Jammcard Launches Mentorship Platform for Music Professionals

Jammcard — the tech startup that facilitates connections between musicians via a curated, app-based professional network — has officially launched Jammcard Mentors, a new marketplace that offers one-on-one live video mentorship sessions with leading music industry professionals, the company tells Billboard.

Through the marketplace, musicians and industry professionals of all backgrounds and skill levels can book one-on-one video calls to receive personalized career advice from music industry mentors, all hand-picked by Jammcard from the platform’s 10,000-member database.

Session prices are set by mentors – a mix of music industry professionals including musicians, producers, songwriters, audio engineers, and industry executives – who can offer 30 or 60-minute session lengths (the average price for a mentorship session is $140 for 30 minutes and $280 for 60 minutes). Mentors receive the full amount of the session fee, minus a $3 charge for credit card transactions. For mentees, the platform charges a 10% service fee per session.  Mentors also have the option of donating their proceeds from the platform to the Recording Academy nonprofit MusiCares.

Current mentors on the platform include such high-profile industry figures as drummer Aaron Spears (Ariana Grande, Usher), guitarist Ari O’Neal (Lizzo, SZA), nine-time Grammy-winning engineer Manny Marroquin, Grammy-winning songwriter Evan Bogart (Beyonce’s “Halo,” Rihanna’s “SOS”), producer Andrew Bolooki (Lil Nas X, The Weeknd), former Columbia Records urban music head Phylicia Fant and All That Remains guitarist Jason Richardson. Additional mentors will be announced each week, with new mentor categories — from tour managers to lighting directors to vocalists — set to debut on the platform in the coming months.

Jammcard founder Elmo Lovano – a drummer and musical director who has worked with artists including Miley Cyrus, Christina Perri, Skrillex and Snoh Aalegra – says the company began testing the new marketplace in November, with Spears signing on as the platform’s very first mentor.

“This isn’t lessons. It’s not ‘Let me teach you guitar,’” says Lovano. “This is, ‘Let me help you with your career.’ You can go to a music school, and they can give you a great education on how to play your instrument or how to use this DAW or whatever it may be. But the place where it lacks is, okay, when you graduate now what do you do? How do you make it?”

The Jammcard Mentors website currently boasts around 40 mentors (including Lovano), with roughly 30 additional mentors set to be added to the platform each month. If a mentor is fully booked or not currently accepting new mentees, users can sign up for a waitlist to receive an email and a push notification once new slots open up.

The platform has already been paying dividends for mentees in concrete ways, says Lovano. A recent 30-minute session booked with Bolooki stretched to a two-hour songwriting session after the Grammy-nominated producer became hooked by his mentee’s music. Another unnamed mentor who owns a publishing company signaled his intention to sign one of his own mentees following their session together.

Stories like these give Lovano hope that Jammcard Mentors will not only offer practical advice but actually help launch careers. “We’ve done such a great job of amassing the professional community, and now this is our first time giving focus to…the next generation,” he says. “How do we actually serve them and help kind of create the funnel that can bring them up into becoming a Jammcard member?”

You can find more information on Jammcard Mentors here.