Scott 'DJ Skee' Keeney
DJ/founder, Skee.TV

Scott "DJ Skee" Keeney, 26, started off as a DJ when he was a teenager in Minneapolis and moved to Los Angeles at the behest of Loud Records/SRC founder Steve Rifkind. He caught the executive's eye by giving him a business memo "telling him what he was doing wrong," Keeney recalls with a laugh. Keeney now DJs for KIIS Los Angeles and for his four Sirius XM Radio shows, as well as running multimedia music/marketing/production site Skee.TV. In the past year, he's produced videos for Snoop Dogg and Chris Cornell, as well as originating marketing campaigns for Daimler-Chrysler and T-Mobile. "Sales are down and people are down on the biz, but I'm more excited than ever," Keeney says. "It's times like this-when the music industry sees road blocks-that it's time for innovation."

Lucy Kozak
Music marketing executive, Creative Artists Agency

Lucy Kozak, 26, works with promoters, labels, managers, sponsors and venues to create strategic tour marketing opportunities for Creative Artists Agency clients. Kozak has played a key role in marketing and ticketing recent tours by Alice in Chains, Chickenfoot, Cobra Starship, Disturbed, Imogen Heap, Jeff Beck, Katy Perry, REO Speedwagon, 30 Seconds to Mars, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and many others. Her work with Chickenfoot led to a gold-certified debut sold exclusively at Best Buy and a sold-out 40-date tour. "I learned early on the power of knowing who your fans are," she says, "and it's great to be part of a team that is passionate about using this knowledge creatively."

Imran Majid
Director of A&R, Universal Republic Records

Imran Majid, 28, has overseen more than 30 recent recording projects, including albums by India.Arie, Jay Sean, Kevin Rudolf, K'Jon, Spose, Savage and DJ Class. All told, Majid's projects have a combined album sales total near the 1 million mark in the last year, Universal Republic reports. Not too shabby for a man who was an intern five years ago. Imran also participates in events to boost awareness of South Asians in the entertainment industry. "I also want to grow in my role as not just an A&R," he says, "but as a pivotal executive within our label."

Maggie Martin
Manager of music resources for the West, EMI Music Publishing

Maggie Martin, 27, upped her game in the past year by handling EMI's relationship with "American Idol," increasing EMI's catalog presence on the show by 33% last year. Martin was key "in helping bring the ["Idol"] Motown episode to fruition," EMI Group CEO Roger Faxon says. Martin attended the Berklee College of Music intending to be an artist but earned a degree with a focus on songwriting and music business studies. "I went to Berklee thinking I wanted to be an artist," she says, "but I decided it would be a lot better to be on the business side."

Beth Mason Laird
Director of writer/publisher relations, BMI Nashville

As a college intern, Beth Mason Laird witnessed a Keith Urban studio session that inspired her: "That's when I fell in love with the music business," she says. Roles at BMG and Windswept Music led her to BMI. Laird, 28, has made BMI a key partner with Belmont University, has signed numerous writers and launched the showcase series BMI Buzz at the Baseman and East Side Sounds. BMI Nashville VP of writer/publisher relations Jody Williams says, "Beth's enthusiasm and business acumen have contributed to the success of BMI's Nashville writer/publisher department, further solidifying BMI's leadership role in the Nashville music community."

Alexander Ljung
Founder/CEO, SoundCloud

SoundCloud founder/CEO Alexander Ljung, 28, says he wants his company, which launched in 2007, to do for music files and musicians what Flickr did for photos and photographers. Given the service's rising popularity, that's an apt comparison. "The growth has been phenomenal," he says. "We've gone from unknown to one of the world's largest and fastest-growing audio platforms in 18 months." The Berlin-based service, which provides tools for musicians to share and collaborate on the Web, now has more than 1.3 million registered users. In addition, 80-plus apps have been built on top of the platform, which allows SoundCloud users to connect their accounts to creations across several applications and websites. SoundCloud received the 2010 digital artist tool of the year award from MusicWeek and was the new business winner at MIDEM 2009.