YMU Group has hired Spotify executive, Rhyanna Coleman, to lead its rapidly growing podcast business and help deliver the organisation's ambition to attract and support elite talent and creators in building highly successful podcasts and community brands.
Coleman, who joins YMU from Spotify, has worked with many leading UK podcasters, such as Gary Lineker's Goalhanger network, to expand their podcast businesses - and launched numerous entertainment and digital talent into podcasting, such as Rob Brydon, Olivia Neill, Munroe Bergdorf, Saffron Barker, Anastasia Kingsnorth, and many others. She has also held podcast strategy roles at BBC Studios and LadBibleGroup.
Starting this month, she will lead and augment YMU's already established podcast output, including Fearne Cotton’s ‘Happy Place’ podcast (over 130m+ downloads), ‘High Performance’ with Jake Humphrey & Damien Hughes, hit Gen Z and Millenial podcasts including ‘Girls Bathroom’, Grace Beverley’s ‘Working Hard Hardly Working’, Jamie Laing & Sophie Habboo’s Jampot Productions slate (‘NewlyWeds’, Wednesdays’, ‘Great Company’), Patricia Bright’s 'The Break', amongst many more.
She will also oversee YMU's upcoming podcasts including a women's health podcast with Davina McCall (produced by Steven Bartlett’s Flight Studios) as well as new podcast additions by Graham Norton and David Walliams & Matt Lucas.
Coleman will join YMU’s digital, commercial, live and content teams who have successfully coalesced around talent podcasts, building them into wider multi-platform community brands - such as Fearne Cotton’s ‘Happy Place’, which has become a sell-out wellness festival across the UK, spawned best-selling books, a publishing imprint & book club, an app, product lines in High Street retailers, and a multi-million-pound partnership portfolio.
YMU digital-first clients James & Fuhad, aka ‘ShxtsnGigs’, are another good example - YMU signing the boys when they had less than 10K Instagram followers, and since then their podcast has seen meteoric growth; becoming a Top 5 podcast on Spotify, and one of the fastest growing comedy podcasts globally - winning multiple awards including Best Entertainment Personalities of the year at the MOBOs, and ‘Best Podcast of the Year’ at Guap Gala.
YMU’s in-house live and commercial teams have since helped to translate ShxtsnGigs successfully into the live space - selling out the O2 Arena, and breaking the US with a sold out North America tour, as well as landing the boys multiple brand partnerships and sell-out product ranges.
Rhyanna Coleman said “I’m hugely excited to be joining YMU from Spotify during this really exciting time in the growth of their podcasting business. YMU have led the market creatively and commercially, establishing brands like Fearne Cotton’s ‘Happy Place', the Spotify Top 3 podcast 'ShxtsNGigs', and 'High Performance' with Jake Humphrey's and Damien Hughes. Their capacity for innovation in the podcast space with both talent and creators has created hugely successful podcasts, as well as some forward-thinking and strategic partnerships with producers, platforms, and networks.”
YMU Group is Europe’s largest elite talent agency, managing broadcasters, music artists, sports personalities, and creators including Ant & Dec, Stacey Solomon, Graham Norton, Simon Cowell, Davina McCall, Paris Hilton, Take That, amongst many others.
