Changing Who Gets Heard — Ebonie Smith on Music, Tech, and Power in the Music Industry

Who gets heard in the music industry—and who gets left out?

In this episode of She Creates Noise, producer, engineer, and Gender Amplified founder Ebonie Smith shares how she’s building a more open, collaborative, and equitable future for music—from the studio to the systems behind it.

Ebonie Smith discusses her production work and origin story. From Memphis, where hymns and call-and-response shaped her music, to New York and LA, where Grammy-nominated projects and Broadway musical recording filled her credits, Ebonie shows how leadership, faith, and enlightened approach to  engineering can create an open environment in the studio and elevate the artist’s voice. We spotlight her journey  and follow the choices that built her reputation: invite artists to the console, demystify the gear, and treat technology as a shared canvas and support system instead of an obstacle.
 
 The story doesn’t stop at credits. While building records for Hamilton, Janelle Monáe, and Cardi B, Ebonie launched Gender Amplified, first as a college thesis, then as a movement. She uncovered a vibrant, often unseen network of women producers and DJs, then built platforms where their work could be found, hired, and celebrated. We dig into why charts show where power sits—not where value lives—and how storytelling, community, and access can shift who gets heard and who gets paid. The conversation widens into the AI surge and why fear isn’t a strategy: audio jobs will change, and those who learn new tools, refine taste, and lead collaboration will thrive.
 
 From her Recording Academy leadership to her AES keynote, Ebonie pushes a provocative idea: artists should build the tech that moves their art. Distribution solved a problem and created a gap between creators and their money. Her playbook points to ownership—of masters, publishing, audience, and the rails themselves. We talk indie wins, sustainable revenue, and the courage to design your own ecosystem. Then we look ahead: more records, daily piano, new content, and Gender Amplified camps in New York and LA that bring gender-expansive producers into rooms built for their success.
 
 Subscribe, share, and leave a review to help more creators find these stories—and tell us: what would you build to put artists back in control? https://www.instagram.com/eboniesmithmusic

