Distribution
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Virgin Music Group announced the members of its global leadership team on Thursday (Oct. 19).
The executives’ responsibilities are split across five regions. Jacqueline Saturn will serve as president of Virgin Music Group North America/executive vp of global artist relations; Thomas Lorain and Nick Roden will be co-presidents in Europe; and Victor Gonzales has been named president in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, with Cris Garcia Falcão working as MD of label and artist strategy/GM of Virgin Music Group Latin.
In Australia and New Zealand, Nathan McLay will assume the role of MD — working with Tim Janes as MD of global marketing for Virgin Music Group Australia — and Michael Roe will take the position of MD in Africa, Middle East and Asia (AMEA).
“It is an enormously exciting time to be working in the independent sector of our business,” JT Myers, co-CEO of Virgin Music Group, said in a statement. “In today’s market,” he added, “visionary music entrepreneurs can be successful on a global scale if they have the right team and infrastructure to empower them.”
In addition to announcing regional leaders, Virgin named Jay Blomquist as chief technology officer, Jeremy Kramer as execugtive vp of global marketing, Joy Larocca as executive vp/CFO, Liz Morentin as senior vp of global communications and brand strategy, Matt Sawin as head of global product strategy and operations, Nina Rabe-Cairns as head of global growth strategy and Zack Gershen as executive vp of global commercial and digital strategy.
The appointments are the latest step in a consolidation process for Universal Music Group’s various artist services outfits. In September 2022, the company lumped together Virgin Music Label and Artist Services, Ingrooves Music Group and the newly acquired mtheory Artist Partnerships into a new entity, Virgin Music Group — of which mtheory’s founders, Myers and Nat Pastor, were appointed co-CEOs.
“mtheory was founded on the idea that we could transform the music industry by offering better, more aligned partnerships with artists,” Myers said last year. “By bringing these incredible global teams and resources together, we have the opportunity to turbo-charge that vision, and deliver even more value to artists, labels and music entrepreneurs.”
Warner Music previously combined its Independent Label Group and Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA) under one roof in 2012. Sony Music merged The Orchard and RED under the Orchard brand in 2017.
BMG said on Thursday (Oct. 18) that it will use Universal Music Group’s (UMG) commercial services division for the distribution of its physical recorded music, in what BMG CEO Thomas Coesfeld described as the first project of a burgeoning “alliance.” Last month, BMG announced it was winding down its agreement with Warner Music Group’s ADA […]
Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign are shopping for a partner to distribute their forthcoming collaborative album — and sources tell Billboard they are considering five different offers. West “will make a decision soon,” says one source. And while sources say the album release was originally planned for Friday (Oct. 13), it was pushed back and is expected to land in the coming weeks.
The project has record industry executives weighing the risks and rewards of releasing what some who’ve heard the music say is West’s best music in at least five years, since 2018’s Ye, but at an especially fraught time as the conflict between Israel and Hamas intensifies following the surprise attack on the Supernova Sukkot Gathering music festival on Oct. 7.
Some label leaders have passed on the opportunity to distribute the project given the antisemitic comments West began making almost exactly a year prior, beginning Oct. 8, 2022 — even though the music itself isn’t controversial lyrically, sources say. But there are a multitude of smaller distributors in fierce competition for whom such a release could be game-changing, given the two artists’ streaming histories. One such possible company is Too Lost, the music distribution and publishing company that launched in 2021 and currently represents West’s rights on YouTube. (When reached for comment, Too Lost CEO Gregory Hirschhorn declined to comment.)
The last time West and Ty Dolla $ign released a collaboration was “Junya Pt 2” on Ye’s 2021 album, Donda. Before that, they worked together on Ty Dolla $ign’s “Ego Death” (2020) and on West’s “Everything We Need” (2019), “Real Friends” (2016) and “Only One” (2014).
After releasing 10 albums on Def Jam, Donda was West’s last release with the label. His 2022 album, Donda 2, was exclusively released on the Stem Player, and later that year, following West’s antisemitic comments, a spokesperson for Def Jam parent company Universal Music Group denounced his rhetoric and distanced the company from the artist. “Def Jam’s relationship with Ye as a recording artist, Def Jam’s partnership with the GOOD Music label venture and Ye’s merchandise agreement with Bravado all ended in 2021,” the rep said.
West has not officially released any new music since then, and industry watchers have wondered what kind of route he might take when he decided to make his return. Owning all his copyrights, West also has the option to self-release his music through a do-it-yourself service such as Distrokid or Tunecore for a modest one-time fee, but may favor a boutique distribution service that would pay an advance for the deal, provide a more personalized approach and work directly with streaming services for promotion and editorial placements.
BMG is exiting its current distribution agreement with Warner Music Group’s ADA and taking direct control of its 80 billion-stream digital business in a move the company called “the biggest change to its recorded music strategy” yet, according to a statement released Monday. The fourth largest global music company will begin phasing in the new […]
Exceleration Music, the independent music company that has invested in and acquired numerous indie labels over the past several years, has acquired global digital and physical distribution and music services company Redeye, it was announced Friday (Sept. 8).
The deal not only marks Exceleration’s biggest acquisition to date but an expansion into distribution and services, effectively creating an entirely new division at the company — albeit one that will continue to operate under the Redeye name. Under the agreement, Redeye founders Glenn Dicker and Tor Hansen will continue to lead the company, retaining its existing staff and infrastructure while taking advantage of the resources and expertise offered by the Exceleration partners and team.
“We looked at what was happening with the distribution landscape, [which was seeing] a lot of consolidation,” Exceleration co-founder Glen Barros tells Billboard. “You know, you have each of the majors buying up indie distributors, and we thought it would be good to really preserve and strengthen a great indie option and make sure that indie labels have a fully independent path to market.”
The deal also includes Redeye’s in-house labels, Yep Roc and Sundazed, along with its publishing company, Riff City Sounds. Yep Roc’s roster includes Nick Lowe, Dave Alvin, Aoife O’Donovan, Alejandro Escovedo, Chuck Prophet and Jobi Riccio. Sundazed is a reissue label based in the United States.
