# Mashup Edu’s AI-agent Nia is designed to “run the business side” of indie acts’ careers > Source: > Published: 2026-11-06 05:46:05+00:00 Indian music education and creator-development platform Mashup Edu — which runs Xcelerator, a ten-week music business programme for indie artists; and Backstage; an on-campus music industry literacy course for school students — is launching Nia, an AI agent “engineered to handle the business operations of independent music creators”. The startup’s impetus for developing Nia, which stands for ‘Next-gen Industry Access’, was the realisation that managing an independent music career requires handling around “17 distinct jobs”, from booking gigs and analysing and acting on statistics across streaming and social media platforms, to tracking royalties. Nia, they say, unifies “these fragmented workflows” and “does not just offer advice” but “is built to perform the heavy lifting” by executing such tasks as pulling cross-platform streaming data, drafting personalised venue pitches, and tracking response windows. “We’ve watched exceptionally talented music creators lose massive momentum to administrative friction and scattered data,” says Mandeep Singh, the founder and CEO of Mashup Edu, which he started in 2023. “Creators don’t need another chatbot giving them homework or five different dashboards open at once. They need an AI agent that gets the work done.” His agent’s execution logic is powered by three years of operational data, working with 87 music creators through Xcelerator, and devising playbooks distilled from the 226 masterclasses Mashup Edu has organised with music industry leaders for the programme’s seven cohorts so far. Indian independent musicians can sign up for early access to the beta rollout of Nia, which is scheduled for early 2027. The agent, which is likely to be priced at around $20 (approx. Rs1,900) per month, will also be available globally at a subsequent point next year. “The idea is to give the kind of industry access and support that used to depend on having a manager or the right connections,” Singh told Music Ally South Asia. While Nia has been made for musicians, Mashup Edu plans to eventually open it to smaller labels, management companies and other interested industry stakeholders in the near future.