XLIVE is proud to present its second annual list of Emerging Leaders. Our group of 2022 winners includes young event professionals — across both B2B and Fan Experience — whose innovation, creativity, and drive are pushing the industry forward. We will be featuring all of the winners on XLIVE over the coming weeks, so be sure to check back!
Daga Pajduszewska’s first experience with the music industry was volunteering at her local radio station when she was 13 years old. She later went on to study music business at BIMM London and fell in love with the industry. Through various internships and professional experiences, she had the opportunity to work with incredibly passionate people who helped shape her career path.
“From Bernard Doherty at LD Communications to Rebecca Allen from Decca, Universal Music (now EMI Records) and many more, I was able to learn firsthand, their own perspectives on music and entertainment,” she says. Prior to her current role, Pajduszewska was leading the marketing department at music startup AI Music — which was subsequently acquired by Apple — which gave her a taste of the start-up dynamic and eventually led her to Volta XR, an extended reality company that enables musicians to create engaging live visuals for free.
“The empowerment we can deliver to artists that might not have the budgets like Travis Scott or Lil Nas X to create next-level live experiences is incredibly exciting,” says Pajduszewska. As Lead Marketing Manager at Volta, Pajduszewska’s primary goal is to deliver the tool to up-and-coming musicians, creators, and DJs following a year of successful building brand awareness and positioning within the industry. Her role involves planning and executing events as well as leading the branding and social media management.
Pajduszewska shares that her favorite part of the role is being able to learn and immerse herself in different music communities. “We’ve been fortunate enough to have worked with musicians and professionals across the board that represent different communities such as independent electronic musicians, music producers, DJs and more,” she explains. Along the way, she has also faced certain challenges, the biggest one of which has been finding the right market for Volta.
“We’ve built extremely powerful 3D software that can deliver huge value to many different users, from the Live Music Industry to Content creation and Design and many more,” she says. “We’ve had to home in on the ones that we assume have gotten the biggest gap that we’re able to fill. Making sure we are focused as a department but also the entire team and communicating market signals well has become very important.”
The next step for Volta will be to roll out its new audience interaction feature, which Pajduszewska is very much looking forward to. This new tool will enable both in-person and virtual audiences to contribute to live performances and impact the 3D visuals created in the platform, which will further help build the hybrid future that events and experiences are moving towards.
“Uniting a global audience with in-person attendees allows the artists to reach every single fan across the globe and make them feel special,” notes Pajduszewska. “With the announcement of the weekly streams by 2Chainz on Amazon Music Live and the increase of music live streams on Twitch, we’re very excited about the further development of hybridized events and how Volta will play a role in it.”
While Pajduszewska is inspired daily by her friends and colleagues in the music industry, she also loves following influential people from other industries for motivation and inspiration. In particular, she is a big fan of Reshma Saujani and shares that Saujani’s book “Brave Not Perfect” has made a massive impact on both her career and personal life. In addition, she admires the work that Jay Shetty is doing with his content and podcast about mental health.
Aside from music, Pajduszewska is also passionate about female empowerment. “I recently joined a lot of communities on Reddit and LinkedIn,” she says, “where we chat about work and life, we exchange professional advice, organise meetups and generally lift each other up! It’s amazing.”