Jada Watson

Jada Watson is an assistant professor of digital humanities in the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa. She is the principal investigator of the SSHRC-funded SongData, a research program that aims to explore representation within the popular music industry (in general) and Country music industry (specifically) through various forms of industry market data and algorithmically-generated playlists.

Radio played a big role in Watson’s musical development – she spent many weekends taping weekly countdowns, using those recordings to teach herself to play popular songs of a variety of genres on piano. This was in the mid-1990s, when songs by women were in higher rotation on radio playlists and better-represented on the charts. And even still, that representation was insufficient and led to the development of the Lilith Fair concert tour by Sarah McLachlan as an platform for creating opportunities and community amongst women in the music industry.

Representation within the music industry is worse than the 1990s and is in dire need of attention across all formats. The conversation surrounding representation has focused largely on the US market, but it is particularly pressing in a Canadian context that continues to prioritise musical imports. To address continued and (in some cases) growing inequity, Watson focuses her research on representation on radio programming, evaluating the rate at which songs by women, artists of colour, and 2SLGBTQ+ artists are played and how the lack of support limits pathways to charts, which also influence opportunities beyond to funding, touring, festivals, award eligibility, and so much more.

Invested in research in the community with the goal of supporting the development of more equitable and diverse practices, SongData serves a larger interest in understanding how genre cultures and communities form and develop, with specific interest in the role of market data in the formation and evolution of genre categories. Check out www.SongData.ca/RadioData to view previous studies.

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 with Paula J. Bishop (Cambridge UP).