As part of our Horizon Future Leaders series of interviews, we are connecting with the music industry’s next generation of leaders to gather candid advice and insights into their career journeys.
This week, we caught up with Grace Theokritoff, Label Manager at independent digital distribution company IDOL. In a role focused on close, day-to-day collaboration with indie labels, Grace supports release campaigns, audience development and long-term strategy, helping artists and teams make informed, data-driven decisions and build meaningful connections with their audiences.
She also acts as the key link between labels and IDOL’s internal teams, ensuring every release gets the tailored support it needs.
Grace’s path into the industry wasn’t straight and that’s exactly what makes her experiences so valuable. She got her start working behind the bar at a grassroots jazz venue that also operated as a record label. From managing table bookings and emails, she soon took on artist liaison and tour management duties, eventually running operations for the venue and its house band.
From there, she built a varied career, balancing freelance work in distribution and copywriting alongside pub shifts, steadily gaining the skills and experience that led her to her current role at IDOL.
Grace’s journey really highlights how important it is to stay open, keep learning on the fly, and be willing to adapt as things change. By balancing instinct with data and making the most of every opportunity, you can gradually build genuine expertise and carve out a meaningful, lasting career in the music industry, no matter how unpredictable it can be.
What’s your current role in the music industry?
I'm a Label Manager at independent digital distribution company IDOL. As well as distribution, we also offer additional services to our labels and artists, including audience development, rights management, catalogue management and retail marketing.
My role is to build strong relationships with our labels through daily communication about their release campaigns, label activity and their business goals. This includes working closely with them on campaign strategy, audience development and marketing their releases.
I encourage labels and artists to take ownership of their organic fanbase and use detailed analytics to drive decision making in an increasingly complex landscape.
I coordinate all the information and planning from the labels to our internal IDOL teams - including the content team, audience development team and retail marketing team - to ensure we can do the best job of promoting our labels’ releases.
What does your general day to day look like?
There’s a lot of contact with labels about upcoming releases and campaign plans, over email of course, but also regular calls and in person meetings. I brainstorm marketing ideas with label accounts, advise them on timeline rollouts and analyse streaming data to gain insight into how releases are landing with fans.
We also have internal meetings to discuss questions or issues that have arisen, as well as how the team can improve processes and systems. I frequently speak with our retail marketing team about how we are pitching and promoting releases to stores. There’s a constant back and forth of information flowing from the labels through to digital service providers, and part of my job is to manage that.
I attend conferences and networking events too, for example The Great Escape and AIM Connected, which are great for meeting new people and learning more about the industry. Attending gigs on a regular basis is also a perk of the job, checking out new acts and bigger names from our roster.
What steps did you take early in your career to gain experience and build skills to get you where you are now?
My career in music started at jazz bar and record label Kansas Smitty's, which was a crash course in several areas of the music industry. As a small team we programmed a six-nights-a-week music venue, put out physical and digital records, took the Kansas Smitty’s house band on tour, and managed stage takeovers at festivals like the Good Life Experience and venues including Two Temple Place.
At first, I was working part-time behind the bar and managing table bookings and emails from customers. Because I was part time I was able to take on some work at the house band’s live booking agency, Fane Productions. This was a very different experience, working in a central London office as part of an agency handling a lot of different artists and non-music clients.
My role with Kansas Smitty’s evolved into a full time job, booking bands and working as artist liaison for the venue, tour managing the house band, and running general operations for the venue and external events. This was a steep learning curve, but through the support of the leadership team there I gained crucial experience and honed my skills.
I then took a detour away from music and worked in the drinks industry for a short time. While this wasn’t an experience I wanted to pursue further, it showed me where my strengths are, and made me realise my passion lies in music.
To get my foot back in the door in the music industry, I reached out to contacts I had made earlier and started freelancing at indie distribution company MTX Music.
This gave me my first experience of working in distribution and set me up for my current role, learning about the distribution ecosystem, speaking with artists regularly about their campaigns and pitching releases to stores. At the same time, I was also freelancing as a copywriter for musicians, small businesses and other clients as well as working shifts in a pub.
The path wasn’t straight and I think it rarely is in an industry like music. I feel it’s really important to be open about that. The earliest part of my career was a patchwork of part time, full time, freelance and shift work. They all helped to build up my skills and tenacity and I’m still learning every day.
What opportunities did you explore early on that were particularly valuable?
Joining a grassroots, DIY organisation as my first experience in music meant I was exposed to a lot of different areas of the industry, and I was also thrown in the deep end as part of a small team.
Small companies that are really hands-on are a great place to learn, as you have to get stuck in and you can take opportunities to grow and learn more quickly than with bigger corporations.
Working closely with the Kansas Smitty’s house band really helped me learn about artist relations and communication. Recording and touring can be super intense, and managing that environment taught me a lot both on a personal and a professional level.
