Business

The power of the major label has been completely decimated.” 
That broadside came from Elliot Grainge during an interview with The Los Angeles Times last year. In the profile, Grainge, founder of the independent label 10K Projects and son of Universal Music Group chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge, added that the majors were like “a conveyor belt with 100 other priorities” and “mediocre-at-best product-management departments.” In his view, there was “not one example” of an artist “signed, developed and marketed from scratch to huge fanfare by a major label in the last three years.” 

Sixteen months later, one of those conveyor belts will soon belong to Grainge. In a sudden and surprising shakeup, Warner Music Group announced that the 30-year-old will take over as CEO of Atlantic Music Group on Oct. 1, less than a year after WMG entered a joint venture with 10K. In his new position, Grainge will oversee the renowned Atlantic Records, as well as 300 Elektra Entertainment and his own imprint.  

This means he will jump from managing a staff of around 30 in 2023, according to The L.A. Times, to commanding hundreds of employees. And as part of the overhaul, at least two well-regarded WMG veterans are headed for the exits: Max Lousada, who served as the company’s CEO of Recorded Music since 2017; and Julie Greenwald, who had led Atlantic as chairman and COO since 2006.

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The upheaval marks an abrupt generational shift for Atlantic, the storied label co-founded by music legend Ahmet Ertegun in 1947. “They’re going from the most traditional, A&R-driven leadership to a very contemporary, digitally-native new administration,” says one executive who has worked with Grainge in the past. “It’s going to be interesting to see what happens.” 

“Cutting Away the Bullshit” 

Grainge has risen rapidly in a remarkably short time in the business, and several executives who have worked with him cheered his latest promotion. “We’re still operating in an antiquated system, and Elliot’s found his success by cutting away the bullshit,” says Solomon Sobande, who managed XXXTentacion, the SoundCloud rapper-turned-streaming superstar, before his death and teamed up with Grainge to release X’s ? album in 2018. “There’s a certain level of commitment to his artists, making sure they had everything they needed to be successful, that I was always enthralled by.” 

Some Warner employees, however, said they were upset at the departures precipitated by Grainge’s promotion. For them, losing Greenwald, who has been at Atlantic for two decades and assured Ertegun she would take care of the company upon being named president back in 2004, symbolizes the end of an era. (Craig Kallman, who served as chairman/CEO of Atlantic alongside Greenwald for many years and focused on A&R, will remain as CEO of Atlantic Records, albeit in a diminished role.) “We did not think Julie’s run was up yet, and we did not think Max’s run was up yet,” says one WMG executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.  

Both Lousada and Greenwald were known for their close connections to marquee artists on WMG’s rosters; filling the void left by their departures will be no mean feat. Each has spent decades at record labels, developing reputations for their relationships with both artists and staff. Several executives expressed surprise that the new Atlantic boss is relatively inexperienced — even at a time when younger CEOs have taken over Columbia Records, Def Jam, Island Records and Warner Records, Grainge is the youngest major-label chief by a wide margin — rather than someone who has invested the years to learn how the majors operate. 

Multiple WMG employees also wondered how 10K’s approach to signing and building artists will translate to Atlantic. While Grainge’s label has helped generate billions of streams, it has not yet nurtured an arena-headlining superstar in the mold of Atlantic’s Bruno Mars or Ed Sheeran, two artists whom Lousada and Greenwald helped shepherd to global success.

“Julie was widely regarded as one of the last real artist advocates who prioritized substantial songwriting over memetic share-ability,” says one manager who has worked closely with Atlantic. “She knows superstars transcend the algorithm. I really haven’t seen 10K develop anything that I think will last a generation or more.” 

In addition, some employees said they are struggling to wrap their heads around the fact that the father of their incoming boss runs their biggest competitor. Together, father and son will lead companies that control more than a third of the U.S. recorded music market. 

And some executives are worried that additional consolidation might mean more layoffs. Earlier this year, Atlantic laid off roughly two dozen staffers, mostly from radio and video; any new CEO at any company is likely to have new priorities. Grainge will do “some creative marketing that might not be ‘traditional’ for the majors,” predicts a second executive who has worked with him.  

“Some labels still send shit to radio as their primary marketing strategy,” adds a third source who knows Grainge. “10K hasn’t done that. They invest heavily in digital — their ways of working with artists are much more modern.”

A rep for WMG declined to comment. On a recent earnings call, WMG CEO Robert Kyncl said he was “excited by the prospect of taking Atlantic’s culture-making capabilities” and “adding Elliot’s digitally native approach into the mix.” That combination, he continued, will “grow the label’s outstanding reputation.” 

“Labels Are Trying to Adjust” 

All the majors are facing an increasingly tough landscape because their influence over what music becomes popular is diminished — “decimated,” in Grainge’s words. As a result, “Labels are trying to adjust and test different methodologies to figure out what the future of a major will look like,” says a fourth executive who has worked with Grainge in the past.  

In the last year, outside of the superstar ecosystems, music industry wins have often come from smaller, more agile outfits like Pulse Records (Tommy Richman) or Artist Partner Group (Odetari, Lay Bankz). 10K’s biggest success since moving to Warner has been Artemas’ “I Like the Way You Kiss Me” — low-slung club-pop — which peaked at No. 12 on the Hot 100, and, to a lesser extent, Rich Amiri‘s “One Call” (No. 60).  

