From the Desk Of
Page: 2
Given the multitude of distribution, streaming, promotion and marketing options and expectations, the business of becoming an established artist has turned into a seriously heavy lift for music acts and their managers. It’s one reason that Mick Management partner Jonathan Eshak says, “We don’t like to refer to ourselves as a management company anymore. We’re a music company. What we do more than anything else is brand development, artist development — world-building … We’re not just trying to keep the train on the tracks.”
Eshak and his partner, Michael McDonald, the company’s founder, got into management after immersing themselves in other sectors of the business. McDonald served as Dave Matthews Band’s tour manager before co-founding ATO Records in 2000 with Matthews; his manager, Red Light founder Coran Capshaw; and Chris Tetzeli, who went on to start 7S Management. He opened Mick the following year with John Mayer as one of his first clients and, in 2004, brought on data savant Eshak, who worked at Universal Music Publishing Group (and is the twin brother of Island Records co-CEO Justin Eshak). Jonathan became a partner in 2015.
With a staff of approximately 20 in New York, Los Angeles and Nashville, the duo has built a boutique firm — with its own record label, Mick Music, distributed by Believe — that represents Maggie Rogers, who released the critically praised Don’t Forget Me in April; Leon Bridges and Ray LaMontagne, who will both release albums later this year; The Walkmen and the solo career of their frontman, Hamilton Leithauser; Sharon Van Etten; Brett Dennen; Mandy Moore; My Morning Jacket; and The Marias.
Trending on Billboard
In a fragmented culture where “it’s very hard to find water-cooler moments,” according to Eshak, Mick’s team excels in building committed fan bases for a roster of individualistic artists who punch above their weight. “Artists all define success differently, and we understand that,” he adds. “We understand that there’s no one way of doing it anymore.” Their bespoke approach has resulted in some notable recent successes. In August, Rogers will embark on an international arena tour — including two shows at Madison Square Garden — though she has yet to achieve platinum sales with an album. In 2018, Leithauser began a five-night residency at the swank, 100-capacity Café Carlyle in New York, playing to “a few die-hard Walkmen fans and some fairly confused business travelers,” as Eshak puts it. This year, Leithauser sold out 12 nights, and the concept will be expanded with potential notable guests in 2025. And in June, The Marias celebrated the release of their new album, Submarine, with a secret pop-up show in downtown Los Angeles for approximately 5,000 fans. Eshak says 38,000 RSVP’d.
“What each of those things speak to is us finding interesting ways that the artists appreciate and superserve fan bases,” McDonald says.
Eshak saw his first concert in the late 1980s when George Strait and his band headlined the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo at the Houston Astrodome. “Thirty-plus years later, I was given this belt buckle by the rodeo when Leon Bridges headlined,” he says. “Truly a full-circle moment.”
Michael Buckner
What are the challenges of running an artist management company today versus 25 years ago?
Jonathan Eshak: When I first started with Michael, the sky had started to fall on the recorded-music business. This was the dawn of file-sharing companies like Napster and Kazaa. It was attractive to join Michael for that very reason. He was coming from building a world that was unique, not just to the ebbs and flows of the success of recorded music but also, how do you do things well in touring, merchandising, etc. He understood the creation of cultures, having worked with Dave Matthews and Coran.
Like the Grateful Dead, Matthews built a culture around his music.
Eshak: The Dead were the godfathers of that, and Mick’s ethos effectively starts there. While the challenges of the industry have evolved, the code of building an artist’s career remains the same. Which is, how do you focus on building a meaningful, long-lasting relationship with your fan base? We always say, “How do we make the artist the hit and not just the songs?” Music is just part of the cocktail. It’s also, how are we creating a dynamic of connectivity between the artist and the fan? How are we merchandising with them? How are we creating live shows that are meaningful, that evolve? There’s been a lot of lip service about artist development throughout the history of recorded music.
Michael McDonald: There were fewer breakthrough moments then, whereas today, because of the way technology and culture has evolved, it’s been democratized. The upside is that more people can succeed. The downside is there are fewer channels that create that star-turn moment.
Eshak snagged this copy of the run-of-show for Saturday Night Live on Nov. 3, 2018, when Rogers appeared as musical guest. “It’s an honor each time our acts receive the invite,” he says.
Michael Buckner
Maggie Rogers seems to be a prime example of someone who has grown through connectivity with her fans.
Eshak: Maggie has understood the importance of connectivity from the start. She had this moment of Pharrell-ity, for lack of a better word, and instead of sitting back and working that, she understood the importance of going around the world and connecting with her fans face-to-face. To your point, she’s doing two nights in Madison Square Garden without a platinum record. Now, she obviously wants that and we want that for her, but people who are in are in. Even as she’s grown, the No. 1 thing on the checklist is, what are we doing for that audience?
What’s an example of that?
Eshak: When we were announcing the fall arena tour, we created pop-up shops in all the markets where people could line up to buy exclusive merchandise and, most importantly, reduced-price tickets. She was hearing from unsettled fans about ticket prices, so we tried to create solves. Fans could walk [into the pop-ups], point at a seat map and get a ticket that was going to cost less than if they paid for it online. Because of that, her fans understand that she sees them.
What questions do you ask before signing an artist?
McDonald: Most importantly, “Do we love the music? Do we feel like we can really grow this career?” And then, “Do they, will they, work hard?” We can’t want it more than they do. Some of this is research you can do before you meet the artist. Much of it we do through conversations, but there’s also data that’s crucial. We’ve had great success following our passion and guts, but to not use the tools at our disposal to help make those decisions would be foolish. Data is a great strength of Jonathan’s and why we’ve evolved in using it to inform decisions but never to unequivocally make decisions. If we did, we never would have signed some of the artists we have.
