In the aftermath of the Sean Combs sex trafficking charges, John Legend’s manager has penned an op-ed detailing her experience in the “toxic” music industry and how things must change.
Ty Stiklorius, a 20-year music industry exec, opens her New York Times op-ed recounting a story about how she, as a then-recent college graduate on a family trip to the Caribbean, ended up at a yacht party thrown by P. Diddy. While there, she was guided to a bedroom where “a man who seemed to be an associate of the party’s host” locked the door behind him.
“Perhaps my nervous babbling — ‘My brother’s on this boat, and he’s probably looking for me!’ — convinced him to unlock the bedroom door and let me go,” Stiklorius writes.
“I still don’t know who he was or if he had any connection to Mr. Combs, as it seemed. But I do now know, after 20 years as a music industry executive, that what happened that night was no aberration — it was an indicator of a pervasive culture in the music industry that actively fostered sexual misconduct and exploited the lives and bodies of those hoping to make it in the business.”
Stiklorius continued, “This toxic situation has been allowed to fester because power has been concentrated in the hands of kingmakers: wealthy, entitled, nearly always male gatekeepers who control nearly every door that leads to success and who can, without consequence, use their power to abuse young women and young men. Too often, women have not been safe in recording studios, on tour buses, in green rooms or in offices. It’s not a bug of the music business; it’s a major feature.”
However, she added that there is hope for change in the music industry, as “exploitative gatekeepers” have seen their power lessened as record labels struggle in the streaming era. “The business model is flailing. Stiklorius writes. “All of this means we have an opportunity to turn the page on an archaic, sometimes predatory model of doing business in which it was all too common to ignore, protect or elevate predators and their enablers.”
Stiklorius added that “more representation in positions of power and “minimizing the use” of NDAs will help the issue, as will the current shift in the industry where now the power is in the hands of the artists.
“Gatekeepers — whether at labels, studios, management, publishing or radio — who once chose the next hot talent and shaped the public taste in her favor, have less of that power than they used to,” Stiklorius wrote. “They might still dangle the keys to success in front of young artists, but the locks are changing.”
