Do Festivals Need To Book More Women?

0:00Why aren't there more women in hard rock? I don't think there's some kind of natural, and I've spoken with people who have, just to bring up one example, why, who loved metal music as a teenager, and she wanted to just be in a band. She didn't really know what she was doing, but she loved that, like wanted to, you know, learn to play guitar, get in a band. So she just started getting in with these, you know, people, you know, almost exclusively men who are already in bands, getting in this local scene. And she felt so uncomfortable. She was the only woman there at any show, at any, you know, in any studio, anything like that.

0:41And it just felt so uncomfortable for her to not feel like she was, you know, a sense of belonging at all that she just gave up. And she was like, I'm not, you know, I'm not going to pursue this anymore, even though it had been something that she really wanted to do. So, you know, that's just one little example of, you know, all these all these things that play into it, I think.

1:06What's going on? Welcome to The New Music Business. I'm your host, Ari Herstand, author of How to Make It in the New Music Business. Third edition is out now. Hardcover, ebook, audiobook, however you like books, you can find it. Today, my guest is Abby Carbano. She is the founder of Book More Women, which is a non-profit organization. It is a 501c3 non-profit. Abby started this in 2018 just as an Instagram account to highlight the discrepancies of of how many men are booked at music festivals versus how many women are booked at music festivals. And I think the results would startle you. They post a lot of these.

1:44You've probably seen their festival flyers on their Instagram page where all the male acts are removed and there's just like a smattering of names on these festival flyers. That's of course how I saw it. I met Abby just through Instagram. I commented on a couple of these posts and had some questions about it and support the mission and for equity and parody in the music industry. This was a great conversation where Abby kind of highlights the challenges and the reasons and what's going on and their mission overall of why she started Book More Women, what's going on with this organization. Book More Women has gotten the attention of the entire music industry.

2:20All the booking agencies know about it, festivals. And now she's taken it a step further with the organization with a booked accountability program, which she talks about, where festivals are now taking a pledge to be part of this. So if you're interested in live music and just kind of what is happening in this live space on this side to make our industry safer and more equitable. Outside of just what Olivia Rodrigo did with Daisy Chain, this is an organization that is working to do this work every day to make the industry safer, more equitable for everybody. You can find Book More Women on their website, Book More Women.

2:53You can make a donation there. You can find them on Instagram at Book More Women, all of that. You can find all of us that make the show happen at Ari's Take on the socials. Find me at Ari Herstand on Instagram. Visit Ari'sTake.com and get on our email list. That's actually the best way to stay in touch with us. And if you wouldn't mind right now, just hit pause. Leave us a five-star review. However you're listening to this on whatever platform, leave us that five-star review. Leave us a comment. Love reading the comments. Hit the thumbs up button. Hit the subscribe button. Hit the follow button.

3:22All that good stuff. All right, let's kick into the show. Abby Carboneau, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. So I think I probably discovered Book More Women maybe the same way that most people, I imagine, do on Instagram. And we see one of the festival posters that, oddly enough, just has a few names. And you'd think this festival would be fully fleshed out with the full lineup. And then you swipe to the next slide. You're like, oh, that's just the number of women that they have. and it looks like there's not many. And it's a very startling representation of a big issue in our industry.

4:04And I would love to just kind of hear kind of how you got this thing started, why you did, and what it is for people that just aren't familiar with what Book More Women is and the overall mission and all of that. Yeah, yeah. So if I go back to the beginning, like you said, that it really started with a single festival and a lineup was announced. And this was going back to 2018. And I was, you know, I liked the festival. I'd gone to it a couple of years before with my sister and was excited to see the new lineup and came out and it wasn't really for me. And, you know, that's all right. Not everyone needs to be for me, right?

4:47But I realized why as I was looking at it. I'm like, you had to count down 21 artists to get to the second woman on that lineup. And so I pointed it out on their Twitter announcement. And I just said exactly what I just said. You have to count down 21 to get to the second woman and do better. And that was all I said. And then it was just this immediate onslaught of arguments and all this stuff with other fans and stuff. At that time, I was really just a festival fan, a music fan. And so, yeah, you know, I sort of entertained that for a while. And then really, you know, there were some things I think that really stuck with me about it.