Why did you partner with Firebird?
McDonald: Firebird brings us resources that a company our size doesn’t have. There’s a data department and an analytics department of 10 to 15 people. There’s a finance department. There are all sorts of things that allow us to double down on the data and free us up to stay focused on our artists.
McDonald celebrated “turning 50, 20 years of sobriety, raising nearly $500,000 for MusiCares and crossing something off my bucket list” by participating in the 2019 Iron Man World Championship. “It was an epic journey and one of the greatest days of my life,” he says.
Michael Buckner
What’s your pitch to artists you want to sign?
Eshak: It really comes down to having a shared code, so it’s important that we take the time to sit down with artists and say, “What are your life goals in addition to success in recorded music?” This is such a deep relationship that we talk all the time. We talk on weekends. We’re there with them for very big life stages, and it’s really important for us to have at least a common set of goals because it takes a lot out of everybody. Where we do a good job is acting almost as coaches now. It’s our job to be highly informed about how people are having success, distilling that and applying it to the artists that we represent, who are all quite different. In other words, how can we do this with you so that you remain true to yourself? We can’t do that for a thousand artists. It’s not the business model that Michael and I have elected to build.
You have a label.
Eshak: We have a label, and we’re working with some of our artists whose repertoires are returning to them and they need a mechanism to put music out. Some of it is also identifying artists that we like and helping them put music into the world.
Do you encourage your artists to own their masters?
McDonald: One hundred percent, whenever possible. Today, we would be hard pressed to pursue a deal that started with perpetuity music being somewhere else. There’s always a chance that it’s going to happen, and ultimately, it’s an artist’s decision. If they feel like this is their shot and they’re willing to give that up — absolutely. But one of the reasons we created the label was to say, “All right, let’s have an easy mechanism where we can control the deal terms. Let’s put music out and try to build on that. Then, if a great licensing option is not available today, let’s take a year and try to build something.” Ray LaMontagne’s album Trouble reverted to him in May after 20 years. So it’s not always a three-year or five-year reversion. But 20 years ago, we were able to take a long view and say, “Let’s take whatever percentage less today so at least there’s the option to sell those recordings X number of years later.”
Are your agreements with artists traditional percentage deals or partnerships?
McDonald: It varies. We have a lot of traditional deals, but any time we’re in true partnership, where we’re sharing [intellectual property] with an artist, it’s fully above board and clear with everyone’s legal teams. There is an evolving way that artists are going to get into business with different companies. We welcome that as things evolve.
A friend of McDonald had this box made for him. “It’s where I keep my most cherished and memorable notes and small keepsakes from artists, family and friends.”
Michael Buckner
At the beginning of 2013, Mike Luba says he dragged Mumford & Sons’ Ben Lovett to Forest Hills Stadium in Queens on a sort of vision quest. He was working with the band on its Gentlemen of the Road Tour and knew that Lovett had grown up in the tennis town of Wimbledon, England. An avid tennis fan and player himself, Luba wanted to sell the band on “playing a gig at the Wimbledon of New York.”
Built in the 1920s, the stadium, which adjoins and is owned by the West Side Tennis Club (WSTC), had been the site of the U.S. Open for six decades and, in the ’60s and ’70s, hosted a series of landmark concerts by The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Barbra Streisand, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, to name a few. But those days had long since passed when Luba says Lovett “took two steps into the site, which at that point had trees growing out of compost piles in the bowl and hadn’t been touched in decades. Ben looked at me and said, ‘This is nothing like Wimbledon. It’s a total fucking train wreck. But we can do a proper rock show here.’
Trending on Billboard
“That was early 2013,” Luba recalls. “They played that August. That’s how fast I did that.”
Almost 11 years after that first concert, Forest Hills Stadium has evolved into the Chateau Marmont of outdoor venues. Luba and his team have restored much of its ’20s vintage vibe and rehabbed a dozen or so funkily decorated speakeasy-style rooms that ring the stadium floor. (One is entered through a port-a-potty; another, a phone booth.)
A self-described “hippie punk-rock dude,” Luba says the stadium, which has a capacity of about 13,000, will stage “30-ish” events this season in a hypercompetitive market for venues. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, The National, The War on Drugs, Khruangbin, Tiësto, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Pitbull are among those that have played or will play this season. And in early June, Hozier sold out four nights — a first in the stadium’s 101-year history.
Box office results have grown accordingly. In 2019, the stadium grossed $6.7 million; in 2023, it took in $22.1 million and finished at No. 17 for the year among venues with capacities between 10,001 and 15,000, according to Billboard Boxscore. Along with that success, however, came an ongoing legal battle with the local homeowners association, the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation (FHGC), over alleged noise levels and unruly crowds.
Luba had much to say about the contretemps during this conversation with Billboard, which took place in the small hut where he works on the stadium grounds. He also discussed his unique employment arrangement. Luba is a partner in Tiebreaker Productions — which holds a long-term lease to the stadium — with his previous full-time employer, AEG, and its subsidiary The Bowery Presents, as well as some overachiever friends from his high school tennis team. Since last July, he is also Live Nation’s executive vp of strategy. (It’s his second turn at the company: He worked with then-chairman Michael Cohl in the early 2000s.) Given the rivalry between the two live-industry giants, his dual roles can be a tightrope walk.