These artists typically thrive in niches online, and don’t necessarily release the type of blockbuster albums that linger near the top of the Billboard 200 for weeks on end. But many young executives believe that this “riches in the niches” approach is the future — they argue that hardly any new superstars will be created now that audiences are spread across dozens of online platforms and mass media has lost much of its firepower. 

Grainge’s rise, then, is a nod to the success of these streamlined, quick-on-the-draw operations, with their lower overheads and digital expertise. “It says something about the state of the industry as a whole that one big label system made a bet on a more independent, lean music business strategy,” says the first executive who has worked with Grainge. 

But there’s no guarantee that the two systems will mesh. “There’s a political element to going into a place like Atlantic which is very different from running an independent company,” the executive continues. “It’s a challenge to be in that position and inherit decades worth of custom and chains of command.” 

Elliot Grainge

Logan Mock

“The Red Tape Doesn’t Exist” 

Grainge founded 10K Projects in 2016 and connected with many of his biggest acts early on — often rappers with avid online followings. Grainge was quick to dive into the volatile, punk- and emo-inflected hip-hop that erupted on SoundCloud in this era, signing Trippie Redd, 6ix9ine and XXXTentacion, among others. (More recently, 10K signed Ice Spice in partnership with Capitol Music Group; while most artists moved to WMG with 10K in the joint venture last September, Ice Spice remained under 10K/Capitol.) 

At the time, the major labels hadn’t yet built the tools they now use to scour the internet’s nooks and crannies looking for viral phenomena, which left an opportunity for executives immersed in these digital scenes to find talent. The majors may also have been wary of the media controversies and legal troubles that dogged artists like 6ix9ine and XXXTentacion. (At the time, Universal Music Group distributed 10K.) Grainge has “never been afraid to jump out the window for something he believed in,” Sobande says.

“The first time I spoke to Elliot, I was really shocked — everybody knows who his dad was, so I was expecting a spoiled rich kid,” Sobande continues. Instead, he found Grainge “was down to get in the trenches. He was with us flying out to Florida, picking singles, coming in the studio, actually doing the work.” 

10K developed a reputation for finding online phenomena early and marketing them savvily, especially on youth-friendly platforms like TikTok — an approach that has now been widely adopted by labels. “The guys at 10K are quick and nimble as it relates to digital strategy and taking risks,” says Karl Fowlkes, an entertainment attorney who has signed several clients to the label. “That’s what makes them special. The red tape doesn’t exist.” 

Grainge’s “word was as good as a contract,” the first executive who worked with him agrees. “If you spoke to the guy and he agreed to do something, it would get done without having to jump through a million hoops.” 

10K was also known for offering flexible — and generous — short-term deals to artists with momentum, and getting those agreements done speedily. (In contrast, multiple lawyers say Atlantic favored much more traditional deals until relatively recently.) XXXTentacion was initially signed to EMPIRE, but “they could only do so much at the time — it wasn’t the huge company it is now,” Sobande says. “Elliot wanted to get in the X business. And I remember calling him one day, like, ‘Listen, I’ve got an opportunity for you to get involved.’”  

Grainge’s response: “Tell me how much, and I’ll do it.”  

In the music business, financial commitments often come with strings attached, but multiple sources who know Grainge say he is uninterested in meddling in artists’ processes. He’s very much “this is their idea, let’s go with it,” says the third executive who has collaborated with Atlantic’s incoming CEO.  

Birdman Zoe manages the producer Taz Taylor, whose Internet Money record label signed a joint venture with 10K in 2019. “We had a lot of label meetings early on,” Birdman Zoe says. “We really liked the fact that Elliot told us, ‘I want to let you guys do your thing. I’m not here to give you my opinion on something I might not know about. I’m going to back you and financially support you.’” 

“You’ve Got to Be Able to Move Quickly” 

Independent operations like AWAL, 300 and Alamo have all been snapped up, wholly or partially, by major labels in recent years, part of the majors’ never-ending struggle for market share. 10K was also a target: In September 2023, the company ended its longtime association with UMG and announced a joint venture with Warner Music Group. As part of the move, 10K became a standalone frontline label at WMG and Grainge joined the company’s leadership team.  

Forging this partnership was one of the first big moves by Kyncl, who held roles at YouTube and Netflix before taking over WMG in January 2023. (His background in tech has been a point of contention with staff — multiple executives worry that he and the former tech employees he has hired understand data but not culture.) Kyncl inherited a challenge: Halfway through 2024, Republic Records’ current market share was greater than all of Warner Music Group’s. Without big releases from marquee stars, Atlantic in particular has slipped; it’s now behind sister label Warner Records in current market share so far in 2024. 

Grainge will be partially responsible for reversing that decline. Sobande is confident he can pull it off. “To be successful, you’ve got to be able to move quickly, and a lot of times the corporate structure slows that process down,” Sobande acknowledges. But if anybody can figure out a way to navigate that tension, “it’s going to be Elliot.”