Josh Simons on making the shift from artist to entrepreneur [podcast]

After a fallout with his band’s management, Josh Simons decided to park his career as a musician and launch the music-tech startup Vampr in 2016 with co-founder Barry Palmer.

Simons talks to TMN editor Jake Challenor about making the shift from artist to entrepreneur and how his years in a band helped to build a network that would prove very valuable.

“The cool thing about being in the band, and I didn’t know this at the time, but I got to know everyone in the music industry,” said Simons on the latest episode of the TMN podcast.

“When the moment came to explore tech, I didn’t have to start from scratch.”

Simons’ elevator pitch for Vampr is “LinkedIn for the music ecosystem”, an artist-friendly platform for the industry to build connections.

With about 500,000 users, Vampr has just launched a music licensing product and plans to enter the distribution space later this year, with a similar model to SoundCloud.

Simons was on the TMN 30 Under 30 and collected the coveted Reader’s Choice title last month.