How Streaming Reshaped Songwriters' Lives | Michelle Lewis, CEO of SONA.

Every song you stream makes money. Just not necessarily for the person who wrote it.

We’re joined by Emmy-winning songwriter and composer Michelle Lewis, whose credits span major pop cuts and television favorites, and who now leads one of the strongest songwriter advocacy efforts in the business as co-founder and CEO of Songwriters of North America (SONA).

Streaming didn't just change how fans listen—it fundamentally changed how songwriters get paid.  Michelle Lewis discusses the economics of modern music, the policies shaping songwriter income, and what needs to change if songwriting is going to remain a sustainable career.  

Michelle walks us through her path from growing up in New York with working-musician parents to making a living in music as a kid, then building a career that pivots from artist life to writing songs for other performers and eventually creating music for characters and story. We talk about what “contextual music” really means in TV and animation, why she refuses to dumb anything down for kids, and how finding the right creative lane can be the difference between burnout and momentum.

Then we get into the money and the policy: why the “songwriters are rich on royalties” myth won’t die, how YouTube and streaming reshaped the value of a song, and why the split between sound recording and composition revenue leaves songwriters behind. Michelle explains the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), what it was designed to solve, and why new threats like AI can dilute value all over again. We also dig into survival strategies for modern creators, the need to diversify skills, and why women investing in women can change who gets to build lasting careers.

If you care about songwriter rights, fair pay, streaming royalties, and the future of women in music, listen now, then subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review so more creators can find these conversations.

https://www.wearesona.com/

https://www.instagram.com/mlewey/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:03

She creates the voice. She creates the voice. She creates noise. She creates. She creates noise. She creates.

SPEAKER_04 0:21

Noise.

Season Two Wrap And Next Guests

SPEAKER_04 0:22

Hi and welcome to She Creates Noise. As we wrap up season two with Michelle Lewis, I want to take a moment to thank all of you for listening, sharing episodes, and supporting this growing community. This season featured an incredible range of voices and experiences. We explored songwriting and reinvention with Lauren Christie, artist advocacy and songwriter rights with Tiffany Redd, creativity and independence with songwriter-producer Ella Voss, leadership and purpose with Karen Veezy, and innovation in music production with Caro Duran. We also took an important look at mental health in the music industry with Kathy Olsen of Hollywood in Mind and Erica Ramon. Each conversation offered a unique perspective on what it takes to build a meaningful and sustainable career in music. Next season we'll have Sammy Ray, Laura Veltz, Golnar, Kashra Shahi, and Lauren Christie's going to come back with her two daughters who have a band, just to name a few that are coming up. I'm deeply grateful to every guest who generously share their stories, wisdom, and hard-earned lessons, and to each of you who continue to champion this podcast. She Creates Noise was created to shine a light on the women shaping our industry. And your support helps these conversations read a wider audience. Whether you've listened to one episode or every episode, thank you again for being part of this journey. We'll be back soon with more inspiring voices and stories. Until then, keep creating, listening, and keep making noise. Thanks so much.

Michelle Lewis Origin Story

SPEAKER_04 2:00

Michelle is an Emmy-winning songwriter, composer, and one of the leading advocates for music creators working today. She's written songs recorded by artists including Cher, Little Mix, and Andrew Day, while also building an acclaimed career in television with credits including Julian the Phantoms, The Loudhouse, and the Peabody Award-winning Doc McStuffins. She's also the co-creator, executive producer, and songwriter behind Kindergarten the Musical, continuing a remarkable run of creative success. But Michelle's story goes far beyond credits and awards. She's the co-founder and CEO of Songwriters of North America, otherwise known as Sona, a vital force fighting for fair pay, equity, and protection for songwriters in today's music business. At a time when so many creators feel unseen, Michelle has helped them turn frustration into action. Today we talk about balancing art and activism, what songwriters are really facing behind the scenes, and how women lead in changing this. And why creating change can matter just as much as creating songs. Please welcome Michelle Lewis. Hi, thank you for having me. So, Michelle, you've had success writing songs that live in very different worlds from pop records written for Amy Grant, Share a Little Mix, Kids Television with We the People, Little House, and Bubble Guppies, and a full series. And you've had Emmy winning creative work and real industry influence now through Sona. You're seeing it all through a different lens. Please tell us a bit about your journey.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Oh, sure. Um, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_04 3:35