Transcript

Welcome And Show Mission

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Hi, you're listening to Sarah Nagurney, and welcome to She Creates Noise, a new podcast spotlighting women who power the music industry, coming to you from New York City. Now, if you don't know me yet, here's a little background. I'm a songwriter, producer, manager, educator, and mentor. I've written platinum-selling songs, had tracks on Grammy nominated records, and released music on both major and independent labels. I've been a jazz singer, a jingle singer, toured with big bands, and became a pop artist, and I've performed at festivals across the US, Europe, and Asia. These days I focus on writing with and developing young talent. In the coming weeks, I'll be pulling back the curtain on the music industry's female change makers. Some are close friends, others I'm just getting to know, but all have reshaped the business in profound ways. My goal here is to help listeners better understand how the music business really works and just how instrumental women behind the scenes have been. You'll hear from both sides of the desk artists, producers, managers, label executives, lawyers, women making things happen, often without the spotlight on them. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Now let's dive in. In celebration of Black History Month, she creates noise, honoring some of the incredible women of color who've joined us this season, including Karen Vizy, the previous episode, and today I'm excited to spotlight the work of Ebony Smith. We've also had other wonderful women of color in the first season. Now, Ebony is an award-winning producer, audio engineer, and creative leader whose story begins in Memphis, Tennessee, where church, community, and a deep musical lineage shaped her voice early on. Raised in a working-class household and surrounded by strong women, she carried that foundation first to New York City, which is where I got to know her, and eventually to LA, where she's become one of the most respected behind-the-scenes forces in music. Her credits are extraordinary. Hamilton, Janelle Monet's Dirty Computer, Cardi B's Invasion of Privacy, and soundtracks for Dear Evan Hansen and Jagged Little Pill, along with Grammy-nominated work on My Black Country, featuring Alison Russell, Brianna Giddens, and Value June, who was a guest on the previous season. Whether she's producing, engineering, or working in the AR level, Ebony brings emotional depth, technical excellence, and a deep respect for the artist's voice. Beyond the studio, Ebony is also a catalyst for real change. She's the founder and president of Gender Amplified and a senior leader within the recording academy, including having been the co-chair of the Producers and Engineers Wing. Her work continues to push the industry towards greater equity, access, and representation. In 2024, she delivered the AES show Keynote, cementing her role as one of the leading voices shaping the future of audio and culture. I'm so thrilled to have her today. Please welcome Ebony Smith. So it's lovely to have Ebony Smith here today. Thank you so much for joining us. Yes, I'm glad to be here. Yeah, it's great. And um, I know we met a while back uh and on Zoom, in fact, because I had a song camp and you kindly participated, and that was uh during COVID, actually. It's called Songs Across the Water. It was, you know, I felt very impressed by everything you've done, and I'm so glad that you you're here with us today. Uh, I just want to talk a little bit about, you know, how you got here. Uh now you grew up in Memphis, surrounded by the city's incredible musical legacy and a community of resilient women. How did that environment shape your identity as both an artist and a leader? Please tell us a bit about your journey.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Well, absolutely. I'd first like to say thank you for having me. It's an honor to be a part of your podcast. Sure. Um, in terms of my beginnings, I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. And I guess my first musical inspirations were in church. So I grew up with three mothers. My mother, my great-grandmother, and my grandmother. And my great-grandmother was the person who introduced me to church. And as a Baptist church member, we spent a lot of time learning hymns, learning call and response. And I think that's where so much of my musical understanding was shaped. And from there, obviously, Memphis is a major blues center as well as an RB center, hip-hop. So that was really my next introduction to popular music, commercialized music, much of it from local artists, and from artists who were very successful in the region. But then also a lot of music was being imported from New York and California, which were two major capitals for pop music, and as well as some records that were coming from Miami. Right. So were you able to do this, do music in schools and when you were young? School. School was a major influence. But I spent a lot of time playing basketball as a young person. So music was really silently a passion. It was not something that was in the frame at the time. Although I did take piano lessons for a short period of time in the third and second grade. Music really didn't become a major focus until college. A professional pursuit until then.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

So I I know you're saying going to church was very important. Or are you still a very spiritual person? Is that something that carries through?

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yeah, I mean, my faith in Jesus is still center um to my life.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

So Yeah, I mean, I was I was reading somewhere that people with faith just tend to be happier people. You know, they they have something higher to believe in, and I think it it seems to also fuel a lot of wonderful music.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

I would argue that everybody is a faith-based person. It's just where the faith is placed. We all do something religiously. If you wake up every day and you brush your teeth, if you take a shower every day, if you make coffee every day, then you're religious. You have a religious sensibilities. It's just about where that religion is placed. Whereas some people may get up and first thing they make a cup of coffee, I first thing I pray, I stretch, I do devotional. Um, so but I I firmly believe that everybody is religious. It's whether the religion is working for you or not, is what determines, I think, whether or not a person is truly gaining benefit from what they do religiously. That's great that you do you pray every morning. Try to every morning and in the evenings.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Just looking at your uh work has spanned so many different areas, um, from doing some Broadway stuff, Hamilton to Dirty Computer, an invasion of privacy. I I saw you also work with Sergio Simpson, which is another very interesting lane, and Valerie June, who I just had on the podcast. She's actually on a current episode. You're a senior producer and audio engineer in Atlantic Records since 2013, which is also very impressive. When you step into the new creative environment, uh, what's your process for earning trust and bringing out the best in artists? How do you sort of go into a room and just take over? Like I know you do, like I'm sure you do. Or actually speak their speak to their voice or encourage them to express their voice.