5:34So I really just started digging in to the issue. And, you know, with the festival poster in particular, I had I had sort of used that in the arguments with with somebody where I had, you know, just kind of crossed out all the male artists. And, you know, you're left with, you know, these first five, six rows and there were two names. Right. And, you know, I know there's a lot of, you know, I'm more of a numbers person, you know, but I know there's a lot of visual learners, I'm sure, especially in the music, you know, art space. So, you know, I was like, you know, maybe this will be effective.

6:12And I had seen there was a viral one the year before from Reading and Leeds Festival that, you know, got a lot of discourse. And so, you know, basically, you know, I really dug into the issue after that. And it just stuck with me as, you know, something that I really cared about where, you know, I love music festivals. And I always had for what they represent of just community, like discovery, you know, coming, you might, you know, whether you're coming for one artist and you, you know, discover the one on the stage before them or, you know, you're just going for the general experience and you're, you know, you're side by side with people that you don't know.

6:52and you're, you know, you're there for, you know, similar reasons. And it's, yeah, so I've always loved, you know, festivals for, you know, so many reasons. And then, you know, at that point, you know, I really started listening to a lot more female artists and just really resonating with that. So, you know, that, you know, the fact that they didn't, they weren't having the opportunities on these big stages really started, you know, really became my sort of like niche issue. Yeah. So why do you think now we are in 2026 and a lot of festivals have announced in 2027 their lineups, which notably like Stagecoach, which I saw you posted on the Instagram like this year had 87 percent of the lineup was men.

7:43next year is marginally better, but only 82.4 % is men, which is 13 % women artists this year and just under 18 % next year. Why do you think this is the way it is? Are there just, you know, I think some people might be arguing, well, there just aren't that many women artists. So it's just like They're booking who are popular and the artists that are out there and there just aren't enough women to book on festivals. You know, this is obviously I'm playing devil's advocate, but I'm curious. There are those arguments. I'm sure you've seen them. Why do you think this is? Why is Stagecoast this year or any festival have a majority amount of men?

8:27Daisy chains aside, which we will get into that later. Yeah, you know, I think, you know, and I think that is a very fair argument. And that definitely does play into, you know, in terms of not being enough women, if you think of the hard rock space. Right. I guess to go back and answer the question, I there certainly isn't one reason. There probably isn't a dozen reasons. Right. I think that's this is the music industry. You know, just if you've watched, you know, your if you've listened to your all the people who have been on on your show. I mean, you know how complex it is and all these people are in these different positions and they all interplay.

9:08It's this massive system. So, you know, I say that, you know, that lineup you see is it's not like it's one person's initial vision generally. Right. It's the end result of thousands of industry decisions of, you know, that poster in the end. So, you know, and I think that, you know, certainly in some genres, you know, like I was saying with, say, hard rock and there is just less women. That is certainly the case, especially if you're looking for a headliner. There just aren't that many out there. But I think that that's when you dig into the issue and say, why aren't there more women in hard rock?

9:47You know, I don't think there's some kind of natural, you know, and I've spoken with with people who have just just to bring up one example, why, you know, who who loved, you know, metal music as a as a teenager. And she wanted to, you know, just be in a band. She didn't really know what she was doing, but she loved that, like wanted to, you know, learn to play guitar, get in a band. So she just started getting in with these, you know, people, you know, almost exclusively men who are already in bands getting in this local scene. And she felt so uncomfortable. She was the only woman there at any show, at any, you know, in any studio, any anything like that.

10:27And it just felt so uncomfortable for her to not feel like she was, you know, a sense of belonging at all that she just gave up. And she was like, I'm not, you know, I'm not going to pursue this anymore, even though it had been something that she really wanted to do. So, you know, that's just one little example of, you know, all these all these things that play into it, I think. Yeah, no, that's that's I mean, a good point. And, you know, I think a lot of people saw the Woodstock 99 documentary. And I thought, you know, where Woodstock 99, I think there were only like three women on the entire lineup, this like three or four day festival.

