From the Desk Of
“It’s still pretty awesome and ridiculous that we get paid to do this,” The Bowery Presents founder John “JoMo” Moore says. He and his partner, Jim Glancy, are discussing the 20th anniversary of their concert promotion and venue operation business, which they celebrated by producing four residencies for indie acts they’ve worked with since the beginning of their careers: Modest Mouse, Interpol, LCD Soundsystem and a reunion of TV on the Radio, which was also celebrating a 20th anniversary — the release of its first album.
Although a subsidiary of AEG Presents since 2016, The Bowery Presents remains a brand that, more than any other concert promoter, is closely associated with top-shelf indie artists who began playing in clubs and evolved to arenas. In addition to the aforementioned acts, they include Vampire Weekend, The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The National, Arcade Fire, Phoebe Bridgers and Brandi Carlile. It has also worked with mainstream acts like Adele and Sam Smith.
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Over the past two decades, the company has evolved as well. Glancy, who joined Moore from Live Nation in 2006, and AEG’s resources and venues have enabled The Bowery Presents to produce more shows at more — and larger — venues, including Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, where the company is the managing partner.
“We’ve been lucky in that things have continued to evolve,” Glancy says. “I’d go crazy doing the same thing day after day — like being on Broadway and doing A Chorus Line night No. 12,000. We always have interesting stories. We always have incredible opportunities.”
“This painting by the artist Dave McDowell was made for me,” Moore says. “It depicts some of my favorite things in life.”
Nina Westervelt
The company owns, co-owns and/or operates 18 venues in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Virginia and Maine and has booking agreements with another 10. And while not all of them report to Billboard Boxscore, those that do in New York — including Brooklyn Steel, Terminal 5, Webster Hall, Music Hall of Williamsburg and Racket — grossed $17.6 million in the first 10 months of 2024. Forest Hills Stadium alone grossed $20.3 million during its season, although not all shows were promoted by The Bowery Presents or AEG.
You produced four residencies in the past month. Are they the future of booking smaller venues?
JOHN MOORE Residencies may not be the future of booking clubs, but the industry sees merit in confirming multiple shows in a major city and [music] center like New York. And we love to be part of that story when it makes sense for the artist.
What are the most enduring memories of the business and the shows you’ve produced?
MOORE The first 12 years being down on Ludlow Street, where we had a walkup office that was above Pianos [nightclub] from 2004 to June 2017, was a great time to be down there and to be starting the company with Mercury [Lounge] and Bowery Ballroom. We’d walk downstairs to Pianos to see Bon Iver play for the first time — not an underplay, just “Hey, this is the hot new guy.” Doing it on our own for 12 years before partnering with AEG was exciting.
JIM GLANCY For me, it’s the incredible music and the incredible artists that we’ve been able to work with over the last 20 years. Combined, we did 22 shows with LCD, Interpol, Modest Mouse and TV on the Radio over a three-week period. And we’ve probably done a total of 125 or 150 shows with them over the last 20 years. We took dozens and dozens of acts from Mercury Lounge or, later, Rough Trade, all the way up to [Madison Square] Garden. Vampire Weekend and The White Stripes and The Strokes. That’s the way you want the system to work. And we’re still doing that today. I can’t tell you if MJ Lenderman is going to play Madison Square Garden someday, but I can tell you he just did three Music Hall [of Williamsburg] shows in early October, and he’s got three sold-out Brooklyn Steels in April. That’s exciting.
“This is a tabletop painted by a Lower East Side artist Adam Lucas who went by Hanksy,” Moore says. “It’s called ‘Meth Rogen,’ and it’s a mashup of Seth Rogen and Walter White from Breaking Bad.”
Nina Westervelt
Do you have an established path through your venues in which you help artists evolve to play larger spaces?
GLANCY That’s a question for the industry. When we go back 15, 18, 20 years, there was the thing of, “Don’t skip steps. You’ve got to do the 200-capacity step and the 500-capacity step,” and there’s something to that with a career artist. I used to say to JoMo, “How was so-and-so last night?” and he’d say, “They’ll be great after they do another 300 shows.” He meant it. But there’s also the reality in this age, particularly in 2024, where things go viral and happen fast.
Do you ever tell an agent or manager, “No, that’s too big a venue for this act”?
MOORE It’s all about relationships with the agents and managers. In general, they seem to have a clear path of what they want and depending on what our relationship is, they’re calling and saying, “Hey, we were thinking of X, Y and Z.” And we’ll say, “I know that you’re thinking about Terminal 5, but the timing is right to consider Webster Hall and Brooklyn Steel.” We ultimately need to trust them if they want to go bigger than we think, or we choose not to do it. We definitely are involved in the process but we’re not telling them what to do — and we’d like to sometimes.
Rising indie acts have a tougher time making a profit or even breaking even on tours. And yet, tickets to those shows are usually affordable. How does that work?
GLANCY Here’s the dirty secret: The act is not making any money, and neither are we. We’re both betting on our respective futures. If we look at our average ticket price at Music Hall of Williamsburg and go back over the last 10 years, it probably went from a $15 to an $18 or $19 ticket. You’ve got smaller rooms because it’s a sense of discovery. What you’re banking on is, it’s a student, it’s someone who’s living probably paycheck to paycheck. We want to make sure there’s not a barrier to entry for them. I think most agents, managers, artists are on the same wavelength.
“I have a strong attachment to New Orleans,” Glancy says. “This is a bottle of New Orleans R&B singer Ernie K-Doe’s hot sauce that the Allman Brothers’ manager Bert Holman gave me.”
Nina Westervelt
Do you work on ticket prices with managers and agents?
MOORE Yes, they often have an idea, like, “How about a $35 ticket?” Or sometimes they’ll say, “We need to make $10,000,” so then it’s backward math. To get $10,000 you need this ticket price. And then the question is, is that actually the right price?
GLANCY Every deal should start with “What’s the ticket price?” But as these bands get a little bigger, it’s “We need this price.” Then you’re working backward, and you’re going to start making bad decisions and bad habits. Setting a ticket price based on a requested guarantee will sometimes yield higher ticket prices than the fan base will support.
What are the advantages of being owned by AEG?
GLANCY When you’re independent, there are some things you do really well and there are some things you don’t do well. At the most basic level, with AEG, we’re getting a critical mass of information. When you’re in a silo by yourself, you’re only as good as your own borders. So the fact that our general managers can get on a weekly call with other GMs in the Northeast — we’re Virginia up to Maine — the Rocky Mountains, [AEG’s] Goldenvoice and, in the Southeast, our Zero Mile Presents counterparts, that’s invaluable. The same thing goes for our more than 100 sales and sponsorship people. And at Bowery, we were bad at the things that were least sexy to us: finance, accounting, IT, legal, HR. All those are important for running a company, especially a growing company. AEG has been incredible in that regard.
I wear this badge to high-profile gigs and special occasions,” Glancy explains. “It says, ‘Bowery Presents Bank Enforcement,’ with my name on it. It was inspired by a Bowery Bank commercial that Glancy stumbled upon on YouTube that features Joe DiMaggio saying, ‘Come to the Bowery. They’ll give you a lot of money.’ We send that out to agents.”
Nina Westervelt
Where do you see your company in five years?
GLANCY There are some interesting outdoor opportunities: in Maine and Suffolk Downs in Boston. We’re going to have a great season in 2025. We’re the managing partner at Forest Hills Stadium, and if you look at from when we came on in 2021 or 2022 post-COVID to where we were before, everything is just humming out there. We’re back booking CMAC in Rochester [N.Y.]. We’re involved in Westville in New Haven [Conn.], a couple of venues down in the Richmond, Va., area. There’s a couple of larger outdoor projects that are going to hopefully shake out for us in the next year or two. Under the K Bridge — the Kosciuszko Bridge between Queens and Brooklyn — this past year, it tended to all be DJs. I think you’re going to see a little broader programming in 2025 and beyond. It’s a unique New York moment where it feels kind of wild and lawless. Meanwhile, it’s very much by the book, permitted and done properly. People that walk in there are just like WTF, and then there’s actually porta johns. You’re not peeing in a bush. Although a few people did, just for the record.
In the debate over whether ticket prices are too high, the response is often “Maybe, but the cost of touring has skyrocketed.” Who should be making a little less money?
MOORE Everybody should make a little less. Everybody is making more [now], but, genuinely, from the bus to the hotel, to our landlord to the electric company, rentals, etc., everything has gone up. We don’t know how realistic it is for everything to go down. I would much rather someone go to two shows in a year than pull every single dollar out of them for one. Back in the early 2000s, Jim and I would see civilians at shows that we recognized and say hello to them — not because we knew them personally, but because they came to a lot of shows as fans. And I’m seeing less of that.
Andre Benz’s foray into the music business was not like most. He didn’t attend a music business program at a university, toil away at an unpaid internship or manage a local artist. Instead, he built his own YouTube empire at age 15.
Working from his childhood bedroom in New Jersey, Benz created the YouTube channel Trap Nation, where he featured a curated selection of dance music and remixes of popular songs. “Originally, it was just a hobby, but I think one of my positive and negative traits is I become obsessive about what I do,” he says. “I just kept doing it and doing it until one of the uploads blew up — a remix of ‘Wrecking Ball’ by Miley Cyrus.”
By the time of his high school graduation, Benz had become an unlikely but important tastemaker in the world of electronic music. He expanded Trap Nation into a whole suite of channels — Chill Nation, House Nation and Bass Nation — and he says his flagship brand grew to about 2 million subscribers. Today, it has amassed over 30 million.
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Around the same time, he met another student, Brandon De Oliveira, who went to a neighboring high school in New Jersey and had mutual friends. Their eventual collaboration led Benz to sell his YouTube channels to Create Music Group in 2022 and co-found Broke Records with De Oliveira the following year. Now 27, Benz says his goal is no less than building “the best independent record label in the history of the music industry,” and he takes inspiration from the digital-driven approach of Mike Caren’s APG and Elliot Grainge’s 10K Projects, which he says showed him what indie success can look like.
“What we’re doing would not work at any other company in the music industry — Republic, Columbia, Atlantic or Warner,” Benz says. “[Create founder] Jonathan Strauss and the entire Create team have given us full-on trust, opportunity and accessibility to do what we believe is right for the company. That means doing larger deals and taking larger risks.”
“Andre gave me this framed printed chart as a Christmas gift to commemorate the label’s launch,” De Oliveira says, “so we’d be able to look at it and grasp the level of growth the company has had over the next year.”
Jamie Pearl
Broke Records is distributed by Create and has a staff of eight full-time employees focused on finding and breaking artists. The label currently has “Embrace It” by London-based Angolan rapper Ndotz and “Alibi” by Iranian Dutch singer-songwriter-producer Sevdaliza on Spotify’s Global Top 50 chart and claims that its international roster, which includes Blackbear, Bread Beatz and Camelphat, generates more than 32 million streams a day globally on Spotify.
