an easy path to success but they got there somehow. Some other people simply won't get there (male + female artists) and some will make it but simply won't be as big as their contemporaries. That's just how the world works. We can say that from the 2010s, there are like 8-10 acts who broke out and saw huge levels of success. Very few of them are relevant today or even moderately successful and at the height of their success, they all had peers who weren't anywhere near as successful as they were because everyone can't be as successful as everyone. There will always be varying degrees of success. Chucking that up to something as dynamic as misogyny and having that as a conclusion shouldn't be done.

[lawmak]

I think @swissman has a point about misogyny.

 

It's really a cultural and social bias. Also psychological.

[onewillowsilk]

On 2/20/2022 at 2:10 AM, Paranoid Android said:

There is a general tendency across both men and women to listen to more male artists. I suppose you can decompose that into other factors such as number of artists by gender, genre biases, demographics etc. which could maybe significantly explain why women listen to more male artists. But there is a very huge gap between the % of female artists men listen to and a % of female artists women listen to. Which I doubt is simply due to 'preferences' or 'genre biases'. Of course, none of that is accounting for the fact that maybe women find it difficult to breakthrough in male audience dominated genres, because men refuse to listen to them in the first place, or that female led genres are unpopular because men simply refuse to listen to them. It could all be cyclical really. Anyway, here's some surface level stats.

 

https://everynoise.com/gender_tldr.html

 

Sorry to jump in, but I think the key difference is you are comparing specifics, while their point is averages. I am not very familiar with Tinashe's music. But the question really is will a male singer identical to Tinashe in demographics, genre and similarly talented, good looking and light-skinned; just naturally find a bigger audience. Likely. It's commonly shown in most employment fields, I am going to look up if they have anything like that for music. 

People will be influenced by the world around them but I don't agree with this idea that women have been somehow programmed to only prefer the music made by male artists. That's just making a weak and lazy argument. People like what they like and they support what they want. That goes for everyone. Every female artist has male fans. You also don't need everybody to be fans of your music to be successful. All you need is the right number of people consistently supporting your work and you'll be just fine.

[swissman]

3 hours ago, Paranoid Android said:

There is almost certainly some effect of socialization on what you listen to. That's not a lazy argument, it is how we behave. A weak argument is just saying it is all preferences, when the preferences itself probably have a gendered component driving them. 

 

Regardless, my point was that even if you assume women listening to lesser women than men can all be chalked up to preferences, there is still a huge gap between male and female listeners listening to female artists.

And I highly doubt, this somehow also magically boils down to preferences completely independent of gender biases or socialization. Female artists naturally have a smaller audience, because a lot of men won't give them a chance at all. It is not something unique to music, it is common across art forms. 

Exactly this!

[onewillowsilk]

4 hours ago, Paranoid Android said:

There is almost certainly some effect of socialization on what you listen to. That's not a lazy argument, it is how we behave. A weak argument is just saying it is all preferences, when the preferences itself probably have a gendered component driving them. 

 

Regardless, my point was that even if you assume women listening to lesser women than men can all be chalked up to preferences, there is still a huge gap between male and female listeners listening to female artists.

And I highly doubt, this somehow also magically boils down to preferences completely independent of gender biases or socialization. Female artists naturally have a smaller audience, because a lot of men won't give them a chance at all. It is not something unique to music, it is common across art forms. 

I already said people will be influenced by the world around them so I'm not saying people's preferences are completely independent of social influences. My point is that there are more influences than just misogyny or society telling women/men not to listen to more female artists.

 

Like I said, historically, there have been female acts (both solo/all-female groups) that have seen huge amounts of success. Sometimes, it even seems like black female artists saw more success 30-50 years ago than they do now (which is definitely an interesting topic to untangle) but that's why I say it's not as simple as chucking it up to misogyny (or even racism). Black artists (especially black female artists) MOST DEFINITELY had it harder 30-50 years ago than they do today but as I've mentioned, in the case of EVERY ARTIST, regardless of race or gender, the ultimate key to becoming successful lies on people connecting with your music. That's always been key and it'll never change. There were black artists who found success in the peak of the Jim Crow era because somehow, their music connected with even the people who were being racist towards them. You can say that's been the case for every black superstar in the US, because more often than not, the fanbase of any black musicians (especially those with the bulk of their fanbase in the US) are made up of white people. 

 

When it comes to breaking into any major industry, there will always be elements that look to block your path or make it harder for you to break through. I definitely feel like today's world makes it a lot easier because many of the road blocks don't exist anymore. The music industry today doesn't have as many gatekeepers as it used to. There are artists blowing up without labels, just off the strength of good music that connects with enough people and your race/gender doesn't matter nearly as much as it might have in the past. 

 

Maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree because while I don't deny the influence of misogyny (and even colorism) on how we listen to music, I feel like ultimately, people will listen to what they choose to and what they enjoy. No one really gives a damn anymore. If your music is good enough and if you can manage to put it in front of enough eyes/ears, those who will connect to it will and you'll be fine. You don't even have to make the brand of music everyone else makes (see Billie Eilish and how she was able to get massive mainstream success with her style of music). Those who will be successful will be and those who won't be, won't be. That's the bitter truth of life.  

[onewillowsilk]

OP updated. 

[onewillowsilk]

OP updated.

[Fifteen]

1 hour ago, onewillowsilk said:

OP updated.

Hi great OP sorry to bother you but could you add the number of weeks each act is gaining weekly if it's too much work nevermind but would be cool thanks in advance

[UnusualBoy]

The lack of females in the top 40, I only counted 3

[Ribs]

The essays, chile anyway.

Taylor's ass aint stopping 

[onewillowsilk]

OP updated. Adele crosses the 1,000-week mark. 

[Fifteen]

On 2/18/2022 at 9:47 AM, onewillowsilk said:

7. Elvis Presley — 1,892 weeks
8. Taylor Swift — 1,898 weeks

Is this a mistake? Shouldn't Taylor be above.

great OP btw we need more womens to join this list

[onewillowsilk]

OP updated.

[onewillowsilk]

On 4/6/2022 at 2:17 AM, Fifteen said:

Hi great OP sorry to bother you but could you add the number of weeks each act is gaining weekly if it's too much work nevermind but would be cool thanks in advance

That would be tricky because albums leave/re-enter the Billboard 200 every week. An artist charting 4 albums this week could chart 2 the following week and none the week after that. 

 

On 5/3/2022 at 6:08 PM, Fifteen said:

Is this a mistake? Shouldn't Taylor be above.

great OP btw we need more womens to join this list

OP is now updated.

[LesFleur]

The Supremes — 901 weeks

 

[Fifteen]

12 hours ago, onewillowsilk said:

That would be tricky because albums leave/re-enter the Billboard 200 every week. An artist charting 4 albums this week could chart 2 the following week and none the week after that. 

 

OP is now updated.

you have a very good point, thanks keep up the good work

[IVY]

50. Bruno Mars — 1,001 weeks

With only 4 albums 

[Werbory]

Lmao, Britney's not even among the list. What poor longevity her albums have got. 

[wehan6]

katy might join the list next week

 

 

[1989]

Taylor 

 

Needs more women higher on/on the list, though. 

Edited June 13, 2022 by 1989

[onewillowsilk]

OP updated.