Women in music production: who's shaping the industry right now

For a long time, music production was talked about as though it were a male profession with a handful of female exceptions. That framing has never reflected reality, and it reflects it less with every year that passes. Across the UK right now, women are producing chart albums, shaping entire genres, running their own labels, and changing what a studio career can look like, both from behind the desk and from the booth itself.

Industry research consistently shows that women remain a small minority of producers and engineers working on commercially released music, and the reasons behind that gap are structural, historical and, in some cases, still actively present in studio culture today. But the women working in UK music production right now are not waiting for the industry to fix itself before they get on with the work. They are simply doing it, brilliantly, and in increasing numbers.

Here are some of the women currently shaping the sound of British music, in the studio and on stage.

Nia Archives

Nia Archives represents an artist who learned production entirely on her own terms and has built a career on the strength of that self-sufficiency. Born in Bradford and raised in Leeds before moving to Manchester and then London, she taught herself to produce using a cracked copy of Logic after finding that collaborating with other producers slowed her down.

Her 2024 debut album Silence Is Loud charted at number 16 on the UK Albums Chart and earned a Mercury Prize nomination, and she has gone on to open for Beyoncé on the Renaissance tour and headline her own Up Ya Archives events. She won Best Producer at the 2022 NME Awards and has been widely credited as one of the central figures driving jungle's contemporary revival.

SHERELLE

Born Sherelle Thomas in London, SHERELLE built her reputation first as a DJ, becoming one of the most in-demand names in UK club culture after a 2019 Boiler Room set went viral, before turning her attention seriously to production during lockdown. She taught herself from scratch, spending months learning and experimenting before releasing her first original track.

She holds a residency on BBC Radio 1, runs two record labels, Hooversound, which she co-founded to push the boundaries of electronic music, and BEAUTIFUL, which she set up specifically to platform Black and LGBTQ+ voices in dance music, and has been recognised at the DJ Mag Best of British Awards as one of the most significant breakthrough artists of recent years.

Lollypop Beatz

Built entirely from a bedroom setup in London and with no formal industry connections to begin with, Lollypop Beatz developed her career successfully throughout the years. She taught herself production by watching tutorials on YouTube, building her sound around the dark, intense trap style associated with artists like Future and Chief Keef. Her beats caught the attention of Chief Keef himself, who discovered her work online - a co-sign that helped propel her career forward

She’s gained a mass following on TikTok, where she shares tutorials and behind-the-scenes content alongside her own beats, becoming something of a mentor figure for aspiring producers watching from their own bedrooms. Her message to other self-starters is characteristically direct: if she can do it from her bedroom with no connections in the industry, anyone can.

PinkPantheress

Few producers have moved as quickly from bedroom anonymity to the very top of the industry as PinkPantheress. Raised in Kent, she began producing instrumentals for a friend on GarageBand at seventeen, later recording many of her own early tracks lying down in her university halls late at night using nothing more than a laptop. Entirely self-taught, she has gone on to release the chart-topping mixtapes To Hell with It, Heaven Knows and Fancy That, and in February 2026 she became the first woman and the youngest artist in history to win the Brit Award for British Producer of the Year.

She has also spoken openly about the particular difficulty of being recognised as a producer as a woman of colour working in two-step and drum and bass, a genre that has historically been slow to credit women behind the desk.

CeeBeaats

Born Cee and raised in Redbridge, London, the producer known as CeeBeaats has been carving out a reputation in UK hip-hop and drill production since her mid-teens, inspired by a mother who is herself a singer, songwriter, and producer.

She co-produced Digga D's Woi, the biggest-selling drill single of 2020, and has gone on to work with artists including AJ Tracey, Busta Rhymes and Tyla, alongside a worldwide publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music. Versatile across pop, Afrobeats, drill, trap and Amapiano, she has been candid about the responsibility that comes with being one of relatively few female producers in UK hip-hop, saying it has always mattered to her to inspire other women to make beats and be fearless.

Effy

Raised near Blackpool in Lancashire and now based in London, the producer Effy began by looping records on her boyfriend's DJ decks as a teenager before turning that curiosity into a career producing acid-driven techno and high-energy club music.