Redeye — which signed a distribution deal with Exceleration in May — represents some of the world’s most prominent independent labels, including Beggars Group, Domino, New West, Saddle Creek, Mom+Pop, Kemado/Mexican Summer, Stones Throw, Warp, Drag City, Real Gone, Innovative Leisure, Carpark, !K7, Thrill Jockey, Luaka Bop, Partisan, Sargent House, Ninja Tune, Barsuk and Daptone.
Founded in 1996 by Hansen and Dicker, the distributor is headquartered in Hillsborough, N.C., and boasts more than 120 employees spread across 15 locations in the United States, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom and Australia. Prior to the acquisition, it was wholly owned and operated by Dicker, Hansen and their team. In 2019, the company merged with Sweden-based distributor Border Music to expand its distribution operation in Europe.
In addition to Hansen and Dicker, Redeye’s leadership structure will remain in place following the acquisition. The list of high-level executives at the company includes Michael Petkov, head of international; Jason Taylor, director of global sales (physical and digital); Laura Pittard, director of global marketing; Michael Howard, associate vp of global operations; Hank Stockard, global business development director; Sean Pecor, IT director; and Jim Trenner, global accounting director.
Moving forward, Exceleration will support Redeye’s existing growth plans by providing operational and strategic support as well as capital. “Redeye has done a lot of work over the last few years to expand their worldwide footprint on the physical side, and they’re been a digital distributor for a long time too,” says Exceleration co-founder Dave Hansen. “So we’re going to work with them to continue building that network and offer a real solution for their existing customers, our label group and new customers [as well].”
More than anything, adds Barros, the Redeye acquisition dovetails nicely with Exceleration’s overall mission: to strengthen the independent music community in whatever ways it can. “We really want to serve this community according to what’s important within this community, and [that] is having, I think, an independent vibe,” he says. “It really is looking at the whole sector holistically and saying, ‘How can we really fill the needs of the community and do it in an indie way?’”
Exceleration was founded in 2020 by a group of five prominent independent label executives: Barros (former CEO of Concord Music Group), Hansen (executive chairman of Merlin and former GM of Epitaph), Charles Caldas (former CEO of Merlin), Amy Dietz (former GM of Ingrooves) and John Burk (a Grammy-winning producer and former president of Concord Records). Its music rights group includes investments and partnerships with labels and catalogs including +1 Records, Alligator, Azadi, Bloodshot, Candid, Heroic, Kill Rock Stars, Mom+Pop, SideOneDummy and The Ray Charles Foundation/Tangerine Records. The company currently boasts nearly 30 employees and is currently hiring for two additional positions, including a head of finance. Funding for Exceleration comes from all five of its partners as well as institutional and private investors.
“Working with the Exceleration team feels like expanding the family,” said Dicker in a statement. “Sharing strong ideals and a strategic vision, it feels like the next natural step on our journey towards providing our world class distribution service to an expanded independent community.”
Distribution company and payment platform Stem said on Tuesday it raised $250 million from Victory Park Capital to expand it’s popular advance check product. Stem first started offering the product in 2020 to artists at various career stages, including artists like Justine Skye, who used the capital as bridge financing when transitioning from a major […]
BMG acquired the recording catalog of British band (and Rock & Roll Hall of Famers) The Hollies. The deal includes over 20 studio, compilation, live and tribute album titles and rarities that are wholly owned by the group, including Evolution and Butterfly (1967), Hollies Sing Dylan and Hollies Sing Hollies (1969), Confessions of the Mind (1970); Distant Light (1971), Romany (1972), Out on the Road (1973); Hollies (1974), Another Night (1975), Write On and Russian Roulette (1976), Hollies Live Hits (1977), A Crazy Steal (1978), Five Three One – Double Seven O Four (1979), Buddy Holly (1980), and Then, Now, Always (2009). The agreement encompasses eight of The Hollies’ most-streamed tracks, including “Carrie Anne,” “King Midas In Reverse,” “Jennifer Eccles,” “On A Carousel,” “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” “Long Cool Woman (in a Black Dress)” and “The Air That I Breathe,” as well as the group’s cover versions of “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” (Bruce Springsteen), “Boulder to Birmingham” (Emmylou Harris) and “Say It Ain’t So, Jo” (Head).
Soundtrack Your Brand, a global music streaming service for businesses, announced a $15 million pre-growth round led by Matt Pincus‘ MUSIC in partnership with Liontree, JS Capital Management and Schusterman Family Investments. The round also included funding from music investors Dundee Partners and was supported by all major existing Soundtrack Your Brand investors including Balderton Capital, Fuel Venture Capital, Industrifonden, Telia and DIG. The investment will allow Soundtrack Your Brand to “double down” on its go-to-market strategy, according to a press release. Along with MUSIC’s investment, Pincus will join Soundtrack Your Brand’s board. In 2024, the company plans to raise an additional growth round.
ADA Worldwide partnered with Rostrum Records to distribute the indie label’s entire catalog and new releases. Recent Rostrum releases include Fat Nick’s “Songs on the Radio” and DC The Don’s “Funeral” as well as new music from Alé Araya and Brevin Kim. Forthcoming releases include music from Fat Nick, Lou Phelps and My Favorite Color.
Yoto, an audio platform for kids that’s behind screen-free portable audio players the Yoto Player and Yoto Mini, signed a deal with Warner Music Group that will make music from some of WMG’s artists available on the players. The partnership kicks off in June with music from Super Simple Songs, a popular YouTube channel boasting original children’s songs and traditional nursery rhymes that’s been distributed by WMG’s arts music division since 2020. Next year, Yoto will create “cards” featuring music from a curated group of WMG’s pop, rock and soul artists.
Believe signed a marketing and distribution deal with Global Records Germany, the new Berlin branch of independent label Global Records. The first release under the agreement is “Party Songs” by Gamuel Sori & INNA, which dropped June 9.
In the two years that Cat Kreidich has served as president of Warner Music Group’s distribution company ADA Worldwide, she has focused on one overarching theme: reinvention.