Finding Music After Basketball

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Right. I was recently in a session with some artists, and I turned to them as the control room typically in a recording studio is often set up the same way. It's not a ton of creativity in terms of design, um, where there's typically a major console or some hub for computers and gear, and then there's a space in the back, usually with chairs or couches, and the hierarchy is designed through that aesthetic. The engineer or the producer will sit by the technology helming the process, and the artists will sit in the back, the songwriters will typically sit in the back. And one of the things that I did in this session is I said to the artists, I turned to them as soon as we started working, and I said, just come up here. I don't, there's no hierarchy. Right, come on, hang out. Yeah, like look at what I'm doing and ask whatever questions. We're collaboratively building this sonic world and experience, and it's important for you to see what I'm doing. It's not a mystery, and certainly the technology, I don't believe, is above any songwriter or artist. So I think that helps to earn trust. It definitely creates a sense of respect, mutual respect for each other's talents. That's an important thing.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

I know we didn't talk about your education, but you went to Barnard and then later did a music and technology course at NYU. When you were at Barnard, did you find music there? Was that kind of part of the journey or?

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Absolutely. So I think that was really what kick started everything because for the first time I was away from home and really able to explore my musical interest with no intervention by my parents who were pretty adamant about me being a doctor or a lawyer. This is what I've heard a lot.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Yes, me. I had the same thing, yes. So you could go do your thing because you weren't home, basically.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Yeah, I could do my thing. So I started exploring and taking classes. I took diatonic theory at Columbia University and chromatic theory. I started also doing some musical theater, and I started taking courses at the Columbia Computer Music Center, which taught me all about music production techniques and recorded music techniques. I also had a campus job, I think, which gave me the best foundation any producer or engineer can have. And I was an audio tech and audiovisual specialist on campus. So I had the responsibility of managing, maintaining all the audiovisual equipment, moving it around campus, learning how it worked, how it functioned, using mixers, microphones, coiling cables. It was the best possible training.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

It sounds like a pivotal moment for you. That really was when you're kind of like, hey, I think I want to do this.

Earning Trust In The Studio

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Because it was it was the first time that audio and music converged. I'd never seen those two things aligned. And there was a technological component to something that I already had such a passion for, which was music, and technology was also a great curiosity, and it was just kind of the only thing that could hold my attention before that. There was just things that I could just do and didn't have to think very much about. I could write very well. Um I think in some ways I took that for granted. I was good at public speaking, I took that kind of for granted. I was good at sports, kind of, but when music and tech came along, I really had to work for that. Like that, I don't know that a person just is great at producing records, which is just like naturally great at tech or audio tech. I had to really work for that understanding, and so it held my attention. It was it was um a challenge.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Also, for a woman, it was very unusual, and for women of color even more so, I would think. Did you find any conflict there, or would you just put put your head towards it and that was it?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Did you ever have to think twice? I think for me personally, I didn't think twice about it really. It was just something that I knew that I cared for and I liked to do, and I didn't really see any barriers. And you have to understand, I was at Barnard College, so Barnard is and was a very unique experience because you're taking all the top young ladies from across the world, and you're the some of the brightest minds. I mean, to this day, I've never met girls smarter than in mass the women that I went to school with at Barnard, and they've since all gone on to change the world, they've won Oscars and Grammys, they Nobel Peace Prizes, you know, like in mass, I'd never been around such smart women ever. And so I was in an environment where there was really nothing we could collectively couldn't do. Like, so I never underestimated my ability to do the job, even though I didn't see other women who were doing audio, I saw so many other women who were just dangerously intelligent. So I was just in an environment where we were encouraged to push ourselves, and we were encouraged to believe in ourselves as academics and as scholars. And so, really, it was just an extension of the indoctrination of the space.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

What a wonderful experience. That's that's so great to hear that you just you felt like there was nothing that could stop you. I mean, in the few years I've known you, I I I remember thinking, and you were in your 30s, mid-30s, I guess, when I met. You felt like I was in the company of someone much older and much more experienced. You just carry yourself with such clarity and strength. It was really impressive. So much to cover, but I wanted to talk a little bit about, to that point, gender amplified, which is something you began as a student at Barnard. And you were looking for a community that you certain certainly seems like you found to some extent, but you were looking to help gender expansive producers get more opportunity. And what has surprised you most about how that organization has grown and evolved? Something you started as a student, and it's this big thing now.

