Rebecca Jolly is a global business consultant focused on innovative brand solutions across the music, publishing, and entertainment industries. She's worked for and with music entities including Beatport, Mixmag, Spotify, ID&T and MassiveMusic in London, New York and Amsterdam. Her brand work extends into some of the biggest global consumer brands including Microsoft, Budweiser, Samsung, Diageo and New Balance.
Rebecca is the founder of music and brand consultancy called Sounds Nice, and her work has been featured in Billboard, Entrepreneur, and Music Week. Rebecca speaks regularly on industry panels, including Cannes Lions, SXSW and ADE, and has also featured as a guest lecturer at NYU. Rebecca lives just outside London with her family.
Describe a day in your life as a music business consultant.
My days are a juggle of wrangling kids, meetings, writing time and occasional networking and events. As many in the shesaid.so community will testify, being a working mum is a fine balance that can tip from uber productive to complete chaos in a nanosecond!
After I ship the kids off to school, I try to schedule an hour of exercise - either yoga, a spin or strength class and some cold water therapy to clear my head and get me ready for the day. Carving this time is a luxury, but it makes me so much more productive during the day, and more willing to pick my laptop up again in the evening if necessary.
From here, I usually have a few hours of meetings - most days, these take the form of calls, but I usually spend a day or two a week in London for some necessary face time (done over delicious food and coffee if possible). These meetings can be a mix of speaking with the partners I work with - music media companies, labels, sound agencies or the new music conference I’m involved with, and also brands I’m leading cultural strategies for. A lot of what I do is built around that sweet spot where music and brands can work together to create impact, so these meetings can range from presentations about strategies and plans, updates on product and program developments, briefings and pitches.
I recently published a book, so after a quick lunch break and dog walk, the afternoon is usually spent focused on writing - either on the development of a second book which is currently in the works or perhaps for a feature or column. A couple of days a week, I also tend to have a podcast interview record or will be speaking on a panel or at a virtual town hall (including the shesaid.so community town hall!), which makes up the rest of my day till school ends.
After a flurry of homework, dinner, bath and bedtime - I sometimes have a call or two in the evening as I work a lot with partners in the US, but usually, just cook up a storm before crashing with a good book or in front of the TV (Succession series 3 HELLO) with a nice glass of red.
How did you get your start in music?
I started to dip my toe in the music waters a few years before formally starting to work in the industry. I began promoting music nights while at university in Manchester - I worked with the guys at Fat City Records up there for a while and also put on a few of my own music nights. I moved to London and initially started working at a brand advertising agency while spending late nights and weekends running a couple of electro-punk nights at 93 Feet East and 333 Mother Bar in Shoreditch. They were wild days - the stories! In retrospect, this period probably started to fuse the music and brand worlds in my head though I don’t think I realized it at the time.
After a few years in London, an opportunity came up to move to Amsterdam and join the team at ID&T, looking after a global brand partnership they had with Samsung for their Sensation events. This really solidified my interest in this space - looking at how the involvement of a brand, if done correctly, can really facilitate and evolve the music space - either through commercial investment or also resource and infrastructure against research, development, product and marketing. In those days brand / commercial was still a bit of a dirty word in the music industry - the legacy of clunky sponsorships and brands plastering themselves over festivals or content, but I think ID&T really lead the charge with thoughtful brand integrations and the understanding that a brand can be an essential part of the music ecosystem - which has only become more clear in recent years are the industry model has shifted.
I moved back to the agency world in London for a few years before relocating to New York to help launch one of the agency clients into the US market - a little-known streaming platform called Spotify…! I ended up spending a decade in New York - after Spotify rolled out in the US, I rejoined ID&T as their partnership lead for the festivals they were launching over there - Mysteryland, Sensation and Tomorrowland, and from there took a role as US CEO of Wasted Talent - Mixmag, Kerrang! and ultimately The Face - sitting across offices in NY and LA.
A real back and forth between brand and music worlds - ultimately leading to the creation of my own consultancy back in the UK, building strategies and partnerships in the space - and writing a book about it, another lockdown author!
Tips on finding your first music job?
For me, everything is about a combination of knowledge and network - you need to know and understand music, and you need to start to build your community. After a couple of decades working in music, it’s rare for a project to land on my table that hasn’t come through my network (many of which are ultimately friends these days). And as I start to build out and embark on programs, the people who come to collaborate with me on them are from the same network. It really is key. In terms of knowing the space - you don’t have to know which area you really want to work in or what your specialism will end up being - this will inevitably change and evolve over time - but get under the hood, drive your passion forward - intimate knowledge of the scene, artists, creators will pay dividends.
Then work it! Keep yourself front of mind with people, make yourself useful - indispensable, even. Offer to help out on events or projects, keep abreast of hiring and opportunities, become part of communities like shesaid.so that offer a front-row seat to many industry happenings and positions. But in the same breath, I will say it’s a small industry of well-connected people - keep your approach focused and thoughtful.
Essential things you always carry with you in your bag
Well, I kind of have two bags, so it depends on when you catch me! On the weekend with the kids, it tends to be snacks, snacks and more snacks. In my regular bag, however, the non-negotiables I will always be found with are headphones, not just for listening to music and podcasts, but also to help focus on work when I’m on the move or in busy places (I work best, particularly deck writing, to really loud electronic music mixes - Fred Again and Sherelle are my current faves). Lipbalm, I think I have an addiction. And my phone, because what can we even do these days without it?
What does community mean to you in one sentence?
It means help, support, solidarity, and the ability to find a familiar face in a room wherever in the world you might be - which really is priceless.
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