How does your YouTube marketing background and experience with algorithms benefit Broke Records?
ANDRE BENZ That’s our biggest advantage and the biggest difference between us and an older label — how we think about services for our artists. We don’t have to rely on paying outside people to do the [digital marketing] for us. I think a lot of companies love outsourcing work because it holds a third party accountable. If the artist complains, the label can say, “Oh, it’s actually their fault.” Some of these other labels have too much volume, too, and they’re not able to control what’s actually going on, so they outsource work.
Why are you succeeding with TikTok creator campaigns at a time when digital markets are saying they’re less effective than a few years ago?
BRANDON DE OLIVEIRA I think creator campaigns now are actually more influential than ever, but everyone’s spending way too much. We are constantly refreshing the list of creators that we’re [using]. Two or three years ago, labels got used to thinking, “OK, these are the big accounts now. We will just go to them.” These creators’ rates kept going up, and as the market kept getting more saturated, those creators didn’t move the needle anymore. In certain cases, we will spend on larger creators, but for the most part, we’re spending like $1,000 across 100 to 200 creators in really strategic markets — Eastern Europe and Latin America specifically. That’s typically where we start most of our campaigns before we move into more premium territories.
“Lowly Palace was the first label I started, at 19,” Benz says. “We created a hard-cover illustration book of our cover art to showcase the brand and vision that we had. I hold on to this to value the importance of progress and growth over the years.”
Jamie Pearl
Why those territories?
DE OLIVEIRA Cheaper cost, and these markets start a lot of trends on the internet. A lot of our marketing campaigns start as bundle deals. We spread less money across several tracks that have familiarity in whatever type of video we are into, whether it’s edits, dances, lip-syncs and so on. And a lot of those bigger creators in the more premium territories — where we would have had to spend $4,000 for one post — just jump on for free. Why? Because at some point, there’s a tipping point where creators jump on just because they see the videos using that song getting bigger.
Andre, why was Create the right partner for you? Why not continue to do things on your own?
BENZ There were three or four years after I started Trap Nation where I was, for lack of a better word, a degenerate. I wasn’t interested in music at all anymore. I couldn’t find any passion. I was just so young when I started it, and I felt like I didn’t have anybody to relate to in terms of what I was building. YouTube was declining, and our channels were declining in growth. I had never been through the process of growing quickly and then declining. I was like, “I’m out, I’m done.” I wanted a fresh start. The acquisition was less of a money thing than it was a fresh start. I was like, “OK, I can sell this company, move forward, get integrated into a new ecosystem and learn from other people who started their own company. Jonathan Strauss started [Create] around the same time I started [my company]. I thought, “I can learn from these people.”
How promising are YouTube Shorts and other features that the platform has added?
BENZ I’m super excited about YouTube Shorts. I think they’re going to continue pushing them from an algorithmic standpoint, and we see that we’re able to capture a lot of new audiences and revenue as well. We make a lot of money on YouTube Shorts for songs we are putting out because we have a really good content claiming team [through Create]. And because of our background with YouTube, we understand the platform better than any other label. They also give us a lot of support. Anytime we have songs trending on that platform, they’ll give us billboards in Times Square [in New York], in Los Angeles. They’ll feature us on the homepage. YouTube, out of all platforms right now, is by far the most powerful for the amplification of records.
Does virality on Shorts translate to non-YouTube streams?
BENZ Not really. Brandon and I share the same opinion that YouTube Shorts usually comes last in terms of virality. It’s TikTok, then Instagram, or TikTok and Instagram at the same time. Then it trickles over to YouTube a month later. But we see our songs stay super viral for a while on YouTube Shorts. I don’t think we’ve ever found a new song viral from YouTube Shorts — maybe once. We don’t look for artists or records on Shorts. It’s more of an audience-marketing opportunity.
The golden Broke hoodie “was the first piece of merchandise we produced under the new label,” De Oliveira says. “We continue to gift it to our artists and partners.”
Jamie Pearl
What are you doing to ensure the longevity of those songs that go viral and, in the long term, build a catalog?
BENZ When we started Broke, the plan was to build an incredible digital marketing team and sign a lot of these viral electronic songs because that’s what we know best. So we did that. And then we started moving to other genres: rap, alternative rock, pop. Then we hired a few more people. Now we have to start breaking artists and building longer narratives around artists, not just singles.
In two years, we want to have four to five superstars [with] 30 million to 40 million monthly listeners, selling out arenas, selling out merchandise. Sevdaliza is our first opportunity to prove ourselves. It’s a huge risk for our company because of the deal size, but I think it’s a once-ina-lifetime opportunity for us to go above and beyond. I want to prove to people that you don’t need to sign to Republic Records to get on top 40 [radio]. You don’t have to sign to Island to be the next Sabrina Carpenter. I don’t think anyone’s proved that yet.
What does the label landscape look like in 10 years?
BENZ A lot of distributors are going to start acquiring and starting up labels like ours. A lot of traditional record labels are going to continue the distribution model, which I think is a race to the bottom. It makes absolutely no sense. It’s going to be more fragmented, more democratized. You’re going to have more independent market share.
DE OLIVEIRA There will be a lower barrier of entry with [artificial intelligence] — whether that’s mixing, mastering, content production or the actual full production of songs. It’s going to be really interesting and it’s going to be super saturated. So figuring out how to create experiences and really personal moments between the artists and their fans will be the key distinguishing factor moving forward.
This story appears in the Nov. 16, 2024, issue of Billboard.
For all the talk about TikTok and its impact on the music business, much less has been said about YouTube in the last few years. George Karalexis and Donna Budica, the co-founders and CEO and COO, respectively, of YouTube strategy company Ten2 Media, want to change that. “YouTube is so underserviced by the music industry. Traditionally, it’s just been a place to put up your music video,” Karalexis says of the platform where Justin Bieber, Troye Sivan and Maggie Rogers were discovered.
“It has evolved so much now,” Budica adds.
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With the 2021 introduction of Shorts, YouTube’s video equivalent of Instagram Reels and TikTok, the duo saw an opportunity to start a firm that hyperspecialized in YouTube. “YouTube is unlike anything else. It is an ecosystem,” Budica says. “Shorts, livestreams, longer videos, music videos, YouTube Music.”
Unlike the plethora of YouTube distributors and rights management firms that simply collect money from the platform and send artists and labels a check for what they’ve found, Ten2 sees itself as a high-touch service, handling YouTube royalty collection but also helping clients strategize content creation specifically for the platform. Those services include helping artists and labels create lucrative livestream loops of their videos, building out playlists of their songs, capturing publishing dollars from user-generated covers and developing strategies to attract new audiences with their Shorts. While Billboard has reported several stories about rights managers employing fraudulent schemes to siphon royalties from YouTube — often from unsuspecting independent artists who don’t have access to the streaming service’s content management system (CMS) — Ten2 offers clients a “completely transparent” dashboard, Karalexis says, that provides “educational tools, greater understanding about analytics — like what’s working, what’s not working — why and how to expedite growth,” Budica says, finishing his thought.
Karalexis and Budica’s clients include Warner Records, Rhino Records and a number of distributors that wish to remain anonymous, and they say they have had major success with such mainstream clients as Brent Faiyaz, Benson Boone, blink-182’s Travis Barker and NLE Choppa, to name a few, and have helped Christian artists Maverick City Music and Don Moen earn six-figure incomes on YouTube alone through savvy strategizing.
With data analytics firm Kantar reporting that YouTube Music was the “most adopted music streaming service” for the second quarter of 2024, and Luminate’s findings that YouTube Shorts are nearly at parity with TikTok when it comes to U.S. music listeners using the platform — more than 30% — Karalexis and Budica contend YouTube has a strong future. “We saw the writing on the wall,” Karalexis says.
Karalexis says he was given this guitar pick after seeing his first concert, Eric Clapton, in 1992. “That experience changed my life and made me want to pursue music.”
Yasara Gunawardena
Should all artists use a service like Ten2, or are there artists who fare better on YouTube with your guidance?
GEORGE KARALEXIS: If you don’t have a partner that understands YouTube [and has access to its CMS], then you’re blind on the platform. It’s not like Spotify and Apple, which have this very [similar] systematic approach where the song just kind of sits there. YouTube is part social network, part streaming service. So if you’re actively creating content on it, you’ll see a lot of upward growth of your own making. Also, Spotify and Apple don’t share how often listeners skip a song or how long people listen to your songs. If you get a partner with access to YouTube’s CMS, you can really get an understanding of who your audience is and who your potential audience is.
You’ve had success working with Christian artists. What makes this genre distinct from others?
KARALEXIS: We’ve found that Christian is song-based rather than artist-based. House bands at churches play lots of covers of popular Christian songs. Don Moen has written huge songs that get covered over and over, and the covers are even bigger than his original. Through that process, we realized there were a lot of royalties to claim. We also found success using keywords that Christians are searching for, like “Sunday prayer,” “worship,” stuff like that. YouTube is the second-largest search engine for folks behind Google, so these keywords really work to drive traffic. Also, it’s very driven by lyrics and long-form consumption. We’ve started a 24/7 livestream, like the Lofi Girl study beats videos, and it’s been huge. We’ve found that people watch these streams for an average of an hour and 50 minutes. Another example: We work with a few superchurch pastors, too. They have such a hardcore following that tunes in. They might draw 1,000 people in person, but on YouTube they’ll have 15,000 to 20,000.
DONNA BUDICA: But all these approaches are genre-agnostic. It doesn’t matter if it’s hip-hop or Christian or whatever. Everyone can benefit from a livestream or a lyric video or keywords.
What makes Shorts distinct in the short-form video space?
KARALEXIS: When someone opens the YouTube app on their phone, their mentality is very different than if they just choose to click on TikTok or Instagram. They are [typically] someone who watches long-form, someone who wants to get frequent updates from a person they subscribe to, whereas TikTok is quick virality-driven. We look at Shorts as a brand-builder — onboarding fans versus driving audio consumption.
“Disraeli Gears by Cream is my earliest memory of music,” Karalexis says. “I remember flipping through my dad’s vinyl collection and always asking for this one to be played.”
Yasara Gunawardena
Recently, a lot of labels have turned away from making high-quality music videos for singles. Why do you think that is?
BUDICA: YouTube is no longer a place where an artist should put out one really expensive music video every era and go away. Consistency is key, and the YouTube algorithm rewards that. If you’re constantly putting out one long-form video [shot on an iPhone] every week or every month, it’s better.
KARALEXIS: Hip-hop got it right first. They would do these lifestyle videos, where it’s them with cars, their friends. They’re showcasing the life that their lyrics are selling.
Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl joined the company from YouTube. Is this leadership one of the reasons WMG hired Ten2?