It's really nice to be.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

It's really nice to be here in person. I live in Los Angeles, so it's fun that I'm have to be in New York right now. I love it. When you said you're gonna be in New York, I was thinking, can we do this live? Let's give it a try. I'm so glad you did.

SPEAKER_04 3:48

We haven't done that a lot. So we thank you for being a guinea pig. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

I'm so happy to be. I love that Union Square is right there, and yeah, we're in like one of my favorite parts of the city. Where I'm from here. I'm from New York. My mom was a jingle singer, still singing, that's great, and a jazz singer. My dad was a jazz musician. He's gone, but he when he was playing, he was in Sinatra's band. Yeah. So he was a jazz tenor player in Brooklyn. Both my parents were musicians their whole lives. And so I really grew up around like working musicians. That's great. Very lucky. And I started singing jingles myself when I was six years old. Wow. So I've been making a living as like a worker in the music industry since I was a little kid. And I I think that's what sort of put in my head that like people get paid to do music. The music isn't just an art, it's a craft, and it's it's a skill too, and that people should be compensated for it. So so when I started, I went to college, I went to college in the city as well. Not for music. I was actually, you know, did all kind of I was I was a religion major. Wow. And uh I wrote a lot of writer, I was really into science, all kinds of stuff. And then uh it wasn't until I graduated that I kind of got pulled back into music. I started writing songs for a group that I was in, like a girl group. And some of those songs started getting cut by artists. I didn't know that was a thing. Like I didn't know songwriting for other people was, even though my parents were musicians, I didn't realize that that was that writing songs and composing music was a job. But I loved that, and it was sort of my favorite part of the process between sort of having these dual lanes of being an artist myself and getting a I've been in, I think I've had like a like four different record deals with bands and different iterations and solo artists and stuff like that. And then also having publishing deals. It was sort of a race to see which one would kind of take first. The weird true story is that my first single to commercial radio with Amy Grant was on came out at the same day as my own first single as an artist. And you were competing with yourself. I was competing with myself and Amy Grant. And I think Amy won.

SPEAKER_04 6:12

That would make sense.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Yeah. It was also a time, it was 1998. It was just the same. Oh, another thing that came out on the same day is the singles. Hit me baby one more time. Oh no.

SPEAKER_04 6:25

Competition.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

And a paradigm shift, right? You know, really from like Will Affair, singer-songwriters, a lot of women. I was in a riot girl band at one point. You know, it was very empowered women. It was a lot of empowered women, and there wasn't just one on stage, you know, it was an entire festival, Will Affair, with women artists, and you've had radio stations playing more than one woman in a place in a playlist. And that just went like unlike one week in 1998. You pivot and you if you're if you think in music and you make music, you keep doing that. And so songs that I had written for myself started getting cut by other people that that had some dignity to it. And I moved to LA and became a songwriter full-time.

SPEAKER_04 7:12

So you did sort of make that pivot at that point. You sort of looked at what it was, what the temperature was, and you said maybe I should not be focusing on my artist career.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Yeah, well, it was a lot about dancing. Less about playing. I think, you know, during that time and I was still in my twenties, the teens were with a bat with a bunch of backup dancers were the thing that was kind of think about the like the turn of the millennium 1999, that those years with all the Christina Aguilera's and and Jessica Simpson and things like that. Very very young, very young and and you know, very sort of pop and dancey and things like that. And in my late 20s, I wasn't gonna start dancing.

