Why Female Artists Are Missing From Your Playlists ft. Music Tech Europe Academy

Jakob

Hey guys and welcome back to Sound Connections podcast. Today is a partnership episode with Music Tech Europe Academy and Tites, you're in the studio, welcome.

Thais

Thank you.

Jakob

We're gonna have a very interesting talk today and as I said to you before the recording, I'm gonna be a humble student today and try to understand what you're all about. Before we into that, Tice, who are you and what do you do?

Thais

Hi, my name is Thais. I am Barcelona-based and I run a non-profit called Digital Femmes. Digital Femmes promotes the presence of female and gender diverse people in tech and music tech. I have, I would say, a digital and tech background in the business. For the last 25 years I've been, you know, going and coming from different types of companies, corporations, small startups, et cetera. And I don't know. Trying to build a more, I would say, fair digital and tech environments.

Jakob

Amazing. And that's what we're going to talk about today. And I don't have a lot of knowledge in this space. I have had the pleasure of having several conversations about it on the podcast, but I'm very curious to hear more. Let's just start with some hard questions. So what are the tech industry missing out on from not having a better gender balance?

Thais

Okay. Yeah. So let me, let me go back. So tech, the tech industry started in the fifties, last century, and it was a nice new business industry where everyone was welcome. Something happened in the eighties. At the end of the 70s and at the beginning of the 80s. It had to do with patents. And that was the first day that a software patent was registered. I would say that the tech industry as a whole changed. And that was a very relevant milestone because that was the starting point of the whole tech moment. At that point, we had a lot of ICT students from both genders. And at the beginning of the 80s, that parity just decreased, Currently, 35 % of the tech industry, or I would say that, yeah. 35 % of total workers in the tech industry are females today. And we don't know very much about other diversities. But the point is that this has really a very, very important impact in the way technology is built. So my point here is that you cannot build a tech product or service. If you do not include diversity in the conceptualization and deployment of technology. That is my point. That's, mean, I don't remember the question. Yes, exactly. So one of the things that the tech industry is missing is exactly diversity. There is a tech bro, you know, kind of culture and

Jakob

What are the industry missing out on?

Thais

This means that if only 35 % of total workers in the tech industry, and when we talk about music tech, we do not have figures yet. But my suspicion is that this is probably not reaching the 15 % of total workers here. Why is this happening? There are a lot of factors. The tech bro thing is very, relevant. Programmer culture.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

Is just not a place where females feel safe. Digital Femmes, this is the name of the non-profit, I didn't mention this before, Digital Femmes did run a very big survey in asking a lot of questions to more than 500 female tech pros. And one of the things that we found out is that, for instance, there is a, you know... I don't want to talk about sexual harassment, but 22 % of females were saying that they were feeling or they were receiving or they were being impacted by this tech bro culture and sexist culture. So this is a pain because what is happening is that when females reach to 35 years, and this is a... a report from Accenture in 2023, they just get out. They just drop off or drop out and they leave the sector. And this means that the more senior, the more experienced you are and the better you can design products and services is... is kind of a problem in the sense that females are not proposing, are not able to decide exactly features from these tech businesses or services or products. And this is a pity because we are building a digital society, but only a small little part of it is deciding what.

Jakob

Thank you.

Thais

To do and how to do it. And this is a problem. This is a problem. So, yeah.

Jakob

Hmm. Yeah, I would definitely also be surprised if the number is very high in music tech. I have the privilege of speaking with a lot of founders in this space and I, without being totally clear of maybe the hundred startups I've spoken with the last 18 months, I think there's maybe been like 10 female founders or something like that, maybe. So I think, you know, the conversations that I've had, it's probably 10%, I would say.

Thais

Yeah, well, exactly. Founders, would say, like in general, according to the European Commission, approximately between 10 and 20 % of the startups have female founders or co-founders. But many of these businesses are related to female issues. So if you take out the female issues and the female topics, don't know, femtech, it's called, hell, blah, blah.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

Then probably it's around 10 or even less.

Jakob

I have again, I'm trying to take this from a student angle and sorry if I'm ignorant, but there's one thought I've had is This is actually met in a positive way like most founders that I speak with shouldn't be founders like just you know, it's so incredibly difficult doing this and the conversations I've had on this base very limited though is Men tend to be more blind going into risk that they tend to be more careless and less thought through. And oftentimes that's what's required of a founder to some degree. But very much the early stage founders that really don't know what to go into, they often are a bit stupid like that. I'm not trying to say stupid in a bad way, but that's the reality. There needs to be a good deal of naivety and stupidity to actually be a founder. I sense from the conversations that have that is often less prevalent from females, that they often, generally speaking, maybe think a bit more before they jump into big risk. Do you think that's a part of the whole reason within the founder environment or does it make sense?

