As Danielle Cuoco departs Equalizer, heading towards the next steps of her career as a music business professional, I asked her to reflect upon the last few months of her internship - what projects she found valuable, things that she learned that she didn’t expect, skills that she’s taking into her future endeavors.

I walked into the New Era of Women in Music panel expecting to hear about opportunities. I thought it would focus on progress, empowerment, and the ways women are thriving in today’s music industry. If I’m being honest, I also walked in a bit skeptical. I’ve heard those conversations before, and I wasn’t sure how much of it would actually feel real.

At the start of the summer, Equalizer was excited to bring on its first intern, Griffin O’Neill. At the conclusion of his internship, I asked him to share some thoughts on what he’d learned - not only as a reflection, but also to better understand how this world can be understood by somebody coming in fresh. Should the right training on how to handle data elements be a foundational part of training for any new employee in music? If you know me, you know I’ll say yes.

Griffin O’Neill recently joined the Equalizer team as a summer intern, and was immediately tasked with digging into data and rights research for some indie artists. This is the same type of publishing ownership research that I had to do early in my career and, although there are more public databases to search than there were back then, many of the same problems with identifying ownership still persist decades later.

2024 was brought to me by the letter C - conferences, community, collaboration, (and coffee). It marked the first full year for Equalizer Consulting, which has been exhilarating, but not without challenges faced by any small business owner.