British music entrepreneur Jamal Edwards has died at the of age 31

London, TGO: British entrepreneur Jamal Edwards has died at the age of 31, his manager said.

Edwards gained fame from setting up new music platform SBTV, which helped to launch a string of UK music careers including Dave and Jessie J.

Edwards was a teenager when he decided to launch the youth broadcasting and production company SBTV to upload clips he recorded of his friends performing on the estate where he lived in Acton, west London.

By 2014, he had amassed an estimated fortune of about £8 million ($10.8m) and worked with the likes of Jessie J, Emeli Sande and Ed Sheeran. In 2014, he was awarded an MBE for his services to music.

After receiving his MBE, he said he started SBTV to give his friends a platform.

“It was a frustration of going to school and everyone talking about, ‘How do we get our videos on MTV?'” Edwards said.

“YouTube was like a year old. I was like, ‘I’ve got a camera for Christmas, I’m going to start filming people and uploading it’.

“Everyone was looking at me like, ‘What are you doing, like you can compete with these major corporations’, but I think I was early enough to believe that I could make a change.”

In the same interview, he described his working relationship with musicians as “symbiotic”.

“Fifty per cent is the talent and 50 per cent is the platform,” he said.

“I try to focus on people who haven’t got the platform. As well as getting a really well-known artist, I want to get the up-and-coming ones as well.”