Season 2 · Episode 2
Jo Gardner is the Director of Unholy Management and an electronic music PR consultant who spent eight years at Listen Up, the UK's biggest electronic music PR company, working with artists including Deadmau5, Tiësto, Swedish House Mafia, Marshmello and David Guetta. She began her career wanting to be a music journalist, ended up in PR and is now in management.
Jo Gardner always wanted to work in music - fascinated from her teens by how the industry worked, how artists got famous, what happened behind the scenes. She tailored her entire education around it, studied journalism at university with the aim of becoming a music journalist, then ended up on the other side in PR - as many music-obsessed journalists do. She bounced around doing internships and events before joining Listen Up, the biggest electronic music PR company in the UK, having come from band world. She was thrown into EDM, fell completely in love with it, and stayed for eight years working with Deadmau5, Tiësto, Marshmello, Swedish House Mafia, David Guetta and Martin Garrix, among many others. Her first major EDM moment was attending Ultra Music Festival in America with one of the Swedish House Mafia and standing on the main stage watching tens of thousands of people, thinking: "This is an industry."
Jo is now the Director of Unholy Management and represents an incredible roster of talent including Trash Boat and Lake Malice.
Duration: 63 minutes 3 Seconds
Season: 2 · Episode 2
Also available: Audio only on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Acast
The journalism path and the PR pivot
Jo Gardner's route into music was through journalism - she tailored her entire education around getting into the industry, went to university to become a music journalist, and then found herself on the other side in PR because that is where the opportunity was and she had the instinct for it. The transition from aspiring writer to working publicist is one that many people in the music industry have made; Jo's version of it is instructive because she is direct about the role of luck, timing and being willing to accept whatever door opens.
Ultra Music Festival and understanding what EDM had become
Jo's entry into electronic music was not a deliberate choice. Listen Up offered her a job. She came from band world. What happened next surprised her: she went to Ultra Music Festival in America with one of the Swedish House Mafia, stood on the main stage watching an audience of tens of thousands, and understood for the first time what electronic music had become. "This is an industry," she thought. Not a pocket of underground culture. A genuine, enormous industry. She fell completely in love with it.
Eight years at the peak of EDM
The EDM moment that Jo worked through - Deadmau5, Tiësto, Swedish House Mafia, David Guetta, Marshmello - is defined by a pattern she observed consistently: the artists who converted that cultural peak into lasting careers were the ones whose audiences felt genuine ownership over the music. Community first, mainstream second. The UK had a deep electronic music history and took the genre more seriously than America, which - as Jo puts it - "just rolled it in glitter." American festivals were bigger, cheesier and more pop. The UK's heritage kept things honest.
What PR taught her and the move into management
Eight years in electronic music PR gave Jo a granular understanding of major labels, artist development, marketing campaigns and industry relationships - because as a publicist you sit in the room for all of it. That knowledge is what led her to management. "Management is something you can't do unless you've done something else first," she says. PR taught her how to do it properly: how to sit in boardrooms, understand what labels are actually thinking, and advocate for artists from an informed position rather than an outside one.
"I stood on the main stage at Ultra and understood — this is not just a pocket of culture. This is an industry."
- Jo Gardner - Artist Manager , on her first Ultra Music Festival
"Community first, mainstream second. The artists who converted that EDM peak into lasting careers were the ones whose audiences felt genuine ownership over the music."
- Jo Gardner - on what the EDM era taught her about building audiences
"Management is something you can't do unless you've done something else first. PR taught me how to sit in the room and actually understand what was happening."
- Jo Gardner - on the move from music PR into management
The Blinding Talent Music Industry Podcast is hosted by Mark Adams - founder of Blinding Talent and former Director of Music Programming at Channel 4, where he launched the Official YouTube Chart (2015) and Spotify's first ever Streaming Chart (2016). Each episode is an in-depth conversation with a senior music industry figure - equal parts campfire stories and practical insight.
If this episode resonated, Blinding Talent works with independent artists across the UK and internationally - helping them do exactly what Jo describes - how real audience communities are built and why the artists who create genuine ownership outlast the viral moments.
From artist management with Mark Adams to digital marketing campaigns across Spotify, Meta and YouTube, everything we do is built around getting artists closer to the music industry.
Jo Gardner is the Director of Unholy Management and an electronic music PR consultant who spent eight years at Listen Up, the UK's biggest electronic music PR company, working with artists including Deadmau5, Tiësto, Swedish House Mafia, Marshmello and David Guetta. She began her career wanting to be a music journalist, ended up in PR and is now in management.
Jo Gardner was inside the EDM industry during the critical crossing-over period. Her view is that it happened through a combination of genuine community-building by artists and a moment where pop was open to electronic music's energy. Ultra Music Festival in America was the moment she understood the scale of what it had become. The UK treated it with more respect for its heritage; America, as she puts it, "rolled it in glitter."
Jo Gardner's path was through journalism training, followed by internships and events work, before being offered a role at Listen Up. She describes it as being thrown in the deep end - which has been a recurring theme across her career. Her advice: be willing to accept the door that opens and do it properly once you're through it.
The Blinding Talent Music Industry Podcast is hosted by Mark Adams - founder of Blinding Talent and former Director of Music Programming at Channel 4. Guests include Jo Gardner, Colin Barlow, Sol Parker, Judd Lander and many others.
