This month, we spoke with Hollie Hutton (she/her), Co-Founder and Creative Director of the award-winning music supervision agency RESISTER and its sister composer agency 515, the dedicated home for women and gender minority composers.
In this interview, Hollie challenges music and advertising agencies to be fully transparent about the composers they’re working with and to commission composers based on their music, not just their credits.
Pictured: Hollie Hutton (sher/her), Executive Creative Director / Co-Founder, RESISTER
Hey Hollie! First of all, tell us about how RESISTER and 515 came to be.
Hi! Hannah Charman and I set up RESISTER five years ago to resist the historical lack of women and underrepresented groups in music composition for all media.
From our experience of composer rosters at other agencies, we’d noticed that the majority of jobs were going to the same composers, and that most of these were male. But content creators were increasingly looking for women and other underrepresented composers to help tell specific stories and we didn’t see any composer agencies that focused on supporting and championing this talent. So we wanted to create a home where people can find that talent alongside continuing our work as music supervisors.
Our original aspiration was to have at least 50% of our pitches going out to women and gender minority composers. While this is how we started (the company was initially named SISTER), the more progress we made, the more our clients came to us specifically for this diverse talent pool and the more things we collectively wanted to resist. Rebranding to RESISTER in 2023 allowed us to expand our mission to resist more industry norms, from a lack of transparency when commissioning composers to a lack of crediting on won jobs..
So we lifted the hood and three years later, we have a talent pool of over 300 women, gender minority and underrepresented composers and have now signed nine of them exclusively to our 515 roster. Although 515 is the ‘SIS’ from RESISTER, we wanted to separate our composer agency from our music supervision brand. We didn’t just want to sit on 300 composers or limit them from working with competing supervisors. We believe the more credits and experience the composers can get, the more we can advance composer representation across the board.
So what barriers to composer representation is RESISTER resisting?
First of all, to understand the lack of representation, you have to be able to see who is getting the work. We tried to get stats from all composed ads last year, but only some of the composers have been credited. When agencies don’t credit their composers, we’re not even able to see how bad the problem is. There’s a real transparency issue in advertising.
But there are stats for Hollywood films, so I can tell you that when we started the company five years ago, only 7% of Hollywood film scores were composed by women. That’s peaked at 14% since. As for commercial music on the Billboard Hot 100, 2.6% was produced by women in 2019, and that went up to 6.5% by 2023 (only 0.9% women of colour).
Even though those stats have doubled in the last five years, there’s still a huge amount of work to do in film scores and commercial music. I have no doubt the advertising world is very similar.
Music and advertising agencies need to credit the composers they’re working with, because only then can they start to understand and address commissioning inclusively. The more transparent they are, the more we’ll see change.
There’s also an issue with the reel-first approach, where commissioners only give a composer a job if they can see that they’ve done the work before. Deadlines to deliver demos are very strenuous, so agencies are understandably reluctant to commission composers who have less experience turning something around quickly. So you find this circulation of amazingly experienced composers, but a lack of confidence to commission outside of them.
With that in mind, we listen to the music first, as opposed to reels, and try to include at least one new composer on each of our pitches. We’re also seeing more composers blind pitching for film and TV work, which really enables them to be valued based on the music they’ve created rather than just on their previous experience (which is important too). We love taking the creative approach of commissioning talent from a certain soundworld, because their authenticity and passion pushes the creative boundaries.
You mentioned ‘authenticity’. What role does this play in the commissioning of female and gender diverse composers?
Well, I’ve seen a big shift over the past five years where more content creators are looking for authenticity. So when there is a story about a person from a particular area or marginalised group, commissioners want to bring on composers who have that same story at their heart too.
On the last three TV shows that we’ve done, all of the music has been commissioned from artists local to where the show was set. Supporting regional talent brings authenticity to the sound, opportunity outside of the ‘London bubble’ and clout from a PR and storytelling perspective.
Five years ago, there was a flipside to this (which has started to improve) where we were being asked for female composers because it was a female-only creative, like a tampon ad. Whereas, the dark car ads or masculine action films weren’t considered something that a woman or nonbinary composer could score.
So there’s definitely a balance between being authentic with your community and limiting specific talent to specific stories. We don’t want to create a place where underrepresented genders are only getting opportunities to work on certain projects.
So tell us more about the 515 roster and their successful sync placements.
We launched 515 a year ago with six composers. We now have nine, so we’ve had some exciting additional signings, including Shelly McErlaine, who’s one half of Alisha’s Attic, for those of my generation who’ll know them.She just wrote the theme for the Pride of Britain Awards. It’s a beautiful, incredibly powerful theme, she’s an amazing talent.
Adina Nelu, one of our original 515, and Sarah Decourcy, a new signing based in LA, both did incredible re-records last year, Adina for Dove and Sarah for Magnum (working with Iggy Pop and Siouxsie Sioux). Both were finalists at the Music+Sound Awards. Sarah is very talented in the trailer world and was also the first female composer to score a Far Cry video game.
What makes 515 different is that we have a mixture of heritage composers and emerging talent. We take that music-first approach – we don’t sign the people with the most credits, we sign the people we believe in who have a unique voice.
For example, Nailah Hunter is an incredible harpist and artist based in LA who’s looking to do more score composing. Whereas, Akiko Haruna has more of an underground, electronic sound.
So we’ve cherry picked artists with a passion for a specific soundworld to ensure our composers don’t cross over sonically and to drive home their authenticity and specialism. That way, the roster also covers lots of different briefs.
How can our members find out more and get involved?
Music commissioners can think of 515 as a resource to find women and gender minority composers for their projects. Emily Richardson, our Head of 515 and composer agent, represents all the composers we’ve met and worked with. She doesn’t just pitch a composer because they’re part of 515, she pitches the right talent for the job.
For instance, we recently partnered with Wake The Town on the John Lewis Christmas campaign, representing composer and artist Laura Mvula who we’ve been working with on bespoke projects for the last two years.
So we’re very open to collaboration, both for anyone looking to commission our 515 roster, and as tastemakers for the community of women, and gender minority composers.
So come to us and ask, “Who might be good for this?” That’s a great place to start.
Hollie Hutton – Executive Creative Director / Co-Founder, RESISTER: hollie@resistermusic.com
Emily Richardson – Head of 515 / Senior Music Supervisor: emily@515talent.com
Interview by David Simkins (he/him), GMS D&I Committee