Eleven years later, how has the stadium evolved?
We realized early on that the place itself was inherently magical. So we just leaned into making it feel like when you come here it’s in its 1920s state, but we are using 2024 technology. So much of the credit for that goes to [stadium GM] Jason Brandt and the work that was done. For years, every penny we made got poured back into it. The food and beverage program has totally been elevated. I’m personally most proud of the fact that we now have real bathrooms that are plumbed into the main sewer system of the city. We’re tied into the power grid instead of having to bring in generators. We’ve put in tons of points of sale for bars so there’s no lines. The load-in went from being three days to four hours. You can pull your trucks right up to the stage. It has really reduced the impact on trucks coming in and out of the neighborhood.
“The first time John McEnroe [second from left] came to see a show, he confirmed an urban legend that in 1977, the last year of the U.S. Open here, someone was shot in the shin. I said, ‘That’s crazy.’ He said, ‘There’s something even crazier. I once played tennis with Carlos Santana [left], Vitas Gerulaitis [second from right, who was once a member of the tennis club’s ground crew] and Meat Loaf [right].’ When I showed him this photo, he tried to take it off the wall. I literally had to wrestle it away from him.”
Nina Westervelt
How did you build your season lineup from a few shows to around 30?
The second year we did five. That was right when I started at AEG. I did a walkaround with [chairman/CEO] Jay Marciano — he had previously run the Garden — who told me, “You will never book more than six shows here. The competition is too much.” I said, “Jay, if it was just me, you’re probably right, but my partner Don Sullivan is one of the great promoters of all time. There’s no way we’re not going to be able to book six fucking shows here.” Sure enough, the second year we got five — and the fifth one was a major favor. The first three seasons — 2013, 2014 and 2015 — were all bands that I’d either slept on their couch or they had slept on my couch. I had been their agent or their manager, and Jay and I were cashing in 30 years’ worth of chips. Zero income.
What did you do to turn that around?
It was really word-of-mouth. The bands told other bands. The crews told other crews. And then people who came to shows told other people. Our original ticketing system was Ticketfly, so we had no mailing list. There was no institutional way to market.
When did your battle with the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation begin?
This was the first master-planned neighborhood ever in America, and it happened to include the tennis club and the stadium. The governing body is the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation, with whom we had an incredible relationship for a decade — multiple presidents, multiple boards. It’s an all-volunteer board, and it changes every couple of years. We did everything in consultation with them, we paid them, and at the end of every season, we would sit down and have a postmortem of what was good, what was bad and give them a check.
They had an election, and a new president [Anthony Oprisiu] comes in. It turns out he has a serious grudge against the tennis club. There are all sorts of rumors about what it is. Whatever it is, there’s no rational anything. It doesn’t make any sense. [Editor’s note: A spokesman for the FHGC denies this, saying, “The FHGC board — made up of 15 members — voted unanimously to commence litigation because of the WSTC and Tiebreaker’s unacceptable behavior.”]
So this beef is more about the tennis club than the concerts?
Yeah, but we’re the easy target. The tropes are so prevalent: rock’n’roll, people creating garbage, pissing everywhere, puking everywhere. And it’s just not true. However, to the general public, it all sounds reasonable. This guy and like three to five board members are like the Matt Gaetzes, Marjorie Taylor Greenes — the Freedom Caucus of Forest Hills. They are willing to destroy it for the 600 people who work here on every show and the more than 375,000 people who come here to enjoy the music.
Haven’t you also addressed their complaints about sound levels?
The first year we got here, the conventional wisdom was that in the old days, the sound was blowing up over the top of the stadium. So, we did a full acoustical study, and the engineer was like, look, in the ‘60s you were basically plopping giant speakers on the stages and blasting it. The PAs now are so sophisticated with the line arrays that we can control the direction of it. He said, we can get it so that there’s no sound going over the top, but it will go down the stairwells. If you cover the stairwells, you’ll trap 98% of it. Then, he said, “What step do you want the earmuffs to go on?” I’m like, “Man, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He said, if you tell me step six, when you hit step six going up to the seats, it will feel like earmuffs get put on your head. Then when you get six steps from the top, you’ll feel like they come off.
Sure as shit, it totally works. We built these bass traps over what used to be kind of dodgy and scary stairwells up into the bowl and after the first show people were freaking out because they’d go into the stairwell and it’s like a sensory deprivation thing. So, we put up signs that say, “You’re standing in a bass trap,” and something like, “These walls were designed specifically to keep the music from reaching our neighbors who are right across the street.” Working hand-in-hand with the DEP, we’ve now built the same sort of enclosures over the ground-floor exits. Outside of putting a roof on it, every hole is blocked. We had Primus ripping on Saturday and there was a moment when I was in the concourse, and I was like, shouldn’t they be on?
“Bob Dylan played air guitar to ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ on this racket his first time back at the stadium,” Luba says.
Nina Westervelt
You gave the corporation a check at the end of each season, and they wanted more?
They wanted $100,000 a show instead of the $5,000 we were paying them. If we wanted to book 20 or more shows, it went to $200,000 a show.
How did they arrive at those numbers?
They made some calculation based on gross ticket sales and attendance, with zero knowledge of our costs. Basically, the only way we survive is selling beer. We have no parking. The bands take all the money, and we’re competing with [Madison Square] Garden, Barclays Center, Central Park, Prospect Park, UBS Arena, Jones Beach and on and on. No one is cutting anyone a deal. [Editor’s note: According to the FHGC spokesman, due to its “decadeslong relationship” with the stadium, it did not charge the market price it charges other entities for closing its streets. He adds, “In light of the stadium’s unwillingness to work in partnership with the FHGC, the FHGC is no longer willing to subsidize the operational costs of the stadium.”]
