From the Desk Of
In the ever-evolving world of music asset trading, Influence Media Partners early on broke away from the initial frenzy over evergreen rock music classics to pursue a riskier strategy: acquiring contemporary music catalogs, including hip-hop. One of its biggest deals was the 2022 acquisition of Future’s publishing catalog, which consists of 612 songs composed from 2004 to 2020.
Last year, Influence Media, which is backed by BlackRock and Warner Music Group (WMG), expanded its operations with the founding of SLANG, a label and music publishing operation. While the music company has signed publishing deals and separate joint ventures with Future and DJ Khaled that allows them to sign songwriters to publishing deals, its label is betting on such developing acts as hip-hop artists Camper, RX YP and TruththeBull — a sector of the business that usually does not attract institutional investors.
Rene McLean founded Influence Media in 2019 with his wife and business partner, Lylette Pizarro McLean, a former music industry marketing executive, and Lynn Hazan, a former CFO for Epic and RED. He grew up in New York just before hip-hop music and culture were becoming mainstream in the early 1990s. “What do you do when you’re 18 in New York City?” he says. “You start clubbing. I got drawn into nightlife and music, and I loved hip-hop and did break dancing and graffiti and all that stuff.” Even though he was the son of jazz musician Rene McLean Sr. and the grandson of renowned jazz saxophonist-composer Jackie McLean, “I didn’t want to be a musician or in the music business,” he recalls. “But then something went off in my head.”
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“I like to keep meaningful books and collectibles I’ve picked up throughout my career to remember where I come from.”
Carl Chisolm
After landing a promotion position at Virgin Records, followed by similar jobs at RCA — where he worked with Mobb Deep and Wu-Tang Clan — and Elektra, McLean formed Mixshow Marketing and Promotion company The RPM Group before founding Influence Media.
What led you to found Influence Media?
At that point in time, I had created a conference, a trade magazine, and, through the conference, we were doing a lot of brand work. That’s when Lylette Pizarro entered my life. We had gotten corporate clients to sponsor the conference, so we went out and created our own boutique agency, which wound up having a bunch of Fortune 500 clients like PepsiCo, LVMH and Verizon. We did everything from sponsorship to endorsement deals to strategy work, and that led us to think if we’re going to really get back into the nuts and bolts of the music business, the only way to really be impactful was to create Influence Media. By then, streaming had come on, and we saw the future. So we raised money and acquired three catalogs, which we then sold to Tempo.
After selling those catalogs, you got $750 million in funding from BlackRock and WMG and bought more catalogs — Future, Blake Shelton and Enrique Iglesias. Why start SLANG?
Lylette and I felt that, outside of acquiring and investing in these catalogs, there was an opportunity to build a label and a publishing company. I’ve always looked for the white space. We’re not just finance folks; we come from the music business.
Is WMG a partner in the label? Are you using them for distribution and publishing administration?
Yes, SLANG is a part of Influence and Warner is one of our strategic partners in Influence.
“My son painted these art pieces,” McLean says. “I love the color that they add to the office.”
Carl Chisolm
Who is doing the A&R and signing the artists to the label?
I’ve done all the signings to date, but we’re going to bring in a head of A&R. We now have a staff of about eight. But it’s been very boutique in the way I’ve been looking at these acts. We really want to develop these acts properly and break them solidly. And it seems like it’s really going in the right direction.
In looking at your roster, the bigger names are Will Smith and The Underachievers.
Will Smith is a distribution deal. But we’re highly involved in all the marketing and everything else. We work closely with Will’s camp. They’ve been great partners. And we just had our first No. 1 gospel record with him. So that’s wonderful right there.
I would classify the rest of your roster as developing artists, like Camper and RX YP.
Camper is incredible. He is a Grammy-nominated R&B producer, and he’s done a lot of things with H.E.R., Daniel Caesar and Coco Jones. RX YP is a rapper from Atlanta, very street. We also have, like you mentioned earlier, The Underachievers, who were originally signed to RPM and we picked them back up. They have a project coming out soon. They’re doing something with the clothing designer Kid Super. We’ve got TruththeBull, which is a true artist development story in the making. His debut mixtape is coming out in April, and his most recent single debuted [at No. 28 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50]. We’re really excited about that project.
“Blake Shelton signed this guitar. We have been working with him on the Influence Media side since 2022, and we are honored to work with such a luminary.”