Barnard To Audio Tech Foundations

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Right. It's well, thank you, first of all. Um, just for reviewing that history. I to be honest, I'm so in the thick of thinking about it. I've just gotten off two calls um talking to artists, talking to our podcast producer, uh, talking to my assistant who's you know doing work for us, our executive assistant. So, in some ways, I have to be reminded about all that we have done and all that we are doing. I am tremendously grateful for the times that we've been in the organization, and the genesis of it, it really was a bit of a germ of an idea that came from a woman who was helping me with my senior thesis project, which I decided to conform to an analysis of women in music production because that's all I wanted to do. And I went to my senior thesis advisor and I told her, Listen, like, if I can't write this on something I care about, I'm gonna drop out of school. So she gave me the green light. They didn't want to lose you. Yeah, she was like, listen, Godspeed. So I found an organization called phemex.com that was started by a woman named uh Tashelle Shamash Wilkes. Now, this is the thing about gender amplified. I think folks think that I started it from a place of lack or thinking about lack, and in some ways, there is some merit to that assumption because I did write my thesis on women producers in hip hop, and there was a scarcity there. There was certainly a disparity, and that was addressed in my thesis. But I think it's important for people to understand that when I started my thesis research, I found a myriad of organizations just like gender amplified that were all over New York City, that were organized by women, that were doing incredible work. And Tichelle's organization, phemix.com, was one of them. And she introduced me to all these women who were producing records, all these female DJs, and there was this burgeoning community of women in New York who were doing beat battles, who were producing records, some of the biggest records on the planet. There was shout out to DJ Coco Chanel, who was producing Saigon at the time, who was signed to Atlantic Records at the time. She was also a major DJ on I forget which radio station it was, it was a syndicated radio station. I mean, Tishelle introduced me to all these women, and there was this culture there already. It was it was a bit invisible, it was hidden. So it wasn't as known about it. It wasn't as known, but there were all these women producing, and in some ways, I wanted to be one of them, I wanted to be one of them, and but I also just felt like it was a community that I should be contributing to. And to shelle was actually the one who gave me the impulse. She she challenged me directly. She said, You have resources at Columbia University that I don't have, and that certainly these other women don't have. And she said, You should do a conference. She was like, You should turn your senior thesis work into a conference, and if you do that, I will help you. Wow. And she kept her word. So you did a conference as a student? I did a conference, and it was we this was April 14th, 20s, 2007, and it was so inspiring that it was from that that I realized that there was something to gender amplified as a concept, but even more as a movement. And um, and we've only seen the beginning of it. I mean, what what I have a vision for is so much larger than anything we've accomplished today.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

I I found out about it. It was, I think it was an AIMP event in New York City. I'm gonna guess around eight years ago, something like that. Could it have been 10? Eight eight-ish years ago. And I remember I went to another event of yours. It was the first time I ever saw Splice. Yeah, it was probably early-ish days of Splice. Again, I'm guessing somewhere around eight years ago, and and I use Splice all the time now. Yeah, as a songwriter, it's really a great tool, but I'd never even heard of it. And I was like writing things down. I was like, wow, what is that? Yeah, you had all these women producers playing. This was not at the AMP event, it was another event later on. Uh and then I used to get emails from you about job opportunities and all kinds of great information.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Yeah, thank you. We've grown and we're still building out, you know, our team. I try to tell people all the time if if you if you'd like to join us, please join us. There's we need so much. And um, but we're we're growing very quickly and doing as much as we can to not only serve women and gender expansive producers, and that's great, but I I think their stories, it's the highlighting of the stories for me that is the most significant contribution uh that we've made and wanting to continue to highlight those stories of all of these women who are out there. There's like thousands, hundreds, I mean, so many. Like this idea that they're they're not out there because they're not on the charts is insane. Like that's not to me, that's not really the the conversation. That's not really the point. You know, they may not be on the charts, but a lot of people aren't on the charts. It's not really, I think that has less to do with their value.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

So that's not a major barometer in your opinion. It's it's I mean, that is something the Annenberg study talks about that, you know, what the percentage is. It's 27 to 1, and that's you know, men, male producers to women producers in the top 100.

