12.07.06

Race/Gender in my iTunes Library

Posted in music, personal at 11:42 pm by danvk

Mostly out of curiosity, I tried to do some race and gender statistics on my iTunes Library this evening. Weighted by number of tracks I’ve played in the last three months, here’s how my iTunes library breaks down. By race:

  • White 1340 tracks played
  • Black 505 tracks played

By gender:

  • Male 1833 tracks played
  • Female 12 tracks played

This is by race/gender of the lead vocalist only. Apparently I’m sexist but not racist. The numbers don’t change too much if you count Michael Jackson as white.

I haven’t been able to find a good way to automate this. There’s tons of directories of musicians and bands, but none of them include information about race or gender. The closest I’ve found is the Notable Names database which has some musicians, but nonspectacular coverage.