Good Vibes Friday: Reflections on Livestreaming During the COVID-19 Lockdown

In the Key of She is the title of my Leverhulme Trust Fellowship, exploring career experiences of female, female-identifying and gender minority electronic music (self) producers to shed light on the persistent male dominance of digital-creative cultural production. The music industry recognises its gender balance problem with various initiatives to balance festival and gig line-ups, such as the Keychange initiative. When we consider the more technical roles in the industry, things get even more unbalanced. For example, according to the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, only around 2% of music producers are women (Smith et al. 2019). With electronic music production increasingly being seen as a source of reputational capital for contemporary DJs, if women are not producing and/or releasing their own tracks, they will struggle to compete with their male peers (Reitsamer 2011).