Where do things stand now?
We got an injunction, which remains in place while this is being litigated. Most of the lawsuit is to make us follow the law and pull the proper permits, which we’ve always done and will continue to do. The judge granted their request to have an independent sound monitor here for every show. We had suggested that the [Department of Environmental Protection] be the independent monitor. They’ve dinged us when we’ve been out of code. They’re a city agency. They have no horse in the race. They’ve dinged us when we’ve been out of code. But after the judge granted their request, they realized they would have to pay for the independent monitor — because it was their request — and they freaked out. Then they wrote a letter withdrawing the one thing that they won because when they won it, they went out to the neighborhood saying they had a triumphant, majestic win in court, and the neighbors were like, whoa, we’re paying for it?
What does the tennis club make of this?
This tennis club is the largest member of the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation. They pay more dues than anyone else. They sued the board for breach of candor and breach of their fiduciary duty because essentially the club is going to be funding the lawsuit against itself. [Editor’s note: In a statement, Oprisiu said, “FHGC remains open to a compromise that respects our community and historic norms of behavior at the club. To date, [the WSTC] and Tiebreaker have yet to share a meaningful proposal for our community to consider. Instead, they have recently tripled the number of events and focused on personal attacks on the board with offensive innuendos and gossip. We’re confident in our legal standing as recently supported by the court’s ruling.”]
You actually own a piece of Forest Hills, right?
The entity is called Tiebreaker Productions. Don Sullivan and I, my high school tennis team, and the guys at MTheory, JT Myers and Nat Pastor, put up the original bread. Then, the MTheory guys said, we don’t want to be in the venue business, and they sold their share to AEG. Then, when AEG acquired Bowery Presents, they got that share.
You’re serious about the high school tennis team?
Dead serious. I have these five friends who have stayed friends since kindergarten. We all went to Wheatley High School in Old Westbury, Long Island. Some of us went to college together. At least once a year we try to get together, and it happened to be the night after I did the walkthrough here. By far, I’m the black sheep of this highly overachieving group. One guy was an incredible high school tennis player. He was considering turning pro but ended up going to Yale and was the best Ivy League tennis player. a freshman. When I explained that I wanted to keep Forest Hills Stadium independent and not sell it to AEG, he looked at me and said, “I love tennis. I love music. Let’s try it.” We were all blotto at that point. I said, “Okay man, tonight go home, take $2 million, put it in a suitcase, go out into your backyard and just torch it. If you can stomach that then welcome to the music business. He called me the next day and said his wife wouldn’t let him do the suitcase thing, but he still wanted to try it.
How did you come to work for Live Nation?
When my deal was potentially coming up at AEG, [Live Nation chief strategy officer] Jordan Zachary called. I was ready to move on. It finally all worked out, and Live Nation gave me this incredible opportunity. I get to work on tours with artists that I love and care about. I get to help them on [business development] when they do new building projects or any kind of venue stuff, and I get to participate a little bit on the big-picture strategy.
Nina Westervelt
How does Forest Hills fit in with your Live Nation work?
From day one, Forest Hills was an open room, like the Garden or the Staples Center. When AEG [took a stake in Tiebreaker], they became the promoter partner, but if there was a band that wanted Live Nation to promote their tour, they would come in. This year, half of the shows we do will be Live Nation and half will be Bowery. When I started back at Live Nation, we began to educate the industry that the idea of playing Jones Beach and Forest Hills is now possible. You look on a map and they’re 27 or so miles apart, but for those who live here, they might as well be Mars and Jupiter. There’s an ecosystem now where Pitbull can play Jones Beach and Forest Hills, as he will, and both will sell out.
How do you balance the Live Nation-AEG equation?
My real job is at Live Nation, and my partners here are Bowery and AEG. The companies clearly don’t like each other, so it’s a little tricky. There’s real-life proprietary shit that I’m dead serious about, and I keep it very, very separate. That’s why I sit out here by myself. I’ll go into the Live Nation office once in a while, but I try to stay out of all the drama. I’m really thankful that both AEG and Live Nation let me exist in this space. And it’s important to me that Live Nation understands that I’m on the Live Nation team. It’s a testament to Rapino and Jordan and that team being open-minded. I mean, I hated Live Nation.
That’s right, you manage The String Cheese Incident, and they sued Ticketmaster for allegedly denying them their direct-to-fan ticket allotment. [The suit was settled.]
Yeah, we sued them under the antitrust act and we probably would have won. But now I see it from the other side that company is full of people who really love music, take real pride in their job, work really hard, and do it at a really high level.
We’ve reported on how Gen Z is not consuming as much alcohol as previous generations. Would you consider selling pot in the way, for instance, that Outside Lands has Grasslands?
I will consider as soon as it’s legal. There’s no reason not to. For me, alcohol is way more dangerous than marijuana. At least in New York State it’s a really gray area. I’m by no means an expert on this, but I think it’s mostly because it’s not federally legal, so there’s no way for the banks — no one knows how to deal with the money part of it. Until there’s some way to actually transact on it, I don’t think we can legally do it anywhere. It’s coming, though, for sure.
What are the most pressing issues facing the live business right now?
