An Interview With...Rebecca Cook

Meet Rebecca Cook, the woman who has worked with Nick Roberts for BBC Music Introducing Newcastle, ran her own music blog in a pandemic and is championing for more women to work in music and this is what she said.

Rebecca always had an interest in music growing up but didn't know how to work in the music scene. "I’ve just always really loved live music ever since I was little. I went to Sunderland University and a big thing about it was that they had Spark the student radio station there and that was the big reason of why I chose Sunderland over somewhere like Manchester."

She has found that females are still treated differently from men in many ways in the music industry. "I think women are kind of looked very different to men and it’s still a very unsafe place don’t get me wrong a lot has progressed and improved for women in the industry but I've noticed that there is still such a difficult thing with being a woman and being into music."

Rebecca's day in the life of working as a producer varies from different roles. "I actually only work eight hours a week that I’m contracted for but I would probably say I do about four times that but I only get paid for eight hours, submissions vary it can slow down on certain times of the year but about 70 submissions a day and in a week you are talking about 100 odd or 150 submissions a week. A lot of additional work that me and Nick use to put in the show so people could post things. It would be doing a lot of work for the Thursday night show and then my weekends I will try to get to a lot of gigs."

Her main piece of advice if you want to work in radio is to push yourself to do it. "So my advice would be to people who are wanting to work in the music industry would be just really get stuck in. Get involved in a community station as it helps your confidence a lot!"