Serenade Turns Attention to U.K. With ‘Dynamic’ New Advisory Board

As it sets its sights on expansion, Serenade unveils a U.K. advisory board stacked with high profile music industry figures.

Among the board members are Darcus Beese OBE, former president of Island Records who joined Warner Music U.K. last year in a dual role as executive VP and founder of the joint venture Darco Recordings; Sammy Andrews, founder and CEO of Deviate Digital; promoter Toby Leighton-Pope and others.

The new board is chaired by former YMU managing director Iain Watt, and includes Fay Milton, musician and co-founder of Music Declares Emergency; Jin Jin, songwriter, A&R and publisher; Dan Sanders, art director at Atlantic Records; Phil Christie, co-founder Manifest Publishing and former managing director of Warner Records; Oliver Sasse of Nerve Management, and BBC Radio 1XTRA broadcaster DJ Target.

According to a statement issued Tuesday (July 5), the U.K. advisory board will meet quarterly and serve as an “active, credible voice and advocate” for the Australia-originated venture.

Its members will “offer opinions, guidance and insight into key issues relating to the company’s U.K. presence” and also support the business’ “mission of enabling artists to generate new revenue streams through deeper fan engagement.”

The brainchild of Max Shand, Serenade soft-launched in Australia in September 2020 with an early incarnation that enabled music fans to go direct to artists and purchase a personalised, virtual — and shareable — performance.

Serenade would then dive into the eco-friendly music NFT marketplace, and, in 2021 launched in the U.K.

The first executive hire there was Mike Walsh, U.K. head of strategic partnerships, who plays a key role in guiding its artist and partner strategy, in addition to helping create new opportunities, relationships, and more.

“When putting together an advisory board for Serenade we wanted to bring together a dynamic and varied pool of expertise and opinions from a broad range of backgrounds,” comments Watt.

“This will allow us to understand how we should best serve artists and their teams and in turn create new experiences for their fans,” Watt continues.

“It’s a real privilege to be able to work alongside the members of this board with their collective wisdom and knowledge to help create new ideas and drive new opportunities for Serenade.”

The NFT platform landed a coup earlier in 2022 when it partnered with the Brit Awards on a range of limited-edition tokens, marking the first arrangement of its kind for the U.K. record industry’s flagship awards show.

Since then, Serenade has announced it would enter the U.S. after securing a $6 million fundraise.

“We’ve built our music advisory board to give a voice to the U.K. music industry – its artists, institutions, and most importantly, fans,” says Shand in a statement.

“As a music company that uses innovative technology to improve the artist-fan relationship, we rely on being close to the industry to empathise with its needs to build meaningful products.”

This U.K. board “represents the strongest voices contributing to the artist-fan relationship today across multiple music industry pillars,” he notes “and we are confident that we have the right expertise and insight to expand our business meaningfully, and with integrity, into the future.”