Climate change is making it very hard to do outdoor events. I’m worried that at some point they become uninsurable. Every morning, I wake up and multiple shows are canceled in places that have never had [weather issues], like 80-mile-an-hour winds shutting down Lovers & Friends in Las Vegas. And that happens over and over. It’s also become excruciatingly expensive. The supply chain issues are real, labor is real. Five years ago, you could get a bus for $5,000 a week. They’re now $13,000 a week. It’s really hard for bands to tour.
“This is a bobblehead of the master electrician at the stadium, Tommy Sellers. He has been here for basically every show that has been at the stadium, and he’s the spiritual leader for the crew.”
Nina Westervelt
When the Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC) releases its annual Music Industry Action Report Card, co-founder and president/CEO Willie “Prophet” Stiggers says a barrage of distressed phone calls from executives inevitably follows. The assessments grade music companies on how well they’ve kept promises made in 2020 to diversify their executive ranks, among other measures; the executives call, he explains, to complain that the grades affect their bottom lines.
“That’s what we want to do,” says Stiggers, who is also the CEO of artist and brand management company 50/50 Music Group Management. “You can’t continue to operate with false promises after saying that you stand in solidarity with your Black brothers and sisters and then don’t promote the Black executive and don’t ensure that a woman is in an environment where she is protected and her vision is executed.”
BMAC was established in June 2020 following the movement #TheShowMustBePaused to advance racial diversity, equity and inclusion in the music business. But this year’s mass industry layoffs, which included many DEI executives, has “unrolled some of the progress we were making,” Stiggers says.
Trending on Billboard
As a result, BMAC will present a new version of its report before its fourth annual gala in September. The organization has sent a link to executives that asks them to anonymously indicate whether they have seen true change, what has worsened and what still needs to be addressed.
The early results, Stiggers says, are “almost a slap in the face — a ‘whitelash,’ if you will, to the commitments that were made in 2020. The question has become, Was this s— really performative or not?”
The National Action Network Award that Stiggers received this year — “a 360 moment for me because my activism began with [NAN founder and president] Al Sharpton. I created and led [the organization’s] youth division.”
Diwang Valdez
Why are there fewer Black executives in the music industry now than in 2019?
The major labels, I’m sure, would tell you AI [artificial intelligence]. The uncertainty of that realm has caused them to tighten up. But my suspicions are, there’s a bit of that, but these positions [for Black and women executives] were not permanent. A lot of the people were put in these positions in 2020 — managers became senior-level directors, for example — and then in 2024, they have been asked to go back to that lower position or exit altogether. When you have the RIAA report record-breaking revenue that the industry generated in 2023, it’s a little lost on me how that translates to the lack of employment.
What are your thoughts on the DEI positions that have been eliminated since 2020?
The reality is that a lot of these commitments from the labels were three-year commitments. That seemed to be the hot number where they thought maybe at the end of the three years this s— would go away or we would be on to something else. Seemingly, the contracts that these DEI executives had were three-year deals. Once they were up, [the labels were] like, “We did that. We checked the box. Now let’s go back to business as usual.” There was so much potential for us to set this thing on the right course. So for us to go backward is really embarrassing, and history is going to reflect this.
How are you counseling these companies to elevate people of color and women?
A lot of our conversations with these labels, we do confidentially. Here’s what I can say about it. We bring all kinds of stats to prove how profitable diversity is; how profitable it is when you let women lead; how profitable historically it has been when people of color — those who make the product, who consume the product — lead [in terms of] how that product is distributed. This is not even a moral conversation at this point. I’m telling you how it impacts your bottom line.
The prototype of the first BMAC Award, which was given in September 2021 to The Weeknd at the first gala. “He said, ‘This is the greatest award I ever received.’ ”
Diwang Valdez
What do you think of the Recording Academy’s attempts to diversify the voting membership for the Grammy Awards?
Racism is a 450-year-old issue. It is not going to be solved in three or four years. What we can do is talk about the progress that has been made. We have, for the first time, a Black CEO of the Recording Academy. That’s progress. We watched new categories get introduced [like] best song for social change. That didn’t exist prior to Harvey Mason jr. as CEO. He’s up against decades of systems that we are slowly chipping away at. The mere fact that there is a Black Music Collective. The fact that Jay-Z stood on the stage and held a Grammy named after Dr. Dre. We’re not going to act like that is the liberation of our people, but we’re not going to act like that’s not change.
You say BMAC has moved from protest to policy. How?
In 2022, it came to our attention that there were over 500 cases of Black men that were locked up for lyrics. That became a problem for us. So BMAC created the federal legislation called the RAP Act. The work that we did on that federal level created all these statewide bills like what Gov. [Gavin] Newsom signed in California last year. That was a direct result of our work. We are working with the group around Fix the Tix and are working with the groups around AI protection. Our work around legislative policy is as loud, as real and as meaningful as the work we’re doing with pipeline programs.
What are some of those pipeline programs?
Three years ago, we partnered with the RIAA and Tennessee State University and [Nashville Music Equity’s] Brian Sexton, who is an alumnus there, to bring a unique commercial business school to young people who want to get into the industry. We bring in executives and artists from all over the industry. They get paid internships that come out of that every year. We’ve had several people get gainfully employed at record labels and music studios. Most recently, Live Nation hired one of the participants. Tri Star [Sports & Entertainment] hired a young woman from this year’s classes.
A portrait of Stiggers; his wife of 29 years, Fatima; and three of their children, from left: Zaira, Nailah and Willie III. They have since been joined by daughter Safra-Cree. “We met in high school and started [our] family young, which defined my greater purpose,” he says.