11:01And it was all men. And of course, it devolved into this like toxic fire, mud wrestling, like everything got set on. fire uh and it just i mean it was like it was a complete shit show but i mean and also on a more serious note like there was a lot of uh like reported sexual assaults that came from that festival no one was kind of taking any of uh that seriously at the time and then it was juxtaposed with the exact same time uh lilith fair was happening and i watched the lilith fair documentary uh as well and it was quite the juxtaposition seeing oh literally the identical time period You have this toxic festival of Woodstock 99 where everything goes to shit.

11:45And then you have and Cheryl Crow plays it. And then Cheryl Crow jumps back on over to Livet Fair. And she says, you're like, I remember the point. She's like, and I ran into Sarah McLachlan's arms and I cried in your arms because it was such a safe place for me when I came from just like this horror show that was happening over at Woodstock. um so you know the argument i think what they made a point in the lilith fair documentary was is that initially in the 90s even uh they're like we can't book more women because it's bad for business and so there was like that business argument which was disproven by lilith fair and they sold everything out and all of that um and like you said it was just like a thousand decisions up and down the music industry of why this is the way it is.

12:31So what is, you know, it is illuminating to see this. I think a lot of, you know, people understand, okay, the facts, these are the facts. What are you hoping to achieve with this organization? I know it's a 501c3 now, nonprofit, with this Instagram account. What is the mission? What are you hoping to achieve here yeah so to you know to start you know going back to 2018 uh it was really like let me let me just keep posting these over and over again no editorializing just the the numbers you know let's track the progress but let's put the numbers in the graphics out there and just show that this is not happening in one genre it's not happening at one festival one you know production company one region whatever it is um and so that was that was really my initial goal was just to you know make make make it more you know make the industry more aware of of it and um you know i i had uh accomplished that you know i think that uh you know a few years ago i um for example uh there was a quote in in rolling stone in a story about book more women um and in a you know the organizer of lullapalooza said you know we just really weren't aware that we weren't you know we thought we were doing a lot better with our goals for representation but we you know the the numbers the graphics made it clear that uh you know we had work to do still we just weren't aware so i think that that was the first real goal right making of the awareness awareness and um you know at that point you know a few years ago um it had i think you know there wasn't really anybody in the festival world who wasn't aware of it anymore of the account and and all that so um You achieved that goal.

14:18That's great. You brought the awareness. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So that's when I was like, you know, kind of coincided as well with me getting laid off from my, you know, quote unquote, real job in chemistry. So I was like, you know, have this thing that I really care about. And it has, you know, sort of infiltrated the industry in some way and, you know, dug a hole from the outside. And, you know, I really wanted to see at that point, you know, how can we take that foundation of the data of what I'd built and really go further and, you know, get involved in the industry to make real change. because I think the awareness point, you know, could, I think, you know, we sort of saw the numbers.

15:06I, you know, I certainly can't claim how much impact in terms of the numbers that, you know, it had, but, you know, from 2018 to 20, you know, 2022, you do see this increase when you're especially looking at the major festivals, say Lollapalooza, Coachella, Bonnaroo, all those together. It was something that we've tracked really closely over the years And you do see an increase in, you know, pretty steady increase. And then it sort of leveled off. And that's where I was like, you know, it felt to me like, okay, they did sort of the, you know, where we're aware now. They did sort of the basics to increase what they were doing.

15:48And then it was like, okay, yeah, you know, how can Bookmore Women really, really get involved and take that next step, go from the awareness into action and like take the data that we have and like put that to work. So, yeah, like you mentioned, we incorporated last year in 2015, got a board together, a small team, just volunteers, really, and then got our 501c3 this past summer. And yeah, so the, you know, the first real step is, you know, for us was to sort of bring festivals in on this and so partner with the festival directly. And the goal, you know, to get back, I guess the question, the goal really is to, you know, I think that, you know, the words that we use a lot are, you know, commitment, accountability, and transparency.

16:48You know, those are, I think transparency is really important in the industry. And it's just not, you know, it's in many ways, right? Whether it's how things work, if you're coming up, we have a lot of emerging artists or aspiring artists that follow us. And they'll ask, how do I get on my first festival? How do I get that first slot? And that's something that the process is just not that known. So that's something that we want to step into. And, yeah, and I think we can, you know, use the data and then work with the industry, work with the festivals, because they want people to know how it works, too, right?