Her breakthrough single Bodied dealt directly with female sexual empowerment, and she has gone on to release a string of acclaimed EPs while opening for artists including Peggy Gou and Honey Dijon. She also founded Not Yours, a club night and label built specifically to celebrate and platform women in dance music, a response, she has said, to the years she spent being one of very few women in the room.

Oppidan

Bristol-based Oppidan has become one of the fastest-rising names in contemporary UK garage, building a sound that blends 2-step with 4x4 and bass influences into something distinctly her own.

Her tracks, including See Me and Mr Sandman, have established her as part of a new wave of producers translating UKG for a modern generation of ravers, and her live sets have taken her across the UK festival circuit and beyond. She has spoken about feeling vulnerable as her sound expands beyond the bouncy garage productions she first became known for.

Flava D

Danielle Gooding, known as Flava D, has spent well over a decade at the forefront of UK bass culture, moving fluidly between grime, bassline, UK garage, and drum and bass.

She first got her hands on Ableton while working a teenage job in a record shop, and her 2011 garage anthem Hold On marked her breakthrough after catching the attention of the "Godfather of Grime" Wiley. As one third of TQD alongside Royal-T and DJ Q, and now signed to the revered Hospital Records for her debut drum and bass album, she remains one of the most versatile and respected producers working in British dance music.

Girls Don't Sync

Girls Don't Sync - Gaia Ahuja, Matty Chiabi, Hannah Lynch and Sophia Violet - formed in Liverpool in 2021 as a collective of promoters before becoming one of the UK's most exciting DJ and production groups.

They have been outspoken advocates for protecting British nightlife culture and for platforming other underrepresented talent on their bills, and their collective approach to production, shared writing, shared vocals, shared credit, reflects the values they've built the group around from the start.

EMMAVIE

A singer, songwriter, producer, and DJ from London, EMMAVIE blends 90s R&B influences with a love of digital audio experimentation in her sound.

Largely self-taught, she began producing in order to make music she could dance to, and has gone on to release a self-produced debut album, Honeymoon, and a string of EPs.. Her work has been placed on television series, including I May Destroy You and Queen Sugar, and she has collaborated with artists including Alfa Mist and Kojey Radical, building a reputation as one of UK R&B's most distinctive producer-vocalists.

FKA Twigs

FKA Twigs has spent over a decade co-producing every one of her own records, working alongside collaborators including Arca, Paul Epworth and Sampha on her Mercury-nominated debut LP1, and more recently with Koreless and Sasha on her Grammy-winning album Eusexua. In 2024, she received the Music Producers Guild's award for Outstanding Contribution to UK Music.

It is what she did next that matters most here, collecting her Inspirational Artist award at the Music Week Women in Music Awards, Twigs spoke candidly about having worked with only one female engineer in two decades in the studio, and used the same speech to announce a new educational grant programme with Saffron - the UK-based non-profit and music tech initiative founded by Laura Lewis-Paul, which has spent ten years running production, sound engineering, DJ mixing and radio broadcasting courses for women, non-binary and trans people, guaranteeing that at least a quarter of places on every course are free. Saffron's founder later described the moment as one where the vision the organisation had been building for a decade was finally heard by the entire industry at once.

The grant is aimed squarely at the technical roles Twigs calls "the backbone of the industry", engineers, techs and producers, the very roles where women remain most acutely underrepresented.

Women pushing for a change in music

The women named above are not working in isolation, and it is worth recognising the organisations and initiatives built specifically to support women coming up in production and sound engineering.

The Music Producers Guild has reported a meaningful increase in female membership over recent years, alongside a board of directors with significant female representation. Saffron, a UK-based music label and tech initiative, and shesaid.so, one of the largest international communities supporting women in music, have both worked to create direct pathways and opportunities for women in production.

EQ50 Mentorship Scheme, a twelve-month programme supporting women and non-binary people coming up in jungle and drum and bass, has been a significant route into the industry for emerging artists - Nia Archives herself credits the scheme as a pivotal part of her early development.

At dBs Institute of Music, we are committed to supporting the next generation of music producers and engineers, including the women who will go on to shape the sound of the industry's future. Our Music Production courses are taught by working professionals in studios equipped to industry standard, across our campuses. Come see for yourself on our open days.