As a college student, Simon Rugg found himself questioning what career to pursue once he graduated. Driven by his passion for listening to radio, Rugg decided to create a student station—his own personal hub of sorts—to encourage music discovery on campus.

On a weekly basis, Rugg would receive anywhere from 50-70 track requests to be featured on his station, often times connecting with various people within the industry. His involvement landed him a career at Sony as a student rep and eventually led him to create a music blog, mainly focused on the disco/funk scene called Bristol Funk.

His blog started out as a testament to finding new music and exposing it to a wider audience. Now, almost 10 years later, Rugg is still just as eager to support lesser-known artists.

Knowing that Spotify would eventually take off, Rugg decided to expand his efforts onto the platform in its early stages in 2010. “I primarily starting curating playlists for myself, but after experiencing the impact my network made, I decided to stick with it. Plus, it keeps me out of trouble.” By accumulating over 50k followers across his playlists, it’s safe to say Bristol Funk has become notorious for catering to a large fanbase.

His newest playlist, New Funk & Soul, has attracted more than 9k followers within the short time span of five months. Initially, Rugg curated the playlist with a focus on soul music that was popular in the early 1970s, featuring artists such as Stevie Wonder. “For a while, the playlist wasn’t being consistently updated, so I decided to curate a list of tracks for those with an old soul flavor, but with a modern twist.” New Funk & Soul features artists such as The Bamboos, Patawawa and Mark Pelli—many of which have been influenced from 70’s."

For a chance to be featured on Bristol Funk’s Spotify, submit your tracks here.