17:36They want people to know that that lineup and those numbers probably weren't their first choice, you know, in the end. And so, you know, our sort of first step is really, you know, digging through, getting the data, collecting the, you know, having conversations, collecting that sort of information. And then next, just really educating based, you know, based on that, educating everyone, the industry themselves, artists, fans, including ourselves as we're building these things to what's the then the third point where we engage. what are the best sort of levers that we can pull where where can we best get involved um to make change that that lasts and and we see that as sort of this three-part process that can really um kind of feed back on itself and yeah you know we're starting at festivals yeah starts you know we're starting a festival just because that's where we've that's because we've always done but sure you know we know this goes back into the industry so yeah definitely a lot ahead yeah so So speaking of transparency, you know, the natural next question is, do artists pay?

18:44Is artists pay affected based on gender? Have you done any research into what artists are paid for festival slots? You know, a woman headliner versus a male headliner of the same festival of the same year. Or do you have any of those numbers or do you have any transparency into that? Yeah, so we have not looked into that. But that is sort of definitely a next, you know, a big thing we want to do is be able to put these, you know, reports, white papers together, things like that. Certainly based on this festival partnership that we have is called Booked. It's a booked accountability program. So, you know, based on that in our conversations with talent buyers and organizers, you know, we want to put these things together in a, you know, real, real, you know, digestible, you know, way to show what's going on.

19:51and then digging in further and finding out, you know, where can we advocate for, you know, certain practices or things like that to, you know, just even things out. And yeah, I think that, you know, a big thing for me is, you know, I'd love to dig into that business case, like you mentioned before um you know yeah i mean you know yeah you know does booking equitably hurt your bottom line you know i and i i'm not sure that the you know in terms of a festival wide thing i'm not i don't think you know i'm not sure that that's out there anywhere um but there's been stories here and there you know i believe it was um like you know it came out that like Justin Bieber was paid like 10 million for Coachella this year and Sabrina Carpenter was like paid 5 million but then like Bieber I think came out and said like that's unfair so he got her paid more and like you know it's like our artists typically you know the people that know this information are the booking agents obviously and the talent buyers and so I'm curious if there is a movement or conversations or anything where a festival basically just takes a pledge or something or you force their hand to take a pledge and just like everyone will be paid equally for their slots.

21:21So like if it's, you know, Coachella, you know, the three headlines we're going to have, they're all paid equally. I don't care who you are. If they're a headliner of Coachella, they're paid the same. If you are, you know, the eight o 'clock slots are paid the same. The six o 'clock slots are paid the same. Doesn't matter your gender. Because, you know, there's there's I'm sure, you know, no agent or talent buyer is going to say, oh, well, men are worth more than women. That of course, I'm not going to say that. But there's, of course, inherent biases. And they might not even realize that they're agents that have men and men and women clients that like, oh, weird.

21:59I've been advocating harder for my male clients to get more money than my women. client. I didn't even know that. I didn't even realize that, you know, they're not thinking that or like the talent buy-to is the same thing. They could just like have these perceived biases like, oh, well, I guess, you know, Bieber's worth more than Sabrina Carpenter, double. He should get double the pay than Sabrina will because of X, Y, and Z, the business factors that you kind of referenced earlier. So yeah, you know, I don't, I'm curious if there's any of those types of conversations that you're thinking of having or like any type of pledge, whether it's with this artist pay or not, or even just booking more artists, if there's like those types of conversations.

22:31yeah yeah absolutely i think you know that gets back to the transparency uh that i think is so important in like i said in in so many ways and that goes to you know artist pay to i mean even you know you know what what the makeup of you know agency rosters and you know the things like that and in the submission list all of this stuff is is uh you know just you don't really you don't really know. And, um, yeah, so I think, you know, in terms of in the industry as well, right? Like pay transparency, you know, is a huge thing. I think, you know, think about the agents themselves, right. And, and, um, that's, you know, there's not enough female agents out there.

