Capitol Music Group’s New Capitol Innovation Center

The Capitol Innovation Center (CIC) is Capitol Music Group’s most recent initiative to bring together innovative thinkers in the music industry,  technology sector, and the student community in order to envision the future of music. The CIC will be based in the well-known Capitol Tower in Los Angeles, California, and will provide a workspace and a professional studio where professionals and students alike will be able to collaborate and pave the path in music innovation.

The Capitol Innovation Center will host a series of events and forums that revolve around diversity, inclusion, social change, and community, including a speaker workshop called The Future She Built in partnership with Select Management Group. The workshop will center female figures in the entertainment, sports, and academic spheres. Additionally, the CIC will put on A Women’s Immersive Recording Arts Summit in conjunction with Women’s Audio Mission. Participants will attend panels hosted by keynote speakers and they will have the opportunity to partake in technical production workshops alongside the industry’s leading engineers and producers.

The CIC’s decision to center women’s voices in these events and forums is indicative of how recent, publicized social movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp have transformed discourse in the entertainment industry. Women’s stories are increasingly being recognized, heard, and reconciled in the wake of such social movements, and companies within the music industry are paying attention. While I am eager to see how the events and forums hosted by the Capital Innovation Center actually serve to increase women’s visibility and opportunities within the music industry and entertainment industry at large, I am wary of the nascent trend of corporations co-opting the #MeToo movement and other social movements fighting for gender equality for corporate gain and social respectability.

Yet, the CIC does have great potential to uplift and celebrate the voices of women and their contributions to the music industry at all levels if and only if they commit themselves (for the long haul, not just during times when it is in a corporation’s best interest) to ideals of diversity, inclusion, and equity.