Most people in the music industry have seen music just as a hobby for a long time. So did Jules Müller – who was fascinated by a German music festival one day and then decided to apply for jobs in this sector and made her dream come true. Today, she is co-running an artist management company which is known under the name OK CIAO. As a result of this entrepreneurial project, Jules is the winner of one of the MEWEM golden tickets. And it seems like this is just the beginning of a big career.
Jules’ journey starts with an experience at Reeperbahn festival that turned her perspective on music from a personal safe space to an actual workplace: “When I was like 18, I went to Reeperbahn festival. It was my first music festival and I realized that there are actual jobs behind it. I started to understand how the music industry works, went to workshops and was really interested in it. At the end, I knew I wanted to be in the music industry.” During her studies in communication and literature, she started to work at a PR agency in Berlin, went to London for a job at a distribution company, worked for music streaming services like Deezer and also ended up at Universal Music. “I did lots of different things in the music industry and realized I kind of liked everything, but not enough for me to pursue it 9/5 after my studies”, she explains. Artist management then suddenly felt different: She loves the combination of booking, PR, label work and much more, which led her to this exact path and, as a consequence of this, to her own company.
The management company OK CIAO Jules is running together with a former colleague from Universal Music: “We would always make jokes about starting our management, starting to work with newcomer artists and doing projects we found interesting. Then we found our first artist and it was like a perfect match, so we started to work with her together. That’s when we realized it is lots of fun – and after a few drinks we said ‘Ah, we should do this!’. So we just tried it.” Jules describes it as a big step out of her comfort zone. The MEWEM program was a big helping hand in this case, as she states herself: “I got so much encouragement from all the women, not just my mentor but like the whole group. My mentor really helped me with some big things in my career I kind of struggled with and she really gave me a lot of trust in my skills.” Last year, Jules was at a big turning point in her life, as she has finished her bachelor’s degree in Berlin and moved to Mannheim for a master’s in music and creative industries. “Everything was changing in my life and I felt super unsure if I made the right decisions. MEWEM really gave me so much confidence in myself and what I am doing.”
“I feel like MEWEM has made a huge difference already, I now feel capable of what I am doing”
Her diagnosis with ADHD in April this year has explained struggles regarding self-confidence and work-life-balance a little bit. By working as a freelancer and studying at the same time, it often is difficult for her to take some time off and step back when things get heavy, especially in the music industry, which Jules describes as “really exhausting”. Still, she keeps pursuing her goals and wants to fight the condition: “My goal is to be nicer to myself, to treat myself better, to take the breaks I deserve and to talk to myself the way I deserve it. I feel like MEWEM has made a huge difference already, I now feel capable of what I am doing and I don’t feel like I have to hide behind my colleague because he is a man and he is 10 years older.” At the moment, Jules is looking back at an intense time with lots of hard work, since her artist ANAÏS has released her debut EP a few weeks ago: “Now I am really excited to take a break and look back on how much we have achieved.”
Katharina Reiffenstuhl