Music Insiders overview icould is a youth careers inspiration website, which lets teens browse 1000+ video interviews with people from all kinds of careers talking about what they do and how they got there. The interviews are a real mixture of roles and industries from junior creatives and runners, up to celebrities like Sir Richard Branson, Lord Puttnam, Davina McCall, Trevor Nelson and Kevin Spacey. Supported by BlackBerry, icould is now inviting young people to meet the Music Insiders and discover a world of amazing jobs within the music industry they may never have known existed. Incredible career stories captured by icould include Jessie J s choreographer, Coldplay s label president, Tinie Tempah s publicist, video directors, journalists, photographers, presenters, make- up artists and more. Together they show you don t have to be the person holding the microphone to have a fulfilling career in music, and that passion and dedication often count for more than qualifications. As well as inspiring the new generation of music lovers to aspire to a broader range of careers, icould and BlackBerry are giving a few lucky winners the chance to become a Music Insider for a day. Prizes include amazing job shadow experiences on a music video set and celebrity photoshoot, and even a trip to Ibiza to work for superclub Amnesia. Visit www.icould.com/musicinsiders for a chance to win. 1
Music Insiders stars Amit Amin & Naroop Jhooti, Photographers http://icould.com/videos/naroop- jhooti/ http://youtu.be/pwh2khw6smw http://icould.com/videos/amit- amin/ http://youtu.be/ej9l28agx2y Amit & Naroop are the photographers of choice for a number of urban music starts including Tinie Tempah, Jay Sean and Tinchy Stryder. Amit Amin is a self- trained photographer who began a media course at university but quickly discovered it wasn't for him. Naroop always knew that he wanted to follow a creative career but it wasn't until he teamed up with Amit that everything came together. Amit said: If we go back five years now, we wouldn t necessarily expect to be in this situation and we ve learnt that if we knew how hard this was going to be, none of us would have started from the beginning, cos we just wouldn t have had the courage to do it. Naroop said: Skill and talent are two totally separate things. Talent alone will never get you to where you need to be. You need to be highly skilled and work hard, work hard, keep doing it and eventually you ll get to where you want to be. Andre Carroll, Music Licensing Assistant http://icould.com/videos/andre- carroll/ http://youtu.be/d1pctga6qps Andre Carroll is a Music Licensing Assistant at EMI. After studying at the Brit School, Andre was picked to be part of a new boy band and was signed by a record label. The band didn't achieve the success they'd hoped for but Andre continued to follow his passion and began a music apprenticeship at EMI, through the Music4Good apprenticeship scheme. Andre was recently offered a permanent job at EMI. I think if you decide that you wanna work in something you kind of have to realise that you have to make a commitment somehow and hope that in the end it pays off. 2
Christina Armstrong, Brand Engagement Manager http://icould.com/videos/christina- armstrong/ http://youtu.be/whxvpbedftc Christina Armstrong is Brand Engagement Manager for BlackBerry. After leaving school earlier than expected due to illness, Christina decided to go straight into work. Through determination and a key relationship with a manager, she developed a career in marketing. Christina trained on the job and recently began her dream role, leading on BlackBerry's relationship with music artists, including working with Tinie Tempah and Jessie J. In five years time I d still like to be working within music. I d possibly like to look at mentoring younger people and showing them that you don t necessarily have to be a Tinie Tempah to work in the music industry. There are other ways, for instance what I do, or lots of other roles that support those guys to get to where they are. Emil Nava, Music Video Director http://icould.com/videos/emil- nava/ http://youtu.be/s5l07sr9so0 Music video director, Emil Nava started his career producing videos for his friends. One of the videos was spotted and from there Emil was approached by a number of agencies that wanted to represent him. He went for one of the biggest but after a while felt that it wasn t right for him and moved to a smaller agency. The first video he produced there was for Tinchy Stryder, Take Me Back. Since then, Emil has worked with Jessie J, N- Dubz, Yasmin and Ed Sheeran. I definitely didn t grow up thinking I wanted to be a director, I kinda grew up not really knowing I think school made me feel like I didn t really know as well because even though I was good at drama, I was still naughty in drama when I got onto a film set I kinda saw what they were doing and was like yeah, that, I could definitely do that. Georgia Lewis Anderson, Online Music TV Presenter 3
