AND SHINE RISE...
At just 25, RCA’s senior urban artist manager Parris O’Loughlin-Hoste is one of the brightest talents in the biz. Music Week meets this year’s Rising Star to hear why the industry has got her smiling like she means it…
2018’s Music Week Women In Music Awards Rising Star. Indeed, the 25-year-old Londoner has professed her ambitions to an array of high ranking executives including none other than Sony Music UK’s CEO and chairman. “I told Jason Iley the same thing,” she says. “I’m more than grateful to Sony for having people around to help me, challenge me, protect me and push me to be the greatest exec that I can be. I don’t think I could have done it anywhere else. And I started out as an intern...” It’s true, O’Loughlin-Hoste first walked into Sony’s Derry Street offices four years ago, having won a place on the major’s internship programme after university, where she studied sports and ran her own Pow PR company on the side. Now serving as RCA’s senior urban artist manager, a new position created as part of a round of fresh hires revealed by Music Week back in July, O’Loughlin-Hoste is working with a roster including Yungen, Lady Leshurr, Her and Ziezie. She is also a proud Rising Star award winner. “When I found out, I was like, ‘Wait, what, an award?’ It’s insane,” she says. “It’s is something that I’ve seen people win in the past and was on my goals list, so I’m very happy.” For this young executive, it means a lot to be celebrated at the Women In Music Awards. “It’s important that we recognise not only the incredible talent that is already established, but also the young talent coming up,” she says. “This is an important ceremony to recognise people that aren’t always recognised. For me to have this so early on in my career is a real achievement.”
A
O’Loughlin-Hoste is grateful, sure, but she speaks with the conviction of someone who has always believed success was around the corner. Scroll through her Twitter feed and you’ll find a potent mix of enthusiasm, passion and belief, random nuggets of advice (and emojis), as much for herself as other young executives (‘GREATNESS ONLY’). “I probably thought the same as a lot of starry-eyed kids,” she says, remembering her pre-Sony years. “You think the music industry is all free parties, glitz and glamour. One thing I knew was that I was always dedicated to hard work. When I realised how much hard work it was, it was an eye-opener, but also a blessing, because I thought, ‘I’m built for this, I know how to work hard.’” Clearly, O’Loughlin-Hoste’s confidence is innate, but she credits mentors including DJ Semtex, RCA managing director Stacey Tang, label president David Dollimore and Columbia’s head of publicity and 2018 Women In
musicweek.com ------------ BY BEN HOMEWOOD ------------
ttention all label presidents: Parris O’Loughlin-Hoste is coming for your jobs. “I sat down with DJ Semtex three years ago and told him that I wanted to be the president of a label and I’ve told everybody the same thing since,” says
Music Roll Of Honour inductee Taponeswa Mavunga with building her self-belief to new levels.
“My aim is to be the
president of a major label”
PARRIS
O’LOUGHLIN- HOSTE RCA
“They’ve instilled a confidence that I can take anywhere and apply to anything. I know I can walk into a room and talk confidently, and it doesn’t matter who’s in that room. It’s the confidence that I can be what I truly believe I can, although it sounds cheesy,” she says, stifling a laugh. O’Loughlin-Hoste is also keen to highlight the importance of Sony’s array of high-level female executives in showing her the way forward. “Especially as a young woman of colour, it’s important to see more established and older women in senior roles,” she says. Indeed, O’Loughlin-Hoste has a catchphrase for young execs dreaming of a job in music. “I always say to people coming through, ‘You can’t be what you can’t see’. To have someone like Stacey Tang in a MD role, it’s an amazing example of the greatness I can achieve myself.” Ever since arriving at Sony, O’Loughlin-Hoste has been “really happy” about the presence of “great women” around her. “It [gender equality] has definitely improved. As a young woman of colour, you’re always aware that you have different struggles to a straight white male in the industry, but I’ve never let that hold me back in any way, and nobody else has let it hold me back,” she says. The more you hear from Parris O’Loughlin-Hoste, the more unlikely the notion of anything preventing her from achieving her goals becomes.
Growing up as grime was breaking in London, she was surrounded by artists, hanging on every morsel of output from SBTV, GRM Daily and Link Up TV. None of her university friends wanted to get into music, but O’Loughlin-Hoste thought of nothing else. “I had started music blogging when I was 15 or 16, it’s always been important to document what’s happening around me in culture and music,” she says. “Then when I was 18 that turned into me wanting to help people around me who were artists. I started my digital PR company, from then I knew that I definitely wanted a job in music.” Now she’s got one, O’Loughlin-Hoste wants to build a lasting legacy, not to mention the small matter of the ambition she confided to Semtex, Sony’s director of artist development and her presenting partner on Spotify’s Who We Be Talks podcast, three years back.
“Definitely, that’s my aim, to be the president of a major label,” she says. “I can get there with support and guidance, dedication to my vision and not letting anything that doesn’t align with that get in the way.” For the record, O’Loughlin-Hoste would like to run “a very collaborative, team-based label that is culturally relevant and where every artist is important to somebody”. You heard it here first...
12.11.18 Music Week | 23
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64