Thais

Yeah, so that's a very good question. Why are there so few female powders? So that is a question. I think that there are at least two factors. I agree very much with what you have said. I mean, there are a of research, a lot of research has been done around what are the differences between the management skills.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

Of female founders and male founders. And yeah, what you said is exactly what happens. I mean, in the sense that female founders or female, I would say frameworks, see, do you say? Mindsets are less, I would say impulsive. And more, would say, they are risky, but not that much. They have a kind of sixth sense that makes them more cautious. And this is a management skill that, for instance, corporations value a lot. But the point is that...

Jakob

Hmm.

Jakob

Hmm.

Thais

Female founders only are able to recap 2 % of total funds, total VCs and everything. So that is something that makes it very, difficult for female founders to survive because they don't get money. That is one of the big topics that the European Commission is trying to tackle. Because I don't know...

Jakob

set.

Thais

No one knows exactly why only 2 % of total funds are just being deployed or being, you know, rich female founders. The figure raises until 9 % when co-founder teams are mixed, females and males, which is good. But that means that, you know...

Jakob

Yeah.

Jakob

Hmm.

Thais

79 % of total funds, so the money that is around is only for male founders. So that probably it's a combination of these two factors, know, not being able to raise more than 2 % and that is because probably there are also biases in the, you know, the funding process when a female founder pitches.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

There is something called performance bias in the tech development, I would say, world. So when you're a developer and you're designing technology and you have a performance review every year, Female workers or employees are subject to what we call this performance bias. So you are evaluated under, not under the perspective of the, how would I say this, the potential that you have. You are evaluated for what you have done, not what...

Jakob

Hmm.

Thais

For you are able to do. And that is exactly the opposite in case of males. And this model is exactly the same. This is what female founders face when they pitch. So it is a bias. It is a bias. And that is a problem. We are all biased. It doesn't matter. We are all biased. The earlier we assume this, the earlier we will be able to, you know...

Jakob

Mm.

Jakob

and

Thais

Find solutions or hack our own bias and try to look at things from different angles or perspectives.

Jakob

Yeah, it's really interesting. Maybe if I can add a nuance to this is, so Amplitude Ventures that I'm CEO of, we have raised money ourselves and then we have multiple portfolio companies we've raised money for. So we have 22 investors in our portfolio. And one of our companies is a part of an accelerated program. And these business developers in this accelerated program, whenever I'm there, because I don't attend that much, some of my colleagues do. They're like, Jacob, your five-minute pitch needs to be more simple and it needs to be more to the point. And yesterday I just talked with them and said, guys, all due respect, I don't believe in the five-minute pitch. Like, of all the investors I have, nothing has ever happened for me trying to sell them something for five minutes. Everything is, we meet somewhere, we create a relationship. I developed that relationship between 48 months. And once in a while, between those 48 months, I get to sit down, have an hour with them, talk to them about what we do. Like, I have never had an artificial scenario without that pitch is what defines the outcome. My point is, this is story I hear over and over again, which means oftentimes to convert, especially angel investors, it's relationships. And... Again, going back to my numbers, I have 22 investors, I have one female investor. In the region that I live in, there are practically maybe five or 10 female investors that are active. If you try to tie those things together, I can imagine that it would be harder for a female founder to create those strategic relationships over time because of the nature of the two genders. And I don't know the psychological behavior behind that. I'm just trying to draw a conclusion that beyond the pitch, which I have much agree, there's also what I believe is the most effective, which is relationships. And in a founder investor scenario, I can imagine the gender would matter.

Thais

Yeah, exactly.

Jakob

Or that would affect the whole situation.