The music industry veteran has spent the majority of her career in the distribution business. She first worked first at Caroline, then ADA, then at Sony’s The Orchard — where she spent eight years — before shifting to Sony’s catalog division for a little over a year in 2019. But when she returned to ADA as executive vp at the end of 2020, “It was invigorating,” she says, sitting in her office at WMG’s Manhattan headquarters. “I hadn’t expected to come back to ADA, but it makes perfect sense because the culture at Warner is very entrepreneurial. So coming back, to me, was an opportunity to make an impact on a company that I truly cared about.”
At the time, the distribution space was exploding. Consolidation, streaming and new players coming into the space were upending the status quo, and the business was moving faster, and with more volume, than ever before. ADA had a few specific challenges facing it in this new environment: a third-party company that handled its tech; a blurred line between ADA and Warner Music Group that made it sometimes unclear how services were handled; and the implosion of Direct Shot Distributing after Warner and ADA had shifted its physical business to the company — leading to supply-chain issues for vinyl and CDs even before the pandemic made that a larger issue.
Kreidich had spent eight years at The Orchard building its commercial insights team, integrating tech into how the company was expanding and parsing data to help optimize commercialization for the company’s label partners. So when it came to the issues that faced ADA upon her return, she had experience in addressing the problems. But just a few months into her tenure came another change: ADA’s then-president, Eliah Seton — whom she calls “a great advocate for me” — announced he was leaving the company. Just five months after coming in as executive vp, Kreidich became president of ADA.
Following that, Kreidich embarked on an overhaul of the company’s executive structure, bringing in a team she calls “the Avengers of Distribution.” That included Samantha Moore, who heads business operations and development; Adriana Sein, who oversees artist and market development globally; Cathy Bauer, who runs physical sales and marketing; Andrea Slobodien, ADA’s first-ever head of product and integration; and MaryLynne Drexler, who oversees business and legal affairs, among several others.
“We were really specific on how we were thinking about the kind of expertise that we wanted to be in the building,” Kreidich says. “And a lot of us are here because we believe that we can do it better [than the competition], and that opportunity to have that voice feels good.”
Now, after two years of reinvention, Kreidich has the team in place to continue to fine-tune ADA as a leader in the global distribution business, which is expanding by the day. The company has launched offices in Canada, Latin America, Japan and across Europe, among others, while WMG has acquired distributors Qanawat in the Middle East and Africori in Africa to further expand their distribution offerings there, too. “At Warner, we want to have an environment where creatives, entrepreneurs and artists at every stage in their career can thrive — where there are as many different avenues as possible into the WMG ecosystem,” says Warner Recorded Music CEO Max Lousada. “What Cat and the team at ADA are doing is an essential part of our ability to partner with the full spectrum of talent. She’s relentless in her passion for the indie community and her mission to empower ADA-supported artists and labels.”
Now, as ADA celebrates its 30th anniversary this month, Kreidich speaks to Billboard about the company’s reinvention over the past two years, what a distributor can offer in the current music business and ADA’s new brand. “I’m really proud of that and the work we’ve done because I think it really nails who we are now,” she says. “I believe in the culture and I have a real soft spot in my heart for it. So I’m happy to celebrate it.”
You’ve worked at Universal, EMI, Warner, Sony and now Warner again. What were some of the things you picked up at each of those places along the way?
I started my career at Universal Motown and then went on to Virgin, and the reason why I ended up at Caroline was because of the passion for the music and the labels. My passion was always to work with the music that I loved and identified with, so I think a big part of being at each of those places was really understanding culture and the culture of representing music from a lot of different backgrounds and styles. And I think the meaning that that has — when people come together to unite for independence and music that they actually care about in a very personal way, not just a professional way — is one of the biggest things I learned and I wanted to be around and create wherever I continued my career.
I certainly thought many times of diversifying, but I always came back to the landscape of independent labels and artists. And I think that landscape has changed dramatically over the years, and the needs have changed. So the other thing I learned was really that value for a client or a label or a partner doesn’t always look the same in distribution, and many times labels are so busy running their businesses that they don’t necessarily have time to stop and ask you what your value is. So it’s being able to creatively come up with different ways to look at the business, or different ways that a label might have not considered.
You came back to ADA at the end of 2020. What were those first couple months back like?
The first thing I did was come in and interview over 40 people in the organization, mostly at ADA, some at Warner, and asked them the same 10 questions. They were generally, “How do you feel about the business? What would labels say about us?” And then I gathered all of those answers and created a presentation for Eliah. Because I knew how I felt about the business, but I also really wanted to understand how people felt about the business, because I didn’t want to make assumptions. And I think that was a really powerful thing to do, and I think it also helped me to come back to ADA authentically and genuinely; I wasn’t just trying to come here and make it The Orchard, I was truly wanting to listen and hear what were the things that we needed to solve for.
What were the conclusions from that?
There was obviously a need for process and empowerment by technology. Our technology was a third-party company that was facilitating the relationship within Warner, so that sometimes [we] just didn’t talk to each other, as third-party companies do. There was also a need for us to differentiate what it is what we do as ADA and what it is Warner does. Having run commercial teams for most of my career, it was always something that people would talk about — “ADA uses Warner to pitch” — and that wasn’t necessarily the truth. But there were things that we needed to do better together and things that we needed to do on our own, and during that time what came out of those talks was, “We need to figure out where the lines were, and then reorient those lines to make the relationships better and more clear.”
You’ve spoken a few times that once you took over as president, you embarked on a “reinvention” of ADA. Why did it need one and how did you implement it?
Warner had not made the same tech investments or acquisitions that the other majors did. They had been growing their [distribution] business as it was in this very shared service mentality that had worked for a while, and I think there was an opportunity clearly to take advantage of more and more music in small corners of the world as more and more DSPs were saturating markets with subscriptions. So it was really about three things for me. It was about being an indie advocate — that education, that understanding and helping to define what it is we do and what it is Warner does with us. It was also bringing in a skill set that was different from what I had seen at other distribution companies.
