Sydney Blu talks to us about #23by23 and her fight for greater representation of female artists.
After years as a prominent figure in the western dance music scene, Canadian artist Sydney Blu has joined the fight against the ever-growing issue of gender inequality in dance music.
Her platform 23by23, was created with the aim of increasing the percentage of women on record label rosters after discussions with others in the industry. The platform joins the likes of Shesaid.so, Keychange, Femme House, We Are Moving the Needle, in helping push the industry towards true gender equality. Since its launch, the platform has been supported by artists and organizations around the world including Ableton, Native Instruments, Beatport, LabelRadar, Lp Giobbi, DJ Rebekah, Tini Gessler, Eli & Fur, Maxinne, Baby Weight, VNSSA, Joyce Muniz, Michelle Sparks and more.
The campaign has run remix contests and partnered with labels like with Toolroom, HE.SHE.THEY, SOMA Records, Insomniac Records, Circus Music, Desert Hearts, Anjunadeep and Anjunabeats, Club Sweat, Pokerflat Recordings, Hospital Records, REALM Records, and more.
Sydney’s work on the platform-although time consuming by her own account-is starting to bear fruit via the platforms contests. Despite this, barriers are still present via influential figures who chose to distance themselves from the conversation. Regardless, Sydney’s quest continues, and her passion to help foster a better, safer, and fairer space for women in the industry is leading to something bigger than she had originally planned.
Let’s start at the beginning. Can you give us an overview of the project and what you hope to achieve?
Yeah, #23by23 started in December 2021. It was supposed to be more of a public relations campaign when we started a discussion around the fact that so few women, trans, and non-binary artists were signed to dance record labels. I felt the need to start the discussion, because there was so much conversation happening around DJ lineups that no one was talking about the labels and production.
In my opinion, the root cause of DJ lineups being so unequal was due to the record labels not signing as many women and gender non-conforming artists. Ultimately, I believe that if the record labels equalize, everything else will follow suit. The more you get signed to big record labels, the more you get known as an artist. Then you’re more likely to get an agent and a manager, which will help you get a better position on a festival or a nightclub, etcetera.
That’s basically where it all came from when we started. It was like this campaign with all these different things we were going to do. On the launch weekend we had a livestream as well as talks which focused around the topics of getting signed to labels.
We also launched with a remix contest where we partnered with Native Instruments. Our first remix contest was with Toolroom. It went really well. Maxinne was the artist that was remixed. We decided to start doing remix contests throughout the year, and they were going so well that we quickly focused all our energy into them.
The remix contests were great because we were able to actively help solve the problem of women not being signed to big record labels. We would run these remix contests, and then at the end of every month, three girls would be picked to potentially be on the label. They would also win these amazing prizes from Native Instruments. We just kept going with it and it basically became the format of our entire platform. Everything was centered around these remix contests.
Eventually it started to grow, and the community grew with it. Initially, we were in a group on this program called Metapop which has since shut down. Now we’ve moved over to Discord, but we have a community of a few hundred women and gender non-conforming artists who enter the contests every month.
We do the contests with a bigger dance label every month. It’s good that we’re doing them with more known labels, because it generates more interest in people entering. A lot of new artists have been discovered this way. Since we started, I’ve seen some of these women go on to have pretty successful up and coming careers. In total, I think we have signed 45 women to labels through these contests. It’s really rewarding to see how far we have come in a year and a half. It’s pretty crazy!
How do you think it’s going so far? Do you feel you are on track with things?
As of recently, I feel like I want to take the focus away from making that goal because ultimately, our remix contests wont change the industry. But, by running these remix contests, we’ve been able to contribute to the percentage of female producers being signed. In addition to that, we are opening a conversation that is now happening across the industry to raise the percentage and to equalize the record label rosters more.
The idea was 23% or more by the end of 2023, but we don’t have accurate data on how many women are currently signed. When we started, it was really low, something like 2 to 5%, and that was based off a study that was done on the number of female production credits.
I’m not exactly sure if it was how many women were actually signed, or how many women make up the production or technical world, but either way it was around 5% when we started, so I definitely think the percentage has gone up. Do I have a way of measuring it now? Not really, but I definitely see new girls being signed to record labels, and it’s really rewarding to see.
What obstacles do you feel are in your way, and have you discovered any that you weren’t aware of before you started?
Yes, there’s been a few obstacles. This really depends on the audience of the record label to be honest, but there have been certain situations where some men have been offended that they couldn’t enter the contest. They were fans of the record label and felt like it was discrimination. I think that’s unfortunate.
We are now on this website called LabelRadar after moving from Metapop due to it shutting down. The website has hundreds of remix contests that are continuously running. It’s like Metapop except it’s less about groups, and you can just straight up enter the contest. For us, we made a rule that if you’re female, trends or non-binary, you can enter.
There’s so many contests running on LabelRadar, but we just run one a month, and that’s it. They’re for our community, and anybody who wants to join our community that are women, trans or non-binary. All we want to do is provide a safe space for women to feel comfortable to enter these contests.
I think there’s a lot of fear amongst women to put themselves out there because it’s so male dominated, and this is why we want to make them feel comfortable entering these contests and having our own community.
