Sarah Burke interviews musicologist, assistant professor and researcher Jada Watson. Jada shares her background in classical music and her transition to researching gender representation in the music industry. She talks about her published research, participating in a recent panel at CRS in Nashville (Country Radio Seminar) and the controversy surrounding Beyoncé song 'Texas Hold 'em.' She also shares surprising findings about the song and its impact on new listeners. The conversation then shifts to the lack of representation at festivals, particularly in headlining positions. The Ottawa Blues Fest lineup is examined as an example. Jada emphasizes the importance of actively supporting underrepresented artists through streaming, buying music, attending shows, and sharing their work. She also highlights the need for intersectional representation and creating safe spaces in the industry.

Works discussed in this episode:

Jada's reports: https://songdata.ca/radiodata/

The latest data: https://songdata.ca/2024/02/29/on-diversitea/

Research Jada is most proud of: Redlining in Country Music

And this study on back-to-back airplay

US Country Radio Research that launched all of this April 2019 study

And the first research she did on Canadian Country Radio in September 2019

Jada Watson is an assistant professor of Digital Humanities in the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa. She also coordinates Digital Humanities programming for the Faculty of Arts. She has taught both in the School of Music and is the coordinator for the Digital Humanities program and her research reflects this intersection. 

Principal Investigator of the SongData project, her research aims to harness the potential of music industry data to study how popular music genres form, develop and change over time. Centered on issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in country music, her research focuses on interpreting the “Big Data” emerging from the popular music industry's efforts to track radio, streams, and sales (and ultimately capture revenue), in the current regulatory and media environment.  

This research has been featured in national and international publications, as well as in media outlets such as Apple Country Radio’s Color me Country with Rissi Palmer, the New York Times’s Popcast, CBC's The National and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Findings emerging from SongData projects have been cited as a major source in a report submitted to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in response to the National Association of Broadcasters' proposal to deregulate radio ownership, as well as in a Grammy Recording Academy report on inclusion and diversity in the music industry. In 2020, she was a research partner on CMT’s EqualPlay initiative.

Much of her research is available publicly via SongData.ca. She has written for various news outlets (including NBC’s Think series, Nashville Scene, The Nashville Briefing, and Toronto Star) and has spoken to industry audiences at MusicBiz, SXSW, Triple A radio’s NonCommvention, and Country Radio Seminar. Her work on representation in the industry also appears in Popular Music & Society, Popular Music History, and American Music Perspectives. She has chapters in several edited collections and is co-editor of Whose Country Music? Genre, Identity, and Belonging in Twenty-First Century Country Music Culture, a collection of essays on country music in the twenty-first century with Paula J. Bishop (Cambridge UP).

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