Jamal Edwards, the music video mogul and Sussex University’s first entrepreneur in residence, has died at the age of 31.
Edwards set up the SBTV YouTube channel and helped propel the likes of Ed Sheeran and Jessie J to stardom.
At the age of 24, he became an MBE in 2014 for his services to music, and he also served also an ambassador for the Prince of Wales’s charity, the Prince’s Trust.
Edwards died yesterday morning (Sunday 20 February), his manager said, although there were no details at this stage about the cause of death.
Last September, Edwards became the first entrepreneur in residence at Sussex University.
At the time he said: “It’s an honour to be the first entrepreneur in residence at Sussex.
“I’m available to give students advice about how to start their business and to remind them not to doubt themselves.
“When I hear students say, ‘I won’t be able to do that,’ I say the worst thing that’s going to happen to you is that someone is going to say ‘no’.
“I want students to come to me with their ideas and to use my network to leverage them. If I can get people thinking ‘why not?’ I’ve made an improvement.
“I started my video business, SBTV, when I was 15 because the artists that I wanted to film weren’t being represented on mainstream media.
“Predominantly it was underground artists and then I branched out, filming Ed Sheeran, Emile Sande, Stormzy, Skepta.
“I felt loads of people wanted to watch this content but couldn’t find it anywhere, so that’s why I started to upload it to the internet.
“YouTube was only about a year old and it had become this democratic platform for people.”
Edwards, the son of Loose Women star Brenda Edwards, won 1.2 million subscribers for his SBTV YouTube channel and amassed a multimillion-pound fortune.