I didn't study anything music related at university, but moving to London and taking a job at a small company paid off. Showing myself to be willing and able meant I was trusted with bigger projects.
I went from not having worked in music before, to running the operations for a small venue and its house band within a couple of years. Not saying no to any opportunities - even when I didn’t fully know what I was signing up for! - and leaning on my organisation, admin and strategic planning skills meant I carved out a role for myself.
Has the opportunity landscape changed since then?
Yes definitely, both in positive and negative ways. There are fewer internships available now and the general economic and music industry climate means that companies are taking fewer risks with hiring junior members of staff.
A lot of venues, record labels and smaller music companies are having to cut costs or close altogether and that can make it harder to get your foot in the door.
However, there are now more ways to get your name out there and connect with other people in the industry. It’s easier to reach people thanks to the internet and social media, so if you want to start putting on club nights or putting out music you can start on promotion straight away. There are also more initiatives aimed at bringing under-represented groups into the music industry and lifting them up.
Are there any specific internships, projects, or initiatives that you would recommend to newcomers looking to pursue a similar role?
Music Ally run good courses and there’s the AIM Amplify apprenticeship, which helps people access internships at various companies across the music industry.
Aside from more formal training or opportunities, my biggest recommendation would be to be in the room and be around. If you love a certain label, go to their events and shows to see how they work. If you want to work for a venue, go to their concerts and chat to the team there, to build a rapport and see how the venue runs. Being visible and connecting with people is the best way in.
What advice do you have for building and leveraging a professional network in the music industry?
Start following pages online for young music professionals: Women in CTRL, Small Green Shoots, Cat’s Mother, Young Guns Network, Young Music Boss and Tileyard Education are just a few. It’s worth checking out local music industry meet-ups too.
Go to networking events and meet new people. It can be really daunting but everyone is there for the same reason, so push yourself out of your comfort zone. You never know who you might meet.
The best thing about working in music is that everyone is so passionate. Lean into that, most people are kind and want to help others in the industry.
Keep your online profiles like LinkedIn updated with your achievements and work history, and connect with people you meet in real life there. Building a network takes time and patience but it’s worth it.
All experience is useful, whether it’s voluntary or paid. I recently did some volunteering with Rendezvous Projects on their Music In Newham project, and have met loads of new contacts and interesting people. They run some super cool projects, check them out.
How has the evolving digital landscape impacted your role, and where do you focus to stay ahead?
The dominance of streaming and the focus on DSPs has hugely affected my role. There’s a big focus on editorial playlisting from labels and artists, and they’re still seen as a cornerstone of a successful campaign. However for me, the focus now more than ever is on organic engagement.
If there isn’t an environment around a release coming out - a combination of live shows, digital marketing, touring, press, radio etc - and a growing fanbase who are going to go and stream the music organically, then the chances of it landing editorial playlisting are pretty low.
I encourage my labels to focus on drivers other than playlisting or stores’ placements, as they’re not guaranteed and the support can disappear once more releases come out and stores turn. Musicians need organic audiences to sustain streaming in a meaningful way. Those will naturally start small, but that is the only solid foundation for artists that doesn’t rely on outside tastemakers.
Outside of streaming, the digital marketing landscape also affects my work every day. There are now more platforms than ever to get your message out to fans. Again the focus has to be on the organic audience for those to work and land with listeners.
There are more opportunities than ever to tell your story, and fans want artists and labels to do that in a genuine way; that’s when you’ll create a solid and loyal offline fanbase rather than relying on short lived trends or virality. Creating an organic audience on both streaming platforms and social media means you’re building up a fanbase of real people who you can then engage with off-platform.
What trends or changes do you see on the horizon for the music industry, and how can early career professionals prepare for them?
The music industry’s in an interesting place at the moment as more conversations emerge around tech: sometimes it can feel like there’s more focus on that than the actual music!
The role of big tech in music is ever evolving, and a huge factor in how the industry will develop over the next few years. Spotify, Meta and TikTok still dominate the landscape, but more and more artists are realising that algorithms or trends can quickly change, and not always in their favour.
I think that’s part of the reason direct-to-fan has become such a big talking point as well, and that’s something industry professionals have to consider as a growth area. Staying on top of music industry news and trends is really important for early career professionals, as the landscape changes so quickly.
There’s also a lot of discourse around the role of major labels in the industry, and their recent acquisition of smaller companies - it will be really interesting to see how that plays out. As someone who's only worked in the indie sector, the interest in independent market share reinforces my belief in the strength of the indie scene, which only looks set to grow in the next few years.
What’s one piece of advice you wish someone had given you at the start of your career?
I can't pick one so here's three:
- Take ownership of your mistakes - we all make them and it’s ok, do not shy away from them but lean into continual improvement.
- Don’t take feedback personally, if you overcome your own resistance to feedback there will be more scope for growth.
- And don’t compare your career journey with other people, we’re all out here just figuring it out.