#HowWeListen Live: In Conversation Podcast

Supporting Independents and Championing Diversity in Music

Episode Summary

Lara Baker is the General Manager at FUGA for the UK and Ireland. Named in Billboard's International Power Players in 2022, Lara’s passions lie in improving diversity, gender balance and inclusivity in the music business. Lara talks about making her way into the music ecosystem from a showbiz family and Music Business school. Most recently she joined FUGA, before that she was with the music publisher, Songtrust as Director of Business Development. This episode looks at the music ecosystem from many angles, including Lara's attempts to even out the scales when it came to representation.

Episode Notes

" I think socioeconomic status and background is one of the key areas where the music industry isn’t diverse enough."

Today's guest is Lara Baker, General Manager at FUGA for the UK & Ireland. On top of being named in Billboard's International Power Players 2022, she was also honoured with Music Week’s Women in Music Roll of Honour and SheSaidSo's Alternative Power List. She is passionate about improving diversity, gender balance and inclusivity in the music business. She has sat on UK Music’s Diversity Taskforce, supported the Love Music Hate Racism campaign and organised regular women in music and diversity-focused events. Lara joined FUGA in early 2023. She came from Songtrust/Downtown Music Publishing, where Lara worked for 4 years as Director of Business Development for the UK, IE and Australia. Lara's background and passion have always been supporting independent labels and artists. Her music career began in 2004 at AIM (the UK trade association for independent labels), where Lara spent 14 years serving the independent community, ultimately as Marketing and Events Director. During this time she created the AIM Awards, the leading celebration of independent music, as well as AIM's year-round programme events including AIM Connected, AIM Sync conference and Indie-Con (now known as Future Independents). There is a lot to talk about and Marc and Lara definitely get into it.

FUGA is the world's leading B2B music distributor. FUGA is the number one choice for some of the world’s top labels, management companies and distributors, including Epitaph Records, Ultra, Curb, Mom + Pop, mTheory and Domino. As GM UK/IE, Lara's role leads new business and client relations for the territory.

Show Notes:

#HowWeListen Live: In Conversation

Songtrust/Downtown Music

Women in Music Awards

shesaid.so

Keychange

Black Music Coalition,

Women in CTRL,