SPEAKER_04 7:54

Yeah, I had a similar conversation with Lauren Christie about who was on the podcast earlier, just how she got she kind of said, Well, maybe I don't want to compete in this way anymore. Right. A very good move.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

It was a very good move. And she and I are really good friends. Yeah, she's lovely.

SPEAKER_04 8:16

They've written for artists, for characters, and for entire

Writing For TV And Characters

SPEAKER_04 8:20

worlds in television. What does writing for story and characters unlock creatively than writing for a traditional artist doesn't?

SPEAKER_00 8:28

It's such a great question. I I live in my imagination a lot, which is different from like living in your in your heart. And I feel like songwriting for artists is so emotional and personal. And I'm more in here of like stories and and what if this happens. And I I just I I I like thinking in story, and that goes back to like when I was little. And so I think once I sort of found that lane of writing for characters and for animation, and I think I am a little bit of a cartoon character myself, it was like a whole world just opened up, you know. I I wasn't just trying to guess what the next big pop star would be feeling about her latest heart rank. And I was now thinking about endless possibilities of stories and and Doc McSuffins. Doc McStuffins. Yes, like how to make a kid feel better. And you had little kids too at the end. I didn't yeah, exactly. I was around the time I had Jackson that I shifted into writing for animation.

SPEAKER_04 9:39

Yeah, I do I do know quite a few people who who did that. Yeah, I haven't had too much children's releases, a few, but it's a it's a great, it's certainly a great area.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, it's a great area, and it's almost like what I would say is that I've never really written children's music. I write contextual music. Right. You know, like I don't dumb down anything for kids. I think we keep the production values and the textures really high and and sophisticated, and and then the context lyrically will be more appropriate for an age group. Yeah, and also story-related. And story-related, and and you can be funny and descriptive and just can't be too sexy.

SPEAKER_04 10:18

Yeah, that makes sense. I've actually stayed writing with a lot of people that want to be sexy, so maybe I should reset

Authenticity And Finding Your Lane

SPEAKER_04 10:25

that. A lot of creatives, especially women, come into this business very talented, hopeful, but without a roadmap. What's your best piece of advice? And what was the turning point when you stopped waiting and started to say, this is what I'm doing?

SPEAKER_00 10:39

So my advice is that I wish even if someone had told this to me, I don't know if I would have listened. Because I think my publisher at the time did say this to me. Is I wanted to be so much like the coolest artist that I loved, that I was a fan of. But I'm nothing like them. And so when you can kind of own your nerdiness or your your superpower, whatever that is, you know, if you are sort of an emotional, dramatic person, then like, yes, walk in that sunlight or walk in that lane and and and emote and and do all that. But I think I wasn't that, and I was trying to be. And I wish I had sort of accepted the cartoon character that I am earlier so that I would have not thought it. Right. It's it's authenticity, always always wins.

SPEAKER_04 11:34

Yeah, I think so. And and I have a friend whose daughter is doing incredibly well. She just decided after quitting music for a while to come back. I won't say the name, but you'll have heard of them, and they're supporting Harry's styles. I mean, they went from like zero to a million really quickly. Yeah. And I'm it it's just because she's so authentic. She stepped into her lane. Yeah, she just was like, I'm doing this, and this is what I do, and I don't care if you like it.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

I mean there's something to say, there's really something to that flow state when you sort of find your flow of where you're where you're supposed to be. And I don't know the the trick is to get there sooner than later, but if you can get out of your own way, like because other people are gonna sort of throw things at you.

SPEAKER_04 12:22

Sound like this. You need to sound like that.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Yeah, yeah. But you, if you could get out of your own way and get into that that lane, the sooner you could do that, the better.

SPEAKER_04 12:31

Yeah. It is all about authenticity.

