Alicia Keys Honors Gracie Abrams As She Is The Music Builds A Revolution

Last Thursday (March 27) some of the most accomplished and powerful women in music gathered at The Peppermint Club in Los Angeles for She Is The Music: Women Sharing The Spotlight.

The two-hour-plus event featured Alicia Keys honoring Gracie Abrams, as well as 50 women from the music industry, 25 honorees who each selected a fellow honoree, living up to the event’s name – Women Sharing The Spotlight — being honored. The event was co-sponsored by TuneCore, whose CEO, Andreea Gleeson, told me, “I was a little starstruck being in the room with these incredible women, many of whom have blazed a trail in the music industry. “

Both Keys and Abrams made powerful speeches in presenting and accepting the night’s top honor.

Keys praised Abrams’ female team of 40-plus women. “When I found out that she has, like, 40 women who are a part of her team…this is the living embodiment, the walking the walk, the breathing the breath, the doing the thing that we’re talking about,” she said. “Because it’s one thing to talk about it, it’s another thing to actually live it and breathe it and execute it and be it and believe in it…this all female led team is still an exception in this business, and this is a reminder that we belong in every room, we belong at every table, and we should be leading every conversation.”

In accepting the honor Abrams said, “It’s an interesting time to be a woman in America and I firmly believe that the way we survive and thrive is by leading together, by sticking our necks out for each other – especially when it’s difficult – and by being in community as much as possible. To improvise off Margaret Mead if you’ll allow: ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed WOMEN can change the world. In fact it’s the only thing that ever has.’”

Also being honored and giving speeches were Universal Music Publishing Group Chairman and CEO and She Is The Music co-founder Jody Gerson and She Is The Music Executive Director Michelle Yablans.

Finally, Gleeson and Dr. Stacy L. Smith of USC Annenberg discussed key findings from the new Inclusion in the Music Business report. Despite the numbers seeming bleak — 84.2% of top executives at major music companies are white men, only 13.2% of CEO/President roles are held by women, and just 5.3% of top roles are held by women of color, a number unchanged since 2021 – Gleeson did find room for hope, starting with the event Thursday.

“Last night we sponsored the event with She Is the Music really to celebrate incredible women that have risen up the ranks. But also, to talk about the study and what we need to do next,” she said.

Having come from retail, where she says, “In that industry women rule,” Gleeson is very excited to be in a position to help facilitate change.

“Gender parity is something we’re super passionate about within TuneCore and our parent company Believe,” she says, pointing to her own company’s success as proof diversity works. “We really believe it makes the company a lot stronger. If you have diverse minds at the table with different points of view you are going to be a stronger organization. That’s something that I believe in and actually can be shown in our results.”

For Gleeson, part of the idea of bringing about change is bringing successful minds together. “We need to bring more of our amazing minds to help come up with what the goals should be. Plus, they’ve been living the challenges and can have better ideas of what would make the difference. And we can come back to the music industry as a group to say here are things we’d like to see.”

Bringing all these women together wasn’t just a celebration for Gleeson and event producer Marcie Allen, President MAC Consulting. It was just the beginning of a much-needed revolution in the industry.

“This was the perfect opportunity to do this, in this room of incredible women, is ask them to be a part of workshops. We need to set targets of what we’d like to see, and the milestones. And then it’s kind of like a proposal and a challenge to the music industry of what we’d like to see them do. We’re going to be organizing a series of workshops to bring various incredible minds together to come up with this plan. And that’s we want to put out definitely by next year,” Gleeson said of their next steps.

For Allen, it was about building the community necessary for the future. “Last night, we didn’t just celebrate women; we empowered them to lift each other. I’m proud to have produced an event that sparked a movement: women sharing the spotlight, creating a future where we rise together,” Allen told me.