Carl Chisolm
You have eight albums by developing acts either out already or coming out this year. With such a small staff, does SLANG have the bandwidth to try to break that many acts?
But they are not all coming at the same time. Some of them, like RX YP, are releasing things later in the year. The focus right now is on TruththeBull, Leaf, Isaia Huron and Camper. When you are working with developing acts, there are no days off, so it’s constant development, building and building. And if things are going in the right direction, then you just keep fueling it to keep it going. But then certain acts are just very creative on their own, so we lean on their creativity and just amplify it. Some acts require heavy lifting and then there’s some light lifting.
Why start a publishing division?
In my mind, it goes hand in hand with the label. The great thing about the publishing side of things is that you can step in at a more accelerated [pace]. We’ve had three No. 1s in the last six months courtesy of our relationship with Future. We also publish Lil Durk and, I love this one, RaiNao. It’s pronounced “right now,” and she’s currently on Bad Bunny’s album. It’s getting huge exposure. She’s working on her new project. We’re excited about her, as we are about our friend DJ Khaled. We are currently his publisher, too.
In addition to a publishing deal with Future, you have partnered with him on other business. What does that entail?
We also have a joint venture with him regarding signing writers. The same thing with DJ Khaled. We get vertically involved with a lot of artists that we work with. For instance, with Future we secured [a deal for] him to be the face of Grand Marnier, which just started rolling out. And we helped Visa organize their first large event at the Louvre and secure Post Malone [for it]. We had RaiNao perform at the Louvre with Post. That’s an example of how we see the world.
“I was drawn to this chess board because it reminds me of my hometown, the best city in the world, NYC,” he says.
Carl Chisolm
How are these deals structured?
It depends. Some of the [artists] are signed directly to us; some of them are [joint ventures]. There’s the distribution deal [with Smith]. We have the ability to be flexible.
Earlier, you indicated that SLANG is funded by Influence Media, which primarily invested in contemporary, established artists. SLANG works with developing artists, a sector of the business that institutional investors typically don’t fund. Does SLANG have the same investors as Influence? How much funding does it have?
Same investors. I am not going to disclose [financing], but you know Influence is well funded. There’s no lack of capital needs. But you have to look at it right. Most companies that start with too much money usually don’t win because, when you have access, you can be very undisciplined. We’re very conscious of the mindset and how we allocate what we spend and invest in. It’s really about discipline and focus. That’s what got us to where we’re at.
This story appears in the Feb. 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.
As of January, Warner Music Group (WMG) executive vp/general counsel Paul Robinson has worked in the legal department of the company for 30 years. During that time, he has seen “three different owners, seven CEOs and we’ve gone private and public two different times,” he says. “There also have been all of these macro changes in the music business” — which is something of an understatement. What hasn’t changed much, he says, is the culture of the company: “It’s always been an artist- friendly, songwriter-friendly culture, and we’ve always had a great relationship between recorded music and publishing.”
Robinson was slated to receive the 2025 Entertainment Law Initiative Service Award on Jan. 31 at the organization’s annual Grammy Week luncheon at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. But since the event was canceled in the wake of the Los Angeles wildfires, he will receive the honor at next year’s gathering.
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Robinson started at WMG in 1995 after working at Mayer Katz Baker Leibowitz, which at the time did a significant amount of the label group’s legal work. Robinson got the top job in 2006 and helped steer the company through the worst years of the music business, to its 2013 acquisition of Parlophone Label Group from Universal Music Group, and into the streaming-led recovery and a successful 2020 initial public offering.
Like the rest of the industry, WMG is now at a point where streaming growth in developed markets is slowing and the challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) loom — and in a way that will especially test it as the smallest of the three majors. Which is why, Robinson says, “From my point of view, it’s important to be perceived as, and to be, the most artist-friendly, songwriter-friendly company” — a message that WMG sent by being the first major to adopt artist-friendly policies on “digital breakage” in 2009 and on sharing gains from equity sales, such as with Spotify in 2016. “Jac Holzman, when he started Elektra, used to have this love-and-affection clause in his contracts that said the label will treat artists with love and affection and the artist will treat the label with a modicum of respect,” Robinson recalls. “And it’s great because it brings to mind the imbalance: Artists will not always love their labels, but we always have to love them and we hope that they at least respect us.”