And one thing I noticed throughout my career was always, labels, managers and artists want to have expertise, and more and more artists want to own their own rights and be in control of their businesses. And that expertise to understand how other people are doing things, especially around audience development, actionable commercial insights, whether it’s growing an artist or helping with travel or breaking an artist in other countries and bringing them back — that skillset of marketing and artist development doesn’t necessarily exist in full force at tech companies, because it’s just the nature of the game.
So we were really specific about the kinds of talent we were bringing in that was going to differentiate us as we built our tech. And that was really the third thing that was most important, not only for just the idea of getting a piece of content from here to the DSP and back but also just tools and tech that would help us communicate over time zones better, help us to ignite priorities without having to email something. So I think that advocacy and audience development and marketing from a global perspective and the tech piece were the three big things we were changing.
You had gone to work at Sony’s catalog division — then a pandemic happened, and you then came back to distribution. A lot of things changed in a very short amount of time. What did you feel like had to change here because of how many things in the industry had shifted?
The great thing is that ADA is a music company. But ADA needs to be empowered by those tools and technologies that allow communication to happen easily. You can do your business with a carrier pigeon, a rotary telephone and a Yahoo email address — you could get it done — but the truth is, if you don’t have to think about those things, there’s so much more you can do. And let’s face it: we are at a point in the evolution of music formats where there’s so much volume, [thousands of] new tracks are being uploaded, social media is ubiquitous. You don’t want to have to worry about whether something got there or came back or how it worked. So I think the tools, like delivery technology that works; a self-serve platform where you can find out the basic information so that when you’re getting on the phone with somebody you’re talking about things that matter; having the strengths and the ability to talk about artist development and commercial insights and data and how things are flowing — if you have those, then you have a really competitive organization.
You also focused a lot on global expansion and having representation in both emerging and new markets, but also places like Latin America. How did you prioritize all these things?
I’ll give credit to Alfonso [Perez-Soto], who is the emerging markets leader and is a tremendous business development person inside of Warner. That track was already full-blown and a part of Warner’s larger strategy. But the truth is that in places like the Middle East and Africa, those established businesses don’t exist from a record label standpoint, so investing in distribution companies that could develop over time was really a part of that strategy. For us, first and foremost, credit to Eliah — he was able to garner a budget way before I got here and really broke the ice and started bringing people in, and Latin America was obviously really relevant in the sector, and that was a territory he really doubled down in. So we have a significant amount of people in Latin America that are ADA and distribution-focused.
But then I would say what was most important with Alfonso was we acquired Qanawat, we acquired Africori, and there’s many more to come that have not been announced yet that we’re currently working on. Once you’re looking at acquiring companies, then you’re looking at prioritizing what’s going to be most important and most impactful when it comes to market share, what are the feature sets we have to build to make sure we’re giving these labels an equal if not better level of service than they’re already receiving, because it’s distribution deals — they can walk away. So for us, the experience we brought in, it was about understanding what we could ingest the quickest, and what was going to make the most impact. But as far as the acquisitions, they were really part of the larger Warner strategy, though they are the ADA teams.
As you guys continue to expand, what are the challenges and potential pitfalls?
I think the biggest challenge is that there is a lot of competition out there, and it’s hard to compete with rates and advances. There’s a lot of money being thrown around in the distribution market, because there’s venture capital companies, there’s a lot of tourists. So I think that the challenge of growing our business, being a successful distribution company globally and also in the U.S., is making sure that we’re doing smart deals and building our business and delivering value.
I also think ADA is back and revitalized and has a new perspective, especially in the U.S. business, and I think that’s new to people. And reintroducing ourselves and letting people know what we’re doing is best done through our successes. In places around the world we’ve hired some really amazing teams, and it feels different and cool and new because ADA didn’t always really exist in all these territories. And in the U.S., it’s more of an education process because there’s so much competition and because, you know, distribution — it’s the hot new thing. For me, I guess, I’m here because I’ve always loved it.
It’s interesting you brought it up in that way, because I feel like you hear that a lot in the catalog acquisition space — there’s outside money coming in, there are companies coming in that don’t have track records in the music business — I hadn’t thought about the parallels here, too.
And all of that is about to become independent. All of these companies buying music catalogs, they have to put them somewhere, and a lot of them are buying rights that haven’t reverted yet. So those catalogs are now moving around. There’s going to be even more infusion, and I think that there’s a real opportunity. I’m very happy for my experience at Sony catalog, because working catalog is not easy, and I’m hoping that there’s an opportunity for us to continue thinking about tools and tech that can optimize catalogs. Because catalog is more important than it ever was before, and you never know when it’s coming; you have to be proactively reactive. And it’s going to be an opportunity.
What do you look for in bringing on new label partners?
I think the most important thing that we look for is the ability to partner both ways. When we first started, it was really the idea of, “How can we use each other as strengths?” Because when it’s a one-way relationship, okay, it’s transactional and we’re a distributor and you’re a label. Value comes differently for every partner. But I think one of the biggest things is a label wants to know that you’re paying attention and are able to think of opportunity either before or maybe in a different place than they would think about opportunity. We try to be very strategic yet tactical when we do business reviews, and we leave it up to three to five key things that we have to do and be able to measure those things. So of course there’s planning and proactiveness that you can do. But there’s nothing better than getting a call from your distributor and them saying, “Oh my god, I just saw a spike, let’s do this.”
You’ve been president for two years now. When you look back, what are you most proud of in that time?
First of all my team. Bringing in the executives I have is probably the biggest highlight, and empowering them. Also launching Co-Op, which is our proprietary product for third-party labels and artists, which we launched in October. No small feat. And overall I would say the successes that we’ve been able to generate with Quevedo and Central Cee. We just had a No. 1 in India with the Sean Paul–Shaggy–Spice track [“Go Down Deh,”] that literally came from us seeing a spark and starting to work it locally. We just had a No. 1 with Ayliva in Germany that beat out Miley Cyrus. So we definitely have these big wins and I hope to have many more to talk about in the future, but it honestly couldn’t happen without the team that I brought in and the relationships that we created with the ADA folks that have been here before and the new folks that have come in. And I’m really looking forward to holding a global conference and getting everybody together. Being able to be together and appreciate that is what I hope to do for the entire organization.
