Elliot Grainge: the music mogul of the TikTok age who will now helm Atlantic Records

Elliot Grainge, the entrepreneur behind the upstart music producer 10K Projects, has taken over the top job at Atlantic Records, the label synonymous with musical greats. Can he transform its prospects?

Elliot Grainge attends the 67th GRAMMY Awards
(Image credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

When Elliot Grainge was a child, his father – legendary Universal Music boss Lucian Grainge – would take him into the office while he worked. “Subconsciously listening to mixes, listening to phone conversations about music as a very, very, very young chap must have stuck with me.”

Grainge junior went on to found an independent record label, 10K Projects, that established a niche “signing buzzy rappers”, says The Wall Street Journal. Now the 31-year-old has a much more daunting task. In October, he was appointed CEO of Atlantic Records, the well-known label now owned by Warner Music, and “synonymous with music greats” such as Aretha Franklin and Led Zeppelin. His mission is to position it more savvily for the TikTok generation.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.