Gender Amplified Origin Story

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Right. I think that that is a very important metric and it's something that should be studied because it shows us where the power is centralized. And I do think it. Matters to analyze where the power is in music, especially when it comes to rights, ownership, equity, the commercialization of musical ideas, and who has the access to the power and the resources to disseminate messages in mass to the public and to society at large, because music is not just, especially commercialized music, is not just entertainment. It's instructional. So what gets into the music essentially gives instruction to the population. It gives instruction to the populace. So it matters that there's diversity in terms of uh the curation, the making and the dissemination of musical products. So we need more women in those spaces. Don't misunderstand me in that we don't need more women in the spaces making the top records. We absolutely do. Yes. But we also have to be careful in that we don't minimize the women who are not in those spaces and render them practically invisible because they're not charting or because they're not winning Grammys. Some of the best artists are unknown undiscovered. And it matters to reach to them because they deserve to be heard and their stories are just as significant. And how do we get them to the charts if we never analyze them from where they are?

unknown 23:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

I like this point a lot. I was actually at a recording academy event last night here in New York City, and I was talking to a lot of women producers and a lot of artists that produce themselves. It it does seem to be, you know, more typical now than it certainly than I ever remember it being. Am I just wrong and it's been going on and I didn't know about it?

SPEAKER_00 23:48

I would I would venture to say there's, I don't think it's a wrong. I think I think you're correct, and right? I think that the women have always been there and they have always been creating, but also we are in the midst of a technological expansion which has resulted in access to creative tools and certainly access to instant, instantaneous dissemination of musical ideas. You and I can make something right now and put it on Spotify, you know, right now. And that is something that has, I guess, been the case for not quite 20 years yet.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

So we're thinking about um or you know, whatever it started out simply in logic, etc. Those true, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:37

So this is the first time I was I would venture to say in all of music history, and certainly certainly recorded music history, where people have been able to share to a massive community, uh, with very few barriers in and and roadblocks in their way. Good news, bad news, of course, because there is such a glut. Yeah, there's a lot of music going up on the bottom of my hands. And then the AI glut, which is another thing. Right. How do you feel about that? Because I think I I love that everybody can be a music maker now. I do like that. I like that everybody has the tools, but it also makes it difficult, I think, for some of the people who are trained and learned and who have put so much into their work. I think it makes it difficult when the when the pool of applicants, if you will, has expanded so wide. I mean, so many songs being uploaded to distribution services every day, so many people making music every single day or generating it.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

I think it's wonderful, and I think it's also a a problem. And and I was talking to someone who's in the industry on the like the sort of DSP promotion world, and he was concerned about the flood of AI music because these small companies, these large companies like TuneCore and CD Baby, etc. are no fault of their own. They can't police everything that's coming in, and some of it is AI music. And it's definitely a concern for real creatives, I think.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

I think I've seen something, some solution where they're saying AI music should have its own space, it should have its own services where it can be distributed, and human-made music um should have its spaces. But the the issue there is that so many humans are using partially creating their music now with AI generative tools. Yeah. So it's a little complicated. I don't know. Yeah, large story.

unknown 26:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

I think we're just at a turning point. I think it's just uh about accepting that uh the technology is here and the technology is undefeated. You know, once it's here, it's here. It's not going back in the bag, that's right. Going back in the bag, yeah, cats out of the bag.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

You've taken on significant leadership roles at the recording academy, although you recently left it. You had been the co-chair of the producer and engineers wing. From that vantage point, what did you see needs to be addressed?