23:16And, and I think that that's, as you, as you say, these, these on, you know, on, on, on unintentional biases that, um, you know, that can, that will, that will only help or, you know, diversifying every single part of the industry. So, you know, our first step has been with this booked accountability program has been to partner with the festival. So, for example, our first partner was Lightning in a Bottle. Cool. Amazing, amazing festival. Yeah. In California. And so they essentially came and instead of us just making the post as usual with our numbers and stuff they came and made a pledge for you know as a pilot you know we sort of kept this uh like an internal thing but they made a pledge for to increase their uh you know a commitment to increase their representation next year uh or this upcoming year now um so uh yeah so this and and then we shared their stats um their commitment and these have you know these posts have gone over really well and our our you know relationships with these festivals have been you know really great and and like i said that next part is really telling the whole story when you know when next year's lineup comes out it's not going to be about they failed they got worse so like fail right it's it's really about like you know well what what happened you know that obviously wasn't your intention so like let's dig into it and and let's you know let's really be transparent with the whole process and and what were the issues that you ran into and what what can we do about them um yeah so yeah that that was really our first our first uh our first program so and there's a lot more that we want that we're building into booked for next year beyond the pilot but we have nine partners uh from 2026 in our pilot so uh it's been it's been great and like i said the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive of fans of these you know we just announced three points um it's really cool like eclectic electronic festival in in miami and they in the reaction you know to that post was just so strong um from from long-term fans of the festival being like loving that that festival was willing to make a commitment and put it out there and say we are committed to it and it may be obvious to them as fans of the festival that and it was obvious to us that this is a festival that cares and they've been doing this work but yeah even the willingness to go out and make a commitment and, you know, say, you know, we're going we're going to continue to improve and we're willing to put this out here publicly.

25:52Yeah. You know, a huge thing. And it's been really well received. So that's great. Yeah. I saw the post of the lightning in the bottle pledge and it the post and the data showed that lightning in the bottle lineup, 2026 lineup actually had 36 percent women and non-binary musicians, whereas in contrast with like other electronic festivals in, 2025 only had 20.7%. And then all music festivals only had 19 % women and non-binary artists. So that is striking in that, I mean, it does show that whether it was the pledge, whether it was the awareness, whatever it may be, or the festival organizers, Lightning in a Bottle is a very successful festival.

26:34And they're, you know, getting closer to that parody. Yeah. And, you know, like I said, they've already been doing this work. They've already been committed to this for you can look back at their lineups and they've improved over the years just for their own values. Like you said, it's a very successful festival, very well respected. And so just this year, they were willing to come on and say, we've been doing this work, but we're still committed to doing better. Yeah, that's great. Tell me about the people that are part of kind of part of Bookmore Women, the board or yeah, just who's involved, who are they, who came to be, what are you looking for in people that want to kind of either join or partner up or be part of it or all of that?

27:29yeah so uh you know for a good six plus years it was really sort of just me and an instagram account so uh it is it is super weird to not think of bookmore women equals abby anymore sometimes all right it's uh but but yeah we we've got this uh small core team of myself um jess bumstead who who was a longtime agent and Nico Mazio, who is really like a community builder. And, and yeah, so we're sort of this leader leadership team and we've got a lot of volunteers who, who help us out on things like, like socials and doing the, doing the artist research. And then we have our board and our founding board.

28:14You know, it was really important to me to, to find people who understood what it was like to, you know, be a working artist and, you know, run into these barriers in the industry. So, you know, we didn't, you know, maybe build a, you know, fancy fundraising machine, right? But these people have really, really helped us. Like, you know, we want to stay on the ground and connected to the issue of really helping artists, helping independents, helping independent festivals events uh so yeah we've got um uh kayakator uh brandy waller pace um tara lopez uh sabrina but bedwin and dr jada watson who um works in sort of the uh yeah that's that's yeah that's our that's our board yeah that's awesome and and if people uh want to get involved and volunteer.

