Cat’s Mother of the Month - Sim Virdi
If there’s one thing you should remember, it’s that there’s always a Plan B. And honestly... it’s not as bad as you think. Take our Cat’s Mother of the Month, Sim Virdi. She had to give up her dream of being a vocalist and do a complete U-turn for reasons totally beyond her control. A complete grafter with the drive to keep pushing on, she’s since gone on master tech, manage a band and work for an events company, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Naomi Campbell. Now? She’s smashing the role of Project Coordinator at Merlin, a global digital rights agency for the world’s independent label sector.
If you’ve been a real one from the start with these blogs, you’ll probably know what my first question for Sim was. Tell us about your career journey to date, where did it all begin?
Sim started by telling me that she did a Bachelor of Music, studying Jazz vocals in Amsterdam where she grew up.
“I was a singer. I used to tour and do Jazz/Soul/Brazillian music. After graduating, I went to India for a year to teach at a music school in Mumbai. I was the head of vocals and ran workshops. It was a completely different place. I did a mini tour there, playing Afro Cuban and Brazillian music.”
“When I got back to Amsterdam, I felt completely lost! So I moved to London to pursue a singing career.”
That’s when things started to pan out differently to what Sim expected. Sadly she developed nodules, which meant that she was suddenly unable to sing or teach.
“After that happened, I got interviewed for a job as an Events Manager. I was successful and all of a sudden was managing £16m budgets and large-scale events for celebs. I organised events for the likes for Naomi Campbell, an event with Craig David and Mark Ronson. Managed a party for the editor-in-chief of British Vogue. I did events all around the world.”
Sim then began explaining how that led her on to artist and tour management.
“Through that and knowing musicians -”, she told me, “I started managing and tour-managing a band called Kefaya - a UK-based international music and arts collective. We did tours in India, Italy, sold out a gig in Kings Place, toured the festival scene in the UK. These were all such big achievements.”
“But it was at that point I had a burnout. I had to stop everything. Soon after, I ended up in tech. I needed stability and I’m a bit of a geek to be fair!”
Sim worked in financial tech for a year, exploring new products, learning how to manage them, liaising with users and more. From there she pivoted into Merlin. Sim explained that Merlin is what they would call the 4th Major, acting as a negotiating and collective body on behalf of the world’s independent label and distribution sector. Merlin has licensed all leading new-generation digital music services including YouTube, Tik Tok, Spotify and Facebook.
“Our members get access to the best commercial deals, marketing and promotional opportunities for rights holders and their artists. We’re a not-for-profit foundation. That’s a really important reason as to why I joined.”
“Off the back of having nodules and my burnout, I am in the process of creating a short film about mental health, injuries and struggles in the creative industries. I wanted to portray something more real as everything is so polished, especially on social media.”
Sim also went on to gain a Coaching qualification. She expressed how important it is to her to empower young women trying to access the industry. (Couldn’t relate more.)
Speaking of Merlin, I was interested to find out what her role as Project Coordinator actually entails.
“I’ve been there over a year now in their technology department, I manage a range of projects. Merlin seems to be growing as digital music is growing! I wear many hats in my role. I work with the tech team on our internal products, manage the roadmap for new DSP integrations and work directly with DSPs and labels to gather requirements for new features and data for their artists. As well as that, I work a lot with the business affairs, member relations and reporting teams on smaller projects. It’s always very varied and dependent on what projects come up and what needs to be done that week.”
Next, I asked her about her experience as a full-time employee compared to being a freelancer in the creative industries, how does that compare?
Sim told me that she’d been a freelancer for such a long time and that generally, she prefers it.
“In the majority of my roles, I’ve never really worked 9-5’s. It’s not ingrained in me. I enjoy working across different projects.”
“But being a full-time employee, it’s nice building on something and working in a group to accomplish a company’s ethos and to work towards their values. You get more stability too. Being a freelancer can affect your mental health. At my job now I’m actually able to switch off.”
“But working for a big music company can be a really great stepping stone for understanding the industry - the learnings you take from that can equip you with the skills and knowledge you need to start your own business.”
What have your previous roles and endeavours taught you? And how have they helped you get to where you are now?
“I try to take the best I can out of every situation and learn as much as I can from the people around me. My past roles and adventures have taught me endurance, patience, how to manage different types of people, to not give up.”
“Certain projects have been so challenging. You start to doubt yourself sometimes! You’ve just got to stick to what you know and trust your gut feeling. It’s about being open-minded and not being quick to judge. There’s something to learn from every experience. Being in financial tech wasn’t where I wanted to be but it gave me stability. I thought - this is gonna offer me this and I’m gonna open my mind and take in as much as I can. It was a springboard for me.”
It was clear that Sim had done lots across her career in Creative, but I wanted to know what some of her proudest moments had been over the years.
Sim starting with a big one. Pulling off a 3-day event in Spain.
“It was really challenging managing a very large budget and making sure everyone was there - the artists, the audiences… I’d never done anything like that before - seeing the result of it was amazing.”
“Also, the band I managed had been going for a while but they didn’t have much branding going on at the time I worked with them. It was really exciting working with them to create their release campaign, curating their set around the brand they’d created, really thinking about the concept around the album, their image, what they wanted to get out there and also organising their tour.
“Selling out Kings Place and winning the Songlines Music Newcomer award. They were a small band releasing their first album… it was a big thing.”
Another huge milestone and proud achievement for Sim was getting back on stage and singing again for the first time last year, for a large crowd at Shambala Festival.
Do you feel that the landscape has changed over the past 5 years?
“Oh in so many aspects! Social media is a very big thing. A lot of focus is now on marketing and self-promotion. Artists can do it all themselves. In my personal view though, social media is quite impersonal. You can easily get missed as an artist and that’s a real shame. It’s so important feeling valued but that’s hard because you often get lost in the noise. It must be incredibly difficulty for new artists to get seen and heard.”
To round up, I asked, what do you see for the future of live work and events? What can those aspiring to be in the live scene do now to enhance their chances of developing work in this area?
“You’ve got to think outside of the box and create something that’s genuine and organic. No one knows what the world will look like Post-Covid. Getting into the industry will be difficult now because live events are so limited so when you do get the opportunity, you’ll need to go in with an open mind, think about how you’re different and how you can apply every single skill and talent. Just go for it! Things are changing so fast. Don’t let your confidence hold you back.”