Why She Founded SONA

SPEAKER_04 12:37

So you built a career in storytelling, but you've also become a storyteller for songwriters themselves through Sona, and you are the CEO, that's amazing, and helped found it. When did it click for you that writing songs wasn't your only passion and you needed to step into advocacy?

SPEAKER_00 12:54

I I was a righteous kid. Always felt a little like had to do something. If there was something was wrong, if something was unfair. I'm the oldest child in my family, and with a a a tradition of very of matriarchal family that, you know, has a lot of women, strong women who speak out. And um, so I never really thought twice about, you know, speaking out. And you know, up until I'd say 15 years ago, songwriters had it pretty good. It was hard. It's always been hard. I'd never say that this is like a, you know, it's an easy job to do. While we were all just kind of in our studios and collaborating and writing songs and working and at our computers, a big thing happened, a big shift happened. Like say it started in 2007, 2008 with YouTube, really just creating if you have a choice between free or paying for something. Now you could just watch it for free, watch any video of any song for free. And so really, who was gonna choose or pay? Right. So um that sucked out about two-thirds of the value of the entire music industry. I think we're all just like, well, let's work harder, let's do more, you know, all that. And then streaming came along to sort of create a that subscription model. But in the sort of like divvying up the pie of streaming revenue that was starting to come out of all the subscriptions, songwriters and publishers were really hamstrong in fighting for what they could get because of all these regulations. I knew none of this. Right. I just knew that by the time I had a single in 2014 with Little Mix and was seeing the resulting royalties of it, comparing it to singles that I'd had 10 years prior, say with share or something like that, the apples to apples was terrifying. The value of a single in streaming was unsustainable. And my sort of righteous gene that I have kind of like started firing up. And and I I just started asking, what the fuck? You know, what's going on? And a lot of us were. A lot of us were sort of like looking at our royalty statements and swearing. And so we found a very potty mouthed lawyer, Dina LePolte, who explained the regulations and that songwriters' income are 75% regulated by the US government. Didn't know that. A lot of us who are in the found in the group of original co-founders were people who had sit like singles and hits and things like 10 years prior or 20 years prior and knew to kind of make a comparison to go, this is not a sustainable way to make a living anymore.

SPEAKER_04 15:41

That's because it sort of happened to you. You kind of went like, what's going on? We got to do something about this. Yeah. And you started getting active and you had a bunch of friends that I know. Yes, you know a lot of my friends.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yeah, you know, Pam Shane on the show. Pam was one of the original co-founders. Jack, Shelly Paigan, Kara Diaguardi, Eric Anori, Lauren Christie. Women focused. Women, yes, a lot of women, of course. And we looked around. There was some advocacy going on already here in New York and in in Nashville, but we didn't really see our own people doing this in LA.

SPEAKER_04 16:21

And so we started a group. Yeah, I remember it's very early beginnings. It seemed like a a nice small thing that you were starting out. Brendan Crintols.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Yes, Brendan. Brendan was our mama bear.

SPEAKER_04 16:32

Yeah, I said, well, that's very nice. But I mean, wow, you guys have become a powerhouse.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 16:37

You're a big deal.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

It was a friend group. It was 12 of us in Shelly and Adam's kitchen, our you know, bagels and coffee. And I think because we all really liked each other and we all really cared about our younger brothers and sisters who were coming up doing this. We just, you know, figured we had to either well, I know for me, if I had a choice between writing more songs or trying to fix the problem, I'd rather f try to fix the problem.

SPEAKER_04 17:08

That's very cool. It's sort of prides itself on supporting the right to fair pay, the ability to advocate for oneself, and the right to safety and equity in the workplace. It's often described as the closest thing songwriters have to reunion. What is the biggest misconception that people have about uh how songers make a living living in talk a little bit about the MLC and how the guys have been trying to, you know, reframe and and rewrite the rules here?

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Well, so I mean, I guess the misconception is that she ching. Yeah, right? Like oh, it's all the time.