Diwang Valdez
That’s not your only Nashville-related initiative.
BMAC also put out a report in 2022 called Three Chords and the Actual Truth: The Manufactured Myth of Country Music and White America. When we released that report, there was a call to action for the music world to join us in addressing the structural racism on Music Row in Nashville and creating access. We were inspired by a guy named Michael Tubbs from Stockton, Calif. He created Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and got mayors from all over the country to create these pilot programs where they would give [citizens of their city] guaranteed income of up to $2,000 a month. He got the qualitative and quantitative data needed to show the positive effects of small increments of money going to people directly.
We felt we could bring the same concept to the music industry and creators. The Academy of Country Music was the first to raise their hand and join us. A year to the date of that report, 20 young Black kids [in the music community] started receiving $1,000 a month, plus mentorship and [other] services.
BMAC is also working with the live industry.
We did a partnership with Live Nation and created BMAC Live, a 10-day intensive program in California as part of Live Nation’s School of Live. They allowed BMAC to come in and carve out a program specifically geared toward young Black non-college-bound students who have a desire to be in the live space. We’ve had 3,000 applicants already, and we are going to pick 20 of the best of that group and fly them out to Los Angeles for a full week. Each of those young people will go to their respective cities and receive a paid internship from Live Nation for six months. [Then] they will be eligible for the Live Nation apprenticeship program. That’s another six months that will then lead to employment. That’s the type of access and training we talked about, and that program will scale and grow annually.
A plaque commemorating the first Music Business Accelerator Program created by BMAC in partnership with the RIAA that started at Tennessee State University in 2021.
Diwang Valdez
Is there anything else you would like to highlight?
We’re working on something really special with Apple Pathways. [We are training young people] around spatial audio, spatial visual and preparing them for the technology of tomorrow. This is where we are going, and if we don’t create the accessibility to the technology, another divide is about to happen. Another shift will take place in which Black America is left out once again.
Is BMAC looking to expand its staff as these programs and initiatives develop?
Yes. We will be expanding and looking at college representatives. Young people are ready. They’re not moving with the same barriers and the same willingness to allow norms to continue to separate people. It’s a different spirit among this generation here.
One thing we realized is that this fight for justice isn’t just here in the U.S. We are in partnerships with organizations in the United Kingdom and Australia, and we are forging a tremendous movement with several key organizations throughout the continent [of Africa]. I’m very concerned about what’s happening with Afrobeats. If we don’t get over there and start working with our African brothers and sisters to understand the industry, the cultural appropriation that took place in hip-hop, blues, rock, country will happen over there. If we do not protect the [intellectual property], it will be cultural colonization all over again.
Asked to recall his first musical memory, James Rosemond Jr. is quick to answer: R&B duo Groove Theory’s 1995 R&B/pop classic, “Tell Me.” He sings a snippet of the song’s infectious refrain — “Tell me if you want me to…” — and says with a laugh, “I was 4 years old, but that’s the way I fell in love with music.”
Growing up, there was plenty of music to love. Rosemond, now 31, is the son of former artist manager Jimmy Rosemond, who represented Gucci Mane, The Game, Salt-N-Pepa and others. And over the past two years, he has blazed his own path in the profession, helping guide rapper Ice Spice to crossover stardom. Since breaking through in 2022 with the viral TikTok hit “Munch (Feelin’ U),” Ice has garnered four Grammy Award nominations, and in 2023, she released four top 10 Billboard Hot 100 singles: “Princess Diana” with Nicki Minaj, “Boy’s a Liar, Pt. 2” with PinkPantheress, “Karma” with Taylor Swift and “Barbie World” with Minaj and Aqua.
Ice is not Rosemond’s sole client. His Miami-based Mastermind Artists also manages the young rapper’s go-to producer, RIOTUSA, as well as DJ-producer Diablo, who works with Diplo. Former clients include Sean Kingston and songwriter Infrared (Fat Joe, French Montana). Prior to launching Mastermind 12 years ago, Rosemond honed his business skills while brokering publishing deals for songwriters and producers with Primary Wave Music CEO Larry Mestel and Ultra International Music Publishing founder Patrick Moxey.
Trending on Billboard
A painting of the iconic 1968 Esquire cover depicting Muhammad Ali as St. Sebastian. “The photo was shot during the Civil Rights movement and represents sacrifice. As a talent manager, that’s the space I occupy,” Rosemond says.
Alfonso Duran
Rosemond achieved these wins in the face of family upheaval. His father is serving life in prison after being convicted in 2013 of crimes tied to a cocaine-trafficking operation and in 2014 to the 2009 death of G-Unit affiliate Lowell “Lodi Mack” Fletcher. Rosemond says he speaks to his father “all the time” and continues to receive “life advice” from him — “like what any father would give his young adult son in this world.” As for business counsel, he adds, “Times change, and I don’t think he understands streaming, TikTok and other data the way I do, so there’s not much advice there.”
That said, Rosemond came of age watching his father successfully navigate the music business and continues to use much of what he absorbed — especially “creative deal-making,” he says. “Those conversations of how to negotiate and secure a deal, and what to look for in a deal. That always stuck with me.”
He is using some of that advice as he conducts “strategic conversations” to strengthen the firm’s infrastructure, including expanding into more musical genres. Meanwhile, he’s busy preparing for Ice’s debut studio album, Y2K, which is due July 26 on 10K Projects/Capitol Records. The album has been teased by two singles: “Think U the Shit (Fart)” and the latest, “Gimmie the Light,” which she performed at Coachella in April. Also stoking anticipation for the album: 50,000 MetroCards featuring Ice’s image were recently made available in collaboration with Capitol Records at four New York subway stations.
