"It really hit us that there wasn’t rigorous data on the business itself," says Smith, whose team is interviewing dozens of executives while analyzing charts, song lyrics and music videos "in order to really understand and counter implicit and explicit bias," she says, aiming to release the initial findings in early 2018. Smith says that she hopes to create "targeted solutions" for both the live and recorded music sectors, such as encouraging music companies to put language into their employment contracts that incentivizes the promotion and retention of women and minorities in bigger roles. It’s an idea that borrows from Smith’s years of research on the film industry, in which "all an A-list financier has to stipulate [before funding a movie] are inclusion criteria," says Smith.