South Korea-based music and entertainment company HYBE signed a music distribution deal with Tencent Music Entertainment this week, according to media reports. Reuters, citing an article by the Seoul Economic Daily, reported Tuesday (May 23) that the agreement allows music by BTS, TOMORROW X TOGETHER and other HYBE artists to be streamed on Tencent Music’s platforms. […]
Asake leans back in his chair, phone glowing in the darkened studio, as Olamide hunches over his right shoulder. Suddenly, the engineer signals, and the backbone of a song swirls through the speakers while Asake begins teasing out melodies and lyrics in Yoruba, a language of his native Nigeria. The engineer cuts, rewinds and plays, and the loop once again floods the vacuum-like silence that envelops a recording studio.
Outside the room, the building is bubbling with activity and energy as artists, songwriters and engineers mill about, playing unreleased records and eating from a buffet of Nigerian food — smoked mackerel, okra soup, goat, garlic shrimp and crab — prepared by local chefs. But this is not West Africa; it’s San Francisco, at the new studio headquarters of Bay Area-based music company EMPIRE. In early March, EMPIRE was in the midst of a two-week writing camp for three of its biggest Nigerian talents: budding Afrobeats superstar Asake, his YBNL Nation label boss and Nigerian music legend/mogul Olamide and Fireboy DML, another emerging YBNL/EMPIRE artist, whose 2021 single, “Peru,” was remixed with Ed Sheeran and exploded into a global hit. “Peru” was the first song Fireboy created at EMPIRE’s studios near San Francisco’s Mission District, which the company just expanded and overhauled into a first-class, multipurpose creative hub.
The studio is now the epicenter for all that EMPIRE intends to be: a fully operational label group that can sit at the top table alongside the majors and compete at the highest levels of the global music business and beyond — TV, film, podcasts, gaming, social media, nightlife and more. And it’s currently the platform for one of EMPIRE’s biggest achievements: The company is among the foremost global distributors of Afrobeats, the umbrella term for a variety of musical genres emerging from sub-Saharan Africa, where recorded-music revenue has ballooned 34.7% year over year, according to IFPI, the fastest pace in the world.
“The music that they’re making here is, honestly, the most culturally important thing I’ve done in my entire career, and I’ve been in the music business since I was 14,” says EMPIRE founder/CEO Ghazi while walking through the space. “These guys are the kings of where they come from, and they’re about to be the kings of everywhere if we keep doing what we’re doing. It’s phenomenal to see what’s happening.”
From left: Ghazi, Asake and Fireboy DML on February 27, 2023 during EMPIRE’s Africa writing camp in San Francisco.
Matthew Fong/Courtesy of Empire
EMPIRE’s dominance in Nigeria, in particular, is immense. On the country’s TurnTable Charts, EMPIRE ended 2022 with the top three artists (Asake, Burna Boy and BNXN), the top two songs (Kizz Daniel’s “Buga,” and Asake and Fireboy’s “Bandana”) and the top album (Asake’s Mr. Money With the Vibe), while also earning the distinctions of top label and top distributor for the year. At one point, EMPIRE artists held the top slot on the Nigeria 100 for 26 consecutive weeks, and an EMPIRE song was No. 1 for 35 weeks over the course of the year. (The song Asake recorded in San Francisco was released in April as “2:30” and became his ninth No. 1 on the Nigeria 100.) EMPIRE’s relationship with Olamide and YBNL, which began in 2016 before being formalized as a partnership in early 2020, has given it both credibility and a draw to attract artists, and has become a significant success story in the region.
“They are a major organization in Nigerian music,” says Ayomide Oriowo, co-founder/head of operations of TurnTable Charts. “After 2019, when they did the deal with Olamide, they capitalized on that and became a bigger deal. It was also at the moment when the ‘Afrobeats to the world’ [movement] was really taking off. So the timing worked for them, and it was just perfect. Word travels fast when you’re an artist — this idea of, ‘They have the power to get us here.’ ”
Now the challenge is to replicate that success elsewhere — in the Middle East/North Africa region, in the Asia-Pacific, in South America and beyond — without losing the drive and identity that Ghazi and his company have cultivated over the past 13 years.
The evening runs late — it’s past 10 p.m. — but suddenly, the room is buzzing with energy, and everyone moves into the building’s marble-floored lobby. After a beat, Ghazi brings Fireboy in to surprise him with an RIAA platinum plaque for “Peru” as the staff gather around, taking photos and popping champagne. “This is the first platinum plaque we hang on the wall here for a song that was created here — the first of many,” Ghazi says amid the jubilation.
Later, he takes a more reflective tone. “It’s like a zenith point in my life,” he says. “It brought me all the way back to my beginning: in a studio, making a record, and then taking that record and putting it into a company that was a culmination of many years; to be able to put out that record and market it, promote it, distribute it, manufacture it and create accolades and international nominations. And then that record became the record that made a bunch of other African artists say, ‘I want to go to the studio where this was made. I want to have that same experience and that same magic.’ ”
Two days later, Ghazi is sitting at a Mediterranean restaurant in downtown San Francisco near the EMPIRE offices, explaining how he built a company that credibly grew into its name.
EMPIRE’s realm is not limited to West Africa — over the past decade-plus, it has also become one of the Bay Area’s biggest and most successful homegrown music companies. Half of its nearly 200 employees are based in the city (a distinction Ghazi is particularly proud of), and it’s a significant player in the independent hip-hop scene across the United States, which provided the fertile ground from which the company was born. Having its headquarters in Ghazi’s hometown has given EMPIRE a domain of its own, along with access to the best minds in technology and media that flock to Silicon Valley.
Ghazi launched EMPIRE in 2010 as a tech-first digital distributor amid the fervor of Digital Music Industry 2.0 zeal then sweeping through the Bay. He had started working at Ingrooves in 2006, which had an office down the street; IODA, which eventually merged with The Orchard, was in the same building; farther down the hallway, two guys were building Twitter. Additionally, SoundCloud, Pandora, Rdio and Mog (which, after several iterations, morphed into what became Apple Music) all had offices in San Francisco.
