How to become a global pop music playlist editor: Dominic's story

Dominic:

Deezer is a music streaming service and I work on the pop music playlist on a global level, so making pop music playlists that are listened to all around the world in countries like France, Brazil, the UK, Germany, even places like Guatemala. My job's to identify gaps in pop music, so it's identifying modern trends, looking where pop culture's going and then creating new playlists that will best serve our users. The whole reason why I do what I do is because, you know, you want to help artists and fans find each other.

When I was at school, I was like a lot of kids. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I used to make mix tapes for my mum when I was a kid and stuff like that, so to see that like it could be a job to make mix tapes in the new form of playlists, like that was just exciting massively and I knew that was what I was meant to do and that led to a career in something that wasn't invented when I was at school. I started working in radio. I did a local radio show in Nottingham when I was 16, Trinity Radio show, and then moved down to London when I was 18 and got a job working at the BBC and, from there, really just realised my passion lied in music programming, working on lots of music shows like BBC Introducing and then got the opportunity to work here at Deezer.

There's a perception that young people need years and years experience to be able to do jobs like this but, the truth is, it's actually an advantage to be young. Deezer is 10 years old but, in reality, that's a very new industry compared to places like radio and TV. There are not many experts working in streaming to be honest like it's still being moulded all the time and young people are sort of at the heart of where the industry is going.

I don't know anyone who hasn't had setbacks really, in this industry or any industry, like setbacks define who you are. It's about sort of how you come back from them setbacks. I think if you're struggling with family or parents and trying to persuade them about the career that you want to go down, you've just got to trust your instincts and be stubborn. Your potential is always greater than what you think it is, so if you have the confidence that, you know, you can become something great, if you want to work hard and you're passionate about it, we all can do that. So, when you come from an area that perhaps isn't a London or a Manchester, where there's a lot of success on your doorstep, if you come from areas of the country where I'm from, you know, you can often not have the confidence to see yourself succeed in those industries. There are opportunities out there and, you know, you can take the risks and it will pay off.