Outrage!! It's what's for dinner!

Is this representative of the label's choice of whom to sign? Or the artists in the region? Or the industry? Were Sub Pop turning away female groups, or those composed of POC? What is the minimum female/POC composition threshold to be acceptable? Is there a threshold of acceptable that would trigger the cancellation of the event, if not met?

@3 don't worry, SJW's are pulling together very specific parameters for all musical venues and events to follow. Once those are posted they will need to be followed under any circumstances...no matter how poor the quality of the "approved" performers happens to turn out.

We'll make diversity sell albums...it'll be all that's available!

All of you making comments about "diversity" not being a quality that creates returns need to stop being so willfully obtuse. Most folks don't ask for CDs by a band that is diverse, but a label that offers music from diverse acts will see more interest from more people because people like to see folks that look like themselves onstage/screen.

It's hard for you all to realize that because, and I am inferring here, you are likely white and male and most everyone on the stage, screens, radio, etc. LOOKS LIKE YOU. So you are comfortable with the way it is. You are also really uncomfortable when the idea of making the entertainment we out there include people who don't look like you. Imagine how non-white males feel ALL THE TIME.

And, FWIW, I do go to bookstores and libraries and ask for recommendations by and about non white males. So, in fact, diversity does sell.

-a middle-aged white guy

Sub Pop...worse than Hitler!

"Unfortunately many of the female artists we asked to participate weren’t able to join us for various reasons."

But, we can still be outraged, right?

I really don't know what pisses me off the most, the boneheaded and ignorant article or the shitty comments of most everyone above.

@7:

Expressing outrage over other people expressing outrage is pretty much all they have going for them...

Chances Lauren is an outraged Millennial?

So the event she specifically cites as being “amazing” and a display of diversity is ... Tacocat and The Coathangers, comprised of a whopping 0 people of color. Selective outrage that stops when your identity is no longer the one pushed aside is so worthless.

tons of shitballs in the comments. sooooo many shitballs in the comments.

i was a club DJ for many, many years. even way back in the 80's it was a worthwhile effort to play a balance of records that had masculine and feminine identifiers (whether singers or subject matter) - as well as music that originated from white culture, black culture, ambiguous culture - and a shitload of queer culture, because - well, nightclubs. that was your audience. also, you wanted to provide a selection that made every paying customer feel like you played something that was important to them.

this is slightly easier to to when your roots are in disco or dancing - it becomes more complicated when your roots are in rawk, where the origin story lays in black music but (thanks to tiresome music journalism interpretations) tends to over-index in dissatisfied young white guys with guitars (riffs!) and distortion pedals (tone!). sub pop made it's original impression via that demo, and here we are, all these years later.

i'm certainly not mad a sub pop, and i have every reason to believe that they made a good faith effort to show their past and present, and in doing so, show that they've grown beyond pimply male guitar rock. obviously, i think most of the comments here shoot straight out of the buttholes of many, many whitey dudes who have some sort of impression that quotas are secretly measured everywhere and that it'll be the death of any white guy art ever.

You know, given the current shit show dumpster fire of our country with the white supremacist rapist vile pig shit bag traitor squatting in the white house and his administration engaging in worldwide terrorism and stealing and trafficking children, the the problem this person is complaining about does not even fucking rate.

It would be great if people would pull their heads out of their asses and realize what the fuck is going on and oh I don't know maybe try to fucking do something about it? Sub Pop's demographics will be completely irrelevant when the entire country has been thoroughly fucking destroyed, but hey. let's bitch about shit that personally outrages you instead of focusing on what is happening to huge swaths of people in this country and world by the United States' government > black people, brown people, immigrants, women, children, gay people, poor people, working people, foreign allies, etc. etc. etc.

Let's count up male vs. female performers at Sub Pop's festival instead of the fact that the federal government is being deconstructed and destroyed at a breakneck speed by completely psychotic, white supremacist, misogynist, wealthy animals pretending to be people. Forget real problems when you can stomp your little feet and insist that lack of male vs. female representation at a local music festival is an issue that needs to be rectified IMMEDIATELY because your fucking feelings are hurt.

Or, how about FUCK YOU, YOU ENTITLED, SELF-ABSORBED DUMB ASS?! How about that?

@19

I mean I like our little hometown record label at least as much as anyone else, but to my knowledge Sub Pop has never had a black A&R rep, let alone executive, has it?

The music industry's shameful divide between its Rock and R&B charts/stations/imprints was born of overt racism, and is very much a part and perpetuator of the institutional racism that makes today's political landscape possible.

So, like, fuck you too, a little bit?

Sub Pop has had a black A&R person for a few years now... it’s come up in stories about their signing Yuno and Porter Ray. I’ve lost track of who we’re supposed to be saying, “Fuck You” to now though...

It'd be interesting to see the demographic breakdown of all Sub Pop acts. Have they ever had an act fronted by a POC?

@22 Over the years they've had a number of artists on the label branch out into A&R work (and good for them for fostering that) and yeah, now one of them is black, so you're right. Not quite what I had in mind, but I lose this round.

@23 They've had a few, Shabazz Palaces being the most noteworthy at the moment. I couldn't tell you if you'd get a representative percentage if you tallied up all their artists, but my hunch would be "below national, above city."

I find it so odd that so many in here are virtue signaling brighter than searchlights, over what a band LOOKS like. How is that possibly relevant for an aural experience? Does this only apply to music festivals specifically? I enjoy a band's music because of their sound, not because of the composition of the group.

As an example, I had listened to the Sound and Color album by Alabama Shakes a dozen times before looking them up, to find that the lead singer is a black woman, not a man singing in falsetto. Maybe that's easily identifiable for others and this makes me some musical neophyte, but it shouldn't matter because I come to my opinion based on their MUSIC, not their skin tone/background/orientation/gender expression.

But then, I'm a straight white guy, so my opinion is clearly already suspect or entirely worthless, as several comments in here have already condescendingly proclaimed. For what it's worth, I'd be happy to have Slog split from Line Out again, so I wouldn't ever see music posts in the future and thereby spare others the offense of reading my ignorant comments.

Loma, on the day, were three men and two women.

@26 to echo a comment to me, how long have YOU been an Nazi? I'm asking for the world...

Jesus. It's not about the look of the band being the most important thing @26. It's about the perspective people who don't look like you can offer through their music. Whether that's the sound, the lyrics, the instrumentation, what have you. If every band was yet another band full of same-same white guys like you and me, how boring would music become and how fast?

I find it somewhat heartening that the complaint about not enough female representation was answered by the CEO herself.

@21 I worked in the music industry for 20 years. It's a cesspool of shit. Doesn't change the fact that we have more pressing problems right now. People need a serious fucking reality check. Save the Showbox! (while entire populations of people are forced out of Seattle, especially those that are poor and non-white). FFS people, perspective? Priority of Sub Pop male to female ration at their 30th anniversary DOES NOT RATE AS A REAL PROBLEM RIGHT NOW.