The Politics of Sound: Equity and Inclusion in Country Music Labels ft. Dr. Jada Watson

Dr. Jada Watson holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from Université Laval and a Master of Information Studies from the University of Ottawa. In 2020, she was awarded the Faculty of Arts Distinguished Teaching Award for Part-time Professors. She is the author of Whose Country Music? Genre, Identity, and Belonging in Twenty-First Century Country Music, a collection of essays forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Since 2019, she has been the Digital Humanities Coordinator at the University of Ottawa, including the Digital Humanities Summer - the only bilingual digital humanities institute in Canada. In May 2022, she received the CSDH/SCHN Outstanding Early Career Award, for her research and contributions to the digital humanities in Canada.

This week on the show, we’re talking with Jada about equity in country music radio. She tells us how she’s systematically measured country playlists and shown how BIPOC artists, women, and others are underrepresented. She tells how she is using her data to promote equality and diversity in country. We also don’t like some of the dark underbelly of country music, and thank Jada for her unbelievable work. Also, and as importantly, Jada tells us why—despite having a PhD in classical composers—she still loves country. Come listen.


“Marketing labels are keeping the industry segregated." - Jada Watson

"Songs by women actually get tossed out of the playlists at a far greater rate than songs by men." - Jada Watson

"There is a limit to what a woman can achieve in Country music." - Jada Watson

This week on Disarming Data:

• How Jada first become interested in studying musicology
• The interview by a prominent radio consultant who said that radio stations should improve their station ratings by playing songs by women at only 13 to 15% that prompted Jada to study the data behind the Billboard Hot Country Songs Chart
• What kind of radio Jada tracks, how she accesses the data, and why it’s important
• How the industry caps the achievements of female country artists, even singers like Taylor Swift
• Why country music concerts aren’t always safe spaces for white, cis-gendered individuals and what we can do about that
• Why politics has such a tight relationship with the country music industry
• Jada’s take on Jason Aldean’s pro-Trump stance and the public response to his song Try That in a Small Town
• The racial inequity within the country format radio and why it’s so strange given that country music is so sonically diverse
• Lil Nas X and the story of Old Town Road - why Nashville didn’t accept the song or the artist
• The Chicks' experience with sharing their political leanings and why they haven’t been played on country format radio airplay since 2003

Connect with Jada Watson:

• Jada Watson on Instagram

Connect with Disarming Data:

• David Biderman on LinkedIn