Abbey Road Red – the music technology incubator at Abbey Road Studios - is launching a series of online one-to-one mentoring sessions, entitled Red Turntables, designed to offer expert guidance to music technology start-ups during the global Covid-19 lockdown. Red Turntables will offer 121 advice to existing music tech start-ups on how to navigate the challenging business environment and also to those budding founders using this time in isolation to develop new music tech business ideas.

The Abbey Road Red team recognises that the music tech start-up community is facing a new set of challenges during this pandemic. Founders suddenly have to bootstrap already bootstrapped development plans and teams; they have to keep business development partners interested and energised and deals safe from the jitters. Equally, they need to decide what to do about empty pipelines; and double down on closing or chasing investment rounds while recession-weary investors are keeping their cash in their pockets. These are just some of the challenges founders are now facing on top of what was already a unique industry landscape to begin with.

In contrast, life in isolation is also fuelling creativity and collaboration. The Red team has been excited to hear about the new business ideas that are brewing and recognise that these founders would benefit from some early stage guidance and advice from those closest to the industry and the technology.

Isabel Garvey, Abbey Road Studios’ Managing Director and Red Founder says: “We launched Abbey Road Red, Europe’s first music technology incubator, five years ago to champion music technology start-ups within the industry. As a result, we have acquired an in depth understanding of the music industry, consumer trends, technology and the challenges and opportunities faced by music tech start-ups as they scale and grow. Now that our broader community is faced with a new set of disruptive challenges, we want to use our experience, expertise and mentor network to offer our help beyond those on the Abbey Road Red incubation programme to ensure the whole music tech start-up community can weather this storm.”

Karim Fanous, Innovation Manager at Abbey Road Red adds: “There may be some defiant green shoots of invention out there. If there are, we want to look for them and help them grow. With the majority of us confined to our homes, new music consumption behaviours are also emerging. Look at the buzz around live streaming during lockdown. So, what is our new normal? What are the adjustments to our cultural and consumption behaviours, and what new tools will the music industry need to feed them and support its artists and fans going forward?”

To this end, Abbey Road Red is putting out an open call for anyone leading, launching, working in or even just thinking about an idea for a music start-up to join the team for virtual face-to-face mentoring sessions - which they’re calling Red Turntables because, as Karim says “part of our mission at Red is to share knowledge and we want to use that mission to help turn the table on adversity and support music start-ups during this difficult time”.

We are offering our knowledge and expertise in an open conversation with key members of our Abbey Road Red incubation team. Bring your questions, ideas and problems and we’ll talk them through with you. Fill out the form and we’ll book you in with the member of our Abbey Road Red team who can help.

Our Red team at Abbey Road, including:

Karim Fanous, Innovation Manager, Abbey Road Red

Isabel Garvey, Managing Director, Abbey Road Studios

Dom Dronska, Head of Digital, Abbey Road Studios

We will also look to our wider mentor network where relevant.

We’ll host 30 minute online 121 sessions every Thursday from 14:00 – 17:00 GMT for four consecutive Thursdays starting on 16 April, 2020.
It’s open to any music start-up worldwide, though all sessions will be in English (please forgive our lack of linguistic talent!). To book a 121 session, please head over here and fill out the form.

We know that one 30-minute session may not be enough, so we will look to add in some Webinars, open to all 121 applicants, that will be knowledge-sharing sessions on specialist topics and nuances of the music industry. We’ll determine the topics mid-way through the 121s, so that we can provide the best knowledge sharing exercise for our participants after getting to know their ideas, businesses and problems.

We look forward to hearing from you all and sharing your stories and exciting new ideas.