On our discord channel we offer Q&A’s. We want to help the women along their production journeys and not feel intimidated by past situations many women have found themselves in with other men in the studio, which is sometimes the case.
I think it’s unfortunate that any male would be offended that they can’t enter a remix contest for a group of women or a women’s community, because if you go on to label radar, every other contest on there is for everyone. Men, women, everything. This is one remix contest where we’re trying to give an opportunity to women who have a lot of barriers against them and are severely underrepresented in the production and record label space. To be offended by that is really unfortunate, I think.
Every once in a while, that does happen. It doesn’t happen every month, and it doesn’t happen on every contest. But it has happened on occasions where we’ve had a record label with a large male fanbase. When things like that happen, I think it’s time for the label to look inward. If your fan base is getting this offended, then maybe it’s time to see how many women you’re actively involving in your community.
We would never have that kind of issue with HE.SHE.THEY for example, because they’ve made it very clear that their record label is a safe space for all genders.
Have you seen any models in the industry that you feel have gotten it right?
As I mentioned before, HE.SHE.THEY are a great example. I think they’re already at 50/50 in their representation. They represent everybody. There’s a lot of people who could take inspiration from them. Club Sweat is another good example. They’re an Australian label. I think we’re doing our second contest with them this summer. They are pretty close to 50/50 too.
Obviously, it’s 2023 now, so what’s the plan after this?
I think we’re going to do an internal research project with AFEM (Association for Electronic Music) which we aim to complete when the year is over. In addition to that, we’re going to turn into a permanent nonprofit organization.
We’re trying to get funding now, and I would like to change the name to something more permanent. There are many great organizations championing this like Key Change, Femme House, She Said So, and She is the Music. We would like to turn into an organization like those whilst continuing our remix contests and everything else.
I didn’t plan to make this into something that I was going to do forever. Originally, we planned to do this for a year and see how it went. It takes up a lot of my time, but it’s worth it because I’ve helped a lot of people and slowly our team has grown.
We’re planning on hiring some interns in the next couple of months. We are also planning on funding from multiple sources so that we can turn this into a full-time organization like LP Giobbi’s Femme House. She’s got a permanent nonprofit there, and they do Ableton courses and stuff which is something that we also want to do.
What is it like trying to talk to others in the industry about this issue? What has the reaction been when you have spoken about it?
It’s mixed. Sometimes, male driven labels will hesitate on whether they want to involve themselves. A common response will be something like: “We don’t really choose music based on gender; we choose it based on music.” And honestly, that should be unanimous across the board. The music should come first. That being said, it doesn’t mean you can’t also have the conversation about why your label roster is all dudes, you know?
You should still be having a conversation on top of making music your number one priority, and you should still be talking about how you can diversify. You can do the two things at once. I just gave a couple examples of labels that are already doing it. There are other labels on top of that who’s percentages are increasing because they’re having the conversation.
When I was at IMS, I did a panel with LP Giobbi, Stephanie Lafera, who is the head of WME Electronic, and Tia from Future Female sounds. During the panel, we were talking about all the stuff that I’ve just talked about, plus they were talking about lineups and male gatekeeping and all that kind of stuff. The audience was great, and people were listening to us, but it was primarily a lot of women. Stephanie made a comment that all of the gatekeepers were at the pool drinking while we were sitting and talking about what needed to change in the industry.
One of the things that we suggested was that we would potentially have a panel with ourselves and the gatekeepers. That would be a more interesting conversation to have next year because if they don’t get involved, then things probably won’t change much? I think things could get a lot better a lot faster if they were a little bit more involved.
What do you think the reason is for that disparity?
Electronic music is becoming more of a professional business now than it ever was, but prior to that, the independent record labels were run by people who would sign their friends, play each other’s parties and stuff like that.
I don’t think there was necessarily any intention to squeeze out girls, gender non-conforming artists, people of color, or LGBTQ2s+, but that’s what happens when you’re not paying attention to the way things are being presented. I think that that’s what happened.
It’s a much more difficult of a conversation for me to talk about the generational problems in society that have led girls into less technical roles. But there is actual data and research that has done. There’s a woman named Victoria Armstrong who has done research on the issue. Boys and girls as children are led into different kinds of roles, and that’s ultimately how a lot of men end up in technical roles and women don’t. They’re pushed into different directions such as Arts, English, History, and those kinds of things.
I haven’t done a lot of research on that myself, but it makes sense. I don’t remember ever being encouraged to get into technical roles at all when I was younger, so I find that it makes sense that things have ended up this way. When children are raised a certain way, it ends up creating a situation where the direction you go in and what you’re interested in are based around your peers and where they are doing. I think that’s what happened when a lot of people were younger.
I don’t think that people were paying too much attention to diversity 10 years ago. Now however, the conversation is being had, and I think that 10 years from now, things will be very different.
How can people get more involved with the project?
You can go to our website. Everything to join our community is there including information on our Discord. All the contests we run are posted in the Discord, and we are having various conversations within the community about different technical subjects. There’s a room where you can share your music without worrying about entering contests, and people will give feedback and stuff.
We would love for more female and gender non-conforming artists to join our group and enter the contests because you never know. You could place third and win a synthesizer or something, so you might as well try.