Your father is Irwin Robinson, the prominent publishing executive who ran Chappell/Intersong and then EMI Music Publishing. Did you purposefully decide to follow him into the same business?
That was how it ended up, but they say there are no accidents. In some ways, I was afraid to go into the music business. There were huge shoes for me to step into. I thought I wanted to be a doctor, and then I worked at a hospital one summer and I decided, “Maybe I don’t want to be a doctor.” I was a huge music fan as well as a singer, and I thought, “I’ll just go to law school and see what happens.” Maybe I was avoiding it.
Robinson’s father gave him this 1956 letter from legendary songwriter-composer Cole Porter to his lawyer, John Wharton, at Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison. “I like it because in a single letter, he talks about the relatively important issue of assigning his renewal rights to Chappell and the relatively unimportant issue of a songbook being able to stay on a piano rack,” he says. “God is in the details.”
Krista Schlueter
Billboard can reveal that you were the singer in a new wave band.
I was one of the singers. We were called The Doctors. The musicians in the band all wore scrubs, and we were the hit of Williams College campus for a year. In fact, they asked The Doctors to play at my college reunion and we’re doing it.
You’re one of the few people who has been in the same department at the same company since the Napster era. Any lessons from then on how the industry should deal with AI?
Probably to lean into change. Maybe there were people in 1999 at Warner Music Group who saw peer-to-peer coming, but I feel like we were caught very much off guard, and I don’t think that’s been the case with AI. Also, with peer-to-peer, there wasn’t a great deal around until iTunes in 2003, so we’re also in a better place that way. There are services we can strike deals with now.
What are the best- and worst-case scenarios for the industry for generative AI?
[That’s] probably less of a general counsel question than [one for] business development, but I think the worst-case scenario is that somehow it’s determined that you don’t need permission to train an AI model and the market is flooded with a huge volume of content that dilutes legitimate music, in the same way services are flooded now with music that very few people listen to — but in turbo. The best case is that AI becomes an incredible tool for artists and songwriters and lets them up their game and release content in languages they don’t speak.
“This is a 1994 photo from my wedding of
my then-partners from Mayer Katz Baker Leibowitz & Roberts and their wives,” he says. “WMG was Mayer Katz’s biggest client.”
Krista Schlueter
The streaming model seems to be evolving. There’s talk of “Streaming 2.0.” What kind of terms are you looking for now in streaming deals?
Trying to lock in per-subscriber minimums and reduce discounts for family plans and so on. That’s where we are focused.
When you started in the music business, there were six major labels. Now there are three. Does that change the nature of competition?
Even though there are only three majors, it feels like it’s never been more competitive. All you have to do is look at the change in artist deals over time.
I’m assuming you mean that deals now favor artists? Is it harder to invest in them under these circumstances?
No. Every year, our A&R spend increases. When I started, we were getting eight-album deals, but we were signing artists where, because there was no internet, their following was probably their hometown and they needed a huge amount of development. Today, we hardly ever sign an artist that doesn’t have a significant social media presence, and those artists don’t need as much development.
“Believe it or not,” Robinson says, he has had the same office chair for 30 years. “It definitely looks like a chair from 1995, but I just can’t seem to let go of it.”
Krista Schlueter
Now you also compete with distribution deals.
From an artist’s point of view, there’s a trade-off. In a distribution deal, you’re getting a bigger piece of the pie, but you’re getting less development and it’s a shorter-term relationship, so there’s probably not going to be as much investment. If you sign a frontline label deal, you’re committing to more albums and you’re getting a smaller piece of the pie, but you are getting a whole team of people behind you to develop your career. The great thing is that artists have more choice than ever.
How do you make sure artist contracts feel like win-win deals?
Deals get renegotiated all the time if they’re out of sync. If there’s an artist with a small record deal that has tremendous success, the economics of their next albums are going to look different. We’re in the personal services business and we’re in the relationship business. We want to maintain the best relationships with artists and songwriters.
Is there a deal you did that you’re especially proud of?
When we bought Parlophone Label Group, that was a huge regulatory fight, and I would say it was a win-win. UMG had to sell Parlophone, we were the best buyer, and they were looking for a good price, which today looks like a really low price. We paid about $800 million, probably about a seven-and-a-half times multiple, which at the time was huge. We were much more U.S. weighted in our revenue, and we bought a bunch of European assets. So it rebalanced us in terms of geography, and we acquired great repertoire and some great artists.
