Girls’ Day 2024 – A look into the future
Girls’ Day – pizza, music, diversity and the certainty that almost nothing goes to plan!
We all know that women are under-represented in the music industry and are difficult to get into. To this end, we participate in the Girls’ Day programme every year. The purpose of this project, which of course also has a male equivalent (Boys’ Day), is to get a taste of industries that have historically been more gender-specific. The day is intended to promote diversity, provide education and encourage the sexes to have a broadminded view of their future field of work – independent of historic influences.
Empowerment, visible diversity and the power of women
They were all there. On time. 19 girls and young women between the ages of 12 and 18 who had responded to our call. If you didn’t get a seat, you sat on a pillow on the floor. The whole room was full and extremely quiet. All eyes on us! On the women of recordJet. A good feeling.
But also a great responsibility. We knew that today would be about communicating our work, but also about empowerment. Laying all our cards on the table. And even though this was not the first time we had held Girls’ Day in Torstraße in Berlin-Mitte, there was excitement in the air. And open questions. How would the girls and young women respond to what we had to say? And to our musical super act Floss? Or our little games for loosening up? Where should we even begin?
There is magic in every beginning
We started off with some philosophy, with the certainty that life’s paths rarely go as we expect. And that things in life can fall together, and that you cannot and should not plan everything. And that what happened to our first speaker can happen too. That is, taking over a co-directorship while doing a degree in Scandinavian studies and being a mother. This is what happened to Caro, a co-director at recordJet. She dropped the mic right from the start by stating “We want to employ as many women at recordJet as men” (currently there are 24 men and 17 women).
She substantiated her desire for equality in our company with a quiz in which we had to guess, among other things, how many women are in top positions in music labels. She particularly encouraged the young girls to become aware that they are needed – in our industry, too. The music industry.
What are you hoping for from this day?
A good old icebreaker game afterwards allowed us to learn a little bit about the girls. “What are you hoping for from this day?” was one of our questions. Some girls then said they had no expectations, others said they would like to “learn more about the music business and our work”. Of course, we tried to impress them with outrageously delicious pizzas and absolutely addictive donuts, but the day was such a success.
For example, there was our colleague from IT, Alex. Alex showed me how a frontend and a backend work (and how they work together). She also demonstrated her historical background knowledge. Did you know that programming, the basic prerequisite for the computer, was invented by a woman? After Alex, Beate and Theresa took over the mothership of entertainment. They spoke about their areas of expertise: support and customer service.
And their presentation was very vivid. Since they are in direct contact with our artists, they could talk about funny, bizarre and real situations. In addition, our girls were able to watch and listen to proper quality assurance in the phase before a song is sent to the stores. Our colleagues had also prepared a fake profile with a cover photo and information. They had also included small mistakes in the release to better demonstrate their work. Now the girls could play Sherlock Holmes. For example, they found out that the wrong price was stated and that a title was spelled incorrectly. This hands-on exercise ultimately brought us to what recordJet is all about: music. Our work stands and falls with our great artists.
Marketing, First Class and a bit of accounting
The baton was then handed over to me. I had to talk all about marketing and blogging. I did my best to report on the changes to classic marketing brought about by social media, Google Ads and SEO, etc. There was also a bit about the impact of ChatGPT and AI in general on our job. Ultimately, I wanted to make one thing clear: when these girls do our job one day, some professions are likely to look different.
Setareh and Eleni, from the First Class team, then led us eloquently as usual through their section. Together with us, they organised a vote on our monthly recurring feature, “Artist of the Month”. The artist was chosen by all the girls in a simulated vote. Our colleagues had selected five artists for us to choose from. In addition to the song, the voting criteria also included information such as the artist’s bio, their photo marketing, and how many monthly listeners they had on Spotify etc.
The girls learned what a pitch is and how professional recordJet’s artists are with their work.
The absolute highlight – Floss
Speaking of a professional artist, we were joined by the pop musician Floss. The pop singer, with a weakness for the colour pink, came, told and enthused. Not only did she teach the girls about life from the perspective of a female artist, she also let us in on the creative process of making her hit single, “I will eat your God”. To do this, she first read from a book, in order to draw attention, symbolically and practically, to the importance of being inspired and allowing a thought to mature, until it can somehow become independent in the artist’s heart.
From the voice memo in the middle of the night, including the first scraps of rhythmic ideas, to a first demo and the final product: the finished mastered song. The process, which lasted for six months, was, as Floss explained, just the beginning. Artwork, photos and an elaborate music video followed. For just one song.
One thing was certain, Floss had to do a lot of autographs and photos on that day.
Accounting and social media rounded off Girls’ Day
Tina, our numbers fairy, was able to bring to life the for many, rather dry topic of finance and accounting. No doubt this was because she simply enjoys her work – and this fun was felt by everyone in the room. This made what she said and how she presented it even better. The young girls and women were taught in a simple way that it is crucial that at a company that has a lot of employees and high fixed costs every month, the numbers have to add up.
Last but not least, our social media expert Sky ended the day with a bang talking about social media management. She took a very practical approach and carried out a social media analysis using the girls’ favourite artist as an example. Thanks to the high level of interaction, we could tell that it was fun!
In conclusion
After this eventful and full day, two things were clear to us women of recordJet:
- We’ll be back next year!
- It has been so much fun for us to show knowledge, enthusiasm and a kind of ‘open door’ to the new generation that we can only hope that it will bear fruit.
We simply hope that our work has helped a new generation of strong and curious women who would like to follow in our footsteps and who might be able to imagine doing so – perhaps even because of us. Because, in a way, Girls’ Day was just as relevant to us. In any case, I once again realised what a great bunch of women and colleagues we are at recordJet.
We will see each other in the future. April 2025!