KARALEXIS: Our relationship actually predated Robert. We started working with Warner in late 2021, early 2022. I think [Warner Records co-chairman/COO] Tom Corson is a really smart guy, and he’s always trying to find a competitive edge and find ways to service artists differently.
Does the restructuring at Atlantic Music Group affect you and your artist clients?
KARALEXIS: No, we mostly work with Warner Records. We also service a number of indie labels and artists that are not public.
YouTube is trying to launch a TV equivalent to rival Netflix and other streaming platforms. How will this affect your artists?
KARALEXIS: We’re seeing huge spikes in TV consumption already. It’s the next frontier. It’s so hard to break an artist on a phone because of the barrage of notifications you’re getting on there. Sometimes I don’t even remember what content I’ve seen because I was so distracted. On TV you’re not [barraged], so it has a lot of potential.
Budica says her diploma reminds her to “maintain a beginner’s mind while continuing to build upon the tools, fundamentals and passion for business that Wharton gave me during my formative years.”
Yasara Gunawardena
Artificial intelligence-generated or -assisted videos are starting to appear on social media. Will the rise of AI content hurt your clients’ chances of breaking through the noise?
BUDICA: Any kind of milestone in technological advancements could be malicious. But the reality is it’s here and it can expedite content creation. That’s how we choose to approach it.
KARALEXIS: Yeah, what can you do? Throw up your hands? Then you’ll get left behind. We have to embrace it. We’ve seen it help with Don Moen’s content creation. AI has helped him tremendously to create quick lyric videos and increase their output. We have a lyric-video generator and it can make, like, 50 versions a day.
Is that the future of shortform video platforms — generating a million versions of the same thing?
BUDICA: I’m going to say a soft no. It’s not about blindly putting out volume. It is good to experiment, but it’s about putting out things that resonate with your audience and using analytics to figure out what’s working.
The last year has had an influx in catalog sales and viral bumps for songs that are decades old. What are the opportunities on YouTube for catalog marketing?
KARALEXIS: Massive. Repurposing is important here. Donna came up with this idea of “surface area.” For someone who is deceased or no longer able to produce new material in a traditional way, the method has always been the same: a remaster, a reissue, but there’s a lot more we can do now. You can reintroduce the artist in a number of ways. For example, with The Beatles on YouTube, you could create a ton of playlists [videos that play in a particular order] that are based on keywords and themes, like “Beatles acoustic songs,” “Beatles love songs.” Sometimes it is as simple as reworking their old videos into 4K and uploading them with higher quality. We are very bullish on catalog and in deep discussions with some estates.
You’ve been working with major labels, including WMG, but do you think there is any danger in the majors ever trying to replicate your process in-house?
KARALEXIS The majors could do it [in-house], but they are downsizing and consolidating. For them to build what we’ve done from scratch in-house would be hard, and surprising.
“Much of the artwork in my office, including this one, was drawn by my dad, who came here on a boat from Italy [and] is an aerospace engineer,” Budica says. “His name is on the moon, but he also designed album cover art in the ’60s.”
Yasara Gunawardena
On Aug. 28, just over six months after the death of country music star Toby Keith at age 62, NBC celebrated his work and his influence on some of country music’s biggest stars in a two-hour special, Toby Keith: American Icon. Eric Church, Tyler Hubbard, Parker McCollum, Jelly Roll, Darius Rucker, Carrie Underwood, Clay Walker and Lainey Wilson were among those who feted Keith, an oilfield worker-turned-musician known for his steely determination; burly, commanding voice; and top-flight, often witty songwriting that fueled many of his 20 No. 1s on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart.
The special drew 4.7 million viewers, was the No. 1 show in its time slot and was NBC’s most-watched primetime entertainment special of 2024, according to the network. And Luminate data shows a bump in the Oklahoma native’s streams in the weeks following its airing. On the Sept. 14-dated Digital Song Sales chart, streams of “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” totaled 3.4 million; a 344% jump.
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Spearheading the special behind the scenes were UTA’s Curt Motley — Keith’s personal agent for approximately three decades — and his colleague Nick Barnes. The duo packaged the concert and worked with Keith’s longtime manager, TK Kimbrell; the late artist’s family members; Universal Music Group Nashville; the label’s newly launched Sing Me Back Home Productions film/TV division; and Thinkfactory and its CEO, Adam Reed.
“We wanted artists who had connective tissue to Toby, whether they were his friends or had toured with him,” Motley says of the special’s lineup. “A lot of artists came forward and said, ‘We love Toby, and we sing his songs every night.’ There were also a handful of people on the show who had never actually met Toby but were huge fans. We wanted to honor that legacy through multiple generations of country music.”
Motley, who joined UTA in 2016, also reps a roster that includes Jamey Johnson and Sawyer Brown.
“This [wine] bottle celebrates the life of the King of Wyoming, Chris LeDoux,” Motley says. “Music legend, [1976] world champion bareback rider and one of the finest humans to ever walk the earth.”
Diana King
Barnes, who joined the company in 2017, specializes in connecting music artists to projects in TV, film and branding while overseeing UTA’s Heartland division, which focuses on family- and faith-based storytelling. Those clients include film/TV creators the Erwin Brothers and Dallas Jenkins (The Chosen).
UTA’s Nashville team has simultaneously fostered the success of a crop of country newcomers that includes Megan Moroney (“Tennessee Orange”), Dylan Gossett (“Coal”), Brittney Spencer (“Bigger Than the Song”), Chayce Beckham (“23”), HunterGirl (“Ain’t About You”), Ian Munsick (“Long Live Cowgirls”) and Oliver Anthony (the Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper “Rich Men North of Richmond”).
What can new artists learn from the career Toby Keith built?
CURT MOTLEY: Toby was fearlessly unapologetic. He had a vision for what he wanted to do, and he didn’t waver on that line. When you’re good at something like he was, you don’t need other people to validate you. It’s a much harder road, but the fruits at the end of it are so much greater.
How does UTA Nashville differ from other agencies’ country music divisions?
NICK BARNES: An artist’s career should be multihyphenate to have longevity. They should be touching film, television and branding. We are starting earlier than ever in artists’ careers to find opportunities outside of touring to broaden their reach. Historically, these opportunities have existed for artists that were well into their careers. For instance, a feature film based on a hit song or a theatrical tour documentary — [intellectual property] that reflects country music’s way of life. For a long time, it was an antagonistic view. Now this community is embraced more for what it is. The Heartland division serves as the crossover arm for music artists here and is having success in feature film, television, unscripted productions, book publishing and more.
The Toby Keith “Super Bowl” ring was created by Live Nation’s Brian O’Connell to commemorate his 11 USO tours and over 240 shows in support of America’s armed forces, Motley says. Only four exist.
Diana King
TikTok and other social media outlets have changed the game for new artists. How do you sift through viral moments to find acts that won’t be one-hit wonders?
BARNES: It’s a balance between a gut feeling based off our experience and the data that is brought and analyzed by our team at UTA IQ — a world-class group of data analysts with proprietary tools we have built and continue to improve.
When you consider signing an artist, do you determine if they’re a strong live act? It’s key to an act’s longevity.
MOTLEY: You also have to look at consumption numbers, including streaming and social growth velocity, as an indicator for live viability.
UTA recently launched a Christian music division that has Brandon Lake, Phil Wickham, Lecrae and Forrest Frank among its clients. What do you feel is driving the growth in that genre?
BARNES: When we told one of the artists on our roster about the announcement, they said, “That’s like the Avengers of Christian music.” There’s a broader trend afoot in the faith community. In the aughts, a lot of Christian bands wanted to cross over. They were like, “We are Christian bands but we want to be rock bands. We don’t want to be labeled as [contemporary Christian music].” We are seeing Christian bands and artists now that are leaning into who they are, and that’s resonating with the fans. When Forrest Frank is printing merch that says, “I am a child of God,” and he’s selling them as fast as they can put them on the merch table, and his shows are filled with kids and teens that are on fire for his music — I think that’s the correlation.
“I’m proud of the moment that Heartland comics are having right now,” Barnes says. “Both posters are from sold-out Nashville shows by two clients: John Crist and Leanne Morgan.”
Diana King
What kind of market share do you see Christian music attaining in the next five years, and what are the demographics of the fan base?
BARNES: We think consumption will double. Similar to other genres, streaming artists that aren’t dependent on radio are bringing a younger demographic into the market. Streaming has created a multigenerational fan base for the genre.
Country music streaming is surging globally. How does that affect your work?
BARNES: When we’re watching the algorithm trends on the [digital service providers], they’re the same in Dublin as they are in Nashville. They’re the same in Australia as they are in Brazil, which are all burgeoning markets for country music. And we are starting to take artists to the U.K. first to build fans.
MOTLEY: Oliver [Anthony]’s Out of the Woods tour started in the U.K., and we started Dylan Gossett’s [No Better Time] tour in the same areas. They were incredibly well received.
What else are you doing to build fan bases overseas?
MOTLEY: Agents across the globe — especially in our London office — are leaning into country music and integrating it into the fabric of our business here. This allows us to get in early with partners abroad and leads to opportunities that allow aggressive first-look tours. Recent examples are Megan Moroney, Oliver Anthony and Dylan Gossett.
For a newer artist, what are other advantages of launching a tour abroad?
BARNES: One advantage is being able to start a business over there that you can return to when you need to take a break [from touring stateside]. In the American markets, oftentimes our clients have played a lot of hard- and soft-ticket tours and they need to let the U.S. cool off a bit. [If they have played overseas], we’ve already built relationships with promoters and have a base of fans.
“I’ve always been a Marty Stuart apostle,” Barnes says. “Marty once opened for The Steve Miller Band at the Ryman, and Steve signed this poster to Marty — including a few special doodles. It ended up forgotten in a closet, but when we moved offices, it was passed on to me as a gift.”
Diana King
MOTLEY: It is expensive to travel and perform abroad, but when you’re just starting out, your costs are going to be a lot less [because you’re doing smaller-scale shows]. If you wait too long, that opportunity cost is hard. But when you build that fan base from the get-go — we’re going back with Dylan this year and playing big rooms, and we just started in February.
Touring costs in general have increased significantly. How are artists navigating that?
MOTLEY: Post-COVID, we had that big wave where everyone had to get out and go see a show. There wasn’t a bus you could rent; there wasn’t a venue that was available anywhere. I think we are at the tail end of that now, but everything has remained more expensive. Just to lease a bus right now is more than twice as expensive as it was in 2019. It’s almost impossible for acts that tour in a window that’s only four to five months a year to be able to afford that, so we’ve got to charge more for tickets. The big, white-hot shows are largely unaffected right now, but for other things, people are making choices again. It’s probably a bit cyclical as well. I think we will see it even out. There has been a lot of debate about the climbing prices of concert tickets.
Do you think they’ve hit a ceiling?
MOTLEY: Although the pandemic curve has flattened, as it pertains to white-hot stadium-level artists, it does not appear that we have hit a ceiling — especially given the number of tickets and pricing on the secondary market. But underneath that, artists have to be conscious of the market to have the best chance at success.