Visibility Beyond The Charts

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Right. It was such an esteemed privilege, and I want to give a thank you publicly to Tammy Hurt, who um is a trustee and recommended me for that role. And it was really a great education. I think one of the biggest issues that plagues the music business at large currently is that it has not developed the technological platforms that underpin the success of its industry. So the technology corporations that have stepped up and solved a major problem for the music business, specifically a distribution problem, digital distribution problem, that continues to be an issue for the music business. That industry that has solved that problem has actually, in solving the problem, added a burden to the business, which has been a burden that artists have primarily carried. And songwriters and producers, the folks who I like to think of at the beginning of the supply chain, the creatives are at the kind of like the rank and file of the music business, and they're responsible for the intellectual content, the intellectual ingenuity that goes into the product. And once it is productized, it is then disseminated by groups, conglomerates, individuals who do not have a have a stake in the same intellectual pursuit as the artist, but are thus responsible for managing the rights and the intellectual property. So sometimes there's a disconnect between those two groups of folks. So I personally think that because of that, artists should take on the labor of developing tech. I think that there's a middleman issue in the music business.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

As in major labels and publishers, I mean, is that what you're pointing at?

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Anybody that's in the in the anybody in between artists and money, let's put it like that.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

And even the distributors, too.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Anybody in between artists and money who don't make music, I don't care who it is. Artists have to make the tech. And I really think that sounds like such an astronomical ask because I'm an artist. I don't want to make tech, I don't want to build a tech company. But I think it's really important for artists to take back art and the commerce that it generates. And I think it's going to always be a skewed economy. Um, if that's not the case. And I would like to give an example of Jay-Z, for example, who I think made an excellent effort with title. Uh, in the very beginning, the only issue is that there weren't more artists stepping up to do that same kind of thing, right? Because that's what creates competition in the marketplace. And what we've seen Jay-Z go on to do with Rock Nation, and which was his work towards distribution over the years and the work that he's done with his platform, but what he what he's learned from his time at title, I think speaks volumes to how artists have to continue to step up. It matters that artists are driving tech. And they're and to be a successful artist in the music business, one has to have a business acumen. And there are lots of really talented, very tech forward artists out there, like like Jay-Z, like Will I Am, like Dr. Dre, who have to start stepping up and building technology platforms of their own so as to be equitable, proprietary, and useful, not just for this generation of creators and consumers, but for those who are to come. If I see any major issue, I think it's a conceptual one. It's a conceptual one that says the artists aren't technical and artists aren't business savvy, and artists have to take their intellectual content and pair it to some conglomerate or some other individual to see it flourish. And that to me is a problematic conception, and it is one that has been so pervasive among artists and just pervasive in the music business.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Yeah, at this recording academy thing, we talked about it last night, it was an indie party. So it's four artists that are doing it themselves. I mean, like Alaove, who she wasn't there, but just talking about how much she's done as an independent artist without a major label, and that that is happening more and more, though not on the scale that you're talking about with Jay-Z, but still a lot of artists are in charge of their own means of production, as we were saying, because they can make a song and put it out, but they're not making the impact that the major label artists are making, as a rule, occasionally, but not not usually.

Tools, Access, And The AI Flood

SPEAKER_00 32:52

Because they're at you know, seven or eight million monthly streams, that's not significant to a major label. Or somebody has seven million monthly streams, that's not significant necessarily to a major label, but that can be exceptionally significant income. Yes, independent artist. And so when you say who's doing better or worse, there are artists like Nick D, like LaRussell, like Russ, who own a hundred percent of master, a hundred percent of publishing, who don't have to tour, who have built exceptional business infrastructure for themselves, and who own their audiences. It's not a label, you know, putting their records on a playlist that actually has them generating in generating income and listens. It's the marketplaces that they built up on platforms, whether it be YouTube, TikTok, X, Twitch, you know, all of these platforms where these artists own the ecosystem. They have so much influence over their audience. That's what's driving. It's not playlist placements, it's not um co-signs or even being associated with a major label. You have some independent artists that have a larger following online than some of the biggest worker labels in the world. They have more followers, you know. So who's really in control here by numbers? And I think the one of the one of the wonderful things about social media is we actually get to see numbers. You really get to see engagement, you really get to see like the influence that independent artists have. And there are more and more tools being developed specifically for independent artists so that they can build their own businesses and build their own ecosystems. And I am saying simply that while they're doing that, they should be also thinking about building their own tech. Take your music off spot. I mean, if you're doing that, we'll then that many monthly lists, take your music off Spotify, build your own app.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

There's a lot, there's a lot of reasons to do that, but we won't we won't get into that right now. I just was thinking about how you had been the keynote speaker for AES in 2024, speaking to thousands of audio professionals. What did you want people to take away from that?

