Photo: Chris Frazer Smith
‘IT’S IMPORTANT FOR PEOPLE TO BE THEIR AUTHENTIC SELVES’ Jess Kinn was the first hire at agent Jon Ollier’s new live music agency, One Fiinix Live. Here, the former Paradigm agent tells MBUK about her career, working on livestream events for Dua Lipa and Gorillaz and how her family inspired her to pursue a career in the live industry...
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ess Kinn’s family musical legacy is something to behold. The Londonbased live agent’s grandad was Maurice Kinn, the influential promoter and British industry figure who founded the NME in 1952, which published the first UK Singles Chart in November of that year. Kinn’s dad, an avid record collector, had an entire room dedicated to vinyl, which she says she “raided” to DJ around London as a teenager using garage, soul and freakbeat 45s from his collection. He also taught her how to tell the difference between US and UK vinyl pressings just by holding them. 94
“I grew up with my dad literally giving me music quizzes every day,” says Kinn. She adds that her grandad’s musical legacy, and the knowledge that her dad instilled in her, made her and her sister, Martha Kinn (Director at YMU Music in London and manager of Years & Years, MNEK), determined to make it in the music industry. Kinn’s live music career started at The Leighton Pope Organisation before joining Coda Agency (which would later become Paradigm following a merger with the latter US firm). Starting on the reception desk and later working as an assistant with Nick Matthews and Dave Blackgrove, Kinn
worked her way up to agent, spending nine years in total at Paradigm. “There was no set path for me becoming an agent and I would work late, be at every show and always be putting my hand up to do more,” she recalls. “Live [music] and the music industry is heavily male[dominated] and I was usually one of the only females in the room, especially in the early days.” She adds: “Unfortunately that’s still the case now. I saw music industry football teams hardly had any women in them so I decided to start my own mixed football team every Wednesday at Paradigm and it was great. We played during our lunch