When Jeremy Sirota signed on as CEO of indie digital rights nonprofit Merlin in January 2020, he had already spent years championing the independent music community.
After starting his career as a tech lawyer in the mid-2000s, Sirota worked for nine years at the Warner Music Group at WEA and ADA, helping to distribute WMG’s affiliated indie-label partners. He then moved to Facebook Music, where he was independent label lead for its business and partnerships team. That experience gives him the perspective needed to assist Merlin’s 500-plus members representing 30,000-plus label partners in more than 70 countries in navigating an increasingly complex digital world.
Over the past four years, he has worked to set those labels — which collectively represent some 15% of the global recorded-music market — on a course to optimize partnerships that increasingly power the business. They include expanded alliances with Meta and YouTube; deals with SoundCloud, for its fan-powered royalties structure, and Deezer, for its “artist-centric” royalties plan; and a new initiative, Merlin Connect, that grants select tech startups a license for its members’ catalogs to help educate those new companies about music usage on their platforms while getting Merlin’s labels and their artists paid.
Trending on Billboard
Since Sirota became CEO, Merlin has added more than 100 members and launched a mentorship program, Merlin Engage, which pairs women music executives with the next generation of female industry leaders. He’s also debuted Merlin Insights, launched in April to help parse the avalanche of data that indies must process. And as the sector grows globally, Sirota says he’s focused on how to best superserve Merlin’s labels. “There are a lot of ways we think about growth,” he explains. “The most important are ‘Am I driving more value to my members? Am I helping support their ability to be independent? And am I helping to shape a future where artistry, authenticity and creativity can thrive?’ ”
Have you brought in new members and territories this year?
Our growth is about making sure that our values are held by the members who join. This year, 11 new members have joined Merlin, including Artist Partner Group, UNIFIED and Rostrum Pacific. We’ve grown the team to deliver on white-glove support. That involves three things: automate as much as possible; communicate; and collaborate more efficiently and effectively. Something we think about a lot is “How do we free people up?” We’re now over 50 people and have added people around the world at all levels. One of the most important things we do is report and pay to our members on a timely basis so they can pay their bills, their labels and their artists. And we’re deepening our relationships with some of our partners, like Meta, and doing things with [graphic design platform] Canva — which I’m really excited about. We’re finding new ways to monetize music in a healthy and fair way.
A coffee enthusiast, Sirota calls this “my rocket ship of an espresso maker — a Profitec, gifted by my wife — with which I enjoy my daily ritual of making cortados.” He admits to a “guilty love of New York deli coffee with a generous dose of milk and sugar.”
Nina Westervelt
How does Merlin Insights benefit your members?
Insights is a big initiative. We now have a data operations team to make sure that all trends data is being delivered in the right format. Our market share on some of these platforms is significant — more than just the 15% we talk about. So we have this incredible wealth of data. What could we do with that that members cannot do on their own? If you’re not a global organization with 10,000 employees all around the world, we have the ability to pull out interesting stories that help our members — things they don’t know because they’re not on the ground. We do reports, webinars, feedback loops with members around: What else do they want to see? What do we get right? What do we get wrong? That’s where this membership, this community, really comes into play.
What are some of the biggest challenges facing indies right now?
Their world keeps changing so rapidly, and whatever worked six months ago doesn’t work today. That’s why I talk so much about this one-on-one white-glove approach, which is helping them understand where things are headed so that they can make better decisions. Compared to a major, they have less capital, less resources, smaller teams. They have to be more nimble, and the decisions they make have to be right more often. What kind of guidance are you giving them? What does it mean to break and sustain artists, given the way this world’s operating? And what can we be doing with data, our deal-making and with our partners? And then, what are the next, new opportunities? If music is like water, it’s flowing everywhere, and yet it’s not picking up the monetization it should. So trying to find those next, new opportunities.
Is that one of the ideas behind Merlin Connect?
We’re trying to make the ability for startups — pre-seed companies — to be able to more seamlessly tap into music, from a licensing perspective, from an operational perspective, and get value in return for that. But they may not even realize the value of music. We’re also trying to tackle people who may not have thought about music.
I look at so many different types of companies where music could be so valuable to them if they just understood it. We want to make it more seamless, the operations, the licensing, and then there’s an education piece. But it’s not just a license — we’re investing in you as well. You get access to our team, which [collectively] has hundreds of years of music experience with startups about what works and what doesn’t work. You get access to our independent members who love to be on the cutting edge.
We’ve had some really good conversations with some companies now. This is a long-term project — this is our approach now to how we think about the ecosystem and how we nurture it. I’m not going to change the trajectory of every startup just because they have music now, but I think I can fundamentally change the trajectory of so many startups in a way they don’t realize yet.
This photo of David Bowie, taken by Mick Rock, “is a cherished piece because it captures Bowie’s aura.”
Nina Westervelt
Is this about finding new growth sectors?
One hundred percent. It’s almost endless, the types of platforms and startups that could benefit from music. And it’s going to take experimentation. You can’t help everything grow, but there’s a lot out there that’s not growing the way it could. And it’s going to benefit Merlin and its members and their labels and artists, but it could have beneficial ramifications for the whole industry as well. If we can help be a part of that, that would be really exciting.
How have your experiences at Warner and Facebook served you at Merlin?
It gave me the ability to relate to people at different levels in the business, whether it’s a product manager at a digital platform, or an engineer who’s now a founder of a startup, or it’s a member who runs a metal label, or [is] the head of [European indie trade association] IMPALA. I try to see the business through their eyes. I’ve always been on the service side, and that’s always been the through line. People want to know that you understand them, and that they were heard, and that you’re working to do what you can.
When Merlin renewed its Meta partnership this year, you said it was about more than licensing music. What else do you expect of these alliances?
We don’t think of it as “Let’s come back and kick the tires every few years.” We want to help shape their thinking about music and their understanding of what independents need at an operational level. We want to do the same thing with our partners to create this continual feedback loop and conversation.
“These artifacts represent a different period of my life that keeps me grounded,” he says. They include awards from the Eagle Scouts, WEA and the Young Presidents Organization.
Nina Westervelt
What were your reasons for Merlin’s deals with SoundCloud and Deezer over their proposed changes to the royalty payout model for streaming services?
We want to make sure no one’s gaming the system. We want to make sure that fraudulent content is not an issue. We want to make sure that artificial streaming is not an issue. We’re absolutely willing to experiment and try out different models. But when you say, “Let’s change the system,” we need to be really careful about two things. One is unintended consequences. And No. 2 is, sometimes what I hear is, “Let’s penalize independents.” Let’s prevent abuse, but let’s be careful. Let’s be incremental to avoid unintended consequences. And let’s not do something that will make it more difficult for independents to operate. It’s already expensive enough to operate in this space, and it’s creating more barriers to entry for those who don’t have the same level of capital to arbitrage against.
That raises a question. Over the past 10 to 15 years, many of the traditional barriers to the music business have come down. It seems like some of these proposed changes to the model are a bit like “Let’s rebuild some of those walls.” Do you feel like things are too wide open now? Do we actually need barriers to entry?
When I hear “create more barriers to entry,” I have a little bit of reflex [thinking that means] “Let’s make it more difficult for independents.” At the same time, you want to be supporting quality music. What has happened is technology is outpacing how we operate as humans. I think the biggest challenge music always has is that there is a zero-sum game around some of this. It’s one of the reasons we’re always thinking about creating new incremental revenue sources.
Where did the idea of Merlin Engage come from, and how have things gone so far?
Katie Alberts from Reach Records was the first to propose this, and Marie Clausen from Ninja Tune was the second. This is our second year. We’re conscious of not biting off more than we can chew. But what is really great about it is, we’re matching very senior leaders with up-and-coming, next-generation female leaders. And what I find particularly inspiring is that these people who are incredibly busy are willing to put time toward it. The second is, we’re creating another mini community. And it’s global, we’re connecting people from different countries. There’s so much we want to do at Merlin, but this one was just a no-brainer to help move the music industry in a better direction.
“I keep a curated sample of already-read books nearby as an invitation to be inspired,” he says. Above them: “A graffiti artwork by my talented aunt, Laura Shechter, whose art estate I manage.”
Nina Westervelt
This story appears in the Sept. 28, 2024 issue of Billboard magazine.
Mona Scott-Young says she spent the summer “bouncing back-and-forth” between two popular, concurrent tours that she produced with Live Nation: the 30-city Queens of R&B, co-starring SWV and Xscape, and the highly anticipated, 24-city Out of This World: The Missy Elliott Experience — the rap icon’s first-ever headlining gig featuring Ciara, Busta Rhymes and Timbaland.
Both tours wrapped in August, and the founder and CEO of Monami Entertainment and Monami Productions says she’s currently focusing on another co-production: the Sept. 27 theatrical release of The Lost Holliday, starring Vivica A. Fox and the film’s director, Jussie Smollett.
“We have one life, right?” Scott-Young says. “So we’ve got to get it while the getting’s good. With these tours now under our belt, we have other film and TV projects under development. Once we get those up and running, I definitely have other ideas I’m going to develop.” And that’s not counting the multimedia mogul’s earlier business endeavors such as producing the VH1 reality flagship Love & Hip Hop, which led to Atlanta and Miami spinoffs that are in their 12th and fifth seasons, respectively. (Scott-Young is not actively involved with these shows.) She also co-owns MYX Fusions wine beverages.
Trending on Billboard
Scott-Young began her entrepreneurial evolution in 1996 when she and late music executive Chris Lighty co-founded the company Violator. Comprising various divisions including management, a record label and a marketing group, Violator boasted such marquee R&B/hip-hop talent as Busta Rhymes, LL COOL J, 50 Cent, Mariah Carey, Fantasia and Elliott. (Scott-Young still manages Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Elliott under Monami Entertainment.)
“I never felt like the little woman in the equation,” she says of her co-venture with Lighty. “It was a true partnership. He supported me, but I also made sure that I showed up, showed out and delivered at every turn.”
This bedazzled bottle “is a reminder to celebrate my achievements — better yet, to always be the bling!”
Michael Buckner
The New York native, wife and mother of two first staked her claim in TV with the 2005 UPN reality competition series The Road to Stardom With Missy Elliott, produced by her then-newly minted Monami Productions. Six years later, she launched the original Love & Hip Hop series. Since then, Scott-Young has executive-produced a host of subsequent TV programs, among them the History Channel’s Cocaine: History Between the Lines, WE tv’s Tamar Braxton: Get Ya Life! and Bravo’s The New Atlanta and SWV and Xscape: Queens of R&B, which spawned the tour.
Scott-Young isn’t one to look back. “I’m lucky and blessed every time I get the chance to tap another skill set, another part of what I’m capable of. I haven’t pulled my hair out yet,” she says with a laugh, “so we’ll see what’s next. I have no idea, but I’m here — and I’m ready.”