What has been some of the most memorable litigation that you have overseen? The case in which Led Zeppelin was sued for copyright infringement by a trustee for the estate of Spirit frontman Randy Wolfe comes to mind.
The exciting thing about the Zeppelin case was not only winning, after having been dealt a bunch of blows — we won in trial court and we were reversed — but changing the trajectory of copyright infringement litigation. It was a beat-back of what was, I think, the bad law of the “Blurred Lines” case.
Robinson never met Prince, but he is such a big fan that two people gave him signed limited-edition lithographs of the New Yorker cover commemorating the artist’s death. “He was an incredibly distinctive artist. For his first album, Warner Records let him do everything. They basically said, ‘Go in the studio and do it.’ That didn’t happen much in 1977.”
Krista Schlueter
This story appears in the Jan. 25, 2025 issue of Billboard.
When Celia Cruz died in July 2003 at the age of 77, nearly 100,000 mourners paid their respects before her open casket viewing in Miami. In New York, Patti LaBelle sang at her memorial mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, then-Governor George Pataki declared “Celia Cruz Day,” more than 20,000 crowded the funeral home in the Upper East Side and a 30-block stretch of Fifth Avenue was shut down to accommodate thousands more. The death of the beloved “Queen of Salsa” from complications due to a brain tumor became an event as celebrated as her stunning performances during life.
Cruz, who defied Cuba’s communist government when she left her home country at the dawn of the 1959 revolution, also defied the odds of Latin music careers at the time by becoming the only Afro Latina singer to achieve enduring, global fame. Often compared to Ella Fitzgerald, Cruz recorded over 70 albums in a career that spanned three record labels, notching 28 entries on Billboard‘s Tropical Albums chart. More than 20 years after her death, she generated 64 million on-demand official streams in the United States in 2024, according to Luminate.
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Omer Pardillo — who became Cruz’s manager when he was in his 20s and is the executor of her estate — is a key reason the legendary artist remains relevant. When he was 17, he interned at RMM, the powerful tropical indie record label to which Cruz was signed, and worked on every aspect of her career. When Cruz left RMM, she named Pardillo her manager and executor.
“Even now, sometimes people tell me, ‘You got there at the very end [of her career],’” Miami-based Pardillo says. “But my loyalty was unconditional with Celia and something she saw from the very beginning.” That loyalty remains today. Since partnering with Loud And Live CEO Nelson Albareda in 2005, Pardillo has kept Cruz alive in the public eye with a U.S. postage stamp and a commemorative quarter, a Barbie doll, multiple exhibits, merchandise lines, a Telemundo TV series and even a namesake wine.
“I have these film reels because I’m in the process of digitizing footage of Celia from the ’60s and ’70s,” Pardillo says.
Alfonso Duran
Billboard spoke with Pardillo as he prepares to celebrate the centennial of the singer’s birth in 2025.
You are the executor of the Celia Cruz estate. What exactly does that entail?
I manage all assets that come into the estate — royalties, approvals from the labels, creative, productions, everything. As executor, I receive a percentage, and obviously, all the business deals I had or I bring, I charge 20%. The Loud And Live team, especially Nelson [Albareda], help me a lot. We did a deal with Mattel two years ago for a Celia Barbie; we put out a [Napa Valley-produced] wine to celebrate women; Celia was the face of Wells Fargo Bank for Hispanic audiences. One of the biggest achievements was our deal with the U.S. Mint. She’s the first Afro Latina on a coin and the first Latina artist on a coin. I always say Nelson invests 25 cents and gets a dollar in return. Sometimes I get carried away with nostalgia or feeling, and I’ll say, “We have to do something with this brand because they supported Celia once.” He makes me stop and analyze.
Was the U.S. Mint deal lucrative?
We don’t make money with the Mint. But the awareness of Celia Cruz through the coin has been incredible. The dollar is the most important currency in the world. And the fact that this woman — who was poor and Black and had to flee Cuba and was able to conquer the world with just her voice — is now on a U.S. coin is very relevant. Same thing with the Celia U.S. Postal Service stamp. They both have a huge sentimental value, but also economic, because thanks to the coin, for example, many other things have followed.
“This briefcase belonged to my grandfather, who carried it to work in New York,” Pardillo says. “Today, it serves as my lucky charm in the office.”
