Taking matters into their own hands

Ten years ago Sarah McLachlan launched Lilith Fair, "a celebration of women in music." The tour was born of frustration - with radio programmers who wouldn't play two women back to back and with tour promoters who balked at booking more than one female artist on a concert bill.

A decade later, gender bias is alive and well in the music industry. It's the reason we still see annual Women Who Rock specials in magazines, the fuel for breathless coverage of Kelly Clarkson's showdown over creative control with her male handlers, and the subtext of events like last week's Estrojam in Chicago - whose mission to break down stereotypes and foster bold expression is not something men have ever needed to organize around.

But the industry has been transformed in the past decade by the rise of technology and the crumbling of familiar business models, and that's good news for women - particularly those wise enough to navigate the early stages of their careers, to cultivate their voices and their audience, without deferring to the suits.

Take Nellie McKay and Regina Spektor, both of whom play in Boston next month. Both are gifted young singer-pianists with eclectic tastes, satirical streaks, and a gift for mixing musical traditions (classical and folk for Spektor, Broadway and jazz for McKay) with fresh pop sounds. McKay attended the Manhattan School of Music; Spektor studied throughout her adolescence with a professor from the school. Both were associated with the downtown New York anti-folk scene in the early 2000s, honing their live shows at East Village clubs like Tonic and the Sidewalk Cafe.

But their paths diverged when it came to releasing recordings. Spektor stayed strictly grassroots for a number of years, self-releasing four collections of music before signing with Sire. McKay, the object of a bidding war, hitched her wagon to Columbia Records, which launched her debut album with a media and promotional blitz.

Three years later, McKay is playing at the Paradise Rock Club in support of "Obligatory Villagers," an album she released on her own Hungry Mouse label, which McKay founded after Columbia dropped her in a dispute over the length of her second album. Yes, the drama was big news in the music press. And no, we don't hear much about it when a man with vision and a spine stands up to his label boss.

Meanwhile, Spektor will appear at the much larger Orpheum Theatre on the umpteenth leg of a tour behind her second Sire album, "Begin to Hope," which spent 34 weeks on the Billboard album charts.

Of course, there are all kinds of factors, practical and ephemeral, that contribute to the success or decline of a career. Spektor's music has more youth appeal and by extension greater mainstream potential. But more critically, she established herself as an independent artist in the broadest sense of the word - as someone who not only has a creative vision, but also generates her own brand and product - before entering into a business arrangement with industry gatekeepers. By the time Spektor signed with Sire, she was already operating from a position of power: as an indie darling with a strong fan base.

It's impossible to underestimate the power of that elusive fan base in the current climate, where choices are vast and labels are finding it harder and harder to spoon-feed their acts to audiences. Female artists' fans tend to be an emotionally invested bunch, and in the new, consumer-driven music world, their devotion can mean the difference between the shelf and the marketplace. When rumors spread that Fiona Apple's label had put the brakes on her latest album because the executives didn't hear a single, her followers organized a global online "Free Fiona" campaign - convincing Epic Records that even after a six-year dry spell, Apple's fan base was not only intact, but wanted its heroine back in all her eccentric glory.

Apple, by the way, was scheduled to headline with Sheryl Crow and Avril Lavigne later next month at the inaugural Girlfrenzy festival, which has been postponed until 2008 because of weak ticket sales. While the urge to throw a spotlight on a cavalcade of talented women is commendable, it also - like Lilith Fair - smacks of ghettoization: Girlfrenzy's logo, written in swirly pink type with a guitar for the letter "I" and a female gender symbol dangling from the "E," reinforces the idea that women who rock are a lark.

That idea seems even sillier after a glance at Boston's fall concert calendar, which in addition to McKay and Spektor includes rootsy newcomer Brandi Carlile, indie troubadour Mariee Sioux, powerhouse pop singer Clarkson, garage rockers the Donnas, British '60s-pop trio the Pipettes, Americana innovator Erin McKeown, Canadian folk-punk duo Tegan & Sara, and seasoned vets Sinead O'Connor, Tori Amos, Annie Lennox, and Ani DiFranco.

With the exception of former "American Idol" Clarkson and Carlile, a buzzed-about new artist on Columbia, none of them spend much time on the airwaves or the charts. The Sept. 22 issue of Billboard confirms that retail sales and radio continue to skew heavily toward male artists, by roughly five to one, and that's in typically female-friendly formats like Adult Top 40 and Hot 100 Airplay. Go to modern or mainstream rock charts and the scales tip even more dramatically.

Historically, the music industry has been a boy's club, with men in positions of power at labels, radio, and media outlets determining who gets signed, promoted, and played. But as digital distribution and online networking sites provide artists with the tools to build careers on their own, outside the traditional hierarchy, those positions wield ever less power. There's every reason to hope the music landscape of the future will feature a nice, level playing field.

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music visit boston.com/ae/music/blog.