SonyMusic is launching an initiative to promote female producers with its in-house label Columbia at this year’s Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg. Columbia wants to get to the bottom of why women are underrepresented in music production.
The first step in making female producers more visible is to be taken at the Reeperbahn Conference in Hamburg: on September 22, the topic of gender balance will be discussed in a panel. With regard to its own internal structures, Columbia also wants to create a proactive and sustainable change: A&Rs and labels are to be sensitized and a GSA-wide dynamic register for producers is to be set up. All employees should have access to it so that they can network with producers and musicians. In addition, the register is to be expanded to include other musical professional fields such as songwriting.
Female Producer Prize
Furthermore, Columbia has set itself the goal of promoting female producers in their training and further education in order to gain easier access to the industry. It is in this spirit that the Female Producer Prize is awarded: the five winners receive both one financial support as well as the opportunity for professional further training measures in the Circle Studios Berlin.
“Music lives through diversity. As a record label, we want to raise awareness of this imbalance across the industry and take action to change the status quo. More female producers mean more perspectives,” says Alexandra Falken (Vice President Columbia).
According to the guiding principle “Promote female producers”, workshops and workshop talks were held last year, which shed light on the causes of the unbalanced relationship. The result was “Let’s Move Things Forward”, a presentation of concrete fields of action and goals.