It goes without saying that popular music consumption around the globe is largely influenced by the US. We take a look at some stats in the Inclusion in the Recording Studio report from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative which looks in-depth at the gender and race statistics in 700 top songs on Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart between 2012 and 2018. This first number today, “In 2018, the percentage of women of color on the charts was at a seven year high. A full 73% of female artists were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups in 2018 which is 23 percentage points higher than 2017 and 40 percentage points higher than 2012.”

Read on to the full report here.