29:17Are you taking volunteers and what could they do to help out the organization? How could they become part of it or just volunteer? Yeah. So, I mean, you know, the biggest thing for us is just like building this community on online and Instagram. And it's been a, you know, amazing like conversation space. But, you know, in terms of actually getting involved, you know, we do, we do need, we, I think we want to build up that sort of street team type of, um, type of, of thing where we can, you know, cover a wider area in person for things like tabling and in events and stuff like that. So, you know, we were, we're happy to have people reach out and, uh, there's a, there's a, uh, email on our, on our website about that, that, you know, people are interested to uh to reach out and um yeah and you know in any other um you know we're always looking for ways to work with other organizations that make sense too and and building coalition is uh is a big part of i think the future for us and um you know there's a lot of organizations doing work and you know the gender equity space and beyond that are really important in music and i think it's important that in the future, we don't all just keep staying in our little, in our little, you know, slots and doing our work, but really like connecting with each other.

30:40And, you know, sometimes if someone comes to us and, you know, asks for advice or ask for something, it's, you know, it's not our job to do everything. We're probably not the best people to do most things. So, you know, if someone comes to us and asks a specific question, I might say, you should go talk to, you know, backline about this, or let me send you, you know, let me send you, um, to an email, you know, to FemHouse, cause they might, they might know this better. Um, and things like that. I think that, you know, working, you know, working together to, to really, um, strengthen the industry to, to change what, what needs to be changed.

31:17Um, I think that's a big thing. So, yeah, that's great. Well, Abby, you're doing great work and, uh, yeah, I appreciate And it is, you know, an issue that has been, you know, plaguing our industry since the inception. And it takes people like you to at least, you know, start and bring that awareness. But to bring everyone together and to align with the values that so many in the industry claim they have. But it requires the action. And it requires festivals like those that have made the pledge already, and I would hope that they would all make the pledge, to want to do better. But everyone, like labels.

32:02I watched some of the testimonials of artists on your page where there was this artist who, you know, she was being courted by a label. But then when they got further along, they're like, oh, we actually already have, we've met our quota for women here. And I think it was one. Yeah. they're like oh yeah we have we already have another we already have a woman and uh the artist was like yeah but she sounds nothing like me and this was like in 2018 so this was not like you know in the 70s or the 80s or whatever uh so it is just wild that that stuff still exists and you know the music industry tends to uh lean more progressive uh or at least claims that they're progressive but then when you really you know look under the hood pull back the curtain of everything and you show the data and you actually get transparent about all of this, we have a long ways to go.

32:55And so I think you're right. It starts with the transparency. I appreciate the transparency that you've brought and the awareness. I would like to see more transparency. I mean, I think just even, you know, yes, with gender parity and equity and all of that, but also with pay. I mean, pay equity and parity. And I think just across the board, I think it's just like we should just be more transparent and that will just help the conversation with everyone. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's. Yeah, cool. Well, no, I really appreciate you coming on and talking about this. I know you people. Yes, you said they could, you know, volunteer, but I'm assuming they could probably donate.

33:40And so where can people go to kind of learn more? And if they believe in the mission and they want to donate, tell me the steps that they can take. Yeah, you can go to our website, www.bookmorewomen.com. You can donate straight through there. You can learn more about the book program and the other things that we have coming up. And we're on all the social platforms that you would think are most active where we post the lineups, the edited lineups is Instagram and that's at Gold4Women. Awesome. Well, Abby, thanks so much. I have one final question that I ask everyone who comes on the show and that is, what does it mean to you to make it in the new music business?

34:22What is making it in the new music business? Yeah, it's, I guess I'm kind of a, come from a weird spot to answer that one. But I think that, you know, for me, when I think about anyone in general making it, it's, like they they're reaching their own personal goals of whatever they you know what whatever they whatever work they want to put in um gets them the results that that they you know deserve and are looking for and so for me to make it in the music industry would be to make a meaningful contribution to making it more possible for others to make it i think to making the industry more equitable and transparent so that anyone who wants to pursue that success for whatever it means to them has a fair shot, regardless of who they are, who they know.

35:16That's what making it in this industry would mean for me. Right on. Cool. Abby, thanks so much. Thank you. This episode was edited by Ruben Zarate with music by Brassroots District and produced by all the great people at Ari's Take. you