For years now, one common question among advocates of the #MeToo movement is when the music industry will face its own reckoning. Musicians like Ryan Adams, Marylin Manson and R. Kelly alongside powerful executives like Russell Simmons and Charlie Walk have all faced accusations following decades of alleged misconduct, but that hardly scratches the service. A new advocacy foundation is done waiting.
The Face the Music Now foundation, launched Thursday, bills itself as first-ever group focused specifically on helping survivors of sexual harassment and abuse in the music business get their stories out and report their abuse. Founded by music industry advocate and author Dorothy Carvello, the foundation’s goals include helping survivors find legal counsel, connecting survivors with media and advocating for legislation supporting sexual abuse victims such as the Adult Survivors act in New York.
“This is a first step that’s never been done before. No one’s had a safe space to come to report sexual abuse before,” Carvello tells Rolling Stone. “Women are afraid to speak out. Look what happened with Kesha. The kind of treatment she faced is what so many survivors face, and it discourages them from coming forward.” (The singer has been in a legal battle with Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald for years over abuse allegations. Gottwald has denied all charges.)
Carvello started her career as an assistant to Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records in the late 1980s before working her way up to become the label’s first female A&R executive. In her 2018 book Anything for a Hit, she writes about several instances of sexual harassment Ertegun allegedly committed, and noted how she was fired after refusing to sit on the lap of a male coworker during a meeting. She claims she reported the incident to Atlantic’s brass and was let go the next morning.
Since releasing her book, Carvello has become more involved in advocating for sexual abuse survivors in the music industry, becoming a shareholder activist in all three major music companies late last year. Through shareholder activism, she hopes to push for more transparency from the music industry with their own financial arms as leverage.
“The music industry has a policy of omertá, a mob mentality of silence,” Carvello says. “After I published the book, so many survivors reached out to me to tell me their stories, and I knew I had to do something to help these women to change the lack of accountability of men in the music business.”
Carvello wants her foundation to be a presence in the music business, but she says she won’t take funding from any major music company, nor does she expect to get their help. “I won’t be taking any financial support from them,” Carvello says. “And that’ll be the same for everyone. That includes the touring business and Live Nation, the indies; It’s all the same man, just structured on a different power base and level.”
For the foundation’s board of directors, Carvello has brought on dean of Middle Tennessee State University’s College of Media and Entertainment Beverly Keel, songwriter and former music executive Bruce Roberts, and former secret serviceman Rob Savage III.
Keel met Carvello when she spoke to music industry students at MTSU. Before joining Face the Music Now, Keel had founded Change the Conversation, a coalition aimed at promoting gender equity in the country music business. She’s also a cofounder of Nashville Music Equity, a foundation started in 2020 to address racism in country music.
Carvello started her career as an assistant to Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records in the late 1980s before working her way up to become the label’s first female A&R executive. In her 2018 book Anything for a Hit, she writes about several instances of sexual harassment Ertegun allegedly committed, and noted how she was fired after refusing to sit on the lap of a male coworker during a meeting. She claims she reported the incident to Atlantic’s brass and was let go the next morning.
Since releasing her book, Carvello has become more involved in advocating for sexual abuse survivors in the music industry, becoming a shareholder activist in all three major music companies late last year. Through shareholder activism, she hopes to push for more transparency from the music industry with their own financial arms as leverage.
“The music industry has a policy of omertá, a mob mentality of silence,” Carvello says. “After I published the book, so many survivors reached out to me to tell me their stories, and I knew I had to do something to help these women to change the lack of accountability of men in the music business.”
Carvello wants her foundation to be a presence in the music business, but she says she won’t take funding from any major music company, nor does she expect to get their help. “I won’t be taking any financial support from them,” Carvello says. “And that’ll be the same for everyone. That includes the touring business and Live Nation, the indies; It’s all the same man, just structured on a different power base and level.”
For the foundation’s board of directors, Carvello has brought on dean of Middle Tennessee State University’s College of Media and Entertainment Beverly Keel, songwriter and former music executive Bruce Roberts, and former secret serviceman Rob Savage III.
Keel met Carvello when she spoke to music industry students at MTSU. Before joining Face the Music Now, Keel had founded Change the Conversation, a coalition aimed at promoting gender equity in the country music business. She’s also a cofounder of Nashville Music Equity, a foundation started in 2020 to address racism in country music.
