A familiar story

The people in this call were/are(? part of a web3 record label. It was a project I knew of, in the periphery and my friend, who is a brilliant professional and incredible community builder was part of it. Because of her, and because many people spoke about how my point of view could be useful, due to my experience, I minted(bought) a founder’s pass. Maybe it could’ve been a fun do-over from my previous life at record labels, but less than four weeks after that initial sale one of the co-founders left, and the rest of the team was laid off. All of the uncertainty was meant to be addressed in the weekly call, which is usually a place to discuss ideas & business models, this is why these are always recorded with a bot. In this particular call, a new team member was introduced and he spoke of his vision, I disagreed with him, you can hear what happened in the last 15 mins of the call.

Not even sure how to start this one, this is a familiar story for me. I’ve been in the room when this happens, I’ve been on the receiving end of this happening, and I’ve heard the stories of how this happened to someone else. Women in the music industry have a code, we talk to each other, we secretly say things like “take care of yourself,” or “make sure you’re well prepared for this meeting” and read each other’s emails to make sure we are clear enough, and have the right tone.

To be perfectly frank I’m not sure if men know all of this machination is going on. Women are fully aware that we enter the room having to prove ourselves, regardless of our titles or experience. Yet, through years of all of this nonsense, I have managed not to allow it to stop me. Could be delusion or insanity learned from my father who is the most resilient entrepreneur. Problem-solving is my core need and I will attempt to resolve anything way beyond where a normal person would give up. But I’m going to give myself space to dump every single thought that has gone through my mind here and we’ll see how I feel about it after I’m done.

I first remembered the last time something similar happened, it was a Zoom call during the pandemic with our CEO, where he tried to victimize himself by explaining he was discriminated against when he went to buy his BMW. I attempted to shut it down, but he was the CEO so I had to be careful, one other woman tried to say something but in the most gentle and polite way. It was horrible, the call ended awkwardly and three other people told me my days were counted. I tried taking my only recourse, but HR works for the CEO too so it was dead in the water before it started, and there was no recording.

Next, I remembered the one time my incredibly talented and patient coworker told me how the one boss we liked asked her not to be emotional about how our company was exposing ourselves to blatant copyright infringement. The company had been sued so many times, you’d think they would know better, but here we were, telling a MUSIC company to make sure they clear all of the use of music on an app. This boss agreed with us, and yet he wanted her to approach this topic delicately. I was incredulous and wanted to say something but she told me not to say anything, so we just ate our lunch and supported each other.

Lastly, I remembered the time I listened to the men in my company talk about how a woman was strategically pushed out for speaking up consistently. “Just stop talking, just be quiet” they would warn her as if that was the extent of what they could do for her. Being yelled at and humiliated is just par for the course, right? Because we ALL had an abusive boss, but he was especially bad with women. He terrorized women for needing to breastfeed after having children, booked meetings way past normal hours or ridiculously early, and worst of all spoke about women’s maternity leave plans as a hindrance in front of artists. But because there is no recording, he is still there, and because he’s GREAT for the bottom line, he will be there until he decides to retire.

The thing with all of these events, women forge forward on their own. We stand in glass cages watching this happening, watching other people watch it happen, and nobody feels they can do anything. Life continues, a new workweek starts and women keep trudging through. These little glimpses of being a woman in the music industry are one of the main motivators to me leaving the major label life, gasping for air. I am happy to have found a new home in web3, where the culture was considerate of people, where being a mom was a good thing, and where we want to rebuild structures in the music industry that serve artists and fans better.

All the messages I’ve received, especially from male allies, let me know I know that the culture we have here is very strong and that a good number of people will not stand for misogyny, homophobia, racism, transphobia, ableism, and any other phobias/isms. This is why, I’m glad the recording got out there because most of us don’t want to let all of that nonsense over here. With the recording, we can hold those responsible for horrible behavior accountable, we can take this as an opportunity to finally do it right. I believe strongly in this community, and I know we can find a path forward and build a more equitable space. I hope we can all stand together in this, divorce our industry from this behavior for good, and demand better, we all deserve it.