Ghazi had essentially come up within the cultures of two of his home city’s best exports: first as a recording engineer turned studio owner, working with some of the legends of Bay Area hip-hop, and then building servers for computer companies in Silicon Valley.
“I’d be at my Silicon Valley job from 9 to 6, and then I would jump in the car and drive an hour through traffic straight to the studio, order pizza to the studio, then work there until three, four in the morning,” he says. “Then I would go home, take a shower, sleep like four hours and go right back to my Silicon Valley job. I would sleep in my car on lunch breaks and put my pager on vibrate so it would wake me up. Then I’d go right back to work.”
Ghazi photographed on April 12, 2023 at EMPIRE in San Francisco.
Katie Lovecraft
That background — a base in tech, plus deep connections to the Bay’s hip-hop scene — led him to Ingrooves, which was trying to break into the rap market. But after three years navigating the company’s bureaucracy while continuing to run a studio, Universal Music Group (UMG) bought half of Ingrooves (it now owns the company outright), and Ghazi left to form EMPIRE. Early on, he relied on his connections to make not just new releases available, but also offer rappers’ catalogs digitally, sometimes for the first time — and to get them paid monthly, rather than quarterly or not at all. The ability to move quickly, with one-off nonexclusive deals and a client-friendly front end, helped the company expand rapidly through word-of-mouth, first through the Bay, then down to Los Angeles — where EMPIRE put out indie albums by the likes of Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q and Anderson .Paak — then to Houston and beyond.
EMPIRE truly began making its mark in 2016, when it distributed D.R.A.M.’s hit “Broccoli,” which was picked up by Atlantic Records, and the Fat Joe and Remy Ma record “All the Way Up”; both songs earned Grammy nominations. The following year, it released XXXTentacion’s debut album, 17, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and has racked up 3.5 million equivalent album units in the United States, according to Luminate. Without much fanfare, the company had become a hip-hop heavyweight, filling in the gaps that the traditional industry couldn’t, or wouldn’t, serve: the up-and-coming artists who hadn’t yet caught the majors’ eyes and veteran acts who had phased out of the hit-driven system.
At the same time, the industry was shifting. Apple Music had debuted in 2015, streaming had finally begun to return the music business to growth, and EMPIRE’s flexible offering forced rival music companies, including the major-label groups, to offer deals with similar terms and services as they competed for talent. Suddenly, the label pipeline burst into a fire hose, and everyone wanted in on the nimble, flexible and global distribution model that EMPIRE had made its bread and butter. New companies like UnitedMasters, Stem and Create popped up with seed money to buy into the distribution market; labels launched distribution-first imprints (Capitol’s Priority, Republic’s Imperial); and streaming services and social media companies like SoundCloud and, briefly, Spotify began offering independent artists the ability to distribute their music through them. Before long, it seemed that almost every label had a distribution-first option, while the label groups beefed up their own offerings, flooding the zone that EMPIRE helped establish.
“Now every major has an EMPIRE quote-unquote system, where they try to implement that,” says CSH Management’s Kenny Hamilton, who has had several clients work with EMPIRE over the years. “But it’s not the same relationships; it kind of sounds like they’re just trying to find the next quick thing that they can upstream to a major system, but you’re really not doing artist development. At EMPIRE, that’s what they do. They’re patient with the artists, and if they see promise and they believe in it, then they put their all into it as well. It’s often imitated but never duplicated.”
From left: Edgar Esteves of Blank Square Productions, Tina Davis, Ezegozie Eze of EMPIRE and Dayo Ademola Ayoyemi of Salpha Energy at the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit Africa on April 24, 2023 in Gaborone, Botswana.
Tuhenye Dan Muatjitjeja
As the industry started to shift toward the EMPIRE model, EMPIRE itself was moving toward the one used by major-label groups, incorporating A&R, marketing, PR, promotions and social media into its offerings on top of pure distribution and starting to provide label deals and joint ventures. In 2018, EMPIRE struck a nonexclusive deal with UMG to distribute select UMG artist projects; in 2019, it added a vertical to handle original content, which now includes several high-traffic Instagram accounts and a music video department, and expanded into Nashville, the United Kingdom and Europe. By 2020, EMPIRE had started a merch operation by acquiring a majority stake in Top Drawer Merch/Electric Family, then officially announced a publishing division, which had already been informally part of the company for several years. The studio technically opened in 2019, but because of the pandemic and continued expansion and renovations, it is only now becoming the one-stop content shop that Ghazi had envisioned.
“I’m a practice-makes-perfect type of person,” he says. “I always knew the intention was to be a label, but I knew I couldn’t be a label without taking a lot of shots. If you want to be a great free-throw shooter, you’ve got to take a lot of shots, find your technique and the right approach.”
The right approach, at this point, is there; the goal — a full suite of music and cultural offerings — within sight. All of which has brought the kind of attention Ghazi has instinctively shied away from over the years. The offers to sell, to divest, to assume the final form of what it means to be a Major Label in the Traditional Sense is not something he’s interested in. He owns the company outright, has it rooted in his home city and has no investors or board of directors to answer to — only his staff of 200 around the world and, most importantly, his artists. Still, the questions and offers persist.
“I would call it a tug of war,” he says. “I’ve always been a firm believer that attracting too much attention sometimes gets you off your A-game. But, I also understand the balance of, every once in a while, you’ve got to shine a spotlight on something for people to see the magic.
“It was always about autonomy; if you go to my office right now, behind my desk there’s a sign on my floor, written in Arabic. It says, ‘Freedom.’ I just always wanted the freedom to just be my own man.”
The summer of 2016 was dominated by Drake’s single “One Dance,” featuring Wizkid and Kyla, which held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for the entirety of June and July, making Wizkid the first Nigerian artist to chart on, let alone top, the tally. At the same time, EMPIRE made another subtle move, one that would pay off years later: getting into business with one of Nigeria’s biggest talents, Olamide.
Today, the 34-year-old rapper, singer, songwriter, producer and YBNL Nation founder has cemented his legacy on his native continent. For nearly 15 years, he has been a prolific artist and executive, helping shape the sounds of hip-hop and Afrobeats, and growing into one of the pillars of modern West African music while championing and boosting a number of young artists along the way, through features or label deals.