SPEAKER_04 17:41

I mean, you know, I know finance guys that go, oh, it's cool, you live on royalties, right? It's like, uh, I used to.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Yeah, yeah, it's really shifted. And so that's a misconception, is that songwriters are the ones, you know, sort of like caching the trends. Making all them the balance of value between the sound recording and the copyright has now really shifted so that the sound recording is worth quite a bit more than the copyright in streaming. And streaming accounts for, I I won't say I I can't, I don't know the number of how much of the percentage of people, how they consume music. The majority, yeah. It's like a it's a big majority.

SPEAKER_04 18:22

And yeah, just explaining that to people who don't know, it's basically the the person that owns the recording versus the person who wrote the song, and the person that owns the recording, it's like 70%.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 18:33

Or less or more. Yeah. Because I mean, songwriters and publishers get like a really small piece of the publisher.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

It's there, and then stuff goes to the streaming services as well. So, you know, if you're talking about like we're and for streaming services, just so people know, I'm talking about Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Pandora, and YouTube music. They're all paying streaming royalties. They pay us through this thing called the Mechanical Licensing Collective, the MLC, which is what we uh Sona advocated to create. It's building and it's becoming more the balance is getting a little better, it's becoming more valuable, and it has over time and hopefully it will continue to, but now we have AI coming, which is really flooding the zone and sort of once again diluting value.

SPEAKER_04 19:18

Because there's all these songs were created by AI, and they most people don't know the difference, and that's a whole nother whole other we can we won't get too deep into that.

Diversifying To Survive Streaming

SPEAKER_04 19:30

You've mentored and advocated for so many creators. What's a pattern that you keep seeing amongst the up-and-coming? Maybe things you wish someone had, you know, identified earlier for you or for others?

SPEAKER_00 19:42

It's this trajectory. I came up after I'm thinking about women, right? And the women that I think of as like my role models and my mentors and their trajectories. And so you have like Holly Knight and Freddie Goldie and Diane Warren in this kind of time where the song was king or and queen, and you could just call Clive Davis and sing a melody or over the phone.

SPEAKER_04 20:10

Over the phone, and go in the office and play on the piano.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Play on the piano, throw out a title. And it was this like this, I would say a golden golden age of songwriting and songwriters. I miss that a little bit. I I came in just after that, but I know those people. I I consider them you're you yourself as well. I I think of that group of women and uh and a lot of men too, Alan Rich and dear, dear humans, so brilliant as the sort of job of songwriter. Yeah, that's who I think of. And that is a trajectory of writing with artists, finding your collaborators, having this sort of through line from the studio, creating the work into write to the AR people who are sort of the who were the gatekeepers and to the artist. That has completely shifted, I think, since streaming. And so that job that I came up sort of going, well, well, I'll do that. You know, if I do this, if I get cuts and then get cut singles and have these relations, develop these relationships with ARs and and have a manager and a publisher and all those things, I'll have that kind of career. But I think it really has shifted because of streaming, that there's not enough money in that ecosystem to support just songwriters. So what I tell young songwriters now is you really have to diversify. I think you really have to kind of not just songwrite, which is a shame because Do you mean get a side job or write for different kinds of projects? I mean do everything. Learn how to engineer, learn how to produce, be your own social media coordinator, create content, think about your brand as a song. You know, I these words coming out. I can't believe I'm saying it. But my Gen Z son, he's a musician, and and he doesn't think twice about it. He's not he doesn't scoff at the Instagramness of it all. Like he's just kind of like a native.

SPEAKER_04 22:12

Yeah, it's a it's a full-time job. It's got other characteristics than just being a good songwriter.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Yeah, and I think that you see you hear that in the quality of songwriting. I think it lowers the bar.

SPEAKER_04 22:26

So the more people can not do that, maybe they'd be better off.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Yeah, and and I think that's the where we should be as advocates and people who want to keep this job of songwriter a thing and keep it a job. We're the closest thing to a union and we want to maintain that livelihood. What we should be looking at is ways to support a rising class and a middle class.

