The F-List Story

Vick Bain, the creator of The F-List for Music, is an advocate and campaigner for equality and diversity in the music industry. She has over 25 years’ experience in the business and has been enrolled into the Music Week Women in Music Awards Roll Of Honour and featured in BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour Music Powerlist.

The F-List directory grew out of research she undertook in 2019,  analysing the gender of the rosters of over 300 UK record labels and publishing companies.  Her findings were published in the report ‘Counting the Music Industry’. For the first time, it provided data that demonstrated how few women are supported financially by the music industry, in comparison to men.

Using data from that research, The F-List is the first directory of its kind to feature up-to-date information on UK-based female* musicians, songwriters and composers. We’re not a commercial organisation, we don’t take a cut from any earnings, we simply signpost and give information, like a wiki site, about talented musicians working in the UK today.

Many event or festival organisers want to promote female artists but don’t know how or where to find them outside of their own network. The F-List solves this problem. With thousands of professional musicians who are currently signed to labels across all genres of music, this directory makes it easy to search for, and discover, great female talent. And as more women upload their music and information onto the site it will keep growing as a resource, like a wiki for UK female musicians. 

But The F-List is not just a list. It’s a growing community, supported by a not-for-profit Community Interest Company, that’s committed to creating a future where gender equality is celebrated and properly represented throughout the music industry. 

Over the past few years, it has been a fact that at the large UK festivals it’s often less than 15% of the musicians on the main stages are women. This is even though women possess the talent and desire to pursue a career in music – over the past five years they made up almost half of all music performance degree students.  And this figure also drops dramatically when it comes to female representation on UK record labels and publishers.

You will have heard of many of the artists we feature – Adele, Sade, Charli XCX, Little Simz, Hildur Godnadóttir, Anna Meredith to name a few. But it is still a fact that many female musicians do not receive the professional opportunities their male counterparts may enjoy.

So whether you’re already famous or just starting out, The F-List community can help you.  We provide support and development through a network of people who have years of experience within the music industry.

It’s never been easier to find female talent within the UK music industry!

*The F-List is proud to be inclusive of transgender and gender diverse musicians