The Glass Ceiling-Shattering Nigerian Team That Got Spotify’s Backing

Most music artists would agree - climbing up the ladder of the music industry is hard, and reaching the top rung and staying there is even harder. What’s the hardest? Doing all that as a female artist. Sure, being a musician is hard, but being a “female musician” is probably twice as hard.

It cuts deeper than the absence of support, opportunities, and mentorship for upcoming female artists (not for lack of talent or effort on their part), and it goes beyond the unconscionable harassment and exploitation of female creatives - something that is unfortunately rife in the entertainment industry.

Across the world, there is a systemic flaw in the music industry (as in many other industries) that seems to have been normalised even as it promotes the perpetuation of inequality. Sometimes, it even extends beyond 'human factors'.

For instance, the music recommendation algorithms used on streaming platforms are found to be more likely to pick music by male than female artists. In fact, one analysis conducted on the listening behaviour of around 330,000 streamers over a period of nine years showed that only 25 percent of the artists ever listened to were female. And it gets worse.