Back to All News
Increasing Inclusion and Diversity in Music and Sound
Netflix Music Teams
Social Impact
12 May 2021
GlobalUnited States
Participating Netflix music executives, top row from left, Jackie Shuman, Charlene Huang, Steven Gizicki, Gabrielle Mandel, bottom row from left, Vince Villanueva, Bridget Ward, Margaret Yen and Lisa Azille.
At Netflix, representation on screen is just as important off-screen. And that goes for sounds as well as images. Whether it's selecting an up-and-coming composer for their first feature film credit, like Tamar-Kali's powerful original score for Mudbound, or working with music supervisor Morgan Rhodes to create a soundtrack featuring exclusively Black female artists for Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker, new voices in music and sound can open our ears to different worlds and perspectives.
That's why we're committed to finding new musicians, composers and other emerging artists in these fields. And we want to do more to expand the ways we discover new talent.
In recent years, our music teams have organized several outreach and networking events to help empower underrepresented and emerging talent in the music industry. And when these in-person events were halted in March 2020 due to Covid, we didn't want to press pause.
So we moved to a series of online networking events - including large Q&A sessions for groups focused on diversity and inclusion in the music industry, and small virtual meetings to connect underrepresented composers and music supervisors directly with directors and producers.
For the former, we hosted virtual Q&As with non-profits such as She Is the Music and shesaid.so, which support women and gender minorities in music; Pride in Music, which champions members of the LGBTQ+ community; and Sphinx Organization, which addresses the underrepresentation of people of color in classical music.
"The team gave invaluable feedback during the session that covered a wide range of topics while giving our artists a direct platform to submit their work and ask questions that would ultimately help propel each of their respective careers, said Andre Dowell, Chief of Artist Engagement of Sphinx Organization (pictured here).
These quarterly Q&As, organized by Jackie Shuman and Bridget Ward from our Marketing Music and Music Creative Production teams, respectively, allowed members of these organizations to submit questions directly to a panel of Netflix music executives in such areas as marketing, clearance, and creative from departments including films, series, animation, and kids & family.
After each group Q&A, participants were invited to submit music to Netflix for future consideration and feedback. These songs are also added to an internal Netflix database which our music teams use for licensing and custom music opportunities.
Our smaller meetups, titled Music Virtual Connections, were organized by Gabrielle Mandel and Lisa Azille from our Music Creative Production team under ION, our inclusion, outreach and networking group at Netflix. We held 33 online meetings with participants including composers Sherri Chung (Riverdale), Amritha Vaz (Home), Toby Chu (Bao), and Academy Award winners Jon Batiste (Soul) and Michael Abels (Get Out), music supervisors Yvette Metoyer (Halt and Catch Fire) and Aaron Byrd (When They See Us), directors Jason Hehir (The Last Dance), Jorge Gutierrez (Maya & The Three) and Alex Stapleton (Pride), and producers Jinko Gotoh (Klaus) and Julia Pistor (The Magician's Elephant).
So far, we've had more than 400 participants across these events - and there are more ahead. They've already spawned some exciting opportunities. Several artists from our event with shesaid.so and She Is the Music were subsequently hired to create imaginative covers of an iconic song for the marketing campaign of an upcoming Netflix drama series. And we're excited that other composers and music supervisors we've met are now in consideration for upcoming Netflix projects. We're off to a good start, and we're excited to continue bringing new voices and sounds into the storytelling experience.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Back to All News