http://icould.com/videos/georgia- la/ http://youtu.be/dkp8umc9kkc Georgia LA is the presenter for online youth broadcaster SBTV. She s interviewed stars such as Jessie J, Tinie Tempah and Kelly Rowland. Georgia decided that she wanted a career in the entertainment industry during her teens. When she was 15 she was chosen to be a member of a new rock band that she saw advertised in NME, but unfortunately things didn t work out. She decided to go back to school and do her A- Levels and then went on to study at the London College of Fashion. While at college, Georgia got involved with community radio and started to work on her showreel by asking friends to film her. One day she saw a tweet from SBTV looking for a new presenter, sent in her showreel and her presenting career took off from there. I don t take anything for granted and I work really hard for what I want to do. Hattie Collins, Music Journalist http://icould.com/videos/hattie- collins/ http://youtu.be/pytioit_hes Freelance music journalist, Hattie Collins writes for a variety of publications including RWD Magazine, i- D, The Sunday Times and The Guardian. During her career Hattie has interviewed Robbie Williams, Lady Gaga, Mary J Blige, Beyonce and Jay- Z. A career in music journalism was something Hattie stumbled upon thanks to her love for music and writing. Initially she applied to do an MA at NYU but they advised her to try and get some work published to strengthen her application. This advice led to lots of work and the start of her freelance career. My parents, I think, were just very relieved that I d finally got a job I was a bit in the wilderness slightly job wise for a few years and then it took a long time for writing to really kick into any form of structured career.now, they re dead chuffed. 4
Janet Choudry, Publicist http://icould.com/videos/janet- choudry/ http://youtu.be/a8r2xkzufwi Janet Choudry is a Senior EMI publicist. Her interest and passion for music led her into a career in music publicity, after writing music reviews for her university magazine. Whilst at EMI she has worked with artists from Tom Jones to Tinie Tempah and has won awards for her work. I never realised I wanted to go into music, I always though it was a dream job you never realise there are jobs outside the artists When I went to university I started writing for the uni publication and started ringing around record companies for shows so that I could write about them these people started asking do you want to interview them sitting there interviewing Radiohead and artists you can t even get close to these days yes please From there I realised these people do a job and I could maybe do what they do. Kimberley Taylor, Choreographer http://icould.com/videos/kimberley- taylor/ http://youtu.be/s1olrzqlpsm Kimberley Taylor is a dancer, choreographer and dance teacher at Pineapple Studios in London. She started teaching at 18 and believes it took three years for her to get established. Since then she s danced with a variety of stars including Rihanna, Janet Jackson, Nicole Scherzinger, Alexandra Burke and her personal favourite Jessie J. Choreographing Jessie J s video was probably one of the best moments of my life. I was on such a high it was the perfect track, I had the perfect dancers, the perfect artist, in my eyes. I love her and I was just so overwhelmed the whole day went so quick, but I was trying to soak up everything. I was like oh my goodness! It was incredible. 5
Mahta Hassanzadeh, Social Media Assistant http://icould.com/videos/mahta- hassanzadeh/ http://youtu.be/rj8yi18pufe Mahta is the social media assistant for artists including Jessie J and Devlin, and is responsible for assisting on their Facebook pages, MySpace, itunes, blogs and websites. Mahta was encouraged to go to university by her parents but dropped out after a few months and decided to focus on a career as a journalist. She starting off by contributing to youth- run publication Live magazine and from then on has worked on a range of projects across music and media. for me, that [Live magazine] was, that was my uni. Kind of just doing free work and meeting new people and trying to keep those contacts alive, and things like that. So that was my education for what I am doing now, I think it was the best route to take. Definitely. Miles Leonard, President of Parlophone and Virgin Labels http://icould.com/videos/miles- leonard/ http://youtu.be/ngf25h0amgk Miles Leonard is President of Parlophone & Virgin Labels. After leaving school with just a handful of qualifications, Miles decided to train as a plumber. However, his love and passion has always been music and through determination and a little bit of luck he went on to become a music scout. He worked his way up discovering acts such as The Verve and Coldplay and still loves discovering new artists. He was really excited to sign Tinie Tempah in 2009. I didn t know how to get into any of these things [film, art, music, photography] so I left school and became a plumber Suddenly I realised that anyone could get in, it wasn t just the chosen few it was about having real passion, not taking rejection and getting a foot in the door. Eventually, someone said come and see us and gave me a job! 6
Stephanie Gannon- Malcom, Make- up Artist http://icould.com/videos/stephanie- gannon- malcom/ http://youtu.be/alvtsnkr8- c Stephanie GM originally wanted to be a sculptor after completing a degree in Fine Art. When this didn t work out she retrained as a make- up artist, using her transferable creative skills, and is now working within the entertainment industry. Stephanie has worked on a variety of projects including Britain s Next Top Model. It s a very competitive industry because there s a lot of makeup artists out there and a lot of jobs depend on whether you know people or not. If you don t, and you re recommended to someone, you ve really got to show your worth to be able to keep the job, otherwise they ll just find someone else that can do it. 7