SPEAKER_04 22:52

Well, in other countries, Scandinavia, Canada, they actually give artists money. I don't know if that's going to happen in this country. There are two artists I'm working with that are beautiful, talented people, but they're struggling with day jobs. And one of them was we were about to start recording. I think he's gone on the road with someone. I haven't heard from him lately, but I think he just needs to raise more money. It does conflict with your dream because survival and everything kicks in. Everything kicks in. But I know that's true for for you know forever, but it seems more true now.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

It's more true now because there's just less division between the sort of 1% and everybody else has just gotten so huge. You know, there's just a huge gap between people who are making all the money and everyone else is sort of like fighting over scraps.

SPEAKER_04 23:43

It's so interesting the way you're working in both creative spaces, high-level decision-making rooms, boards, policy, and also being a songwriter. How does that, how are you able to do that?

SPEAKER_00 23:53

I think one informs the other. They, you know, I think the reason I'm fired up to be on the ASCAT board, to be involved in the recording academy, and to run Sona two day jobs. And on my other day job, I am with songwriters and composers all the time, and I'm hearing what's going on for them. And that informs my advocacy. That's how I know that the job of just songwriting is sort of that's trains left the station. Like that's really not a thing anymore. Am I bumming you out? I feel like I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_04 24:30

No, no, no, no. I mean, I'm, you know, a bit older and it's uh it isn't as much of a a need for me to survive that way anymore. But it's definitely I'm still writing. Yeah, uh I did this podcast really to let people know about the great women like yourself that are doing so much in different ways from from being artists, songwriters, lawyers, producers, managers, whatever. Because I felt that there's especially for women, we haven't had a seat at the table in the way that we need to have. Yeah. But also it does bring up the fact that so that really artists and songwriters are having a lot of trouble staying in the game.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Yes. And

Investing In Women And Mentors

SPEAKER_00 25:09

so one of the things I think that needs to happen more is when you are, I'd say women have, you know, I don't say we have more responsibility, but I think we definitely are more aware of this responsibility, is when we do get to the point where we've had some success and we have some capital and some resources that we invested in other women. You know, I think that's the point of breakdown is what I see with my say equivalent who are male, they get the investment. Like so many men, pretty much almost all the ones that I know, once they have a couple hits, they have a publishing company and they start signing other writers and they get money from other from major publishers and they do a joint venture, and now they're not just a songwriter, they're scaling, they're at they can scale, and now they're a publisher as well. I can name on one hand the women that's happened to, and I would love to see more women. You know, my friend Kara Dean Guardi has done it. Did Diane Warren do something like that? Diane sort of, yeah. My friend Autumn Rowe is signing writers. I did it actually. Yeah, you did it. I think I think that's a while ago. Really crucial. I think because it also shows investment from I mean, that's what this is all this is all about, is like that's why we're not seeing that's when the reason you don't see women as producers, because there's an investment to creating that sound recording. And someone's gonna have to write that check.

SPEAKER_04 26:47

You know, and I don't know if women do it as much as they should, which brings me to my next question, which is really about your personal mentors, people that have helped you along the way and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Yeah, I mean, my mom was absolutely my first one. She's a singer, and she's never thought twice about being, you know, the primary breadwinner in the family. It didn't matter to her who was making the money. She worked really hard and was great, figured out how to make a living as a session singer. Like she did a she had a great career. So that was a great role model.

