Exclusive: Industry exec Hazel Savage pens op-ed on new venture

10-year veteran of the digital music industryHazel Savage, previously of Shazam, Pandora, Universal and The X Studio, has gone rogue. In her op-edthink-piece published below,Savage candidly discusses her inherent views on quitting and why she’s calling her next move a ‘pivot’.

Thoughts on quitting

I fall into the category of people who refuse to quit despite overwhelming evidence that they should. I come from a long line of ‘never-quitters’, actually it’s a pretty short line, it’s just me and my Dad – we never quit anything. I went to University for three years and I remember distinctly on the very first day when my parents dropped me off at halls thinking ‘I do not want to be doing this’, yet three unhappy years later there I was collecting my, admittedly could-have-done-better, Bachelor of Arts. Those three years can be well summarised by one lecture that sticks out in my mind, the teacher asked us to discuss hypothetically what the UK would be like if we had joined the single currency in Europe (the Euro) instead of keeping the pound, my hand shot straight up and said “but we didn’t, so what’s the point?” Why waste time discussing political situations that didn’t and could never now occur. Teacher didn’t like that, probably didn’t like me very much either – but that episode summed up University life for me, three years of old tropes and essays that had already been written thousands of times. I had no interest, but goddamn I never quit.

Before University, I was dating a chap and I distinctly remember thinking, to myself (and out loud to a good friend), ‘I don’t think this will last more than two weeks’ but goddamn (again) if two years later I wasn’t dragging that festering corpse of a relationship along as if tapping-out was a personal failure.

So I have a problem with quitting. I identify with Tom Haverford (fictional character from the amazing series Parks and Rec) he became famous for his self-help book ‘Failing 2.0’.

With that I come to my next move, my pivot. Pivot is what we in the tech industry call it when we try something, it doesn’t work and we make a 180. Pivot sounds better than, error, boo-boo or entrepreneurial faux-pa.

After 10 years working for some of the biggest and best in the tech-music space (feel free to stalk me on LinkedIn), I have started my own business, I specialise in social media, videography and every marketing acronym you can think of, SEM, SEO, CRM & PR.

So, I bring to you hazelsavage.com (I built my own website and yes I am pretty smug about it) available for work and open to advice from pivoters.

I am delighted to announce that with this move, I have joined the team at MJR presents. I was lucky enough to meet Scott Mesiti over the course of my industry tenure and am delighted to be working with what is destined to be a hugely growing company in the exciting live sector of the music industry.

“We’re excited to be working with Hazel as we head into a busy few months, Australian Music Week launches Nov 18 and we have UB40 over on tour early November and selling fast – it should be an exciting end to 2015,” Scott Mesiti.