SPEAKER

Sofia Ilyas

Music Industry Coach

Sofia Ilyas

Sofia Ilyas has worked in the music industry for over 15 years. Most recently, she was the Chief Community Officer at Beatport, where she led the company’s global community and diversity strategy. She also spent five years as Label Manager at Erased Tapes, working closely with artists such as Nils Frahm. Sofia recently completed a BSc in Psychology and a PG Cert in Career Coaching and Coaching Psychology. Through high-level strategy and evidence-based psychological frameworks, Sofia helps artists, executives and emerging talent navigate their careers with clarity and confidence.

Website

Session

The Human Behind the Artist: Supporting Artists Through Crisis and Change

A 2026 survey of more than 2,000 independent artists and industry professionals found that 86% report significant mental strain or creative burnout. Behind that number sit people expected to keep creating, touring, promoting and staying visible while carrying personal crises, mental health challenges, grief, displacement or the weight of conflict elsewhere in the world.
The question this session asks is what the people around them do about it. Managers, agents and promoters shape an artist’s calendar, workload and exposure, and those decisions are where empathy either exists in practice or does not. It also asks what the dancefloor itself already provides, since community and care have been part of rave culture far longer than the industry has had language for either. As we are heading to an age shaped by AI, emotional intelligence remains one of our most valuable human strengths.

Fishbowl

🇬🇧 English

SOCIAL IMPACT

Artist Wellbeing

Artist Academy

Speakers

Roya Firoozbakhsh
Sofia Ilyas
Katty Lange

Moderators

Qeas Pirzad

Music Hall 4 – nhow Berlin

Nov 4, 2026,

2.30 PM –

3.20 PM