Rosemond says that kind of creative thinking keeps him excited about the music industry. “I love that it keeps me on my toes. I want to feel the challenge.”
A “blur figure” of a $100 bill that friends at the Brooklyn art collective MSCHF gifted to Rosemond.
Alfonso Duran
What was it like growing up with a parent who was such a force in the music industry?
It was definitely an eye-opener. I like to say to people that I live in dog years because of the information and experience that I was privy to early on — the lingo, the conversations and the behind-the-scenes scenarios that I was able to experience. I have to give credit to all of that for where I am today success-wise.
What key lessons did you learn that you use today?
To really listen and forever be a student. A lot of people come into this business quickly and feel like they know it all. No matter what artists my father represented, he still felt like a sponge; always learning new things. I carry that with me to this day.
How has being Jimmy Rosemond’s son affected the way people in the industry deal with you?
I would say that a lot of veterans look out for each other in the way that peers look out for each other. That has always been the spirit in the music industry. There hasn’t been much of a difference between my father being home and not being home.
How did you get into brokering publishing deals?
I always found myself in the same circle as songwriters and producers, who had income or pipeline hits and needed help. And through my relationships with Larry and Patrick — and having a good lawyer by my side — I was able to connect the dots. It’s also how I was able to kick off my company.
A gold record plaque (left) for Ice Spice’s “Munch” single, “the breakthrough that started it all,” and a platinum plaque for “Boy’s a Liar, Pt. 2,” the record “that crossed us over to top 40,” he says.
Alfonso Duran
Did that prompt your pivot into artist management?
Yes, because I’m a nerd when it comes to business, especially the deal-making. Outside of the day-to-day with an artist, it’s about brokering amazing deals for artists; helping them really understand the difference in what they have versus what others have and then having them see the value of what I can bring to the table. I get high on that.
What was it about Ice Spice, your first female client, that caught your ear?
It was her tone and the production she was picking. When I came across her early on, she only had about two or three songs out. She didn’t have the crazy monthly listeners and social numbers. Then I came across a song called “No Clarity,” a drill flip of Zedd’s “Clarity,” and heard the song’s possibilities. Next, I heard “Name of Love.” One, she’s working with the same producer [RIOTUSA] and they’re creating a sound. Two, her tone, and three, they’re flipping these crossover samples in drills. That got me. Then I saw her image — the curls, which was different — and I’m like, “Whoa!”
Talk about the marketing strategy behind Ice Spice with Dunkin’ and New York’s subway system.
Coming out of the gate, it was always three-dimensional chess. “Less is more” was our conversation and “Let’s not saturate.” Strategically, it was also about digital. When we put “Munch” out, we got the right digital team, which was Create Music Group. Its sister companies include WorldStar and Genius. I never want to feel like an artist is on a treadmill. I always want them to feel like they’re moving forward from A to C, C to E. So I did a strategic play on the digital side to accelerate her growth, social and in the market. “Munch” was everywhere that first week we put it out. And that was due to the strategic play that I was able to put together using the song as currency.
That led to Dunkin’?
Yes. When that opportunity came to us, it was a no-brainer because her fan base is called Munchkins. We always like to tap into social media and see what people are thinking or talking about. It’s not like we’re coming in and saying, “Yo, we should do Dunkin’.” It’s coming up with the idea because we’re hearing the conversations about what fans want to see. It’s there; we’re just listening.
Gold camel souvenir from a vacation in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: “Camels, known for their resilience and adaptability, also represent patience and determination.”
Alfonso Duran
How did you enable her to retain her masters?
It was really about giving her all the right information. Like, this is where the market is going. It’s about independence. It’s about retaining ownership; about intellectual property and generational wealth. That sometimes there are sacrifices — that people may be dangling money. But if you want a certain type of deal, you have to be patient as we do the work to have leverage. That was the conversation early on. And thank God she listened and was able to hold out while we kept running up the numbers on “Munch.” Then it became, “Let’s entertain these deals” and, as I said earlier, begin to shape one in a creative way. Now, she not only retains her masters but also her publishing rights and still gets upfront money as if she’s a work for hire. It’s a hybrid type of deal that you don’t see often. And it comes with doing the work, having patience and creating leverage.
In the wake of major-label restructuring and shrinking promotion departments, is radio still important?
Absolutely. I tell my clients, “Streaming is the club, radio is VIP.” We want to get into the club and we want to get into the VIP section. And radio still feels somewhat exclusive. People are still driving and listening to the radio. And it’s not only about an artist breaking through. Once again, there’s the economics of it. If you have a publishing deal, one important factor is radio airplay. So why wouldn’t you want to have music on the radio?
Is there one thing you always tell a new client up front?
That economics is always going to play its part. That’s No. 1. Artists come in with big expectations like wanting the luxurious stuff. To keep them grounded on that front, I always remind them that it’s about profit and loss. So the more money they spend, they’ve got to crank out hits to make sure labels and publishers will want to continue to spend money on them.
When Tunji Balogun took over Def Jam in January 2022 after a career working with stars such as Kendrick Lamar at Interscope; Khalid, Bryson Tiller, H.E.R. and Wizkid at RCA; and Normani at his own Keep Cool imprint, he says he found a label with “a lot of question marks. There was a lot of instability. It seemed like there were a lot of different perspectives.”