Thais

Exactly, exactly. That is exactly what happens. Exactly? So the interesting thing here is that female funders are very few and recently there has been some kind of organization around this funding problem and there have been... So there are different female funds for female... founders being built right now. So we don't really know what is going to happen, how many of them are going to be effectively working in the tech and digital business aside. But there has been movements around this. What we need is female funding visas to tackle this issue and to exactly meet

Jakob

you

Thais

Female funders, but of course, where is the money? That is a problem that we all have, right? And this is not going to be easy, but these are some strategies that different feminists or I would say female sensitive leaders or powerful representatives of funds are trying to build because, because... because of this relationship thing and because of the bias. So it is silly to think that we all, when we are, I mean, this is the invisibility of bias, right? We don't really think that we are biased. Probably, I don't know. I don't know the generation of our parents or grandparents, which could sound that they were more biased than we are. We were going together to schools, mixed schools, university, know, blah, blah. You know, since the seventies and the third wave of feminists, we perceived us equally, probably, when we were born, the people that were born in the seventies, in the eighties, in the nineties. But there is still this invisibility of the feeling that we are not the same, the feeling that, so that the whole issue is about what I'm going to say. The bias that we have all in our mindset is that in tech. Males think that females do shitty deployments. That's the whole point. If you go to a university, you will feel that. Male developers think that female developers deploy technology worse than male developers. And that is the whole thing. So that is the bias that we have. So how come is this, you know, founder going to build this tech thing if she's not able to understand what is good or

Thais

Bad deployment. I mean, I'm being very, am being very, I'm simplifying a lot of this, right? But this is the whole issue. When you, so what we need is more Canva examples and role models saying, okay, this person didn't know how to design anything, but she has been able to build, you know, a competing with Adobe, a business. And I mean, and,

Jakob

Mm-mm.

Thais

It has been a boost. Mean, everyone uses Scamba here, right? For instance, so what we need is more examples, more role models, more and talk and generate a narrative around this to change our mindset. And that's it. And that's it. If we had, I think that the figure was something like one out of 50 unicorns in Europe.

Jakob

Hmm.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

Are only female, have a female leadership in the business, which is a very small, little, tiny bit of it, right? The more young people we are able to convince that they are entitled and empowered to build businesses. The point here is also that female founders are able to scale up.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

More cautiously than male founders. So at the end of figures, if you're an investor, you could see that proportionately, your money is going to be safer and you're going to have a bigger return of investment if you invest in a female business or a female founded business, because the money, the way they scale up businesses is

Jakob

Hmm.

Thais

More cautious than males. So your money is more secure there, right? But what we need is more examples about on this. Mean, more role models. And this is what probably we are struggling against. Mean, changing the whole trend of the industry, right? This is how I see things. Mean.

Jakob

Mm.

Jakob

It's very interesting and it's an area I don't have enough, a lot of knowledge on. One of the questions I have around tech in general is I started coding five months ago and I'm an entrepreneur. Been part of building many businesses and pretty much I would say 30 hours a week I'm coding now. Because, because of cursor, because of lovable, because of tools, like I've always been a very conceptual guy. Understand concepts really fast. And for me with, with the introduction of a genetic AI, like I'm, I'm really sitting building products for international companies now as a coder. And now I have 15 developers that work under me. So obviously I'm not doing it alone, but the bulk of the work I do and hand it over to my team, the bulk of the design, the conceptual work, the frameworks, the architecture. I do it myself because I understand concepts really fast. My question is, I believe that's gonna change a lot about what is a good developer in the future. What is a good tech person in the future? I think personally that a person who has a really strong business sense and really good contextual understanding of products will have a very disproportionate advantage in the future. Do you think that's gonna do something for the gender balance in tech? Do you feel like a lot of the roles that let's say a very nitty gritty nerdy is made mainly men and some of the more let's say creative conceptual roles are more females where in my preemptive conclusion is if the world is going more that direction do you think that's gonna help the gender balance?

Thais

Wow, that is a very, important question.

Thais

Yeah. So at the end, I'm going back to the beginning of the conversation. I said that there is a 35 % of total workforce are females in the tech industry, but only 20 % of total developers are females. Only 20%. In Europe also the figures are exactly

Jakob

In.

