For early-stage artists looking for industry coaching, Ellevate offers a range of options...
As an experienced music manager and industry executive, Charlotte Caleb has the tenacity you need for a successful start-up – but the right external support at key moments can also be vital.
Music management platform Ellevate, which she co-founded with Jasmin Tadjiky, recently secured an industry boost as part of the Grow Music business support and investor school programme. Launched by the BPI with business growth agency London & Partners, the programme selected Ellevate as part of its inaugural cohort. The programme included delivery partners such as the tech incubator Abbey Road REDD.
“I am so grateful for the opportunity because when you are building something you have to have so much self-belief and that can be exhausting,” says Caleb. “So when the BPI and Abbey Road tell you you’re doing something quite interesting, you think, ‘OK, maybe I’m on to something.’ That belief is everything!”
The subscription-based platform offers management expertise to independent acts at the right moment, so they can progress in their career.
As an artist manager for nearly 13 years, in addition to three years at AWAL in operations, Caleb has seen how early-stage artists could get so far by themselves, but then needed a leg-up to make it to the next stage.
“I really believe that artists are individual businesses,” she says. “And sometimes you need a third party to bring their experience – and, to be quite honest, the mistakes they’ve learned along the way – to see what you just cannot see for yourself when you’re deep in the weeds. That’s what the spark was for Ellevate.”
The platform ranges from a low-cost, low-contact tier where users have access to webinars, workshops, templates and the wider community, including the WhatsApp group, to a one-to-one coaching service where artists are matched with a manager as a personal coach.
“We wanted to create a low-cost subscription model that any artist could join from anywhere in the world and get access to all of the incredible minds and experience of the good people in the industry that we knew,” says Caleb.
The human touch is key to bringing artists and coaches together.
“We meet with the new client and assess where they are in their career and what resources they need,” says Caleb. “We then take that away to our catalogue of managers who are signed up to coach artists. Sometimes they are matched based on specialism in genre, sometimes its expertise in a particular skill.”
But technology is set to play a greater role at Ellevate as the platform expands its user base of acts.
“In the future this will be sped up with support from AI, of course, but for now I am very much across the service to make sure our artists are getting the best experience and so that I can continue to learn what works and what doesn’t,” Caleb adds.
Ellevate is building resources for artists to tap into when they need them, such as video editors, digital marketing creatives and sync opportunities. It is also starting to curate live line-ups, including at The Great Escape this month.
While it’s early days, the platform is already helping artists go on to secure professional representation across management and live. And many have welcomed being able to secure coaching from a female manager within Ellevate.
“I’m a really public face for Ellevate, I’m on all the socials and I make myself available to people, so I think that makes women feel comfortable with me in a way that they just aren’t with the ‘cool guy’ male industry executives,” says Caleb.
She has picked up two artists from Ellevate who were ready for full-service management. And being a manager – she has worked with acts including T?l?, Lil Yamaha and Stone Cold Hustle – is key for her role at the start-up.
“I need to know how to release records in the current climate, I need to know the platforms and the new opportunities – and problems – artists and managers face,” says Caleb. “So the two things go hand-in-hand.”
Photo: Sofi Adams
