Beatport Announces Recipients of $100,000 Gender Parity Initiative

Future Female Sounds, Lady of the House, and #FORTHEMUSIC have been announced as co-recipients of this Beatport initiative.

The Beatport Group, which includes Beatport, Beatsource, Loopmasters, Loopcloud, and the Beatport Media Group, announced that they were launching a new Gender Parity Initiative at IMS Ibiza this past April. Focused on making the industry a more inclusive and welcoming environment for female and non-binary artists by granting $100,000 to the cause, over a dozen submissions were made by companies and entrepreneurs whose missions aligned with this cause. Today, Beatport revealed that Future Female Sounds, Lady of the House, and #FORTHEMUSIC would be co-recipients of the investment.

Based out of Copenhagen, but with programs in cities including Paris, Berlin, Cairo, and Tunis, Future Female Sounds is a female-founded and led non-profit organization that intends to make DJ culture more accessible to women and gender minorities globally. Their latest initiative is FFS Online DJ Academy, a training platform exclusively for those aforementioned communities that creates a safer space for them to learn with professional instructors and mentors.

With the support of Beatport, Future Female Sounds will finally be able to take our FFS Online DJ Academy to the next level after more than a year of planning. The online DJ Academy has trained hundreds of DJs and now will have the opportunity to collect and evolve the knowledge we have built training and empowering emerging female and gender minority DJs worldwide. We’re here to open doors for future generations of talent, and make the dream of professionalization in the music industry for female and gender minority DJs come true.
Future Female Sounds founder, Tia Korpe

The second recipient, Lady of the House, is a UK-based community that strives to educate, empower, and diversify the music industry through their platform. Not only have they curated discussions and showcases at conferences and festivals over the past few years, but have teamed up with brands like Redbull, Pioneer DJ, and Spinnin’ Records to achieve their goals further. Lady of the House intends to use this new funding to directly invest in female and non-binary artists in their artist development program, while continuing to serve as a pipeline for emerging talent.

The Meetoo Music platform and its #FORTHEMUSIC campaign were the final recipients of funding from this initiative. Created by Rebekah Teasdale and Pia Micallef with a focus on sexual harassment and assault in the industry, they released a short film called When The Music Ends, which follows sexual assault victims through a night out while detailing various scenarios of harassment and assault that they encounter. This film intends to be an educational tool while showcasing the hard reality that is faced when many stay silent about assaults in the scene.

This initiative from Beatport is just one of many others that they have created to help bring further change to the dance music scene. Stay tuned for more from The Beatport Group by following them on social media.

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