Time for Aussie music industry to shape up

REVELATIONS of the staggering pay gap in the UK music industry should be a wake up call to the Australian music scene, where women in power are a rare sight, writes Bianca O’Neill.

FOLLOWING the introduction of a landmark law in the UK last month, requiring companies larger than 300 employees to disclose their gender pay gap statistics, a shocking disparity between the genders has been uncovered in various corporate sectors.

Perhaps the hardest hit sector to emerge in these reports so far is women in the music industry. The first round of reporting has shown that, within the major record companies, the gender pay gap figure averages a staggering 33.8 per cent (corresponding to 29.8 per cent at Universal, 22.7 per cent at Sony and 49 per cent at Warner).

It’s a figure that proves far greater than the officially reported UK gender pay gap of 18.4 per cent.

Even more shocking, one company has seen discrepancies of up to 82 per cent emerge between awarded bonuses for women and men — event though a similar number of bonuses were awarded to each gender overall.

Music business outlet, MBW, called the disparity “embarrassing and uncomfortable”, advocating for urgent change upon reporting that female executives saw 49.2 per cent less in their bonus pay at Universal, 45 per cent less at Sony and a whopping 82 per cent less at Warner.

Pioneering Australian music figure Fifa Riccobono. (Pic: supplied)

To clarify that final figure: at Warner, 74 per cent of women were given bonuses compared to 85 per cent of men, which isn’t too bad — until you consider that the bonuses received by women translated into 82 per cent less money than their male counterparts. This suggests that, although almost as high a percentage of women were worthy of a bonus, they received significantly less cash in their pockets.

In fact, over at Sony, 75.3 per cent of women received a bonus compared to the slightly smaller figure of 74.3 per cent of men, but they got 45 per cent less cash.

“While our gender pay gap is closing, having fewer women in the most senior roles has had an impact,” Sony explained in their submission, enthusiastically noting that 45 per cent of their workforce is made up of women. It’s an interesting point to make, considering this very statistic emphasises that the lack of pay equality isn’t based on a lack of female employees.

Some might be tempted to argue that women aren’t as aggressive at pursuing pay rises. However, the reporter at MBW quotes an anonymous female source from a major record company below:

“I requested several pay rises over my time and was consistently told the amount I was on was ‘standard’, yet I was made aware of male colleagues with equivalent experience on 50 per cent more [pay] than me. When I flagged this, I was told they were ‘just better at negotiating’ and that I shouldn’t discuss private information.”

And therein lies the issue with making pay information private: it’s hard for women to argue against something that we don’t have concrete proof of, and that many employees are contractually bound to keep secret.

It also makes the tired “the gender pay gap is a myth” furphy an easy lie to spread.

And it seems likely a similarly vast gap likely exists in Australia, given the simple fact that we are yet to see a female record company leader at any major Australian label. Sony (helmed by Denis Handlin), Universal Music (George Ash), EMI (now part of Universal, headed by John O’Donnell) and Warner (Niko Nordstrom) are all led by men at the top, along with our own locally owned Mushroom Group (founded by Michael Gudinski).

Music industry magazine The Industry Observer, for example, named its top ten music industry executives in their annual awards this year — and only two women made the cut. Neither work in a record company.

Spoiler alert: Denis Handlin, Sony Chairman and CEO, won.

Even more tellingingly, The Music’s ‘Power 50’ list this year, which names the most powerful people in the music industry, doesn’t include a single woman who works for a major record company. Telling? Definitely — but there’s more subtlety to this story. This isn’t about a lack of female talent.

Mardi Caught.

In their announcement of the Top 50, The Music slyly offered a shared position to Nordstrom, the aforementioned head of Warner, and then-“consultant” Mardi Caught. Caught, previously GM of Frontline Marketing at Warner, was widely rumoured to be the next name to step into the top spot. She was pipped at the post by Nordstrom — an executive imported from Finland.

Yep, they dragged a man all the way from Finland to head up an Australian record company, rather than give it to the woman who had previously been credited with major wins for Warner locally.

I have worked at two major labels here in Australia, and these numbers come as no surprise to me — nor to many of the music industry women I spoke to.

I spoke to Caught, who has recently launched her own music marketing services company called The Annex, about her thoughts on whether there is a glass ceiling in the Australian music industry — and although she acknowledged the difficulties for women, she also wanted to call out some colleagues who may just change the narrative.

“There are so many great women in the industry who are carving their own paths at the moment, and I would love to see some of these women recognised for what they are doing as well: Cath O’Connor at Nova Entertainment, Susan (Heymann, GM) from Chugg, Maree (Hamblion, Joint Head A&R) from SONY ATV, and Arwen (Curson, VP Creative) from Universal Publishing are all kicking goals and starting to change the conversation.”

“When I started in the industry the only woman I had to look up to was Fifa Riccobono at Albert Music — and she was an amazing role model for a label person. I would love this new generation to appreciate there are many ways women can change the industry now. And I think it’s important to dedicate column inches for the ones that are changing the course, as (well as) discussing why it hasn’t happened yet.”

“The parity issue is sadly universal, not just limited to the music industry,” said Caught. “It would be a wonderful world where people realised their mother, sister, girlfriend, daughter, best friend — whoever matters in their life — has probably been affected by the gender pay gap. We need to stop viewing it as a woman’s issue and step up as a society to make sure it ends.”

The huge discrepancies observed between male and female pay packets in the UK music industry should act as a call here in Australia that we need a renewed and more powerful call for greater transparency in the Australian music industry.

Bianca O’Neill is a freelance writer and blogger.