“Olamide is almost like a street hero,” says Phiona Okumu, Spotify’s head of music, sub-Saharan Africa. “It’s him understanding the best of American, Western hip-hop culture, but also understanding the grace and vibrancy of where he is from and bringing it together and making it so palatable that’s been his main influence. He’s able to spark a star, he’s able to hear a sound, and he’s able to make it go.”
Olamide in the San Francisco studio on February 20, 2023 during EMPIRE’s Africa writing camp.
Matthew Fong/Courtesy of Empire
By 2016, streaming services began to slowly open on the continent. IFPI didn’t even begin tracking revenue in Africa until the last few years. In 2019, South Africa ranked No. 31 among countries tracked by IFPI in recorded-music revenue, at $59.9 million; the entirety of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, lumped together, came in at No. 59, at $4.3 million. (IFPI has not released hard figures since.)
“While we were growing up in Africa, all an artist depended on was shows,” says Mobolaji Kareem, EMPIRE’s regional head of West Africa, as he stands in Studio C with YBNL Nation head of brand and talent management Alex Okeke and DJ Enimoney, Olamide’s DJ and brother. “From 2010, 2011, until 2016, all of it was free music on SoundCloud, Audiomack. We dropped things on Twitter. Streaming money started coming around maybe 2016; if Apple Music was around in 2010, we’d be doing like a billion streams right now.”
Olamide broke onto the scene in 2010, primarily as a rapper, mixing English and Yoruba, and signed to a label called Coded Tunes, through which he distributed music and made songs available as ringtones. In 2012, he left that label and launched YBNL Nation, distributing his own music through telcos, as was standard in Africa at the time, and YBNL artists through Bolaji’s Ingle Mind distribution company, which also handled music by the likes of Wizkid, Burna Boy and Tiwa Savage. Olamide signed rising artists such as Lil Kesh, Adekunle Gold and Viktoh while steadily putting out his own music and being a hands-on label executive. By 2016, Olamide was out of his telco deal and began working with Bolaji, who had started using EMPIRE’s distribution framework to expand his artists’ reach beyond Africa.
At the time, the two sides didn’t know each other. EMPIRE was distributing around 500 projects a month, and Ghazi was more focused on building its label structure than dealing with distribution; Bolaji was working through an intermediary to release his artists’ projects through the EMPIRE system. That was the state of affairs for several years until 2018 or 2019, when the numbers began to change. “The money kept getting so much every year. At some point, Ghazi just said, ‘F–k it, who is this boy from Africa? This artist that is making up to like $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a month out of Africa with no marketing, no pitch, nothing?’ ” Bolaji says. “They had to fly down.”
Ghazi remembers it a little differently. “One day, Tina [Davis, EMPIRE’s vp of A&R] runs in my office and is like, ‘Yo, there’s this dude from Africa on the phone right now, and I don’t know what he wants because he’s screaming at me. You need to help me deal with this,’ ” he recalls. “So I get on the phone, and if I remember correctly, it was like a payment issue — something went wrong with their account, we didn’t respond fast enough or whatever. We fixed it. And then right around that same time, Nima [Etminan, EMPIRE’s COO] came into my office and was like, ‘Man, I think we should go meet these people.’ ”
Nima Etminan photographed on April 12, 2023 at EMPIRE in San Francisco.
Katie Lovecraft
It was a fortuitous meeting — and a well-timed one. Ghazi and Etminan flew to Lagos, Nigeria, and met with Olamide, Bolaji and Okeke, who introduced them to the Nigerian music scene and some of its leading figures, including then-Universal Music Nigeria GM Ezegozie Eze. “Us being personally there was a big deal,” Ghazi says. “Because most people were just sending out reps or just hiring somebody locally to deal with it. We were running around all week, concert to concert, festival to festival, visiting other people’s houses; we went to Fela [Kuti]’s shrine; we were all over the place. We were learning about the country and the music infrastructure. And it was very gratifying that we were received the way we were received, like we’re family. That made me go 10 times harder.”
“Olamide didn’t come to meet EMPIRE. EMPIRE came to meet Olamide,” Bolaji stresses. “And that was how we started EMPIRE Africa, through YBNL. So one of the things I tell people is, ‘The catalog for EMPIRE Africa sits on YBNL.’ Because if YBNL wasn’t making that much money, [EMPIRE] wasn’t going to see Africa that early.”
Within months, EMPIRE had hired Bolaji and Eze to run EMPIRE Africa, an informal entity that was officially incorporated and announced in 2022, with YBNL as its centerpiece. The timing, once again, was fortuitous: After the first seeds of a breakthrough with “One Dance,” momentum had gradually built for a global Afrobeats movement, with artists like Burna Boy, Davido, Mr Eazi, Savage and Nasty C making gains on the Billboard charts year by year. But it was during the pandemic, just as EMPIRE was putting down roots in Lagos, that Afrobeats truly crossed over into the United States, with Wizkid’s “Essence,” featuring Tems, which ultimately peaked at No. 9 on the Hot 100 and ruled the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart for 27 weeks.
“When things like this happen, it’s almost like a domino effect — that sets off the labels, and they get interested and curious about who can be next in terms of what the sound is like,” says Spotify’s Okumu. “All of the major labels were in the space before EMPIRE, and all of them had the same interests, the same pursuits — they all wanted the next big African star. But EMPIRE focused on A&R, and that is incredibly important when you have an emerging genre. I feel like that was the win in the joint venture between EMPIRE and YBNL.”
California State Assembl ymember Matt Haney presents Fireboy DML, Asake, Olamide and EMPIRE with a Certificate of Recognition from the State of California for their contributions to Afrobeats worldwide and their work in San Francisco
Daniel Aziz
It has also been reflected in the numbers. In 2021, recorded-music revenue in sub-Saharan Africa grew 9.6%, according to IFPI, with ad-supported streaming revenue up 56.4%. That number exploded in 2022, with overall revenue up 34.7% — the only region globally with growth north of 30% — taking over as the fastest-growing region for recorded-music revenue in the world. IFPI opened its first African office in mid-2020, reflecting the continent’s growing importance and potential, and all three major labels now have presences in West Africa and South Africa. In the United States, seven of the top 10 on-demand streaming songs Luminate classified under “world music” — which encompasses several African genres, as well as genres like K-pop — were by West African artists in 2022.
