A new study titled Lost in the Mix reveals that female and nonbinary producers, engineers, and other audio tech workers are “vastly underrepresented” in the most popular music of last year. Across the top 50 streamed songs in 14 different genre playlists, totaling 757 songs, women and nonbinary people made up 187 of the total 3,781 tech credits—less than 5%. The song with the most women and nonbinary tech credits from the top 50 streamed songs last year, regardless of genre, was Beyoncé”s “Cuff It” with six of the song’s 19 tech credits.

Prepared by We Are Moving the Needle, Howard University, Middle Tennessee State University, and Jaxsta, Lost in the Mix is part of the inaugural Fix the Mix report, self-described as “the first major study of gender representation across all credited production and engineering personnel by role.” Jobs examined for the study include both top-line key roles (producers, engineers, mixing engineers, mastering engineers) as well as additional production and recording roles (programmers, vocal producers, editors, assistant roles). 

The Fix the Mix report analyzed data from the entirety of 2022 across a total of 1,128 songs: 757 top streamed songs, 30 Grammy-winning albums, top 50 songs from the Spotify Billions playlist, and the top 50 songs from the RIAA Diamond Certified Records list. The findings for female and nonbinary representation vary significantly based on metrics, ranging from 0% to 17.6% in specific sectors.

The report begins by looking at the top 10 most-streamed tracks of 2022 across five major DSPs: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube, and TikTok. Of the 36 unique songs in those entries, there were 240 credited producers and engineers, only 16 of which were women and nonbinary people. The study found that among those same top 10 songs from DSPs last year, women and nonbinary individuals were more highly concentrated within assistant roles than in key technical roles, which could indicate “a growing pipeline of these contributors rising into key levels,” according to the study’s authors, but could also “be indicative of a glass ceiling preventing this demographic from an upward trajectory.”

For the largest section of data, Lost in the Mix compiled the top 50 songs from 14 genre-specific lists: pop, Latin, rap, hip-hop, dance, R&B, country, rock and alternative, metal, folk and Americana, electronic, Christian and gospel, classical, and jazz. The lowest percentages of women and nonbinary people credited in key technical roles were found in metal (0.0%), rap (0.7%), and Christian and gospel at (0.8%). 

Meanwhile the electronic genre clocked in with 17.6% of its producer roles held by women and nonbinary people. Folk and Americana was also high, with women and nonbinary producers representing 16.4% of its top 50 songs in 2022 as well as the second-highest percentage for engineering roles at 6.4%, following R&B (7.2%).

The Fix the Mix report also broke down the gender representation of tech credits at the 65th Grammy Awards. In 28 “best of” categories, the total number of women and nonbinary people credited for technical roles was 19 out of 249 total, averaging out to 7.6%. Across the eight Grammys categories that honor technical roles, only one woman was recognized—Judith Sherman won Producer of the Year, Classical, marking the 14th win of her career—while 30 men were recognized in technical roles.

The study includes dozens of charts outlining the numbers in stark visuals, including Grammy-winning records from this past award show. Brandi Carlile’s album In These Silent Days, which won Best Americana Album, had 14 credited tech roles in total, all of which were held by men. “I’m not sure everyone knows exactly where to start, but it begins with the courage to take a chance on someone who may not be getting recognized regularly in the field. We have to start somewhere,” Carlile said in a press release. “It’s no one’s fault and everyone’s fault at the same time. Even me. I urge my fellow artists and producers to make hiring decisions that work toward a more equitable future.”

Even while examining the top 50 songs on last year’s RIAA Diamond certification list, most of which were not technically released in 2022, the study’s authors found a massive gender representation gap. Out of a total of 248 key technical roles credited, 244 (98.4%) were credited to men and four (1.6%) were credited to women and nonbinary people. Three of those four women and nonbinary people are producers and one is an engineer. Two of the three producer credits are the main artists of the songs themselves: Lady Gaga for “Bad Romance” and Mariah Carey for “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

The Fix the Mix report concludes its Lost in the Mix study with suggested solutions to better close the gap in the years to come, including diversifying hiring practices, accurately crediting all technical contributors on platforms, demanding data transparency, and more. “Women and nonbinary professionals are entering the audio production industry in greater numbers than in years past,” the study’s conclusion reads. “Regardless of this increase in the pipeline, this study shows that women and non-binary people are simply not being hired after they earn audio production degrees or complete the necessary qualifications for credited roles.”

“This study confirms what I’ve known after spending decades behind the board in the recording studio—women are not being given the same opportunities as men in production and engineering roles,” concluded the study’s co-author, Grammy Award-winning mastering engineer, and We Are Moving the Needle founder Emily Lazar. “Ensuring that there is more gender and racial diversity among music’s creators is not actually a complex problem if you want to solve it. The most important step is for artists and record labels to be able to hire from a more diverse pool of producers, mixers and engineers, but it’s exceedingly hard to hire people when you can’t find them. We hope this report will give decision makers the motivation and tools they need to make real change in their hiring practices so we can achieve gender parity in production, engineering and mastering roles.”