When it comes to radio programmers and bosses, they’re clearly slanted to please blokes over women – we’ve got the obvious likes of Radio X, which purposefully draws in ladbants fans by hiring only male presenters such as bloke monolith Chris Moyles. And then we’ve got something a little more insidious.
This is Jimmy Iovine, big boss of Apple Music, who says that one of the charms of the new-ish product is: ‘I always knew that women find it very difficult at times – some women – to find music. And this helps makes it easier with playlists, curated by real people.’
He was on* CBS This Morning*, reports Time, to discuss an ad campaign that featured Kerry Washington, Taraji P Henson and Mary J Blige, who was with him on the show.
‘I just thought of a problem: girls are sitting around talking about boys. Or complaining about boys, when they have their heart broken, or whatever.
‘And they need music for that, right? It’s hard to find the right music. Not everybody knows a DJ.’
Ummm. If he’s talking about music for heartbreak, bloody Adele’s literally released an album this morning. And beyond that? There’s oodles of musicians who have songs about heartbreak and many more who have songs about other stuff that we could probably find without Apple Music guiding us.
In fact, women’s – and men’s – ability to find songs on Spotify, normal radio, YouTube, through other social media, at the club, without the assistance of Apple, might actually be more of a problem for it than women ever being put off by Jimmy’s comments.
Jimmy has now apologised, telling Billboard: ‘We created Apple Music to make finding the right music easier for everyone — men and women, young and old. Our new ad focuses on women, which is why I answered the way I did, but of course the same applies equally for men. I could have chosen my words better, and I apologise.’
As much as there’s no point in dragging Jimmy through the mud over this – we’d rather just go about finding some music to listen to using our own means – it’s interesting that he justifies his comments because he was on the show to talk about women.
If you know you’re meant to be talking women, women who you want to buy your product out of a whole bunch of competitors, surely you give them a little more respect?
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.