What took so long for Missy Elliott to embark on her first-ever headlining tour?
It wasn’t for the lack of opportunity or fan requests. Over the years, she’s gotten offers. But it’s all about her feeling the timing is right for anything. She’s popped her head up every now and then when given an opportunity like Lovers & Friends [in 2023]. She did that concert and a few others because they afforded her the scale and budgetary perspective to put together the kind of show that she wants to deliver for her fans. Then she woke up one morning and was like, “We should go out on tour.” We sat down at the top of the year, and it came together very quickly as we jammed through every detail from set design to wardrobe, choreography and everything in between. There is no simple “I’m just going to jump onstage” for Missy Elliott. This was a full-on, spectacular production.
Elliott has talked about having Graves disease. How has she dealt with that on tour?
We’ve been keeping her safe. The good thing is she has adopted a very healthy lifestyle. She walks constantly to maintain her weight and stamina level. So other than the normal wear and tear of performing every night, we’ve tried to keep her in good shape healthwise, which is why we didn’t do many meet-and-greets, although Missy went into the audience every night.
Scott-Young wore this headpiece when New Orleans’ historic 6th Ward Treme Sidewalk Steppers “crowned me She-King — my preference to being crowned Queen.”
Michael Buckner
What does the Queens of R&B tour say about the impact of those veteran groups and the popularity of R&B?
There are probably more R&B core artists out there now than ever before, and not just in the U.S.: It’s resonating internationally. Couple that with what’s happening with females in music. Look at hip-hop: We have more female artists out now than in a very long time. When you put those elements together, you have all of the emotional attachments that fans have for these two ’90s groups. Watching Xscape and SWV on Verzuz, seeing them on their TV show trying to put their differences aside and pull [the tour] together. It’s the music, the sisterhood, the female empowerment of it all. And it’s a testament to the staying power of these ladies and their careers.
Why are nostalgia tours like these so popular and profitable right now?
Missy talked about this while on the road, her seeing the grandmas — and the grandkids — out there in the audience. A lot of these kids — even her dancers — weren’t even born when her music was first released. And there definitely has been a resurgence, especially for ’90s music across both hip-hop and R&B. We’re seeing a lot of new artists who are tapping into that era of music and the emotions it evokes. It holds a special place for both artists and fans. It also goes back to everything I believe: that you’re definitely as old as you allow yourself to be. And art is art. You mentioned Mick Jagger at 81. As long as you’re still able to get out there, do what you love and execute your passion with a level of delivery that’s going to make fans walk away feeling satisfied and entertained, then God bless. Rock out.
Aren’t women artists subjected to a harsher standard when it comes to age?
As women in business, we’ve dealt with ageism for as long as I can remember. I don’t subscribe to that. When you look at what Missy managed to put on that stage, and SWV and Xscape and their years of experience, musicality and performanceship, you can’t put an age on that. And audiences are turning out.
The New Orleans City Council presented Scott-Young with this proclamation for hosting a parade there. “It’s my favorite city in the world,” she says. “And the airport code, MSY, is my initials.”
Michael Buckner
Will Missy or the Queens extend their tours?
They’re both doing extremely well, so there have been conversations. We have an international opportunity that we’re looking at [for Elliott]. But you know, that tour is such a megillah that I’m just focused on successfully getting through this first round. Missy’s excited about touring. She’s loving the experience, so we’re definitely having discussions about how we keep this thing going.
You have managed Elliott for 20-plus years — a rarity in this business. What’s your secret?
I understand her. At our first official meeting, I saw this incredible, larger-than-life talent. But beyond that, I saw a human being who has been through things in life that contributed to her brilliance — but also created this introverted person who felt the need to protect herself from being hurt. So part of me understood that she needed someone to block for her — clear the path — so that she could reach her maximum potential.
Sounds like you two are close.
I think the relationship has worked to where we’re simultaneously friends, colleagues and sisters. We’ve cried together, laughed together, won together, seen dark days together.
What other artists do you manage?
I have more recently been getting pulled back into management, specifically on the music side. I work very closely with a company called Artist Collective Entertainment. Nick Roses, Brian Sher, Eric Tomosunas and myself are the founding partners. We’ve brought our respective experience and talent to the table to see how we can better serve artists across the board. There’ll be an announcement soon about the company, but we’ve got a growing roster of talent from music artists to actors.
This clapboard reminds Scott-Young that she’s “very proud to have built one of the few Black female-owned physical production companies in film and television.”
Michael Buckner
What’s your advice for women navigating an industry that remains male-dominated?
I don’t want to say it hasn’t been difficult. I’m the kind of person that believes we control our destinies. We cannot allow ourselves to be held back, pigeonholed or marginalized by other people, society or the restrictions that we know exist. Our job every single day is to realize our potential and fight to push ourselves to our limits. I understand what my gifts and talents are. So I just push through every day — push myself further to go to places where we are told we should not be and doing things we are told we can’t do. It’s all about proving them wrong.
You often say that you are determined to create pop culture moments. How do you define those moments?
It’s about doing things that are going to stay with people, providing them with an experience that resonates — one they can hang on to, look back on and talk about as a pivotal moment, whether it’s a piece of music, a memory, an experience. So whether it’s a TV show like Love & Hip Hop, which became part of the zeitgeist and redefined the way we saw a particular genre of television; producing Missy Elliott’s first headlining tour and being a part of that moment in music; or taking a brand like Queens of R&B, doing it as a TV show and then leveraging it as a tour. That is a pop culture moment.
The Schulhof surname first became associated with the music business when former Sony America vice chairman Mickey Schulhof led the negotiations to acquire CBS Records in the late 1980s. But his son David staked out his own territory in 2006, when, backed by Trilantic Capital Partners, he used institutional money to buy music publishing assets from songwriters as a co-founder of Evergreen Copyrights — an early player in the song catalog gold rush that would extend into the 2020s. Schulhof and his partners later sold Evergreen to BMG for $80 million in 2010. Now, after spending about a dozen years as a publishing and business development executive for various film studios — as well as a two-year stint as a managing director of G2 Investment Group, a spinoff focusing on media assets for private equity firm Guggenheim Partners — the 53-year-old Georgetown University graduate is touting music industry stocks to retail investors through his latest undertaking, MUSQ Global Music Industry ETF.
ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, are essentially hybrids of mutual and index funds that enable investors to participate in the performance of publicly traded companies without buying individual stocks. ETFs tend to focus on a specific industry or investment theme. MUSQ (pronounced “music”) is an industry index fund that lets retail investors participate in the music industry’s growth through investments in 40 to 50 mainstream company stocks, including the three major-label groups, the major digital service providers (Spotify, Amazon, Apple and Alphabet), Live Nation, SiriusXM, LiveOne and Sonos. It also includes international music companies HYBE, Alex, CTS, Believe and HIM International Music.
Trending on Billboard
Schulhof, who designed the parameters of the index — which is a passive investment vehicle — and serves as its sponsor, launched MUSQ on July 7, 2023, with $2 million in seeding from Goldman Sachs. That investment enabled the creation of about 100,000 shares in the ETF. On that first day of trading, it closed at $24.95. Today, the fund has grown to about 900,000 shares and is backed by the stocks of music companies that carry a net asset value of about $22.8 million.
On Aug. 6, MUSQ closed at $22.17 a share, a week after Schulhof talked to Billboard about his reasons for creating the fund, as well as its performance since its launch.
The MUSQ website lists you as CEO of the fund. If you are the creator and the chief executive, why doesn’t your name appear on any of the financial filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission? Jay Garrett Stevens is listed as the CEO in the annual report.
Once I owned the index, I licensed it. There are maybe a half a dozen white-label, turnkey service providers that manage and work with ETF investment trusts. In order to be listed on any of the stock exchanges, the fund has to be a trust. So I identified what I believe to be the best ETF service provider out there, Exchange Traded Concepts. If you go to their website, you’ll see they manage several billion dollars and something like 60 ETFs across all kinds of other thematic funds. Garrett is the CEO of ETC, and he is listed in all those filings like that, as are the names of [ETC’s] portfolio advisers.
Promotional materials that Schulhof handed out during MUSQ’s first day of trading.
Nina Westervelt
In that case, what is your role with the MUSQ fund?
I am the founder, sponsor, owner and CEO. I handle all marketing. I am the face for this fund. I’ve done tons of podcast interviews and things like Fintech.tv. When reporters call, I am the one talking about the results from Luminate’s midyear report, Goldman Sachs’ Music in the Air report or something Billboard may have written about. I’m also out there talking to investors, evangelizing about how the music industry is undermonetized, and cheap when it’s compared to streaming services like Netflix or Hulu.
How do your service providers work with MUSQ?
ETC is doing all the back-office work for me. They are the adviser and the trading subadviser. Here’s an analogy: If I buy a publishing catalog and outsource it to Kobalt to handle the collections, accounting and to deal with all the other back-office stuff, it’s basically the same thing. Meanwhile, VettaFi does the rebalancing of the index fund every quarter, aligning it with the eligibility requirements for the companies’ shares in the fund. I give those results to ETC.
Do you have any fiduciary responsibility for the fund?
No. What I do on a daily basis besides marketing is deal with all the compliance. I get everything cleared and [Financial Industry Regulatory Authority-approved]. And I need to get my appearances on podcasts and other media approved by compliance if I want to put them on our website.
What are the eligibility requirements for a company’s shares to be considered for inclusion in the MUSQ index?
Companies eligible for the MUSQ index either have to generate more than 50% of their revenue from music or they have to be a top five player in [music] streaming or content, live music, ticketing, technology or radio. If you look in our fund, we do have Apple, Amazon and Google, and clearly those names don’t generate more than 50% of their revenue from music, but they are among the top five players in the streaming category.
A plaque that the New York Stock Exchange presented to him on July 13, 2023, when he rang the closing bell.
Nina Westervelt
What other requirements or restrictions does MUSQ have?
No single stock can be greater than 5% of the fund’s overall holdings. It used to be 7%, but I lowered it. If a company has a good year and its stock comprises 8% of the index, it would be rebalanced at the end of the quarter. Other rules: No company can have less than a $100 million market capitalization or a daily trading liquidity of less than $500,000 per day. So those rules help give the index a good crosssection of small-cap, midcap and large-capitalization companies with liquidity. And I added a small buffer: If a company drops below $100 million in market cap, then their capitalization weight is cut in half. If the stock price continues to drop in the next quarter, it comes off the index.
Have any mainstream music industry stocks not met the requirements to be included in the index?
You may notice Deezer is not in our index. Even though it has over a $200 million market cap, it does not meet the daily trading liquidity requirement.
Have any companies been removed from the index?
IHeart was once in our fund but the stock is down 70%, so it is no longer in the index. The reverse is true if a small [music-related] company grows and now has a market cap greater than $100 million and it also has the required daily trading level of liquidity. Then it can become eligible. It has to have both ingredients.