IFPI regional director of sub-Saharan Africa Angela Ndambuki says she expects that massive growth to continue at the same rate this year. “With the digital growth and the advances in technology and new platforms coming in, we’re able to see the labels investing even more, and their presence in the region helps drive the development of those scenes,” she says. “And that then creates a healthy music market.”
In the summer of 2021, Fireboy came to San Francisco for the first time to record in the EMPIRE studio. The young Nigerian singer had signed to YBNL in late 2018 and released his debut album, Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps, in November 2019 through YBNL/EMPIRE, then a second, Apollo, the following year. “He came to just record for a few days or a week, and we brought in three or four different producers and writers, and he wasn’t very used to having writers. He’s used to doing all his own stuff,” Davis recalls, sitting in the expansive Studio A. “So it was new for us because he hadn’t recorded here, and it was new for him because he had never been to San Francisco.”
“Peru” emerged from that session the following summer, with its lyric “I’m in San Francisco jammin’,” and almost immediately took off in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. The remix with Sheeran was released on Christmas Eve 2021, which propelled it even further. “That record was a way for us to show people that we could break a record outside of Africa and make it larger than just a record for the club and for the diaspora,” Davis says. “But what it taught the African team is that you don’t give up on a hit. I think it just opened it up for people to recognize how much we care about it, and it also gave us a bar to reach.”
Tina Davis photographed on April 12, 2023 at EMPIRE in San Francisco.
Katie Lovecraft
EMPIRE has grown beyond its YBNL foundations in West Africa. Acts like Daniel, Wande Coal, BNXN, L.A.X., Navy Kenzo and Black Sherif on its roster are expanding the limits of the Afrobeats, amapiano, highlife, fuji and Afropop genres, among others, while the company also distributes Burna Boy in Africa. (Atlantic is Burna’s label stateside, and Warner distributes his music outside of Africa.) And Asake, who officially signed to YBNL/EMPIRE in mid-2022, lit the Afrobeats world on fire with his debut album, Mr. Money With the Vibe. Released last October, it immediately topped the Spotify and Apple Music charts, and has accrued 197.5 million streams in the United States, according to Luminate. Meanwhile, streams for Asake, Fireboy and Olamide have grown more than 500% outside of Africa on Apple Music, according to the company, which greatly over-indexes in African music streams compared with competitors.
That doesn’t mean EMPIRE has cornered the market. Wizkid, Davido, Tems and rising star Libianca are all signed to RCA in the United States; CKay is distributed by Warner in partnership with local indie label Chocolate City, while Omah Lay goes through Sire; UMG’s Virgin distributes Rema’s “Calm Down,” while Larry Jackson’s new venture, gamma, has its African distribution rights, and Def Jam just signed Gold. As the industry’s attention has shifted to opportunities on the continent, the competition has gotten fierce — but EMPIRE’s reputation has allowed it to keep building organically in the region. “EMPIRE’s a family, and all the other labels are labels,” says Okeke. “That’s the difference.”
Now EMPIRE’s task is to build upon that success and keep expanding its dominion — not an easy task in a globalized climate sagging under the weight of an increasing amount of new music every day. The company has already established an operation covering the Middle East/North Africa, bringing on Spotify’s Suhel Nafar to oversee it. It is also making inroads in South Africa and recently hired people in Tokyo to oversee efforts in the Asia-Pacific region and Brazil to begin developing a foothold in South America. In each new region, EMPIRE is looking to build on the model that worked so well in West Africa, making strategic hires based on partnerships with well-connected industry players in local markets rather than signing artists to fit a sound. And even as that old Digital Music Industry 2.0 has long since drifted away from the Bay, relocating to the likes of L.A. and New York, EMPIRE has remained in San Francisco. “We’ve plotted a lot of dots on the map, and I want to plot more dots and create more connectivity, more brainpower,” says Ghazi.
YBNL Founder and CEO/Artist, Olamide, and EMPIRE Founder and CEO, Ghazi, present Fireboy DML with RIAA Platinum Plaque for his hit single “Peru”.
Daniel Aziz
On a Thursday afternoon in mid-April, Ghazi pulls over to the side of the road to explain, over the phone, the next iteration of the vision. He’s about to fly to Johannesburg, then drive to Botswana, then return to the Bay for a few days with his family before another trip down to Rio de Janeiro — around the world and back again. “When you watch those movies from 15, 20 years ago and they put a globe up on the screen and then they push a button, and all the lines fly around the globe and connect to all the different epicenters? It’s kind of like that,” he says.
Which is to say, the journey may have hit one zenith, but that has only established a new jumping-off point, a new foundation on which to build. “You’re always trying to go to greater heights, right? Man makes it to the moon, now you want to make it to Mars,” he says. “As long as we live limitless and we continue to chase ourselves rather than other people, I think that we’ll be OK. We’re already successful; this already looks like success. It’s just, how do you breed more success?”
The answer? In the studio. After the plaque presentation in March, a half-dozen A&Rs and engineers piled back into Studio C to gush over the record that Fireboy made the night before, which has a first verse; an epic, soaring hook; and a second verse left open — maybe for a stateside collaborator, or a fellow Afrobeats star, or maybe for Fireboy himself to finish off. Pop star names are tossed around, and a particular alt-R&B singer is mentioned. But one A&R stands up indignantly, voice rising above the others: “Hang on, hang on, hang on,” he says to quiet the crew before adding nearly incredulously: “Did Bob Marley get someone else to put a second verse on ‘I Shot the Sheriff’? This is all you!” The feeling is euphoric, the room is filled with laughter, the possibilities endless. The beat comes back in: rewind, cut, play, forget about the time. The vibe is here; the night is far from over.
This story will appear in the May 13, 2023, issue of Billboard.