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New music company Babelogue aims to improve music industry’s gender balance

By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 17 November 2016

New label and management company Babelogue launches this week, with a focus on improving gender equality in the music industry.

Set up by Sarah Joy, who by day works for ATC Live, and Joanie Eaton, who works for Domino Records, the company is entirely staffed by women and will work exclusively with female-fronted acts. They kick things off with Yassassin, who release their new single ‘Pretty Face’ tomorrow.

“Our core mission statement is to help female musicians find encouragement and a place for their music”, explains Joy. “As we’re both young women working in the music industry, we know how difficult it is to push through barriers, so we created Babelogue to help do that. Instead of managing acts for gain and trying to squeeze them for profit, our ethos is about respect, collaboration with great people, the creative process and helping more women achieve success within the music profession”.

“You just have to look at the statistics; only 16% of PRS members are female, only five women have ever won the Mercury Prize, the gender split in music is 67.8% male to 32.2% female”, she adds, on why active work to improve the music industry’s gender balance is needed. “How many times have female music workers been called groupies? How many female musicians patronised by soundmen? How many girls are on that festival line up? There is still a lot to do”.

Eaton adds: “We want to focus on what we can do now and how we can change things, educate and inform to build equality within the industry. I’m super proud to work at a label where the ratio of men and women is pretty much equal. It’s an incredible working environment to be part of for so many reasons and I just want that to continue to progress for the entire industry”.

Read our full interview with Joy and Eaton here, and watch the video for Yassassin’s ‘Pretty Face’ here: