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Singer-songwriter Benson Boone has signed with WME for global representation in all areas. Boone gained popularity with the release of his viral hit “Beautiful Things” in January. The track has been an international hit, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 for seven weeks and leading the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart for eight […]

When he first started his own agency, Andrew Kelsey worked out of a tiny, windowless office in San Francisco’s Mission District. He had no experience as an agent, but he did have a passion for underground electronic music and an ambition to get bookings for artists who were making it. 
Twenty years later, Kelsey has a staff of 18, offices in San Francisco and Brooklyn — both of which boast natural lighting — and a roster of more than 140 house, techno and indie electronic artists whose “underground” sound has, over the last two decades, become the prevailing style of commercial electronic music in the United States.  

Kelsey’s agency, the independently owned and operated Liaison Artists, now books 5,000 shows a year, including at major festivals like EDC Las Vegas, Ultra Music Festival and Coachella, where this weekend, Liaison artists Carlita, Folamour, The Blessed Madonna, Bicep, ANOTR, Eli & Fur, Ame and Innelea are all slated to play.  

Trending on Billboard

“I thought it was going to be big,” Kelsey tells Billboard over Zoom, “but not this big.” 

As tastes have shifted toward the style of music Liaison has always championed, the agency has grown in tandem. The company doubled in size just before the pandemic, then doubled again when live shows returned. The staff now includes eight agents, including Kelsey and his partner, Mariesa Stephens, who joined the agency in 2008 after meeting Kelsey through the Bay Area nightlife world.  

Following the pandemic, veteran agents Emma Hoser and Meryl Luzzi joined the team, bringing in clients including house titan Jamie Jones, techno pioneers Adam Beyer and Nicole Moudaber and artists from the revered Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep labels. Beyond the agents, Liaison employes four accountants and several coordinators who, Kelsey says, “make the machine run.” 

There was no machine to speak of when Kelsey moved to San Francisco in 1998. He arrived with one bag from his native Buffalo, N.Y., where he’d booked clubs while earning a criminal justice degree and interning at the courthouse. (“I just had a moment of like, ‘this is miserable,’” he now says of the experience. ”) In San Francisco, he found a thriving electronic music culture and knew he had to be a part of it. 

But with minimal experience, there was no clear “in.” Eventually, Kelsey hustled his way into an internship at Urb Magazine, a job for which he’d “bomb the city with materials” like CDs, posters and show flyers. This led to a four-year run doing distribution at Om Records, where – after observing the label’s in-house booking agent – he decided he wanted to be an agent, too.  

When his boss at Om told him no, Kelsey “quit on the spot and started an agency with no experience,” he says. He made inroads by seeking out the music he liked and persuading a few artists that, with his “absolute dedication to working hard and just making it succeed,” he could represent them. Liaison officially launched in 2004, with Kelsey signing his first big artist, Claude VonStroke, in 2006.  

Around that time, Kelsey spent a summer traveling to festivals throughout Europe, then did a five-month stint in Berlin, where he was converted to the religion of techno. (He also opened a Liaison office in Berlin from 2007-2009.) The experience in Europe “just changed my life,” he says. “It was another epiphany of wanting to bring that music to the U.S.” 

At that time in the United States, the house and techno scene mainly existed at warehouse parties and smaller clubs in cities like New York and Los Angeles. Then-nascent festivals like EDC Las Vegas and Ultra Music Festival in Miami were booking the genres, but Kelsey says most festival stages for this music were “1,000 capacity with no production, in the mud, on the side, just a complete afterthought. There wasn’t even any hospitality onstage, just a couple of warm beers in a dirty cooler.”  

Then everything changed. The EDM boom of the early to mid-2010s brought electronic music to mainstream consciousness in the United States, where it became a major economic force. When the boom’s bombastic “mainstage” sound cooled off, it was replaced in popularity by house, techno and the many subgenres that exist under these two styles. That’s when things shifted for Liaison.  

“I’d say in 2015, it really started moving,” says Kelsey. Suddenly, artists who’d previously been playing 500 capacity clubs were getting booked for much larger stages. San Diego’s CRSSD Festival launched in 2014 to service the sound, and Coachella launched its club-style Yuma Stage in 2013, with that space growing from 1,500 to 7,000 capacity over the last 11 years. Anjunadeep showcases used to max out at 500 people; now they happen at Colorado’s 10,000-capacity Red Rocks Amphitheater. 