SPEAKER_04 27:22

And that's that's a great role model.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Yeah, she's a great role model. There were a bunch of like women who were like contractors in the session world who I worked for that had great careers. And then as I moved into publishing, I or as I moved into songwriting, I was working with publishers. My publisher, my first publisher was a was a man, Clyde Lieberman, who I adore. Then I got lucky enough to get assigned to Susan Koch. So where was she at that time? She was at BMG. Oh. Which is where I assigned Clyde. And Susan was the greatest, really just such a great, you know, just partner. And that's I got my sort of experience in working with a publisher more as a partner than as a little worker bee. You're like my I don't think of my publisher as my boss. I think of my publisher as my business partner. And that's because of Susan. And then the other writers that sort of pulled me in when I moved to LA, that would be like Shelly and Lindy, Robbins and Pam, Shane, and you know, who are still my dear friends. That's great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:31

It's nice to have those kinds of mentors.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

The best.

The Policy Fixes She Wants

SPEAKER_04 28:34

If you could come up with one major thing that could change, like tomorrow for songwriters, what would be the thing that could really help make a difference?

SPEAKER_00 28:44

I wish we could do what SAG AFTRA does with their black box money. You know, they sort of distribute it out to the SAG AFTRA union members. And it's, you know, money that they could actually be that it's associated with this with work that they've done. But it it I wish we could do something like that. They do like a percentage? Yeah, percentage.

SPEAKER_04 29:07

I always used to hear that ASCAP had a big black box and they would, but usually they'd give it to the big hit makers.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Yeah, and streaming does pay by market share, it's a market share kind of distribution, unfortunately. So I wish I I wish there was a way to oh, it's so bad to say income redistribution, but I wish there was a way to fairly distribute pull some of that that money away from the 1% in a not that you know, they earn they oh they are owed what they can get, but I think a lot of it is black box and we don't know that it's theirs. So I wish we could like kind of I think that would help support a middle class and the sort of you know rising class of of young runners.

SPEAKER_04 29:55

So's gotta take that one on. I know.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Yeah, I you know, unfortunately it's in the statute of the MMA that it doesn't do that, but I we can we can change it.

SPEAKER_04 30:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

That's why we exist. That's I think that's a really good idea. What's next for you? I did my show Kindergarten the Musical. That was my first time creating a show and being uh in I w I feel like I went to showrunner school. Now I'm just like working on the next project and still running Sona. There's still plenty of stuff to do with Sona. Like I said, there's ways that we things that could be fixed that are kind of more pie in the sky. But another thing that isn't pie in the sky that's real is trying to get health insurance for songwriters, collective access to health insurance, which we do not have.

SPEAKER_04 30:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

So I'm working on where we are working on that really hard. We're starting, um, we've started a chapter in New York City, which I'm gonna be here a lot more. My son started school last fall in New York, so I'm gonna be here a lot.

SPEAKER_04 30:52

So we we love having you. We love New York. Is there anything I didn't bring up or ask or mention that you want to say?

SPEAKER_00 31:00

No, I just I think this is a great opportunity. I think like getting to have these conversations would maybe help younger songwriters, particularly women, not think differently, but like not make a mistake that I made or navigate better. Yeah, navigate better and and maybe not struggle. I mean, I know the struggle is part of the yeah, part of the journey, you gotta learn for yourself. But I mean, if there is a way to sort of sidestep a little of that. Lots of mentoring. Yeah, lots of mentoring. And I am like absolutely available for questions. You know, like anyone who wants to reach out. We'll put info in the notes. Yeah. Sona is 100% there for the next job. Well, thank you so much, Michelle. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Sponsor Thanks And Listener Reviews

SPEAKER_04 31:47

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 seeing 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, Yelna Stevanovich, Emily Wilson, and the Master of Engineering and Grammy-winning Cooper Anderson. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_03 32:27

We have S. Nice. We have SK.

SPEAKER_04 32:47

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, please consider leaving a review wherever you listen. For example, we have a comment from Tessie Schultz in Berlin, Germany. Brilliant episode with Karen Viesy. Thanks a lot. Inspiring and great insight. All the best from Berlin. Now we really appreciate those things as it helps the algorithm. And we read everything, so please comment, send a review, and we will really appreciate it. And the podcast will do better and get to more people. Thanks a lot. See