'Urban' no more: black British music execs call for industry reforms

By Laura Snapes

 

Logo for the Black Music Coalition. Photograph: Black Music Coalition

 

A collective of senior black music industry executives from companies including Warner, Sony, Universal Music Group, BMG, Live Nation, Spotify and the Music Managers Forum has published an open letter to business leaders calling for immediate action on racism and marginalisation within the sector.

 

The newly formed Black Music Coalition welcomed industry statements of support on last week’s #BlackoutTuesday, a music industry-endorsed day of reflection during the ongoing global Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the death in police custody of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but said that it was time to transform that support into “tangible changes”.

 

The letter states: “The music industry has long profited from the rich and varied culture of black people for many generations but overall, we feel it has failed to acknowledge the structural and systematic racism affecting the very same black community and so effectively, enjoying the rhythm and ignoring the blues.”

 

A diversity report commissioned by UK Music in 2018 found that ethnic minorities represented 17.8% of roles within the British music industry.

 

Full Story: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/09/urban-no-more-black-british-music-execs-call-for-industry-reforms

Following #BlackoutTuesday, Republic Records, home to Ariana Grande and Drake, pledged to stop using the term “urban” to describe music made by black artists. The coalition’s signatories called for music companies across the board to cease use of the term and replace it with “black music”.

 

   It used to be called Black music a good few years ago, but that was deemed inappropriate/racist  , so they changed it to "Urban"  music .

  Now they've changed their mind again and want it reverted back to "Black music "?

That sounds like music from 50 years ago , they should have called it *Music by people of colour*

  Wonder what it will be called next ?

 

23 minutes ago, CorpusChristie said:

Wonder what it will be called next ?

 

Why not just call it "music"?

 

This whole BLM/PC business is just totally barmy.

 

24 minutes ago, snoop1130 said:

The letter states: “The music industry has long profited from the rich and varied culture of black people for many generations but overall, we feel it has failed to acknowledge the structural and systematic racism affecting the very same black community and so effectively, enjoying the rhythm and ignoring the blues

Some of the very best artists of contemporary music across many  genres have been black and their contributions have long been recognised and lauded .. The cream of white musicians have climbed over each other to collaborate and work with black artists for decades .. Black music has created it's own numerous genres for years from Motown through to Grime and many in between all hugely successful .. The need to tie to a record label to become successful is no longer the case with technology available to promote yourself streaming or vid' as many Black artists have proved .. Black musicians have achieved some of the highest record sales of any contemporary artist .. And some of the most iconic memorabilia is that of black musicians like Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix .. 

17 hours ago, Crossy said:

 

Why not just call it "music"?

 

This whole BLM/PC business is just totally barmy.

 

 

Because they actually want to differentiate, create clear differentiation, so they can demand "positive/affirmative discrimination".

 

There may be reasons for those age/job demographics that have nothing to do with racism or discrimination.

 

But now many see an opportunity to advantage people based on race and color and pretend that it's not discrimination.

 

 

Just communautarism, only communautarism,

why they must do only communautarism ?

 

(and complain after white separate them)

According to Wiki, (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom), whites make up 87.2% of the population of the UK. This means 12.8% are not white. There seems to be an over representation of ethnic minorities in the music industry at 17.8%

 

'A diversity report commissioned by UK Music in 2018 found that ethnic minorities represented 17.8% of roles within the British music industry.'

 

From the report referenced in the article.... 'found that ethnic minorities represented 17.8% of roles within the British music industry. While 25.9% of workers age 16-24 age bracket are from an ethnic minority, that number drops steadily to just 11.4% in the 45-64 age bracket, indicating low representation at senior levels.

 

Seems to me, both the 17.8% figure and the 25.9% figure more than makes up for the 11.4% figure.

Edited June 12, 20206 yr by Scott Tracy
Added wiki ref to UK demographics....added comment to and quite from referenced report.