SPEAKER_00 35:13

Right. So that talk was on artificial intelligence and music generation, AI music curation. That was the fall of 2024. Right at the beginning of the conversation around AI generated songs. I guess isn't it? And I think what I wanted to do was quell quite a bit of the fear and worry among audio professionals who didn't quite understand the landscape and who were quite frightened around the disappearance of audio jobs. And I would say that there's a lot of merit in being concerned about audio jobs going away because they will, but the jobs in audio will still exist, but they'll shift, they'll shift, right? So like with any major new technologies any major technology, the engineers will still be necessary, but they won't be operating how they have for the last 50 years. But that's been the case for a long time, right? What an engineer does now in 2025 is very different than what an engineer did in 2005. You know, you can't even get a you can't even really be an engineer like that if you don't auto-tune, right? If you right, so there was a major shift in the industry. There were a lot of engineers, for example, pushing back on that. And there are engineers who still push back on that, who don't feel like they didn't feel like they needed to learn the skill of how to use auto-tune. Singers should just be able to sing. Look, it's it's an economy at the end of the day, and the game is always supply and demand. And if you have a skill that can be useful in this era, you give yourself more opportunity to be in demand. And so I wanted to encourage, I wanted to be an encouraging voice in the sea of voices because I'd heard so much discouraging information, and I just wanted to provide a different perspective, and I wanted people going away from that talk, having engaged in a different train of thought. And and were you successful? How did people feel? Did you quell their fears at all, do you think? I don't know. I like to think that I said some things that resonated. And the fact that we're talking about it over a year later, I think speaks to that.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

There's definitely a lot of fear out there in general, every in every aspect of our lives, the good and the bad with AI, but you know, that's a whole other whole other conversation. I was thinking maybe just you could give me some thoughts on what you see is next for you and what's exciting to you, either project-wise or what's happening creatively out there.

Rethinking Power And Music Tech

SPEAKER_00 38:26

What what kinds of things are you exploring? I'm finding a lot of excitement just with online tools and content creation. And I'm enjoying that aspect of things. I've been creating content for gender amplified and uh started a new podcast, and I've been creating content for my own channels. And it's another lane that I'm embarking upon since I left Atlantic Records, and it's been very useful to me and very exciting and fun, time consuming. Uh, but I like to I hope that content is in my future, and obviously continuing to make records that's where my heart is, and a lot of piano, play piano as much as I can every day, and continuing to grow and study and grow as a musician, and you know, in a perfect world, get paid for those things. Um, gender amplified is 100% in my future as well. We have a camp in New York and we have another camp in LA. So we're continuing to truck along with our ambitions, bringing women and gender expansive producers together in spaces that are optimized for their success.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

It's great. Well, it's an exciting future. I'm always interested in what you're gonna do next. And I actually had someone who was in your one of your last camps, uh, convict Julie. I think I wrote to you about her. I think she's awesomely talented. Well, it's been lovely to have you. Thank you so much for making time available. And um, I just I'm gonna keep watching and listening and seeing where you're up to next.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Um, thanking enough of me to bring you on the platform. God bless.

SPEAKER_01 40:17

Appreciate it. Thanks so much. I'd like to thank today's sponsor, Herd City, the premier audio post-production company servicing the advertising, motion picture, and television industries right here in NYC. I'd also like to thank Antello, aka X O N, for singing the She Creates Noise theme that I wrote. Thanks for listening to She Creates Noise. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, rate, and share. I want to thank the team here: Blair Riley, Yelena Stevanovich, Emily Wilson, and the Master of Engineering and Grammy Willow Cooper and we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_03 40:57

She creates noise.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

She creates noise.

SPEAKER_03 41:03

She creates noise. We have voice. She creates noise.