When a big company in the index releases its financials, does it have much of an impact on the index’s share price?
Yes. The share price is based on the net asset value, but earnings do have an impact. Spotify right now has an average weight of about 3.4% in our fund, so it’s a top 10 holding. The stock crushed earnings in July, and year to date it’s up almost 70%, so that’s going to have a greater weight this quarter because it delivered stellar results. Other stocks like Believe and Tencent are posting positive returns that will have an impact on the weighting. But no single name can be greater than 5% of the fund. MUSQ pricing has been pretty stable during the past year [ranging from a high of $25.82 on July 31, 2023, to a low of $22.17 on Aug. 5, 2024].
This signed copy of Dr. Dre’s The Chronic is a souvenir from Schulhof’s first music industry internship with Jimmy Iovine at Interscope. Dre’s inscription: “Join the Chronic Patrol and take the hit of the bomb shit! Stay up.”
Nina Westervelt
What happens when the stocks in the index aren’t doing well?
MUSQ is a highly diversified, uncorrelated fund. So when the markets are tanking, MUSQ is not tanking. Also, we’re not a meme play in any way. This is really designed to capture the growth and accurately track the global music industry. We view this as a long-term growth investment for investors.
Does MUSQ consist entirely of equity investments, or do you buy fixed-income instruments from these companies too?
They are all equities.
You say your fund is diversified by music industry sector, geography and genre.
The index has labels and music publishers that supply content, it has companies in the concert business, it has technology stocks, and those companies are diversified by genre. Also, the index is diversified across many countries. Today, it looks like 49% is U.S., 21% is Korean, 11% is Japan. If you go to the index page on our website, it will give you a breakdown. Internationally, we’ve got some exciting companies: Tencent in China, CTS Eventim in Germany, Hipgnosis in the U.K., Believe in France. And then we’ve got 10 or 11 K-pop stocks like Genie Music Corp and Cocoa, [and] the two biggest streaming companies in South Korea, HYBE and YG Entertainment. We have companies like Cloud Music and Avex in Japan and Amuse, one of the biggest content companies in Taiwan.
Does having international companies make the index more attractive to investors?
All the international companies in this fund trade in local currencies. You would have to open up local accounts to trade them, and that costs fees. MUSQ creates a very liquid, convenient and portable way for investors to have access to all these exciting companies.
Guitar that Bruce Springsteen autographed for Schulhof when they met after a show on the 1996 Ghost of Tom Joad tour.
Nina Westervelt
How did you do on Hipgnosis?
Hipgnosis was 2.3% weight in our fund and because Blackstone is taking it private, it is up 42%, so we made money on it.
Your fund has grown from $2 million in assets to over $20 million in assets. What’s the next goal?
To reach $25 million. A lot of financial firms have that as a minimum before they offer it to their customer. Beyond that, it’s $50 million. If the MUSQ fund gets to that point, it would have hundreds of thousands of financial advisers offering it as an investment option.
Given the multitude of distribution, streaming, promotion and marketing options and expectations, the business of becoming an established artist has turned into a seriously heavy lift for music acts and their managers. It’s one reason that Mick Management partner Jonathan Eshak says, “We don’t like to refer to ourselves as a management company anymore. We’re a music company. What we do more than anything else is brand development, artist development — world-building … We’re not just trying to keep the train on the tracks.”
Eshak and his partner, Michael McDonald, the company’s founder, got into management after immersing themselves in other sectors of the business. McDonald served as Dave Matthews Band’s tour manager before co-founding ATO Records in 2000 with Matthews; his manager, Red Light founder Coran Capshaw; and Chris Tetzeli, who went on to start 7S Management. He opened Mick the following year with John Mayer as one of his first clients and, in 2004, brought on data savant Eshak, who worked at Universal Music Publishing Group (and is the twin brother of Island Records co-CEO Justin Eshak). Jonathan became a partner in 2015.
With a staff of approximately 20 in New York, Los Angeles and Nashville, the duo has built a boutique firm — with its own record label, Mick Music, distributed by Believe — that represents Maggie Rogers, who released the critically praised Don’t Forget Me in April; Leon Bridges and Ray LaMontagne, who will both release albums later this year; The Walkmen and the solo career of their frontman, Hamilton Leithauser; Sharon Van Etten; Brett Dennen; Mandy Moore; My Morning Jacket; and The Marias.
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In a fragmented culture where “it’s very hard to find water-cooler moments,” according to Eshak, Mick’s team excels in building committed fan bases for a roster of individualistic artists who punch above their weight. “Artists all define success differently, and we understand that,” he adds. “We understand that there’s no one way of doing it anymore.” Their bespoke approach has resulted in some notable recent successes. In August, Rogers will embark on an international arena tour — including two shows at Madison Square Garden — though she has yet to achieve platinum sales with an album. In 2018, Leithauser began a five-night residency at the swank, 100-capacity Café Carlyle in New York, playing to “a few die-hard Walkmen fans and some fairly confused business travelers,” as Eshak puts it. This year, Leithauser sold out 12 nights, and the concept will be expanded with potential notable guests in 2025. And in June, The Marias celebrated the release of their new album, Submarine, with a secret pop-up show in downtown Los Angeles for approximately 5,000 fans. Eshak says 38,000 RSVP’d.
“What each of those things speak to is us finding interesting ways that the artists appreciate and superserve fan bases,” McDonald says.
Eshak saw his first concert in the late 1980s when George Strait and his band headlined the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo at the Houston Astrodome. “Thirty-plus years later, I was given this belt buckle by the rodeo when Leon Bridges headlined,” he says. “Truly a full-circle moment.”
Michael Buckner
What are the challenges of running an artist management company today versus 25 years ago?
Jonathan Eshak: When I first started with Michael, the sky had started to fall on the recorded-music business. This was the dawn of file-sharing companies like Napster and Kazaa. It was attractive to join Michael for that very reason. He was coming from building a world that was unique, not just to the ebbs and flows of the success of recorded music but also, how do you do things well in touring, merchandising, etc. He understood the creation of cultures, having worked with Dave Matthews and Coran.
Like the Grateful Dead, Matthews built a culture around his music.
Eshak: The Dead were the godfathers of that, and Mick’s ethos effectively starts there. While the challenges of the industry have evolved, the code of building an artist’s career remains the same. Which is, how do you focus on building a meaningful, long-lasting relationship with your fan base? We always say, “How do we make the artist the hit and not just the songs?” Music is just part of the cocktail. It’s also, how are we creating a dynamic of connectivity between the artist and the fan? How are we merchandising with them? How are we creating live shows that are meaningful, that evolve? There’s been a lot of lip service about artist development throughout the history of recorded music.
Michael McDonald: There were fewer breakthrough moments then, whereas today, because of the way technology and culture has evolved, it’s been democratized. The upside is that more people can succeed. The downside is there are fewer channels that create that star-turn moment.
Eshak snagged this copy of the run-of-show for Saturday Night Live on Nov. 3, 2018, when Rogers appeared as musical guest. “It’s an honor each time our acts receive the invite,” he says.
Michael Buckner
Maggie Rogers seems to be a prime example of someone who has grown through connectivity with her fans.
Eshak: Maggie has understood the importance of connectivity from the start. She had this moment of Pharrell-ity, for lack of a better word, and instead of sitting back and working that, she understood the importance of going around the world and connecting with her fans face-to-face. To your point, she’s doing two nights in Madison Square Garden without a platinum record. Now, she obviously wants that and we want that for her, but people who are in are in. Even as she’s grown, the No. 1 thing on the checklist is, what are we doing for that audience?
What’s an example of that?
Eshak: When we were announcing the fall arena tour, we created pop-up shops in all the markets where people could line up to buy exclusive merchandise and, most importantly, reduced-price tickets. She was hearing from unsettled fans about ticket prices, so we tried to create solves. Fans could walk [into the pop-ups], point at a seat map and get a ticket that was going to cost less than if they paid for it online. Because of that, her fans understand that she sees them.
What questions do you ask before signing an artist?
McDonald: Most importantly, “Do we love the music? Do we feel like we can really grow this career?” And then, “Do they, will they, work hard?” We can’t want it more than they do. Some of this is research you can do before you meet the artist. Much of it we do through conversations, but there’s also data that’s crucial. We’ve had great success following our passion and guts, but to not use the tools at our disposal to help make those decisions would be foolish. Data is a great strength of Jonathan’s and why we’ve evolved in using it to inform decisions but never to unequivocally make decisions. If we did, we never would have signed some of the artists we have.
Why did you partner with Firebird?
McDonald: Firebird brings us resources that a company our size doesn’t have. There’s a data department and an analytics department of 10 to 15 people. There’s a finance department. There are all sorts of things that allow us to double down on the data and free us up to stay focused on our artists.
McDonald celebrated “turning 50, 20 years of sobriety, raising nearly $500,000 for MusiCares and crossing something off my bucket list” by participating in the 2019 Iron Man World Championship. “It was an epic journey and one of the greatest days of my life,” he says.
Michael Buckner
What’s your pitch to artists you want to sign?
Eshak: It really comes down to having a shared code, so it’s important that we take the time to sit down with artists and say, “What are your life goals in addition to success in recorded music?” This is such a deep relationship that we talk all the time. We talk on weekends. We’re there with them for very big life stages, and it’s really important for us to have at least a common set of goals because it takes a lot out of everybody. Where we do a good job is acting almost as coaches now. It’s our job to be highly informed about how people are having success, distilling that and applying it to the artists that we represent, who are all quite different. In other words, how can we do this with you so that you remain true to yourself? We can’t do that for a thousand artists. It’s not the business model that Michael and I have elected to build.
You have a label.
Eshak: We have a label, and we’re working with some of our artists whose repertoires are returning to them and they need a mechanism to put music out. Some of it is also identifying artists that we like and helping them put music into the world.
Do you encourage your artists to own their masters?
McDonald: One hundred percent, whenever possible. Today, we would be hard pressed to pursue a deal that started with perpetuity music being somewhere else. There’s always a chance that it’s going to happen, and ultimately, it’s an artist’s decision. If they feel like this is their shot and they’re willing to give that up — absolutely. But one of the reasons we created the label was to say, “All right, let’s have an easy mechanism where we can control the deal terms. Let’s put music out and try to build on that. Then, if a great licensing option is not available today, let’s take a year and try to build something.” Ray LaMontagne’s album Trouble reverted to him in May after 20 years. So it’s not always a three-year or five-year reversion. But 20 years ago, we were able to take a long view and say, “Let’s take whatever percentage less today so at least there’s the option to sell those recordings X number of years later.”
Are your agreements with artists traditional percentage deals or partnerships?
