MEET ENTERTAINMENT'S FUTURE LEADERS: GEORGIA BUTLER

Musician Georgia Butler runs hundreds of instore and outstore events for legendary Brighton indie store Resident Music.

After a course in music industry studies at university, Georgia, a musician, moved to Brighton in 2020, starting at Resident shortly afterwards. A fan of a wide range of indie music, Georgia is actively involved in the Brighton music scene.

“I worked my way through different parts of the business,” she says, “and now I’m Events Manager, which has happened alongside instores and outstores becoming a huge thing for the industry.”

She’s not exaggerating. The phenomenon of indie stores organising appearances and performances as part of album campaigns has been one of the biggest innovations of the past years. The sheer scale of Georgia’s events schedule is incredible. “Last year we hosted roughly 130 and we’re currently hosting around four to five events in some weeks, so it’s pretty busy,” she says matter-of-factly. “My job is really to help labels achieve success with new album campaigns and book / organise the kind of event that’s going to be most beneficial to that.”

“In the shop itself these events can be instore performances, signings, meet-and-greets or playbacks with capacity for up to 180 people.

For outstore shows, Resident partners with larger Brighton venues such as the 600-capacity Concorde 2 or 800-capacity Chalk.

In addition to booking and working these events Georgia also works to upgrade the processes and systems the shop uses to manage the events. “When I joined, most systems were manual,” she says, “but now we use (ticketing software) Dice and a big part of my role has been integrating ticketing with running a record shop which are two quite different things!”

Understandably, given the sheer number of events she’s organising, Georgia is reluctant to name just one standout. There really are too many to mention them all.

“We’ve done some really cool stuff,” she says. “Recently we did a signing with FKA twigs. We’ve hosted outstores with Little Simz, Ezra Collective, Conan Gray and Fontaines DC, to name a few. In the shop we get a really nice mix; bands / artists across all genres and in different stages of their careers. Often it can be bands on independent labels celebrating their debut, those have been some of my favourites, as the nature of playing a record shop is pretty DIY, so it’s quite fitting. We’ve also massively grown our reach with opportunities to host bigger pop acts, such as Bastille and Olly Alexander.

“I think the reason we get a lot of returning events, is people love the space and people love Brighton. We are definitely one of the key stops on an instore run these days, which we’re very proud of. We are usually the Brighton stop on the instore / outstore tour.”

With the other four members of the first intake of ERA’s Future Leaders Programme all representing digital platforms, Georgia is conscious she’s flying the flag for the indie sector.

“My role is quite different to the others on the programme, working for an independent record store,” she says. “I think it’s really important that we have that diversity. With the rise of vinyl and the huge uptick in instore and outstore events over the past years, we play a big part in helping album campaigns. We are still growing as an indie store sector and for that to be the case in 2025 is amazing.”

“In my day-to-day job, I speak to a lot of labels, but I don’t really get the opportunity to speak to the digital services. I’m really looking forward to hearing that insight and learning more about the future of the industry.”

Your all-time favourite artist/track?
This changes all the time for me, currently it’s caroline ‘Dark blue’

A new artist/track to look out for?
mary in the junkyard ‘this is my california’

The biggest issue facing the music industry?
I think the biggest issue facing the music industry right now is the growing difficulty for independent breakthrough acts to earn a full time living from touring / releasing music.