Is Spotify Really Not Suggesting Female Artists?

In case you missed it, Martina McBride is upset with the folks at Spotify. In a recent story, she shared her frustrations with the music streaming service not recommending any female country artists after she created a playlist and looked for more suggestions. She has since met with Spotify and they say they're working on it. Since I'm a Spotify customer, I decided to give it a try myself.

I created a Country Music Playlist and selected 11 songs currently on the country charts. The songs I choose were, It All Comes Out in the Wash by Miranda Lambert, Remember You Young by Thomas Rhett, Living by Dierks Bentley, I Don't Know About You by Chris Lane, Even Though I'm Leaving by Luke Combs, We Were by Keith Urban, Southbound by Carrie Underwood, All to Myself by Dan+Shay, Raised on Country by Chris Young, Love Ain't by Eli Young Band, and What Happens in a Small Town by Brantley Gilbert and Lindsay Ell.

When you create a playlist on Spotify, below that playlist is a list of songs it recommends based on the songs above. My initial recommendations had no females listed. I had to hit 'refresh' SEVEN times before I finally was given a recommendation of a female country act, Runaway June.

I don't claim to understand how the search engines and recommendations work on Spotify, but it seems to me like we can do a little better than seven searches later. To be fair, on an already created playlist I got a female country act, Maren Morris, on my second recommendation list. Clearly, there is room for improvement. There are so many great artists out there you can listen to. It would be nice if streaming platforms eliminated gender as a contributing factor.