The night before Billboard’s 2023 Women in Music Awards, we honored another collection of women in music: the top women producers.
At the 2023 Billboard Women in Music Top Producers Dinner on Tuesday night (Feb. 28), Chloë Bailey, TOKiMONSTA, Uniiqu3, Syd, MNDR, Suni, Malibu Babie, Kito, Ebonie Smith, Tiffany Miranda, Jenn Decilveo, Monique Winning, Yuli, INK, Jade Rose and more gathered at the Pendry Hotel in West Hollywood to celebrate their music and talk about the future of the profession for women. Producers who are women make up less than 3% of working producers today, so it’s time to inspire the next generation of women beatmakers.
You might know the names Chloë and TOKiMONSTA — Chloë is a singer/songwriter who also produces her own music, and TOKiMONSTA is a DJ and dance producer who has released projects under her own name — but oftentimes, no matter how high-profile the music they’re working on, producers’ names stay out of the limelight. That’s why this event, as well as the first-ever Women in Music Producer of the Year Award handed out to Rosalía at Wednesday’s ceremony, look to shine a light on the women already making strides in the studio to show young women that this is a viable career path.
As Rosalía said in her speech Wednesday night, “A producer’s job is a job in the shadow. … It’s not very fun – whoever tells you otherwise, they’re lying. It’s 15 hours a day, nonstop maybe, working on a sound. It comes from love, it comes from obsession maybe, and that’s why you stay in that small-ass room with no windows while everybody else around you is at home, just chilling, eating something nice, laughing, having sex, living life, just regular human cool sh–.”
Billboard president Mike Van, Billboard editorial director Hannah Karp and Billboard chief brand officer Dana Droppo led Tuesday’s dinner, sponsored by Splice and the Mechanical Licensing Collective.
See photos from the 2023 Billboard Women in Music Top Producers dinner below.
