Mark Adams, founder of artist management and digital marketing consultancy Blinding Talent, has spent 28 years across music broadcasting, chart innovation and artist development. His career includes launching Kerrang TV, The Hits and 4Music, giving Ed Sheeran his first television appearance, and building the first chart based on Spotify data.
Six years after founding Blinding Talent, Adams is now certified as an MMF (Music Managers Forum) Artist Manager.
Broadcast career and early artist spotting
Adams spent close to two decades in music broadcasting, working with channels and brands including The Box, QTV, Smash Hits TV, Kiss TV and Magic TV. He was part of the launch team for Kerrang TV in 2001, followed by The Hits on Freeview and 4Music.
As Head of Music, he was at The Box Network when it became the UK’s number one music TV network in 2005, the first time any music channel had beaten MTV on market share. “That period taught me how to build and grow a network from scratch, not just program one,” Adams said.
Adams gave Ed Sheeran his first TV appearance on The Crush, a 4Music show run in partnership with KFC. “Ed came on as a completely unknown artist, long before any of what followed,” he said. “I still think about that moment a lot in my current work: the ability to spot something real before the data catches up is a skill, and it’s one you only sharpen by watching hundreds of artists come through.”
Across his broadcasting career, Adams worked with global artists including:
- Billie Eilish
- Dua Lipa
- Ed Sheeran
- Taylor Swift
- Zara Larsson
- Justin Bieber
- Pink
- Beyonce
- Foo Fighters
- My Chemical Romance
- The Weeknd
He said that access gave him a first-hand view of what separates a good career from a genuinely great one.
Chart infrastructure and move to management
In 2014 and 2015, Adams launched the Official YouTube Chart and the Box+ Streaming Chart, respectively. The 2014 chart was the first built using Spotify data and was later rebranded as the UK Hotlist.
Adams said the projects were about building measurement infrastructure for a shift that was already happening, as audiences moved from TV and radio to platforms. “Building those charts taught me how data becomes narrative: a chart isn’t just a ranking, it’s a story about what’s breaking and why,” he said. “That’s a skill that translates directly into artist development.”
Adams left broadcasting six years ago to found Blinding Talent, based in Surrey, with a roster and client base spanning the UK, North America, Europe and Australia. He said Blinding Talent was formed to combine a macro understanding of discovery, charts, music brands and platforms with hands-on artist management and development. “Broadcasting gave me a bird’s eye view of the industry, but I wanted to be back in the room with artists, building careers rather than just charting or broadcasting them,” he said.
Blinding Talent’s four-pillar model and podcast
Blinding Talent operates across four connected areas:
- Artist management and development
- Digital marketing, including Meta, TikTok, Spotify and Google advertising
- Social media management
- Digital music distribution
“The philosophy is that none of those should operate in isolation,” Adams said. “A distribution release without a marketing plan behind it is a wasted opportunity, and a marketing plan without genuine artist management and development underneath it doesn’t hold up.” He added that the company tries to run all four as one connected system rather than separate service lines.
The Blinding Talent Music Industry podcast has become a content engine for the company. “The podcast lets us do publicly what we’d otherwise only do in artist meetings: unpack what’s actually working in the industry right now, episode by episode, with real case studies rather than theory,” Adams said. Each episode is broken down into short-form video and social assets, and Adams said it often serves as a discovery tool for prospective artists and industry contacts.
Judging panels and MMF certification
Adams judged the BRIT Awards from 2001 to 2018 and the BBC Sound Poll from 2005 to 2018. He currently judges for Music Week in the marketing category. Adams said that across close to two decades of judging panels, he built a feel for what is breaking through and the strategies artists need to grow audiences.
In 2026, he gained MMF Certified Artist Manager status, which he said formalised areas including fiduciary duty, royalties, rights, safeguarding and the legal architecture around the creative side. All of it feeds directly back into how Blinding Talent advises its own artists.
Asked what has changed most about breaking an artist since he started, Adams said: “The gatekeepers have changed completely.”
