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Andre Benz’s foray into the music business was not like most. He didn’t attend a music business program at a university, toil away at an unpaid internship or manage a local artist. Instead, he built his own YouTube empire at age 15.

Working from his childhood bedroom in New Jersey, Benz created the YouTube channel Trap Nation, where he featured a curated selection of dance music and remixes of popular songs. “Originally, it was just a hobby, but I think one of my positive and negative traits is I become obsessive about what I do,” he says. “I just kept doing it and doing it until one of the uploads blew up — a remix of ‘Wrecking Ball’ by Miley Cyrus.” 

By the time of his high school graduation, Benz had become an unlikely but important tastemaker in the world of electronic music. He expanded Trap Nation into a whole suite of channels — Chill Nation, House Nation and Bass Nation — and he says his flagship brand grew to about 2 million subscribers. Today, it has amassed over 30 million. 

Around the same time, he met another student, Brandon De Oliveira, who went to a neighboring high school in New Jersey and had mutual friends. Their eventual collaboration led Benz to sell his YouTube channels to Create Music Group in 2022 and co-found Broke Records with De Oliveira the following year. Now 27, Benz says his goal is no less than building “the best independent record label in the history of the music industry,” and he takes inspiration from the digital-driven approach of Mike Caren’s APG and Elliot Grainge’s 10K Projects, which he says showed him what indie success can look like. 

“What we’re doing would not work at any other company in the music industry — Republic, Columbia, Atlantic or Warner,” Benz says. “[Create founder] Jonathan Strauss and the entire Create team have given us full-on trust, opportunity and accessibility to do what we believe is right for the company. That means doing larger deals and taking larger risks.” 

Broke Records is distributed by Create and has a staff of eight full-time employees focused on finding and breaking artists. The label currently has “Embrace It” by London-based Angolan rapper Ndotz and “Alibi” by Iranian Dutch singer-songwriter-producer Sevdaliza on Spotify’s Global Top 50 chart and claims that its international roster, which includes Blackbear, Bread Beatz and Camelphat, generates more than 32 million streams a day globally on Spotify.

How does your YouTube marketing background and experience with algorithms benefit Broke Records? 

ANDRE BENZ That’s our biggest advantage and the biggest difference between us and an older label — how we think about services for our artists. We don’t have to rely on paying outside people to do the [digital marketing] for us. I think a lot of companies love outsourcing work because it holds a third party accountable. If the artist complains, the label can say, “Oh, it’s actually their fault.” Some of these other labels have too much volume, too, and they’re not able to control what’s actually going on, so they outsource work.

Why are you succeeding with TikTok creator campaigns at a time when digital markets are saying they’re less effective than a few years ago?

BRANDON DE OLIVEIRA I think creator campaigns now are actually more influential than ever, but everyone’s spending way too much. We are constantly refreshing the list of creators that we’re [using]. Two or three years ago, labels got used to thinking, “OK, these are the big accounts now. We will just go to them.” These creators’ rates kept going up, and as the market kept getting more saturated, those creators didn’t move the needle anymore. In certain cases, we will spend on larger creators, but for the most part, we’re spending like $1,000 across 100 to 200 creators in really strategic markets — Eastern Europe and Latin America specifically. That’s typically where we start most of our campaigns before we move into more premium territories.

Why those territories? 

DE OLIVEIRA Cheaper cost, and these markets start a lot of trends on the internet. A lot of our marketing campaigns start as bundle deals. We spread less money across several tracks that have familiarity in whatever type of video we are into, whether it’s edits, dances, lip-syncs and so on. And a lot of those bigger creators in the more premium territories — where we would have had to spend $4,000 for one post — just jump on for free. Why? Because at some point, there’s a tipping point where creators jump on just because they see the videos using that song getting bigger. 

Andre, why was Create the right partner for you? Why not continue to do things on your own? 

BENZ There were three or four years after I started Trap Nation where I was, for lack of a better word, a degenerate. I wasn’t interested in music at all anymore. I couldn’t find any passion. I was just so young when I started it, and I felt like I didn’t have anybody to relate to in terms of what I was building. YouTube was declining, and our channels were declining in growth. I had never been through the process of growing quickly and then declining. I was like, “I’m out, I’m done.” I wanted a fresh start. The acquisition was less of a money thing than it was a fresh start. I was like, “OK, I can sell this company, move forward, get integrated into a new ecosystem and learn from other people who started their own company. Jonathan Strauss started [Create] around the same time I started [my company]. I thought, “I can learn from these people.”

How promising are YouTube Shorts and other features that the platform has added? 

BENZ I’m super excited about YouTube Shorts. I think they’re going to continue pushing them from an algorithmic standpoint, and we see that we’re able to capture a lot of new audiences and revenue as well. We make a lot of money on YouTube Shorts for songs we are putting out because we have a really good content claiming team [through Create]. And because of our background with YouTube, we understand the platform better than any other label. They also give us a lot of support. Anytime we have songs trending on that platform, they’ll give us billboards in Times Square [in New York], in Los Angeles. They’ll feature us on the homepage. YouTube, out of all platforms right now, is by far the most powerful for the amplification of records. 

Does virality on Shorts translate to non-YouTube streams? 

BENZ Not really. Brandon and I share the same opinion that YouTube Shorts usually comes last in terms of virality. It’s TikTok, then Instagram, or TikTok and Instagram at the same time. Then it trickles over to YouTube a month later. But we see our songs stay super viral for a while on YouTube Shorts. I don’t think we’ve ever found a new song viral from YouTube Shorts — maybe once. We don’t look for artists or records on Shorts. It’s more of an audience-marketing opportunity. 

What are you doing to ensure the longevity of those songs that go viral and, in the long term, build a catalog? 

BENZ When we started Broke, the plan was to build an incredible digital marketing team and sign a lot of these viral electronic songs because that’s what we know best. So we did that. And then we started moving to other genres: rap, alternative rock, pop. Then we hired a few more people. Now we have to start breaking artists and building longer narratives around artists, not just singles. 

In two years, we want to have four to five superstars [with] 30 million to 40 million monthly listeners, selling out arenas, selling out merchandise. Sevdaliza is our first opportunity to prove ourselves. It’s a huge risk for our company because of the deal size, but I think it’s a once-ina-lifetime opportunity for us to go above and beyond. I want to prove to people that you don’t need to sign to Republic Records to get on top 40 [radio]. You don’t have to sign to Island to be the next Sabrina Carpenter. I don’t think anyone’s proved that yet. 

What does the label landscape look like in 10 years? 

BENZ A lot of distributors are going to start acquiring and starting up labels like ours. A lot of traditional record labels are going to continue the distribution model, which I think is a race to the bottom. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s going to be more fragmented, more democratized. You’re going to have more independent market share. 

DE OLIVEIRA There will be a lower barrier of entry with [artificial intelligence] — whether that’s mixing, mastering, content production or the actual full production of songs. It’s going to be really interesting and it’s going to be super saturated. So figuring out how to create experiences and really personal moments between the artists and their fans will be the key distinguishing factor moving forward.

This story appears in the Nov. 16, 2024, issue of Billboard.