Jason Carter
Meet our managing director
ABOUT JASON CARTER
Jason Carter has worked for over 25 years in the Live music and events sector, as an artist agent, promoter and commissioner of live music and events for broadcast – producing many of the marquee large scale major events and festivals for the BBC as Event Director, delivering shows with artists such as Madonna Jay-Z, Elton John, Taylor Swift, Coldplay, Rihanna, Eminem and Lady Ga Ga to name a few.
Jason has created from origination, design and conception some of the landmark UK events, from Radio 1’s Big Weekend, Radio 2 Live in Hyde Park through to the BBC 6Music Festival, 1Xtra Live and Radio 1’s Teen awards. He was also Event Director for Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend, 2012, part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympia, a two day festival for 10,000 people, and he also led Radio 1’s Big Weekend, Glasgow – Celebrating the Commonwealth Games in 2014 .
He began his career booking new talent at University as an Entertainment Officer, and from there moved on to booking new music showcases throughout the early 1990’s via the Mean Fiddler Group, and subsequently booking major festival stages such as Reading Festival. He also worked in A&R, label management.
Whilst at the BBC Jason was also responsible for delivering all of the BBC’s live music events and concert broadcast coverage across BBC Radio 1, Radio 1Xtra, Radio 2, Radio 3 , 6Music and the Asian Network as well as concert coverage on BBC Television – BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Three.
He was also the creator of BBC Music Introducing, the initiative supporting new and emerging musicians across the BBC, he led the platform for 10 years from Conception – leading editorial programme teams across local and national radio stations. The proposition was responsible for the early discovery of artists such as Florence and The Machine, Ed Sheeran, James Bay, George Ezra and Jake Bugg and more recently Tom Grennan – and to date, the platform has delivered 14 Number 1 Top 10 UK singles, 74 Top 10 UK albums and 7 Grammy nominations.
He has spoken widely at conferences both in the UK and Internationally from Los Angeles, New York and Miami, through to Austin, Tokyo and Cannes – also closer to home with regular talks at UK Universities including an Oxford University address (Exeter College).
Jason also has broad experience with music learning and outreach. He was also responsible for the creation of the Radio 1 and 1Xtra Academy, the stations’ most ambitious ever programme of social action which ran for the three weeks in the run up to the Radio 1 Hackney Weekend. The Academy offered practical advice and workshops to young people from East London and beyond, featuring master-classes from Leona Lewis, Plan B, Dizzee Rascal and many more inspirational figures. The academy is now an annual fixture on the Radio 1 and 1Xtra live events calendar. Jason also spearheaded the BBC Introducing masterclasses that ran across three years at Abbey Road Studios, BBC Maida Vale and around the UK.
Both the Academy and the Hackney Weekend itself received widespread praise in the media in 2012, with the Guardian’s five star review describing it as ‘an Olympics precursor that can only be judged as a gold-medal production.” He also received a coveted Police Commendation by the Metropolitan Police for his work in delivering a safe event in a major London urban festival site.
In October 2017 he also led and orchestrated the delivery of the inaugural BBC Introducing Presents Amplify shows at London’s Excel Arena, with over 100,000 new musicians in attendance. More recently in 2018, Jason is very proud to have been appointed a Trustee on the board of Help Musicians UK, the leading UK charity for musicians of all genres, from starting out through to retirement.