Thais

I think it's 19 % of total ICT professionals are females. So who is deploying, coding or conceptualizing technology products or services are females. This to start with. So if we move to the future, I mean, I don't know, I cannot, I do not have, I mean, I have some ideas on this, but these are only ideas, not really strong statements, because the future is uncertain in this sense. The figures are not climbing up, they are not racing, so.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

Beyond, I mean, we are all doing this effort around Tec... Well, not all, you know, recently, our friend Donald Trump has said exactly, and this is very important. He has not only stopped all the federal projects regarding diversity and inclusion, he has gone beyond that and he has... state stated that private sector, even the private sector, whoever is building day programmes, they are going to be under the eye of, I would say, the censor. They are going to, they are stating that diversity programmes are against the dignity, no, how did they say? The right to be equally respected. Which means they are opposing diversity to equal respect. What this has caused immediately is the dropout of Meta, who has changed the whole narrative around diversity, and Amazon. We still have Google from the gaffa, man. We still have Google. We still have Microsoft. And I don't remember the other one. I don't, I don't, sorry. So we still have the other three, the other three big tech companies waiting to see what can they do. And I'm talking about this because this has a direct effect and impact on the future. Okay. So if the narrative today is to stop diversity programs and inclusion programs.

Jakob

Hmm.

Thais

This means that the effort that the tech sector has been doing in the past 10 years has just blown up. Mean, this has stopped and this will have effects in the future. This is going to stop. This is going to be a limitation in the evolution of females and other... Sorry. Sorry, sorry. So this is going to have a limitation in... Sorry. This is the office coming and going people, sorry. So this is going to have a directive effect on the female presence in tech. We're going to see what we're going to see probably if this is going to become the new trend.

Jakob

Okay.

Jakob

It's fine, I'll cut that out, so you just sit here.

Thais

What we're going to see is that there are going to be less females trying to conceptualize and deploy, et cetera, products on one side. On the other side, what I have to tell you is that currently what females are doing in tech are more product management. So it is not that it is not that they're going to be more females conceptualizing tech products. It is that What we have today is females being the owners of the product and kind of protecting it, protecting it or whatever we want to call it, like being responsible of the whole quality of the product. That is what females are doing today. Mainly they are doing product management and product ownership and UX. The rest, when we go to even DevOps, which is one of the I would say the roles that are today gaining in importance, it doesn't reach even the 10%. So, I mean, I don't know. The future is uncertain and I cannot see a better future for females in tech today. After, what is today? 10 days after the presidential order.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

Pushing for a male domain thing in tech. And this is going to become the new normal. Like, okay, the bias, we don't care. You are not entitled to conceptualize good products because your mindset as a female is not as good as male's designing and conceptualizing products.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

We are going to be sure that your company and your company is not discriminating males. Because this is the suspicion that the new Trump administration, the message that the Trump administration is sending to the industry and the effect that this has caused the day after is, okay, we're all stopping our day programs.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

So I'm not very positive, I'm sorry. Well, no, yes, I am positive. I think that we will all have to fight against this new narrative, I think. I mean... This is going to unite us, think. Males and females.

Jakob

I think it's concerning here those numbers, especially going into this new era of digitalization with this new technology, AI, blockchain, the powerful things around them that will change digital society as we know it. And having those people who are really in the places where we can define what products and services are made, where there's still that much difference in gender bonds. And also, as we also know, especially AI, it can be controlled, but there's danger levels of AI as well. And many of big companies talk about this. When the current balance is so uneven, and technology is being built and deployed by this uneven balance as well. How is that gonna strengthen or weaken whatever messaging and products and bias these models are gonna have? And I'm not the person to speak about this. Someone would know much more and I'm not gonna go deep into it. But my point is, as things are changing from an already unbalanced environment, that makes me concerned. What does that mean? Where the bias is gonna be. Sort of going tiny bit back to music tech, that spills into artistry as well. That spills into livelihood. It's not just female founders, it's also female artists. It's also the environment they live in. Like I believe that a lot of the music industry is still misogynist. I think there's a lot of, I've been both lucky and unlucky to be in the rooms with people who, who decide things and I don't appreciate the way that they talk. I don't appreciate the way that things are being said in jokes by elderly music professionals. I know the insights and industry. I've been on stage, off stage at festivals. It's not an environment I would send my daughter either. Like, I'm...

Jakob

I'm concerned about what is out there and the livelihood for storytellers that inspire people that are females. Like I can only imagine that it's very uncomfortable in a environment where... being a female is not necessarily catered to. And it's not because we need to treat people differently, but again, like if there's an unsafe environment filled with men around you, I don't think that necessarily on a statistical level encourages the risk it takes to go into that certain area.

