Business News Industry People

US diversity initiative plans biggest global database of women in music

By | Published on Friday 7 December 2018

She Is The Music

She Is The Music, a US-based initiative that seeks to drive “equality, inclusivity and opportunity for women across the music community” has announced plans to launch “the largest global database of female creators and professionals”. The new database, which is backed by US industry trade mag Billboard, will go live next year.

The people behind SITM – which include Alicia Keys, Universal Music Publishing’s Jody Gerson, WME’s Samantha Kirby Yoh and Jungle City Studios’ Ann Mincieli – say that the new database will “span female songwriters, engineers, producers, studio positions and live / touring professionals, with more roles to come”. They hope that it will help in SITM’s wider ambition to “increase job opportunities and grow the talent pipeline for women in music”.

One of a number of programmes around the world seeking to encourage and enable more women to pursue careers in music – especially in areas, on and off the stage, that are frequently male dominated – SITM was launched in response to a recent study by the University Of Southern California. The report by USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative revealed distressingly low percentages of women working in music. SITM is also organising songwriting camps and a mentoring programme in addition to the database project.

More info at sheisthemusic.org

Here in the UK a similar database of women working in music was established by Deviate Digital founder Sammy Andrews at the start of last year, partly in response to widespread criticism of the lack of diversity at many music industry conferences and events. The aim was to help connect the organisers of such events to a diverse mix of music industry executives who were happy to talk about their areas of expertise on stage.

That initiative, under the banner ‘Let’s Be The Change’, was also behind the series of adverts recently run in the UK music industry press celebrating countless women working across the music industry, mainly in response to the woeful lack of female execs on the shortlists at this year’s Live UK Awards.

There is more info about that initiative at letsbethechange.co.uk



READ MORE ABOUT: