The Black Music Action Coalition, also known as BMAC, has launched a new internship program in a joint partnership with streaming platform Audiomack.
Known as “Black Music Executives Are the Future,” the program addresses a lack of representation in top positions and will diversify the music industry by offering five current undergraduates or recently graduated Black students a three-month-long paid working opportunity at Audiomack.
Supported by the Culture Fusion Agency, the chosen participants will be able to experience working in multiple aspects of the music industry. In addition to marketing, the program offers them a chance to get artistic with design, explore the technology used and work on the content strategies. Students can also choose to get intimate with how label services and artist relations work.
“If we are serious about closing the wealth gap and building an equitable industry and society, then there must be a true investment made into the next generation of Black executives and artists,” said BMAC co-founder, Willie “Prophet” Stiggers, in a press release. “BMAC’s mission is not to only hold our industry accountable for dismantling systems that have historically prevented us from reaping the benefits of a culture we created, but to also to create new systems, new ideas and new leaders.”
Throughout the internship, the students each will be guided by two music executives that have experience in the industry. Acting as mentors, the seven executives will be there to provide support and answer any questions the new employees might have.
The mentors taking part in the program are Amina Diop, artist manager and the senior vice president at Republic Records, Cortez Bryant, CEO at The Blueprint Group and Tariq Cherif, the CEO and one of the founders of Rolling Loud. Other mentors include Gordon Dillard, artist manager for artists like Doja Cat at SALXCO, Andrew McInnes, CEO at TMWRK and manager for artists like Diplo and A-Trak, Prophet, the co-founder and co-chair at BMAC and Damian Smith, artist manager for Offset and Anderson. Paak at Full Stop Management.
Currently, the music industry is still largely white, specifically when it comes to the people at the top that are running the companies. According to a 2021 USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study, amongst the main 70 major and smaller music companies, only 4.2% of the workers acting as the top executives were Black.
In the slightly lower positions, out of more than 4,000 executives at the VP-level in 119 music companies, only 7.5% were Black. UMG, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group had the most diversity as 23.7% Black employees made up the executive roles of the senior management groups.
Supported by artists such as Earth, Wind & Fire and the Recording Academy amongst others, BMAC main goal is to end this systemic racism in the music industry.
“BMAC works together with leaders from various business leaders to hold their companies accountable and implement a system of checks and balances to ensure change takes root,” said a statement on the “Black Music Executive Are The Future” site.“The group fosters and shepherds various educational, mental health, financial literacy, entrepreneurship, policing, social justice, and political causes that directly impact Black communities.”