Thais

Yeah, exactly. So, one of the examples. Yeah. One of the most amazing things that we have discovered in digital films is something regarding the data architecture of music tech. So the whole issue is the following music.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

Music distribution, digital music distribution established so the industry was able to reach to a kind of agreement on what type of data architecture, which is what today fuels AI. I'm talking about AI in, now I'm talking about AI. Mean, regarding the question that you mentioned, and it is not directly related to what you said, but yes. So imagine 20 years ago, the tech industry reached to an agreement about what the standards had to look like. The data, the metadata standards, which was amazing. Like the industry was able to reach to a statement and to a standard, which is a lot. Like we're talking about the post master moment. Okay. And pre Spotify moment, I would say. So in between, like just in the middle of it. And what happened is that the standards 20 years ago didn't think that this metadata would be the fuel of AI recommendation systems. Innovation minds and the evolution of the whole system realized that They were able, I mean, they were able to build something called recommendation engines. This was the name for, for the whole thing before the AI era. Okay. AI just boosted all types of deployments on recommendation, on recommendation systems. I'm talking about music recommendation processes in DSPs, right? So the lack of gender. Metadata, it is not a standard today. This is not even, I mean, no one wants to take the responsibility of assuming that this is very relevant for something that I'm going to talk about right now. What today is happening in DSPs and this has to do rather than with tech, you know, mindsets and regarding inclusion of females, et cetera, but this is a consequence.

Thais

Is that female artists which are already lacking parity in the industry, the offline world, in the venues, the live music world, there is a lack of parity, we know this. It's maybe between 20 and 30 % of female presence in live venues, so in the industry, like live and recorded, right? But when we transition to the digital world, how is this looking in the digital world? And we can look at it through the DSPs activities, et cetera, et cetera. What we can see is that these recommendation engines, these recommendation systems, these AI deployments beneath the metadata. Is generating a recommendation of male artists rather than female artists. And this is something that it's not something that I think personally, this is something that we all know and that even Spotify is doing a lot of efforts because they know that and I'm talking about Spotify because it's the only one that I think they are taking this seriously. So they know that automated systems are recommending male artists and human curation is trying to stop this trend. So they are making a very big effort in curating female artists and building a lot of female programs around parity, blah, what we want is that female artists can be part of the pop culture today and pop culture today music is DSP, right? So the lack of gender metadata

Jakob

Mm.

Jakob

Yeah.

Jakob

Yeah.

Thais

Is the problem. Mean, because there is no gender metadata, you cannot train AI on parity parameters because this data does not exist. This metadata does not exist. So they have to build other very expensive deployments like, I don't know, like AI based on recognition, voice, et cetera, et cetera, to try to be fair in the way you suggest. You know, artists in playlists. What we are trying to build here is an awareness and we are also building a pilot regarding how to hack this. And we're talking even with DDX. DDX is the consortium, you know, the consortium organization where the governance of metadata takes place. And...

Jakob

Hmm.

Thais

Our approach is that if gender metadata would be a standard, all DSPs would be able to use this metadata to fulfil parity parameters and would be able to recommend fairly female artists.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

And that's the whole point. It is a matter of infrastructure. Because, I mean, how come could not this be a standard? It's the question that we all have, right? But no one is taking this seriously. Why is this not taken seriously? Because no one is really in the industry assuming this as a responsibility. You know what I mean? It's like, okay, this is, I mean... You're passing the ball, right? And that's the whole thing. So what we are trying to do with an international research team and an advisory council of really interesting female mindsets like, know, Cherie from Water Music, Geo, Ex Sonar, and you know, a very well-known person in the sector.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

Professors of AI, experts in metadata, people from BMAT, and even researchers from Marie Curie's grants. We're all building this whole process and bringing to the industry this approach. I don't know if this is innovation. To me, it's common sense. I am not a coder, although I have been around tech for the last 25 years. How would I say this? A computational mind. I do understand technology. I love technology. I understand how it works. So that is what we are tackling right now. Because this is an infrastructure problem and it can be solved. There is a solution. It is not impossible. We don't need to invest a lot of money on it. It is only a matter of will. And to build the will in the industry is complicated, but...

Jakob

Hmm.

Thais

I think that everyone would be okay understanding that we need to gender metadata as a standard and that's it.

