Equality

A new agency representing gender minority composers has launched in London.

Operated by Register, a music agency specialising in licensing and music supervision, 515 is a new venture dedicated to representing female and gender minority composers, artists, producers and sound designers. 

Only 2.8% of music producers are female, according to a study conducted last year by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, dropping to just 0.7% for women of colour. The same analysis showed that between 2013 and 2022, only 7% of Hollywood films were scored by women. 

Register founders Hollie Hutton and Hannah Charman said they started 515 to “open more doors for the underrepresented sectors of the composition talent pool”.

“We discovered, over the course of our careers, that the same handful of people were winning most of the work and that not enough gender-minority composers were even being pitched on projects."

Despite this, the Register team reports an increasing demand for female and gender minority composers.

Emily Richardson, Head of 515, said: “We’ve frequently been asked to scout them for film and TV projects and would continue to support them throughout the process, acting as agents. So we ended up thinking, ‘Why don’t we make this official?’”

“515 has been built on integrity. There’s so much amazing untapped talent out there. We really believe in what we’re doing and the potential to open filmmakers’ ears to a new world of composers while also making a change in the industry.” 

“I really do think that in 10 years’ time, the industry will look very different, and I strongly believe that this starts at grassroots level,” added Richardson.

“We need to be creating pipeline opportunities and encouraging people to take them. Those who are already here should be actively making the industry more inclusive, unlearning systemic biases, having equal representation at senior and board levels, and always having diversity front of mind.”

The DJ and author Annie Macmanus has told MPs that the music industry is "a boys' club" with a system  “rigged against women".

Macmanus was giving testimony at the Government’s Women and Equalities Committee on misogyny in the music industry.

Speaking on behalf of "a real range of" women in the music industry, the former Radio 1 broadcaster said that she had not experienced or witnessed sexual misconduct personally. However, she felt her 19-year career at the BBC had given her a "shield of protection" to discuss the issue openly.

She said: “There are common threads that run through everything I've heard.

"That is that women, especially young women in the music industry, are consistently underestimated and undermined, and freelance women are consistently put in situations where they are unsafe.

"It's infuriating, the amount of women who have stories of sexual assault that just kind of buried them and carried them. It's just unbelievable.”

She added that if an individual with a high profile were to speak out, “there could be a kind of tidal wave of it.”

The singer Rebecca Ferguson also gave evidence to the MPs. She described misogyny in music as “the tip of the iceberg” and said: "Bullying and corruption are being allowed to happen".

She told MPs: "There are plenty of times when you're placed in situations where you are being compromised and where people are abusing their level of power.

"But as well as that, the thing that worries me the most is the rapes that are going unreported. That's what concerns me the most - the fact that women feel like they can't speak up.”

The committee previously questioned Sir John Whittingdale, Media, Tourism and Creative Industries Minister, about the lack of legal protections for freelancers, the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims and improving standards to tackle discrimination. 

The UK music licensing company PPL says latest staffing data shows it is an "industry forerunner" when it comes to diversity in the workplace.

The voluntarily released gender and ethnicity data for 2023 reveals that mean pay gaps – the average difference in pay – have decreased between April 2022 and April 2023.

The mean gender pay gap decreased to 5.4% in favour of men, from 11.7% in 2022, while the proportion of non-white staff has increased by 3% and now makes up 30% of staff.

The company said its senior team including executive directors and heads of department is 51% female.

Kate Reilly, Chief Membership and People Officer at PPL, said the company was "very proud of the work we’re doing to contribute to a fairer, more diverse industry".

She added: “Striving to become an ever more equitable and inclusive company is not only the right thing to do, but it is also good for business. PPL is stronger for better reflecting our membership and society at large.

"Over the coming years, we will further develop our diversity throughout all levels of the organisation."