Serenade announce UK advisory board

05 July 2022 - Press release

Darcus Beese, Sammy Andrews, Fay Milton, Toby Leighton Pope, Jin Jin, Dan Sanders, Phil Christie, Oliver Sasse & DJ Target Among industry Experts Appointed

Serenade, the eco-friendly music NFT marketplace whose mission is to support artists by creating new revenue streams from unique fan experiences, has announced the members of its UK advisory board.

Serenade are committed to drawing expertise and insight from diverse sectors of the music industry including artists, songwriters, broadcasters, label executives, music publishers, live music specialists, artist managers, environmental organisations and creatives.

Among the high profile music industry figures joining the board are: Darcus Beese, Founder of Darco Recordings; Sammy Andrews, Founder & CEO of Deviate Digital; Concert Promoter Toby Leighton-Pope; Fay Milton, Musician & Co-Founder of Music Declares Emergency ; Jin Jin, Songwriter, A&R and Publisher; Dan Sanders - Art Director Atlantic Records; Phil Christie, Co-founder Manifest Publishing and former MD of Warner Records; Oliver Sasse, Nerve Management, and BBC Radio 1XTRA broadcaster DJ Target.

The new board, which will be Chaired by former YMU Managing Director Iain Watt, will meet quarterly and will be an active, credible voice and advocate for Serenade. It will offer opinions, guidance and insight into key issues relating to the company’s UK presence and will also support Serenade's mission of enabling artists to generate new revenue streams through deeper fan engagement.

It will also support the work of Mike Walsh, UK Head of Strategic Partnerships and will play a key role in guiding Serenade’s UK artist and partner strategy, overseeing its commitment to environmentally friendly practices and broadening the company’s pool of genre expertise and contacts and helping create new opportunities and relationships.

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

Serenade is an eco-friendly NFT platform producing 1/44,000th of the carbon emitted by a standard NFT (or 1/10th of the energy usage of a tweet,) using a 'Proof of Stake' authentication method that is far more efficient than a direct-to-Ethereum 'Proof of Work' approach, and eliminates expensive ‘gas’ fees, the prohibitive costs that can be a major barrier to entry for anyone wanting to create affordable NFTs. 
 
Purchases are made with a credit or debit card via Serenade innovative check out facility that has been designed to function like a standard e-commerce cart, where the creation of a digital wallet and the transfer of traditional payments into cryptocurrency is handled directly by the platform.
 
Fans join a community of like-minded music lovers, be confident they are not harming the environment, access affordable digital collectibles, and do all of this without knowing the first thing about NFT technology.

Max Shand Founder and CEO of Serenade said, “We've built our music advisory board to give a voice to the UK music industry - its artists, institutions, and most importantly, fans. 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 board represents the strongest voices contributing to the artist-fan relationship today across multiple music industry pillars, and we are confident that we have the right expertise and insight to expand our business meaningfully, and with integrity, into the future.”

Please visit www.serenade.co for more information