Rock music's not for girls

Music is for everyone.

Chris Moyles agrees: www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/chris-moyles-radio-x-is-for-male-female-gay-straight-black-white/

Music is for everyone.

I look at the crap CDs being advertised for mothers day, and want the fathers day ones

I thought it got better after moyles finished (by better I mean more music).

Massive backtracking I reckon, I doubt only one person saw the press release before it was sent out.

As a man I love love machine

I love Girls Aloud

It sounds like a two fingers up at valid criticism. Kind of like this

So apparently the first thing that Chris Moyles did on Radio X this morning was turn around and say

"If you've read about Radio X being a radio station being for men only, that is rubbish. Nobody agrees with this except for the one person who put it in the press release." Before insisting that Radio X is "not a radio version of a Yorkie bar".

So do we think the marketing has worked (in that it was a headline seeking thing) or is that a massive backtrack as they have realised they have pissed a lot of people off?

As for the music, it was 30 minutes of chat before he played the first record - Love Machine by Girls Aloud to dispel the fact Radio X is aimed just at men.

Well as a woman I hate Love Machine, and I don't quite get how that proves anything other than Radio X is going to play shite music I don't like and indeed suggests that I would like Girls Aloud when I'd rather poke my own eyes out than buy a Girls Aloud record.

found the article about marketing to actively exclude females as a deliberate strategy

In my late teens/early twenties I liked hardcore punk (still do really) and used to go to shows most weekends. This thread reminded me of an awesome fellow fan who interviewed me for her dissertation on the straight edge movement and sexism in hardcore. At shows (back then at least, but I bet it hasn't changed much) women were there not to enjoy the music but to stand around looking pretty while holding their boyfriends backpack so he could go in the circle pit. She never did send it to me; I'd have found it a fascinating read!

Here, they do all sorts of designs, you'd just have to ask for rock music.
www.zazzle.co.uk/girls_cant_what_tees-235274295517160276

Thanks! If it's any help I am a lurker in feminist chat and am very much a feminist in my outlook!

Sorry just realised this is the thread in feminist chat and my comments are just general depressiin about the music industry! Apologies.

Bloody marketing is killing creativity. And I say that as someone who works in marketing! It's so depressing. I can only imagine how it feels as an artist.

Its always been bad but I think it did improve, but has slipped back. I think all this business of market segmentation which has driven pink and blue throughout everything is to blame.

Its now proved so successful as a way to market in other areas and to increase sales that its being used here.

I do feel that this is what and why Ofcom should be used for.

Has it always been this bad or was it marginally better in the britpop days with the likes of Sleeper, Garbage etc? Folk music seems pretty good at attracting women musicians.

talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face by deliberately isolating 50% of your possible audience! Presumably men who like rock music would listen to it anyway, regardless of it being explicitly targeted towards them (and what does that even mean, anyway, in practice?)

It does appear that rock/indie music in particular is very sexist compared with more populist genres, e.g in the pop charts, for every One Direction or Ed Sheeran you have a Little Mix or Taylor Swift...but rock is just so male dominated. I remember last year or so when there were diagrams going round showing how only 2% or something of all the headliners at the main festivals were women and the comments were utterly ridiculous

You might have found music in other ways but XFM did a huge part in supporting bands early in their career before they got found by a wider audience. They did a lot of sponsorship of gigs in Manchester which, no doubt, will be lost in the move south.

Ah, male focused "banter". Fairly sure that's code for lazy offensive humour which attempts to be controversial but ends up being, well, shite.

Anyway, I'm 22 and the only time I know of people my age using the radio is in the car perhaps.

Oh, don't get me started OP, a similar one here or there was.
DD loves Jazz not only listening but playing as well.
She is learning how male dominated professions target their marketing and education to men.
It got so bad at one time that her Dad bought her a 'girl can't what" t shirt with the appropriate picture. Zazzle do them, they are really good if anybody has a sport, pastime etc. Can thoroughly recommend.

I started the other thread. Some has pointed out on that thread that Heart - XFM's sister station is marketed at a similar aged female audience and this was 'just market segmentation'.

I just posted this (with minor differences) in response to that comment as I think its worth thinking about.

I don't know the answer to this question but is Heart Radio marketed as 'for women'? Or is it marketed for the music?

I think the problem with this change is the fact that this marketing campaign is reinforcing the message that guitar music isn't for women through its sheer aggressiveness and focus on this angle and therefore is making me feel pushed out and marginalised that is the real key here.

Whilst it may be trying to attract certain advertisers, if the way to do that is to force out women as lesser listeners then I do think there is a problem.

Especially if the marketing for Heart isn't on a parallel.

I don't have a problem with market segmentation. I do have a problem with outright trying to marginalise women in order to create a brand from a product that was previously marketed as 'for everyone' and didn't have these made boundaries of male and female territory. A brand that was not in need of changing because it was failing and was proving itself to be healthy and doing exceptionally well in a challenging and changing market. And the previous licences were given on this basis and now radio frequency is being given to a station which is actively trying to marginalise a large part of the audience that used to tune into that frequency.

Given that Ofcom's remit is to set and uphold certain standards for broadcast and to ensure that licences are issued in order to benefit socially because of the limited number of broadcast frequencies and its existence was to deliberately prevent radio and television being at the mercy of pure unregulated and rampant commercialism, their are certain questions this move does raise.

It is very different to other communication mediums like print and the internet for this reason. Hence the need for regulation in the first place.

I used to listen to Rock Radio/Real XS a lot, but it got a bit repetitive. It's a bit more 'old' rock, lots of Thin Lizzy, Led Zep etc during the day. The adverts are all for motorbike leathers and Salford scrap yards.

Planet Rock radio is a good station. I've listened to it for years. It's a DAB and online station. Women DJs as well as some men. I haven't liked Radio 1 since prior to it pretending to be cool when I was little.

I used to listen to KLAC online. That was pretty good.

*at Guns 'n Roses concerts.