Andrew Kelsey and Mariesa Stephens

Krescent Carasso

Chicago’s ARC Music Festival, which features house and techno exclusively, launched in 2021, with longtime Liaison client Honey Dijon headlining in 2022. This weekend the artist (who won a 2023 Grammy for her work on Beyoncé’s dance-oriented Renaissance) will also play Coachella’s new Quasar Stage, which will host three to four extended dance sets.  

“I remember watching the festival change, with [Coachella co-founder] Paul [Tollett] and company putting underground dance music artists on [the festival’s massive] Sahara stage, which was kind of the next organic step for this music,” says Kelsey. “I feel like all the major promoters have been in lockstep… We used to do 200 capacity shows together and all grew together with this music.” 

With this growth has come revenue, and competition. In the earlier days, Stephens says a $40,000 fee for a bigger name underground artist “was often the ceiling.” These artists were usually relegated to 2,000 capacity rooms and smaller side stages at major festivals. 

Now, “the entire game has changed,” Stephens continues. “Underground artists are selling out Madison Square Garden and 25,000 cap stadiums” and playing festival headlining sets for tens of thousands of people. She says “artist fees have certainly followed suit.” 

Naturally, major agencies have expanded their rosters to include these formerly niche sounds.   

“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t deeply competitive,” Stephens says. “For many years, the majors were less of a concern for us, but there has been a major shift recently where the music Liaison has been nurturing since our inception has become wildly popular, and things did change.”  

While some of Liaison’s artists “did leave in search of greener pastures,” she continues, “they were few and far between, and most of our core artists have been very loyal to us.” (With Liaison specializing in North and South America, all of its artists have different agencies in Europe and the rest of the world which Liaison works in partnership with.)  

Kelsey says it’s Liaison’s authenticity and its passion for, commitment to and knowledge of this type of music that inspires artists to stay.  

“Liaison embodies the perfect blend of underground authenticity and mainstream appeal,” says Dominik Ceylan, managing partner of Temporary Secretary, a German artist management group with clients, including Dixon and Ame, who are represented by Liaison in North America. “If you’re passionate about music and see your booking agency as an integral part of an ecosystem dedicated to nurturing artists and helping them thrive, Liaison is your go-to partner.” 

Currently, the agency is particularly focused on developing artists’ brands, with Dixon’s Transmoderna and Bicep’s Chroma – both of which feature custom multimedia experiences — giving Liaison the chance to “bring an artist’s vision to life in a very 360-degree way,” says Stephens. As one of the few Black agents in electronic music, she’s also particularly excited about developing Francis Mercier’s Deep Root Records family of artists. “Going to parties filled with black and brown faces [is] deeply inspirational for me,” she says 

Both Stephens and Kelsey agree that the market for the music they specialize in only seems to be growing, with its name at this point only used for lack of a better word.   

“There’s really,” Kelsey says, “not much underground about it.” 

The $10 billion-a-year sports agency business is almost as hard to break into as the big leagues themselves — the gatekeepers are entrenched and powerful, and the cost of competing with them can be prohibitive. Right now, though, a growing disconnect between athletes and agents — players want their agents to find them lucrative ways to leverage their fame, while agents want to focus on the high-dollar contracts — is creating opportunities for entrepreneurs to disrupt the business. Some of them are coming from the music industry, leveraging their own cultural cachet to find clients and opportunities, including Jay-Z, whose Roc Nation includes a sports agency business; Young Money APAA Sports; and Quality Control Sports. More music stars are on their way this year too.

The business is now dominated by five firms — CAA Sports, Wasserman Sports, WME Sports, Excel Sports and Octagon — which together generate half of the $6 billion in commissions that the top 20 firms collected, according to Forbes. On the surface, these companies operate a bit like music and film/TV agencies, where executives identify opportunities for their clients and negotiate on their behalf. But the vast majority of the money comes from long-term player contracts that deliver giant commissions, and many athletes think this leads agents to ignore sports-adjacent opportunities and investments. Roc Nation and Rich Paul’s Klutch Sports, built on their reputation for combining sports and entertainment, used this to challenge the entrenched players, successfully enough that they are now ranked No. 7 and No. 9 by revenue, respectively, according to Forbes.

Does that mean other musicians and music executives will follow their lead — or even that they should? Launching a sports agency is expensive — it can take between $40 million and $50 million, according to Forbes, which is a big bet even for most stars. So that usually means finding additional investors, in the form of financial backers or other entrepreneurs, plus athletes who are either looking for an agent or a new one.

Roc Nation, which had a rock-solid source of both cash and credibility in Jay-Z, entered the sports business in 2013, five years after the company’s launch, with four-time All-Star Yankees second baseman Robinson Canó. Its sports division now has 190 clients, including Charlotte Hornets point guard LaMelo Ball and New York Giants running back Saquon Barkley, and about $2 billion in player salaries and another $500 million in sponsorships and nonsalary deals, according to Forbes, which estimates that the company’s sports operations generate $203 million a year. (Roc Nation declined to comment on its finances.) Klutch Sports, where Paul is agent and manager for LeBron James, as well as a board member for Live Nation Entertainment, generates about half that.

That kind of success brings competition, including from music executives Kevin “Coach K” Lee and Pierre “P” Thomas, who launched Quality Control Sports in 2019, four years before HYBE purchased their company. Their agency’s clients include New Orleans Saints running back Alvin Kamara and Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Richie James. The Lil Wayne-owned Young Money APAA Sports has also put points on the board by signing University of Miami’s Leonard Taylor III ahead of the 2024 NFL draft.

That doesn’t mean every venture succeeds, though. Jeezy started his Sports 99 agency in 2019, but it closed during the pandemic, and Kanye West’s Donda Sports, launched in 2022 with basketball players Aaron Donald and Jaylen Brown, imploded within months after West made a series of antisemitic comments.

The fast-paced evolution of both the sports and music businesses may continue to tempt musicians with money and influence, but anyone who enters the sports agency business, no matter how famous, will probably do so as an underdog.

This story will appear in the Feb. 10, 2024, issue of Billboard.

Demi Lovato has made the move to CAA. The Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter and actress, who was most recently with UTA, is now represented in all areas worldwide by CAA.

Lovato rose to fame as a Disney star in roles on Camp Rock and Sonny with a Chance. The artist released her first album Don’t Forget in 2008, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and has since received two Grammy nominations, four Billboard Music Awards nominations and three Brit Award nominations for her work. All seven of Lovato’s studio albums have appeared on the Billboard 200 chart and reached the top 10.

Lovato has accumulated 36 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, including four top 10 titles: “This Is Me,” with Joe Jonas (No. 9 in 2008); “Skyscraper” (No. 10 in 2011); “Heart Attack” (No. 10 in 2013); and “Sorry Not Sorry” (No. 6 in 2017). Eight of her singles have been top 10 hits on the Pop Airplay chart, from 18 overall chart titles. Two singles, 2012’s “Give Your Heart a Break” and 2017’s “Sorry Not Sorry,” reached No. 1 on that chart.

Throughout her career, Lovato has earned 9.7 million equivalent album units, sold 23.9 million song downloads and her songs have collectively registered 7.7 billion U.S. on-demand streams in the U.S., according to Luminate.

Next month, Lovato will release Revamped, featuring rock versions of the artist’s hit songs. With all new vocals and production, the 10-track album will allow Lovato to reimagine her career-defining songs with a fresh perspective that reflects her current artistic vision.

Lovato has also been celebrated for her deeply personal documentaries, 2017’s Simply Complicated and 2021’s Dancing with the Devil. She currently serves as Global Citizen’s official ambassador for mental health, with a special focus on vulnerable communities around the world and, in 2013, Lovato became a New York Times best-selling author with a book of affirmations titled Staying Stong: 365 Days a Year.

Lovato will next be seen on MTV’s Video Music Awards where she’s nominated for two awards and will perform.

Billboard recently reported that Lovato parted ways with manager Scooter Braun in July. Lovato signed with Braun and his SB Projects firm in 2019. She was previously managed by Phil McIntyre of PhilyMack. One source close to the situation told Billboard it was time for Lovato to go in a new direction, even though she was thankful for her time with SB Projects.

Lovato will continue to be represented by Rob Cohen at Carroll Guido Groffman Cohen Bar & Karalian and align Public Relations.

Amid a production halt during a double strike, major talent agency CAA is undergoing a round of layoffs.

About sixty employees are set to be impacted — including agents, executives and support staff — within the next week, a source tells The Hollywood Reporter. The figure is a relatively small percentage of the thousands of staffers that work at the Century City-based representation giant led by Kevin Huvane, Richard Lovett and Bryan Lourd.

Multiple departments had been evaluating staffing levels even prior to when the Writers Guild of America strike began on May 2. When performer’s union SAG-AFTRA joined the strike on July 13, Hollywood settled in to a long summer as the dealmaking ecosystem ground to a halt.

Several talent agencies have cut staff in the ensuing months as the guilds faced off with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios. For instance, Endeavor, the owner of fellow “Big 3” agency WME and fashion-focused IMG, estimated on August 8 that the impact of the actors’ and writers’ strikes would be about $25 million per month in revenue.

Talent and literary agency Verve, which reps many scribes, cut about 60 percent of its assistants and 3 agents in late May. And Big 3 firm UTA had already made a round of cuts, which it described as a single digit percentage of a workforce that totals 2,000 employees, in February.

Hollywood’s agencies went through retrenchment and conducted notable layoffs or furloughs during the COVID-19 shutdowns in the middle of 2020, also at a time of a widespread production halt. At that time, in July 2020, CAA said it cut 90 agents and executives and further furloughed 275 assistants and other staffers.

Since that time, CAA made the most consequential move in the Hollywood talent agency space, acquiring rival firm ICM in a megadeal that closed last June and added 425 of its employees to the payroll, with 105 staffers cut. At the time, the combined company was said to have 3,200 employees in 25 countries.

Deadline earlier reported CAA’s planned cuts on Thursday. 

This article was originally published by THR.com.

Musician David Kushner has signed with WME in all areas. The Chicago-born Kushner continues to be managed by Brent Shows of ALTAR MGMT. In April, Kushner broke onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart with his single “Daylight” and plans to take his talent on the road this fall. After releasing his debut EP Footprint I […]

Two major forces in talent representation are coming together via the merger of Agency For the Performing Arts (APA) and Artist Group International (AGI).
Announced today (June 21), this partnership launches the newly formed Independent Artist Group (IAG). The company will have offices in Los Angeles, New York, Nashville and Atlanta.

Current APA president Jim Osborne will lead IAG as CEO. Dennis Arfa, founder and CEO of AGI, will serve as chairman of IAG’s music division. AGI president Marsh Vlasic will serve as vice-chair of this music division, with Vlasic, Arfa, AGI COO Jarred Arfa, AGI president of touring Adam Kornfeld and the rest of the company’s senior agents and staff all joining IAG. As reported by Digital Music News, APA recently let go of several of its music agents.

The creation of IAG follows an agreement between APA and Yucaipa Entertainment LLC, a private investment firm owned by Ron Burkle that, as DMN reports, acquired AGI in January 2012 and made a major non-equity investment into APA in September 2012.

Arfa founded touring agency AGI 35 years ago. The company delivers IAG a client roster that includes Billy Joel, Metallica, Def Leppard, Rod Stewart, Motley Crue, Linkin Park, Jane’s Addiction, Darryl Hall & John Oates, Norah Jones, Neil Young, The Strokes, Smashing Pumpkins, Ghost, Elvis Costello, Cage The Elephant and Five Finger Death Punch.

APA touring music clients coming to IAG include 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, Ms. Lauryn Hill, 2 Chainz, NE-YO, Key Glock, $not, Kamasi Washington, D’Angelo, blackbear, JAX, Cypress Hill, Bryce Vine, Jon Bellion and Robert Glasper.

The merger follows recent AGI and APA collaborations involving AGI clients Billy Joel, Daryl Hall, Perry Farrell, GHOST and Billy Corgan.

“Dennis Arfa and his exceptional colleagues at AGI are revered in the industry, having built a spectacular artist roster and a sterling reputation,” Osborne says in a statement. “The great news is we have already established a tremendous working relationship with them through shared representation on some of their most valued artists. This new partnership with AGI and our rebrand to Independent Artist Group (IAG)is another major step that elevates us within the agency landscape…and we are not done yet!”

“This was the natural next step in our evolution and made in the best interests of our valued artists,” adds Arfa. “We have admired how Jim Osborne and their colleagues have been market leaders in creating brand expanding, non-touring revenue opportunities for their clients and we are excited to build on that success with them and look forward to integrating under the Independent Artist Group (IAG) banner.”

UTA has officially set up shop in Atlanta.
Along with its partner company KLUTCH Sports Group, the agency opened its new Atlanta bureau Wednesday (March 22) to extend its ability to discover and serve artists, athletes, musicians and brands in the region. Steve Cohen, Rob Gibbs and Arthur Lewis will serve as co-heads of the new office.

