Rita Ora says social media has given a "powerful" platform to female popstars.
The 27-year-old singer – who will release her new album ‘Phoenix’ next month (23.11.18) – has praised the "internet and social media" for giving "creative souls" the freedom to "put out music" without the restraints of a dedicated album release.
Speaking during an appearance on UK radio station BBC Two, Rita said: "I think it’s just we, as artists, have more freedom, which I think is freaking the music industry out a little bit because of the internet and social media. The change is that we can kind of put out music if we wanted too and however we wanted too. Which for us as creative souls is incredibly powerful.
"[On Instagram] I have 13.9 million followers. But you know there’s some people that are solely, incredibly popular on social media with 20 million followers and for me, you could have your own life off that!"
Rita joined ‘Girls’ collaborator Bebe Rexha at her Women In Harmony event in London last month (25.09.18), with both stars vowing to support their fellow female artists in the music business.
The pop pair teamed up to bring awareness to Bebe’s project which she hopes will encourage women in the industry to help and support each other, especially those girls at the beginning of their careers.
Bebe, 29, got the idea to create Women In Harmony from her own experiences in the business when she was starting out aged 19, as she wishes she could have a female mentor to help her deal with the hardships.
Rita added: "It’s a dinner situation which we try to do in every kind of country we’re all in at the same time, which is actually really rare, and it was actually Bebe’s idea to be honest. She had this incredible idea to bring together anyone that has any sort of job in entertainment whether it’s lighting or engineering, being a songwriter or being a producer or something that’s behind the scenes and recognise those efforts.
"We made it specifically for women because over the years we’ve both been in situations where there’s no room for us at the table and we wanted somewhere where we could really encourage each other and come together in harmony and we might write another song together or something positive come out of it it’s just nice to really encourage each other as women in this male dominated industry."
The ‘For You’ singer made sure to point out that Women In Harmony was not a hate-campaign against men but was instead women being "boss ladies" and supporting each other.
Rita confessed: "It’s not us getting together and kind of going around the cauldron and talking about all the horrible male. This is more just us being like ‘good for you girl’ and being boss ladies as I like to call it.
"Sometimes the writers meet each other and they’ve both wrote individually great records and you never know what comes out of it and that’s the purpose of this really – just to introduce people to each other. Sometimes writers don’t even meet people that are singing the tracks now so it’s amazing to see how we all interact with each other at dinners like that."
Rita Ora: ‘social media’ gives popstars a platform