McDonald: It varies. We have a lot of traditional deals, but any time we’re in true partnership, where we’re sharing [intellectual property] with an artist, it’s fully above board and clear with everyone’s legal teams. There is an evolving way that artists are going to get into business with different companies. We welcome that as things evolve.
A friend of McDonald had this box made for him. “It’s where I keep my most cherished and memorable notes and small keepsakes from artists, family and friends.”
Michael Buckner
At the beginning of 2013, Mike Luba says he dragged Mumford & Sons’ Ben Lovett to Forest Hills Stadium in Queens on a sort of vision quest. He was working with the band on its Gentlemen of the Road Tour and knew that Lovett had grown up in the tennis town of Wimbledon, England. An avid tennis fan and player himself, Luba wanted to sell the band on “playing a gig at the Wimbledon of New York.”
Built in the 1920s, the stadium, which adjoins and is owned by the West Side Tennis Club (WSTC), had been the site of the U.S. Open for six decades and, in the ’60s and ’70s, hosted a series of landmark concerts by The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Barbra Streisand, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, to name a few. But those days had long since passed when Luba says Lovett “took two steps into the site, which at that point had trees growing out of compost piles in the bowl and hadn’t been touched in decades. Ben looked at me and said, ‘This is nothing like Wimbledon. It’s a total fucking train wreck. But we can do a proper rock show here.’
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“That was early 2013,” Luba recalls. “They played that August. That’s how fast I did that.”
Almost 11 years after that first concert, Forest Hills Stadium has evolved into the Chateau Marmont of outdoor venues. Luba and his team have restored much of its ’20s vintage vibe and rehabbed a dozen or so funkily decorated speakeasy-style rooms that ring the stadium floor. (One is entered through a port-a-potty; another, a phone booth.)
A self-described “hippie punk-rock dude,” Luba says the stadium, which has a capacity of about 13,000, will stage “30-ish” events this season in a hypercompetitive market for venues. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, The National, The War on Drugs, Khruangbin, Tiësto, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Pitbull are among those that have played or will play this season. And in early June, Hozier sold out four nights — a first in the stadium’s 101-year history.
Box office results have grown accordingly. In 2019, the stadium grossed $6.7 million; in 2023, it took in $22.1 million and finished at No. 17 for the year among venues with capacities between 10,001 and 15,000, according to Billboard Boxscore. Along with that success, however, came an ongoing legal battle with the local homeowners association, the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation (FHGC), over alleged noise levels and unruly crowds.
Luba had much to say about the contretemps during this conversation with Billboard, which took place in the small hut where he works on the stadium grounds. He also discussed his unique employment arrangement. Luba is a partner in Tiebreaker Productions — which holds a long-term lease to the stadium — with his previous full-time employer, AEG, and its subsidiary The Bowery Presents, as well as some overachiever friends from his high school tennis team. Since last July, he is also Live Nation’s executive vp of strategy. (It’s his second turn at the company: He worked with then-chairman Michael Cohl in the early 2000s.) Given the rivalry between the two live-industry giants, his dual roles can be a tightrope walk.
Eleven years later, how has the stadium evolved?
We realized early on that the place itself was inherently magical. So we just leaned into making it feel like when you come here it’s in its 1920s state, but we are using 2024 technology. So much of the credit for that goes to [stadium GM] Jason Brandt and the work that was done. For years, every penny we made got poured back into it. The food and beverage program has totally been elevated. I’m personally most proud of the fact that we now have real bathrooms that are plumbed into the main sewer system of the city. We’re tied into the power grid instead of having to bring in generators. We’ve put in tons of points of sale for bars so there’s no lines. The load-in went from being three days to four hours. You can pull your trucks right up to the stage. It has really reduced the impact on trucks coming in and out of the neighborhood.
“The first time John McEnroe [second from left] came to see a show, he confirmed an urban legend that in 1977, the last year of the U.S. Open here, someone was shot in the shin. I said, ‘That’s crazy.’ He said, ‘There’s something even crazier. I once played tennis with Carlos Santana [left], Vitas Gerulaitis [second from right, who was once a member of the tennis club’s ground crew] and Meat Loaf [right].’ When I showed him this photo, he tried to take it off the wall. I literally had to wrestle it away from him.”
Nina Westervelt
How did you build your season lineup from a few shows to around 30?
The second year we did five. That was right when I started at AEG. I did a walkaround with [chairman/CEO] Jay Marciano — he had previously run the Garden — who told me, “You will never book more than six shows here. The competition is too much.” I said, “Jay, if it was just me, you’re probably right, but my partner Don Sullivan is one of the great promoters of all time. There’s no way we’re not going to be able to book six fucking shows here.” Sure enough, the second year we got five — and the fifth one was a major favor. The first three seasons — 2013, 2014 and 2015 — were all bands that I’d either slept on their couch or they had slept on my couch. I had been their agent or their manager, and Jay and I were cashing in 30 years’ worth of chips. Zero income.
What did you do to turn that around?
It was really word-of-mouth. The bands told other bands. The crews told other crews. And then people who came to shows told other people. Our original ticketing system was Ticketfly, so we had no mailing list. There was no institutional way to market.
When did your battle with the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation begin?
This was the first master-planned neighborhood ever in America, and it happened to include the tennis club and the stadium. The governing body is the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation, with whom we had an incredible relationship for a decade — multiple presidents, multiple boards. It’s an all-volunteer board, and it changes every couple of years. We did everything in consultation with them, we paid them, and at the end of every season, we would sit down and have a postmortem of what was good, what was bad and give them a check.
They had an election, and a new president [Anthony Oprisiu] comes in. It turns out he has a serious grudge against the tennis club. There are all sorts of rumors about what it is. Whatever it is, there’s no rational anything. It doesn’t make any sense. [Editor’s note: A spokesman for the FHGC denies this, saying, “The FHGC board — made up of 15 members — voted unanimously to commence litigation because of the WSTC and Tiebreaker’s unacceptable behavior.”]
So this beef is more about the tennis club than the concerts?
Yeah, but we’re the easy target. The tropes are so prevalent: rock’n’roll, people creating garbage, pissing everywhere, puking everywhere. And it’s just not true. However, to the general public, it all sounds reasonable. This guy and like three to five board members are like the Matt Gaetzes, Marjorie Taylor Greenes — the Freedom Caucus of Forest Hills. They are willing to destroy it for the 600 people who work here on every show and the more than 375,000 people who come here to enjoy the music.
Haven’t you also addressed their complaints about sound levels?
The first year we got here, the conventional wisdom was that in the old days, the sound was blowing up over the top of the stadium. So, we did a full acoustical study, and the engineer was like, look, in the ‘60s you were basically plopping giant speakers on the stages and blasting it. The PAs now are so sophisticated with the line arrays that we can control the direction of it. He said, we can get it so that there’s no sound going over the top, but it will go down the stairwells. If you cover the stairwells, you’ll trap 98% of it. Then, he said, “What step do you want the earmuffs to go on?” I’m like, “Man, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He said, if you tell me step six, when you hit step six going up to the seats, it will feel like earmuffs get put on your head. Then when you get six steps from the top, you’ll feel like they come off.
Sure as shit, it totally works. We built these bass traps over what used to be kind of dodgy and scary stairwells up into the bowl and after the first show people were freaking out because they’d go into the stairwell and it’s like a sensory deprivation thing. So, we put up signs that say, “You’re standing in a bass trap,” and something like, “These walls were designed specifically to keep the music from reaching our neighbors who are right across the street.” Working hand-in-hand with the DEP, we’ve now built the same sort of enclosures over the ground-floor exits. Outside of putting a roof on it, every hole is blocked. We had Primus ripping on Saturday and there was a moment when I was in the concourse, and I was like, shouldn’t they be on?
“Bob Dylan played air guitar to ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ on this racket his first time back at the stadium,” Luba says.
Nina Westervelt
You gave the corporation a check at the end of each season, and they wanted more?
They wanted $100,000 a show instead of the $5,000 we were paying them. If we wanted to book 20 or more shows, it went to $200,000 a show.
How did they arrive at those numbers?
They made some calculation based on gross ticket sales and attendance, with zero knowledge of our costs. Basically, the only way we survive is selling beer. We have no parking. The bands take all the money, and we’re competing with [Madison Square] Garden, Barclays Center, Central Park, Prospect Park, UBS Arena, Jones Beach and on and on. No one is cutting anyone a deal. [Editor’s note: According to the FHGC spokesman, due to its “decadeslong relationship” with the stadium, it did not charge the market price it charges other entities for closing its streets. He adds, “In light of the stadium’s unwillingness to work in partnership with the FHGC, the FHGC is no longer willing to subsidize the operational costs of the stadium.”]
Where do things stand now?
We got an injunction, which remains in place while this is being litigated. Most of the lawsuit is to make us follow the law and pull the proper permits, which we’ve always done and will continue to do. The judge granted their request to have an independent sound monitor here for every show. We had suggested that the [Department of Environmental Protection] be the independent monitor. They’ve dinged us when we’ve been out of code. They’re a city agency. They have no horse in the race. They’ve dinged us when we’ve been out of code. But after the judge granted their request, they realized they would have to pay for the independent monitor — because it was their request — and they freaked out. Then they wrote a letter withdrawing the one thing that they won because when they won it, they went out to the neighborhood saying they had a triumphant, majestic win in court, and the neighbors were like, whoa, we’re paying for it?
What does the tennis club make of this?
This tennis club is the largest member of the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation. They pay more dues than anyone else. They sued the board for breach of candor and breach of their fiduciary duty because essentially the club is going to be funding the lawsuit against itself. [Editor’s note: In a statement, Oprisiu said, “FHGC remains open to a compromise that respects our community and historic norms of behavior at the club. To date, [the WSTC] and Tiebreaker have yet to share a meaningful proposal for our community to consider. Instead, they have recently tripled the number of events and focused on personal attacks on the board with offensive innuendos and gossip. We’re confident in our legal standing as recently supported by the court’s ruling.”]
You actually own a piece of Forest Hills, right?
The entity is called Tiebreaker Productions. Don Sullivan and I, my high school tennis team, and the guys at MTheory, JT Myers and Nat Pastor, put up the original bread. Then, the MTheory guys said, we don’t want to be in the venue business, and they sold their share to AEG. Then, when AEG acquired Bowery Presents, they got that share.
You’re serious about the high school tennis team?
Dead serious. I have these five friends who have stayed friends since kindergarten. We all went to Wheatley High School in Old Westbury, Long Island. Some of us went to college together. At least once a year we try to get together, and it happened to be the night after I did the walkthrough here. By far, I’m the black sheep of this highly overachieving group. One guy was an incredible high school tennis player. He was considering turning pro but ended up going to Yale and was the best Ivy League tennis player. a freshman. When I explained that I wanted to keep Forest Hills Stadium independent and not sell it to AEG, he looked at me and said, “I love tennis. I love music. Let’s try it.” We were all blotto at that point. I said, “Okay man, tonight go home, take $2 million, put it in a suitcase, go out into your backyard and just torch it. If you can stomach that then welcome to the music business. He called me the next day and said his wife wouldn’t let him do the suitcase thing, but he still wanted to try it.