“Atlanta is an entertainment and cultural hub, and planting our flag here gives us the ability to support clients with investments and opportunities across the city’s growing creative ecosystem,” said Cohen and Gibbs in a joint statement.

UTA will offer representation in Atlanta across its multitude of divisions, including music, sports, film, television, digital talent, marketing, gaming, fine arts and more. This includes advising top global brands based in the Southeast on a range of growth initiatives, including ways to partner with the creative community.

“Atlanta is a vibrant city for music, sports and arts, and there is a ripe opportunity to create another center of gravity for film and television,” said UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer in a statement. “We are excited to bring our full range of services to the community of talented artists, athletes, musicians and creators who call the Southeast their home.”

The new office is located at 1401 Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta and occupies nearly 20,000 square feet across three floors. It was designed by the firm Hastings Architecture, which also designed UTA’s office in Nashville.

The Atlanta bureau will additionally feature a fine art gallery called The UTA Artist Space to showcase programming from the Atlanta art community and across UTA’s global fine arts roster. The inaugural show will feature Atlanta-based artist and musician Lonnie Holley in the first exhibition of his work in the city in over 10 years. Entitled “The Eyes Were Always on Us,” the exhibition will feature sculptures constructed from found materials in the tradition of African-American sculpture. The gallery is open to the public Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

UTA also boasts offices in Beverly Hills, Nashville, New York, Chicago and London.

United Talent Agency is making significant changes to its board of directors.
The company, led by CEO Jeremy Zimmer, is adding two new independent directors, expanding the board beyond its own executives and investors for the first time.

The new directors are Paul Wachter, the founder and CEO of investment firm Main Street Advisors, and Ceci Kurzman, the founder of Nexus Management Group. Wachter will also become chairman of the board for UTA.

With Wachter becoming chairman, UTA co-founder Jim Berkus will step aside from that role, which he has held for the last 25 years, a source close to the company confirms to The Hollywood Reporter. The source added that while Berkus will no longer be on UTA’s board, he remains “very active” at UTA. Berkus co-founded UTA in 1991 with Zimmer and Peter Benedek, and became sole chairman of the firm in 1997, THR reported that year.

The changes to the board come as UTA has spent the last few years transforming its business via expansions and acquisitions. Last summer, the agency secured an investment from EQT Partners and said at the time that it would use the cash to pursue an expansion and growth strategy. EQT is now UTA’s largest minority investor.

And while its agency competitors CAA and Endeavor have pursued megadeals (with CAA acquiring ICM, and Endeavor pushing further into live sports via its acquisition of the rest of UFC and a betting data firm), UTA has made a number of smaller, more targeted acquisitions.

The company acquired the U.K. literary and talent agency Curtis Brown Group last year, and last month acquired the literary agency Fletcher & Company in a push to grow its publishing business. The company also bolstered its UTA IQ data business by buying analytics firm MediaHound, and perhaps most notably made a big expansion into marketing and consulting via the $125 million acquisition of Michael Kassan’s strategic advisory firm MediaLink.

The additions of Wachter and Kurzman are sure to raise questions about UTA’s future, as they will be the first independent directors on the company’s board. UTA has had investors on the board, but never independent directors, who are often tapped to provide more neutral guidance, particularly as a company pursues further growth.

In a statement, Zimmer said that the company and EQT “together recognized the value of adding experienced outside voices to the board to help us continue to pursue our goals.”

“The addition of Paul and Ceci, with their web of expertise in entertainment and technology, finance and corporate governance, is another powerful signal about the trajectory of our company and the work we are doing on behalf of our clients,” he added. “Both Paul and Ceci are passionate about artists and culture and recognize the importance of how UTA can continue to lead into the future.”

“I’ve watched Jeremy and UTA build one of the most dynamic businesses in entertainment, sports and media. These industries are going through a generational transformation, and UTA is uniquely positioned to be one of the companies at the center of it,” added Wachter in a statement. “I’m very honored to join as board chairman and thrilled to be a part of how UTA continues to innovate for their clients and investors.”

“Culture, entertainment and sports are universal throughout the world, creating new forms of disruption and opportunity every day. UTA touches every corner of these ecosystems and has the growing reach and capabilities to continue to drive success for the extraordinary artists, athletes and clients they represent,” Kurzman added. “I’m excited to work with the rest of the UTA board to continue to innovate and pursue their vision.”

This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.