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
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
Back to All News