Alfonso Duran
Did Cruz own any of her catalog?
Not at all. That was her only mistake. Celia never owned anything. She recorded with Fania, which now is Craft; RMM, which is Universal today; and Sony. The best deal was Sony, where she was treated as an icon. It was different. The other deals were the kinds of deals from back then where they say, “Here’s X amount for a record deal, and we own everything forever.”
But Sony had great royalties, a great team behind Celia. We get royalties from Sony, Universal and Craft. I renegotiated royalties with Universal, Sony was always perfect, and Craft is something we’re working on. She’s collecting the same royalty they offered when she initially signed with them [decades ago]. Still, our revenue comes mostly from recording royalties and brand partnerships. We do three to four major partnerships a year. And on Spotify alone, we had 82.3 million [global] streams for the first six months of 2024. That’s not bad for an artist who’s been dead 21 years.
Have you tried to purchase her catalog?
No. It’s worth too much money.
It was recently announced that Hyphenate Media — Eva Longoria and Cris Abrego’s production company — was part of a group that acquired the rights to work on a movie about Cruz. What can you tell us about that?
I have three projects with Celia pending: a Broadway musical, a documentary and the film. I think in the next five years, we’ll accomplish all three. Hyphenate Media bought the rights for film and TV, and the estate was represented by Raymond García of Uncontained Media. Producer Gloria Calderón Kellett, who is Cuban American, is working on the film project. The film is very important because it will tell things she never told and were not in the [Telemundo] series. Issues with racism, for example, that she never shared with anyone. She always said the negative had to be locked away so they couldn’t cause more pain.
“This chair was used by Celia in her office for over 30 years.”
Alfonso Duran
What are the advantages and challenges of managing the estate of an artist like Cruz?
The big challenge is we don’t own the music rights. So anything related to music, we have to go to the labels. For example, if Mattel wants Barbie to sing “Quimbara,” they have to negotiate those rights with Craft. If I had the ownership of the masters, I could do so much. With the Fania catalog, for example, I can suggest, but I don’t own. It’s frustrating. The advantage is we’re dealing with an artist that was always very respected, and that respect is still the same. There’s a love and a connection with fans, which is very, very important.
What do you have in the works for Cruz’s centennial?
We’re in the process of closing several brand deals, including a major clothing retailer who will put out Celia apparel. We’re also in negotiations with a major restaurant brand. Mostly, we’re focused on concerts. We’re talking with different venues to produce Celia Sinfónica, a series of concerts with different symphony orchestras in different countries, for example. And there’s an upcoming Smithsonian Latino exhibit that opens in May. We’ve had 20 exhibits since Celia’s death, and the Smithsonian has 33% of her outfits, shoes, documents and wigs in their collection.
I have to imagine that with artificial intelligence and new technology, you’re getting requests to produce new songs with Celia’s voice. Recently, Cuban artist Yotuel used AI to add her voice to a new version of “Patria y Vida,” for example.
I approve any use of name, music or image. We have an attorney who sends out letters declining proposals all year long. We really look after that [intellectual property]. Otherwise, the brand will either disappear or will become too accessible. Yotuel’s song was the first time anything was done with AI and Celia’s voice, and I think it came out very well. But from there to a full album, I’m not there yet. I could rerecord the entire catalog, but I feel we’ll lose the essence. I’m told there are producers who can make it sound exactly the same, but it’s not exactly the same because she’s not here.
Cruz’s dedication, which is framed with her 1998 album, Mida Vida Es Cantar, reads: “To Omer Pardillo, the person I most admire for his talent, professionalism, and I love him because I’m his second mom.”
Alfonso Duran
It’s surprising to me that no other woman has emerged in the tropical music scene since Cruz’s death. Why do you think this is?
It has to do with how professional Celia was. She was fully focused on her career. She was very forward-thinking; she was so flamboyant, long before Lady Gaga. She was so humble, and yet she had a divine grace and a power onstage that I have yet to see again.
She was such a fashion icon, with her wigs and her fantastic, glitzy dresses. Did she ever consider doing a fashion line?
No. Celia modeled for Dolce & Gabbana, Thierry Mugler, Valentino. But she was very focused on her career and her voice, and she never thought of a business beyond her music. She always said, “My voice is my business, and I live for my voice.”
This story appears in the Jan. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.
“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.