Jakob

Hmm. Amazing. No, and I can see that. There's this conviction I have about digital transformation right now. That is the human connection. The storytellers are going to be much more important. And what you are saying is there's no way, very little way for the platforms to help their automated systems to promote the storytellers that are going to be much more important now than ever to also be of backgrounds and genders that needs to approach a wider audience. Again, if the amount of females in music are less represented, that is also going to have a consequence for listeners. And as the... importance of storytellers and their presence in our everyday life is going to increase because of this very artificial surroundings that we're going to live in. That's going to have consequences. So I think it's really important. And I don't know the depths of the issues. Many of the things we've talked about today is fairly new to me. Like I haven't really reflected upon gender and metadata before. So when you talk about awareness, I definitely think you are. And from the broad understanding that I have from a Outlook of the future I can only see that actually this might be something that's quite urgent like if This is taking speed as fast as it is and this is not getting addressed in music That is so influential and so many cultural political environmental levels It's gonna be an issue so I totally see it

Thais

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, no. I mean, for instance, I think that what you said here is very important. What are listeners able today to discover through DSPs? Mean, what we can see is that female listeners listen. 33 % of tracks are from female artists. So that could be a need from a consumer perspective. But the point is that, mean, versus male listeners who only listen 18 % of total streams by female artists. So there is a difference here, right? Female listeners prefer to listen female artists than male listeners. So where I see an opportunity, I mean... where I see an opportunity because we have clients, right? We all have clients. We all have consumers to deliver a service. You could see, if DSPs could see that as an opportunity, as a business opportunity, I am sure that they would deploy whatever would be needed to increase because what DSPs want is more streams, right? Click, click. That is the whole business idea, right? If you could have the opportunity to increase 20 % your streams, what would you do? Right? That is something that is plausible. But the point here is that I think that female listeners as consumers, we are not aware of the power that we have. We are not claiming for this. Imagine that... male listeners listen a lot of, I don't know, metal music, right? Just to say something. And metal music would not be present in these DSPs. Wouldn't these male listeners claim for more Metallica music? You know what I mean? Yeah. So if we changed the tax around metal music slash female artists,

Thais

it would be more visible that there is a need here and this is good for the market. It is not something that you have to, it is not a loan. It is something that is going to increase your revenue. So, but here we have been so, so my point here is that females as a condition are so used to not being listened that there is no claiming thing here. So there is the empowerment potential. It's like the iceberg thing, you only see the top of the iceberg. So it's the underneath thing, which we have assumed that society is not fair. And then we carry on with this bias at the end. It's like the opposite to feel empowered. So I don't know. This is what we think that we can bring to the music tech industry, like generating a storytelling about the importance. Metadata is not only about royalties. Metadata is about AI and also the music industry. Music tech has the opportunity because there is this consensus and consortium around standards, which is a lot, much more than other sectors.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

Music has the opportunity to build a data architecture much more fairer than other sectors and become a model. You know what I mean? So that is our excitement. We think that MusicTech could build a new model regarding data architectures and the AI things that come out of that and then become...

Jakob

Hmm. Mm.

Thais

You know, a referral on how to tackle AI bias because AI is all about data and data training. And if there is no gender data, then the AI thing is going to be biased. And that's it, full stop. We all know, we'll know this is happening. Mean, if AI model has not been trained with the correct data sets and, know, data thing.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

Then it's going to be biased. So we need to consider this. I think this is an opportunity for the digital society we are building. We need to take into account the infrastructure and the data infrastructure. Now we can see there is a path. So since we have been generating all this awareness, lot of music tech companies have... called us and like, listen, can you come to this place and explain this? You go? So there is a little bit of movement. We are happy that we have been, you know, so I don't know in Spanish we say pesado. So, so insistent in the gender metadata, agenda metadata, agenda metadata. But at the end, it makes sense. Right. And if we talk about it, and to me, the relevant thing about it, it is that now we're talking about gender, but if we have this

Jakob

you

Thais

Intersectional point of view, this can be amplified to other relevant attributes that data sets should include to be more inclusive. And gender is the starting point. It's half of the population. So it's quite interesting in the sense that whatever you do, it's going to for sure generate a positive change because there's a lot of people affected by this and a lot of people that is going to support. This new, I don't know how to call it, this new field. I mean, and I don't know, that's my hope and my fight and my struggle.

Jakob

Hmm.

Jakob

I do understand and today I was going into the interview and hoping I would understand again. I wouldn't go that far that I'm saying I'm a part of the problem, but I represent a big part of the problem, which is non-awareness. And today, well, that's my own interpretation. And today I do feel more aware. I think you've presented some very, very valid points I haven't heard before, which is also worrying that I haven't heard those points before. I see no flaw in the logic that metadata about gender... is incredibly important in this new environment, more than ever before. And I don't like to comment on political things, but I do also find it perplexing what's happened in America right now, given your statements that I believe to be very reasonable, that is not taking into the big picture. So what I take from this interview, and thank you so much for being on, is...

