Tyla's "That Girl" Scholarship Is Putting Real Money Behind Women in Music

Ten women studying music and the arts are about to get a $5,000 boost toward their degrees — and for a few of them, that money could be the difference between finishing school and figuring it out later.

Tyla has launched the "That Girl" Music Scholarship in partnership with Epic Records, with Essence first reporting the exclusive and coverage following on October 15. The scholarship awards $5,000 each to ten women pursuing music or arts degrees — $50,000 in total — across Atlanta, New York City, Washington, D.C., Tampa, Houston, Los Angeles, and four South African cities. Students at HBCUs are prioritized. Applications run through the Institute of International Education and close October 30.

On paper, it's a celebrity philanthropy headline. Look closer and it's something more useful: a blueprint.

The music industry has a pipeline problem, and everyone in it knows it. Women — Black women especially — are underrepresented on the business side of the industry: in executive suites, on production rosters, behind engineering consoles, and across the teams that decide which records get made and heard. A scholarship doesn't fix that on its own. But it does something advice never can: it funds the years that create the professionals. Degrees in music business, production, and the arts are expensive, and the students most likely to change the industry are the ones least likely to be able to afford the runway.

That's what makes the HBCU priority the sharpest part of the design. HBCUs have long produced an outsized share of Black cultural leadership — the executives, producers, marketers, and strategists who quietly run the machinery of the industry. Tyla's team is not guessing about where the talent is. They're going where it already concentrates.

The partnership structure is worth noting, too. This isn't a one-off gift from an artist's personal account — it's a label (Epic Records) putting infrastructure behind an artist's name, administered through an established education organization (IIE). That matters because it turns a moment of generosity into a system: applications, deadlines, criteria, distribution. Systems outlast news cycles. If you're an artist or a founder thinking about how to give back, this is the lesson: the check is the easy part. The architecture — who runs it, who it reaches, how it repeats — is the actual work.

And then there's the timing. Applications close October 30 — eleven days from today. This isn't a story to bookmark and forget. It's an action item, sitting inside a window small enough to miss.

That's exactly why it belongs in the Journal. So much of what we publish is about the long game: build the catalog, build the table, build the equity. But the long game is played in short windows like this one. A $5,000 scholarship won't make a career. It might keep one alive through the semester where it almost ended. Someone reading this right now knows a young woman in a music or arts program who should apply. The most strategic thing you can do this week might be forwarding her this link.

The music industry keeps asking where the next generation of women leaders will come from. Tyla just answered: they'll come from Atlanta, Houston, D.C., Tampa, L.A., New York, and South Africa — if we make sure they can afford to finish the degrees that get them there.

Who's the young creative in your circle this was made for? Send it to her before October 30.