Joy Denalane will be new Keychange ambassadress
"For years we have been discussing underrepresentation of women in pop culture behind closed doors. For that matter, there are so many women making great music or having good feeling for the business. However, this is not reflected in their success stories. Men still dominate art and its markets. Now, the Keychange Initiative offers a huge opportunity of doing away with this inequality.
Based on its analytical and fact-oriented approach, Keychange has been able to establish a fantastic network all over Europe. And for me, this is the groundwork for raising awareness for this problem and starting a public discourse on necessary changes.
This will provide us women with the opportunity of being perceived and assessed as female artists, business women or executives.
I am glad to be a part of Keychange: Let's show solidarity, dear colleagues, and send an impulse to the world together. Let's have the courage to do it! Your Joy"
This statement by the new German Keychange ambassadress Joy Denalane shows once again: The current structures of the music business are far from real equality of women and men.
1.4 m euros for Keychange 2.0 provided by European Commission with Reeperbahn Festival as lead partner
However, this is precisely one of the key factors for a future-oriented music business. This is where the international Keychange Inititative, founded by the British PRS for Music Foundation in 2017 and meanwhile featuring over 250 music organisations from Europe and Canada, gets its leverage. Reeperbahn Festival as co-founder has been involved right from the start and, starting in 2019, will take the lead of the European initiative, which was funded by the EU Commission with 1.4 million euros in July for another four years (from September 2019 to September 2023). It is the declared goal of Keychange to trigger a global debate on the representation of women intended to entail a sustainable change in the music world.
Reeperbahn Festival will lead this second phase in close cooperation with PRS for Music Foundation (UK), Musikcentrum Öst (Sweden), Iceland Airwaves (Island), Tallinn Music Week/Shiftworks (Estonia) and BIME Festival (Spain). Ireland Music Week/First Music Contact (Ireland), the Oslo World Festival (Norway), Linecheck Festival/Innovation Hub (Italy) and SACEM (France) will be aboard as new partners.
The major sponsors are Gorwelion Horizons, SOCAN Foundation, SoundCloud, STIM, STEF, IMRO, GEMA, Songtrust, Fundación SGAE, FACTOR, Ableton, Smirnoff Equalising Music and Roskilde Festival.
ByteFM, ferryhouse, c/o pop Festival & Convention and many more will sign new 2022 gender-balance pledge
The memorandum of understanding, drawn up by Reeperbahn Festival in 2017, the so-called pledge to present balanced programmes in terms of gender, initially focused on the field of live entertainment and more than 180 international festivals then signed this pledge. This summer, Keychange extended the Pledge 2022 to neighbouring fields and institutions and companies of the music sector such as conservatories, orchestras, music radio channels, venues, concert halls, streaming services, record labels, publishers and further organisations.
In Germany, the extended pledge was recently joined by ByteFM, ferryhouse and c/o pop Festival & Convention. Alínæ Lumr, Berlin Jazz Experiment, DICE Festival, Jazzfest Berlin, MOST WANTED: MUSIC, Operation Ton, Pop-Kultur, punkd Festival, VUT Indie Days, and others had already signed the pledge earlier.
Alexander Schulz (Mitgründer Keychange, Reeperbahn Festival CEO): " In the medium run, realistic adjustment of internal structures of all organisations in the music business as well as their catalogues and rosters and programme offers on stages, in streaming and airplay will lead to a change in reception habits among all listeners and concert-goers. The next generation of listeners should already take gender-balanced music programmes as a matter of course, for the next generation of musicians will already be as diverse as our society.And as a side effect, the quality of music in general will increase because so far undiscovered talents will have a chance to enter the market easily.
The promised subsidy by the EU Commission will enable us and our partners from nine European countries and from Canada to pursue these goals consistently, applying the various new measures of Keychange 2.0."
Presentation of Keychange 2.0 and further gender-balance programmes at Reeperbahn Festival 2019
Details on the Keychange 2.0 measureswill be introduced by Keychange ambassadresses Kate Nash and Joy Denalane as well as Barbara Gessler (EU Commission) and Alexander Schulz (co-founder of Keychange, CEO Reeperbahn Festival) in a presentation on 19 September at 11.00 p.m. The event is open for all media representatives, artists and professional visitors.
In addition, there will be talks and panel session on gender balance in the music business right afterwards and on the following days. They are partly still in preparation and will be presented in our next press releases.
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