Thais

Thank you.

Jakob

It's not even really a part of discussion whether or not that should be addressed. It should be addressed immediately. There's no reasoning that justifies not addressing it. Because we do want this to be a good place. We know that music has impact. We know that music can change situations, can inspire actions, can facilitate relationships. And if the gender... which is half a population, is not represented at scale in technology that will present issues that we don't want to face. So thank you for making me aware.

Thais

Thank you for listening to me or listening to us. Yes. To me, it also sounds like I cannot understand why this is not happening. Like the metadata thing. And it is the same in the rest of the industries. So you talk about, you know, video games. I don't know. I have a lot of friends who are working in video games. They run research about what is happening, why novel. It's the same. There is no metadata. So there is.

Jakob

Yeah, of course.

Thais

No standards of gender metadata. One very important thing I would add is that all this gender metadata revolution, I would say, it all started 10 years ago because this is like a new field, would say. Someone from the MIT published a book called data feminism and she's a data scientist. So she was the first voice in the world to raise awareness about data and a gender perspective, or you can say a feminist perspective in data science, right? And to me, this person was the person who opened my eyes, my brain and said, this is a revolution. This has the potential to change a lot of things. Of course, of course, she was only in the, you know, in the underground, I would say in the underground side. So, you know, it's a very specific field inside, you know, data science. So you need to be techie. You need to understand about data and you need to be sensitive about feminists to, to reach to this, you know, source of knowledge. But. The name of this person is Catherine Ignacio and she belongs to also a movement or a community called Design Justice. Design Justice Network and Principles started in Detroit, I think also 10 years ago. And it was a new, this new framework around what is, how to design in terms of justice was like the... the seed of the whole issue. So it's all very American underground, which poor people now, they must be crying in every corner like, fuck, how are we going to get out of this mess? But they were the ones who kind of started to think, and it's an MIT thing, So how is technology designed in terms of, you know,

Jakob

Yeah.

Thais

Data architectures. So that is a very research question that has trespassed the research world. And now we can expand this theory and this methodology to the rest of the field. So, yeah, I believe that in the following years, this will be something that will be more normalized and listened to closely.

Jakob

with.

Jakob

Mm.

Thais

And the movement has impacted different feminist communities in Europe, in Italy very much, in the UK, not in the rest. Germany, so, France, so, Spain quite a bit because we are very free. And because Catherine Ignacio speaks Spanish. So this was like, you know, something really easy and we brought her here a lot of times. She was invited to the, Smart City Expo World Congress, is a place where you can, like 10 years ago, was already like, I don't know, surveillance, but no one talked about, you know, digital surveillance like today in the smart cities. And we were hacking the Smart City Expo, bringing her like, and talking about, you know, these super alternative, you know, thoughts. And, I mean, it's only a matter of time, but of course the narrative around, you know, feminism and disaggregated by sex or gender is something that today is being questioned in the United States. So I don't know the future. Can only think and desire that we as Europeans can lead the conversation on this and generate impact. That is very, very important. Very important. I think that when I talk with my colleagues, you know, in different countries in Europe, we are all thinking about the same, like, OK, now our American friends will not be able to lead the conversation. We need to take, you know, we need to take the lead now and help them and become stronger because we need to generate a counter narrative very strongly and very loudly, because otherwise this is going to be hell. And we're going to go back, like, 60 years.

Jakob

Mm.

Jakob

Yeah.

Thais

You know what I mean? Better way.

Jakob

I think I do. This has been extremely informative and I want to thank you MusiTech Europe Academy for facilitating the talk. I believe the work that they're doing, also you, together with them, is important. I think that there's many things about this industry that needs to be strengthened, not just for the people in it, but also for the people consuming the music coming from it. So Tyce, thank you so much. Was brilliant talking with you today.

Thais

Thank you, Jacob, thank you. Listen to me, next time you come to Spain, not only Barcelona, Spain, I can provide a list of the places where you have to go. I know a lot of cities, so please, please ask me now. My friend from the Netherlands, she's like, I just want sun. I'm going to Malaga and Cadiz. Tell me places. Yes, I know a lot, so.

Jakob

All the food. Yes, please.

Jakob

I'm

Thais

I'm also a foodie. Now I'm facing a SIBO, you know, the SIBO thing, the syndrome of bacteria.