How did you come to work for Live Nation?
When my deal was potentially coming up at AEG, [Live Nation chief strategy officer] Jordan Zachary called. I was ready to move on. It finally all worked out, and Live Nation gave me this incredible opportunity. I get to work on tours with artists that I love and care about. I get to help them on [business development] when they do new building projects or any kind of venue stuff, and I get to participate a little bit on the big-picture strategy.
Nina Westervelt
How does Forest Hills fit in with your Live Nation work?
From day one, Forest Hills was an open room, like the Garden or the Staples Center. When AEG [took a stake in Tiebreaker], they became the promoter partner, but if there was a band that wanted Live Nation to promote their tour, they would come in. This year, half of the shows we do will be Live Nation and half will be Bowery. When I started back at Live Nation, we began to educate the industry that the idea of playing Jones Beach and Forest Hills is now possible. You look on a map and they’re 27 or so miles apart, but for those who live here, they might as well be Mars and Jupiter. There’s an ecosystem now where Pitbull can play Jones Beach and Forest Hills, as he will, and both will sell out.
How do you balance the Live Nation-AEG equation?
My real job is at Live Nation, and my partners here are Bowery and AEG. The companies clearly don’t like each other, so it’s a little tricky. There’s real-life proprietary shit that I’m dead serious about, and I keep it very, very separate. That’s why I sit out here by myself. I’ll go into the Live Nation office once in a while, but I try to stay out of all the drama. I’m really thankful that both AEG and Live Nation let me exist in this space. And it’s important to me that Live Nation understands that I’m on the Live Nation team. It’s a testament to Rapino and Jordan and that team being open-minded. I mean, I hated Live Nation.
That’s right, you manage The String Cheese Incident, and they sued Ticketmaster for allegedly denying them their direct-to-fan ticket allotment. [The suit was settled.]
Yeah, we sued them under the antitrust act and we probably would have won. But now I see it from the other side that company is full of people who really love music, take real pride in their job, work really hard, and do it at a really high level.
We’ve reported on how Gen Z is not consuming as much alcohol as previous generations. Would you consider selling pot in the way, for instance, that Outside Lands has Grasslands?
I will consider as soon as it’s legal. There’s no reason not to. For me, alcohol is way more dangerous than marijuana. At least in New York State it’s a really gray area. I’m by no means an expert on this, but I think it’s mostly because it’s not federally legal, so there’s no way for the banks — no one knows how to deal with the money part of it. Until there’s some way to actually transact on it, I don’t think we can legally do it anywhere. It’s coming, though, for sure.
What are the most pressing issues facing the live business right now?
Climate change is making it very hard to do outdoor events. I’m worried that at some point they become uninsurable. Every morning, I wake up and multiple shows are canceled in places that have never had [weather issues], like 80-mile-an-hour winds shutting down Lovers & Friends in Las Vegas. And that happens over and over. It’s also become excruciatingly expensive. The supply chain issues are real, labor is real. Five years ago, you could get a bus for $5,000 a week. They’re now $13,000 a week. It’s really hard for bands to tour.
“This is a bobblehead of the master electrician at the stadium, Tommy Sellers. He has been here for basically every show that has been at the stadium, and he’s the spiritual leader for the crew.”
Nina Westervelt
When the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC) releases its annual Music Industry Action Report Card, co-founder and president/CEO Willie “Prophet” Stiggers says a barrage of distressed phone calls from executives inevitably follows. The assessments grade music companies on how well they’ve kept promises made in 2020 to diversify their executive ranks, among other measures; the executives call, he explains, to complain that the grades affect their bottom lines.
“That’s what we want to do,” says Stiggers, who is also the CEO of artist and brand management company 50/50 Music Group Management. “You can’t continue to operate with false promises after saying that you stand in solidarity with your Black brothers and sisters and then don’t promote the Black executive and don’t ensure that a woman is in an environment where she is protected and her vision is executed.”
BMAC was established in June 2020 following the movement #TheShowMustBePaused to advance racial diversity, equity and inclusion in the music business. But this year’s mass industry layoffs, which included many DEI executives, has “unrolled some of the progress we were making,” Stiggers says.
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As a result, BMAC will present a new version of its report before its fourth annual gala in September. The organization has sent a link to executives that asks them to anonymously indicate whether they have seen true change, what has worsened and what still needs to be addressed.
The early results, Stiggers says, are “almost a slap in the face — a ‘whitelash,’ if you will, to the commitments that were made in 2020. The question has become, Was this s— really performative or not?”
The National Action Network Award that Stiggers received this year — “a 360 moment for me because my activism began with [NAN founder and president] Al Sharpton. I created and led [the organization’s] youth division.”
Diwang Valdez
Why are there fewer Black executives in the music industry now than in 2019?
The major labels, I’m sure, would tell you AI [artificial intelligence]. The uncertainty of that realm has caused them to tighten up. But my suspicions are, there’s a bit of that, but these positions [for Black and women executives] were not permanent. A lot of the people were put in these positions in 2020 — managers became senior-level directors, for example — and then in 2024, they have been asked to go back to that lower position or exit altogether. When you have the RIAA report record-breaking revenue that the industry generated in 2023, it’s a little lost on me how that translates to the lack of employment.
What are your thoughts on the DEI positions that have been eliminated since 2020?
The reality is that a lot of these commitments from the labels were three-year commitments. That seemed to be the hot number where they thought maybe at the end of the three years this s— would go away or we would be on to something else. Seemingly, the contracts that these DEI executives had were three-year deals. Once they were up, [the labels were] like, “We did that. We checked the box. Now let’s go back to business as usual.” There was so much potential for us to set this thing on the right course. So for us to go backward is really embarrassing, and history is going to reflect this.
How are you counseling these companies to elevate people of color and women?
A lot of our conversations with these labels, we do confidentially. Here’s what I can say about it. We bring all kinds of stats to prove how profitable diversity is; how profitable it is when you let women lead; how profitable historically it has been when people of color — those who make the product, who consume the product — lead [in terms of] how that product is distributed. This is not even a moral conversation at this point. I’m telling you how it impacts your bottom line.
The prototype of the first BMAC Award, which was given in September 2021 to The Weeknd at the first gala. “He said, ‘This is the greatest award I ever received.’ ”
Diwang Valdez
What do you think of the Recording Academy’s attempts to diversify the voting membership for the Grammy Awards?
Racism is a 450-year-old issue. It is not going to be solved in three or four years. What we can do is talk about the progress that has been made. We have, for the first time, a Black CEO of the Recording Academy. That’s progress. We watched new categories get introduced [like] best song for social change. That didn’t exist prior to Harvey Mason jr. as CEO. He’s up against decades of systems that we are slowly chipping away at. The mere fact that there is a Black Music Collective. The fact that Jay-Z stood on the stage and held a Grammy named after Dr. Dre. We’re not going to act like that is the liberation of our people, but we’re not going to act like that’s not change.
You say BMAC has moved from protest to policy. How?
In 2022, it came to our attention that there were over 500 cases of Black men that were locked up for lyrics. That became a problem for us. So BMAC created the federal legislation called the RAP Act. The work that we did on that federal level created all these statewide bills like what Gov. [Gavin] Newsom signed in California last year. That was a direct result of our work. We are working with the group around Fix the Tix and are working with the groups around AI protection. Our work around legislative policy is as loud, as real and as meaningful as the work we’re doing with pipeline programs.
What are some of those pipeline programs?
Three years ago, we partnered with the RIAA and Tennessee State University and [Nashville Music Equity’s] Brian Sexton, who is an alumnus there, to bring a unique commercial business school to young people who want to get into the industry. We bring in executives and artists from all over the industry. They get paid internships that come out of that every year. We’ve had several people get gainfully employed at record labels and music studios. Most recently, Live Nation hired one of the participants. Tri Star [Sports & Entertainment] hired a young woman from this year’s classes.
A portrait of Stiggers; his wife of 29 years, Fatima; and three of their children, from left: Zaira, Nailah and Willie III. They have since been joined by daughter Safra-Cree. “We met in high school and started [our] family young, which defined my greater purpose,” he says.
Diwang Valdez
That’s not your only Nashville-related initiative.
BMAC also put out a report in 2022 called Three Chords and the Actual Truth: The Manufactured Myth of Country Music and White America. When we released that report, there was a call to action for the music world to join us in addressing the structural racism on Music Row in Nashville and creating access. We were inspired by a guy named Michael Tubbs from Stockton, Calif. He created Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and got mayors from all over the country to create these pilot programs where they would give [citizens of their city] guaranteed income of up to $2,000 a month. He got the qualitative and quantitative data needed to show the positive effects of small increments of money going to people directly.
We felt we could bring the same concept to the music industry and creators. The Academy of Country Music was the first to raise their hand and join us. A year to the date of that report, 20 young Black kids [in the music community] started receiving $1,000 a month, plus mentorship and [other] services.
BMAC is also working with the live industry.
We did a partnership with Live Nation and created BMAC Live, a 10-day intensive program in California as part of Live Nation’s School of Live. They allowed BMAC to come in and carve out a program specifically geared toward young Black non-college-bound students who have a desire to be in the live space. We’ve had 3,000 applicants already, and we are going to pick 20 of the best of that group and fly them out to Los Angeles for a full week. Each of those young people will go to their respective cities and receive a paid internship from Live Nation for six months. [Then] they will be eligible for the Live Nation apprenticeship program. That’s another six months that will then lead to employment. That’s the type of access and training we talked about, and that program will scale and grow annually.
A plaque commemorating the first Music Business Accelerator Program created by BMAC in partnership with the RIAA that started at Tennessee State University in 2021.
Diwang Valdez
Is there anything else you would like to highlight?
We’re working on something really special with Apple Pathways. [We are training young people] around spatial audio, spatial visual and preparing them for the technology of tomorrow. This is where we are going, and if we don’t create the accessibility to the technology, another divide is about to happen. Another shift will take place in which Black America is left out once again.
Is BMAC looking to expand its staff as these programs and initiatives develop?
Yes. We will be expanding and looking at college representatives. Young people are ready. They’re not moving with the same barriers and the same willingness to allow norms to continue to separate people. It’s a different spirit among this generation here.
One thing we realized is that this fight for justice isn’t just here in the U.S. We are in partnerships with organizations in the United Kingdom and Australia, and we are forging a tremendous movement with several key organizations throughout the continent [of Africa]. I’m very concerned about what’s happening with Afrobeats. If we don’t get over there and start working with our African brothers and sisters to understand the industry, the cultural appropriation that took place in hip-hop, blues, rock, country will happen over there. If we do not protect the [intellectual property], it will be cultural colonization all over again.