In the five years prior to Balogun’s tenure, Def Jam had been in a state of near-continual upheaval. After Steve Bartels exited as CEO in 2018, Eminem manager and Shady Records co-founder Paul Rosenberg took the job but lasted only two years. Jeffrey Harleston, executive vp of business affairs/general counsel of the label’s parent company, Universal Music Group (UMG), ran Def Jam on an interim basis — which coincided with the pandemic — until Balogun was hired. By that time, nearly a decade had passed since someone with an A&R background had led the company.
Trending on Billboard
Not surprisingly, Balogun inherited a label in serious need of reinvention. “It felt like there was an overreliance on the existing roster and not as much of a focus on what comes next,” the A&R veteran and former rapper says. “The current roster was strong, especially at that time. You still had Kanye [West], and [Justin] Bieber was releasing a lot of music; Jhené [Aiko] had a big album. But the reality is, you always need that next wave of artists that’s going to continue turning the page, and I put the focus on that from day one.”
Balogun quickly set to work reshaping the roster, signing Muni Long, Coco Jones and Armani White while expanding into dancehall with Masicka and into Afrobeats with Adekunle Gold and Odumodublvck, in partnership with Native Records. Some of it has paid off: Muni Long and Jones were nominated for best new artist at the Grammy Awards in 2023 and 2024, respectively, and each won for best R&B performance in subsequent years, a first for any label in that category.
The plaque commemorating Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” going two-times platinum reminds Balogun “of one of the most unique and impactful records I’ve been lucky enough to play a small part in bringing to the world.”
DeSean McClinton-Holland
But the path forward, which Balogun says includes “being deliberate about giving our artists resources and nurturing them,” has had its setbacks. Def Jam’s market share has declined for the past three years — a downturn that began before Balogun arrived — and sat at 0.65% at the end of 2023, according to Luminate. And the label that once released culture-shaping music by LL COOL J, Public Enemy, Jay-Z, West and Rihanna had no chart-topping albums.
There was more upheaval as a result of the restructuring and layoffs at UMG in the first few months of the year, which led to Balogun reporting to Republic co-founder/CEO Monte Lipman and Def Jam’s urban promotions and public relations staff moving into the new Republic Corps shared-services division. “It was difficult for us, just as I’m sure it was difficult for any other label to have to go through” layoffs, he says, adding, “I actually think we are more focused and more aligned and more set up for success now.”
Despite these changes, Balogun’s reset is gaining momentum and market share is on the upswing. After Muni Long’s “Hrs & Hrs” reached No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022, her latest single, “Made for Me,” reached No. 20 on the March 9 chart and became her second No. 1 hit on R&B/ Hip-Hop Airplay, where it has reigned for five weeks. That will lead into her forthcoming debut album, part of a slate of releases this year from Jones, Aiko, Vince Staples, Big Sean, Alessia Cara, Wale, LL COOL J and Chuck D, among others.
As Def Jam celebrates 40 years of history, Balogun says the label is driving forward once again. “I want to get to a place where we’re not defined by nostalgia; where nostalgia is just a part of the magic,” he says. “I do think we’re heading there. But it’s a heavy task.”
Balogun says the boombox is “a reminder of my musical roots and the magical era when Def Jam began to change the world.”
DeSean McClinton-Holland
Def Jam is 40 years old. What does that mean to you?
Def Jam, to me, has always stood for forward-thinking, cutting-edge Black music. And I’m careful to say “Black music” and not just “Black artists” because if you have something special like a Beastie Boys or eventually a [Justin] Bieber, it belongs on the label as well. It was the first label that felt like [it had] a point of view. If you plot the course of the label over time, there has always been risk-taking signings that reflect where music is going. The goal is to continue that tradition and bring it into the future. My entire career, most of my successes have been a little bit left of center: riskier signings, artists that have their own point of view.
When you accepted the role, what was your strategy, and how did it change once you got to Def Jam?
My plan was to look under the hood, meet every single artist and employee and have genuine, one-on-one conversations with them. I found that there was a lot of instability. There wasn’t a focus on the new, which is everything I saw when I worked with Jimmy Iovine, John Janick, Peter Edge.
Did the label need a cultural reinvention?
Yes. I am a walking reset button for Def Jam. That’s not to disrespect anyone who was here before me. It was more about bringing [the label] into my world and the way that I move. I try to be a reflection of what’s happening in the creative community. That’s always going to be my superpower: I’m tapped in with the producers and the artists. Def Jam has always been the culture’s label, the most down-to-earth label, that feels like a reflection of the people. I want to reestablish those values.
How do you balance that with the need for hits?
I want more hits, but to get to that point, you need to plant multiple seeds and allow them to flourish. You can’t just put [a song] on MTV and the radio and it’s over. There needs to be 100 discovery points, a digital story, an [in real life] story, an artist proposition, a song that’s special, and all those things need to align in one moment. When I started, I told Lucian [Grainge] that I’m a long-term guy and I’m willing to wait for the moment. I’m not pressed to chase numbers, chase the algorithm, chase the hot new thing of the week. I’m going to wait until I find something really special that makes my skin tingle, and then I’m going to go for it.
“My small but mighty jewelry collection”: his wedding band and his half of matching Cartier rings that he and his wife wear. His mother gave him the chain with the charm and matching ring when Balogun was in Nigeria “reconnecting with my roots. She literally took the chain off her neck and put it around mine.” A few months later, she “hooked me up to complete the look” with the ring. He wears it on his left pinky and the Cartier on his right.
DeSean McClinton-Holland
How has the UMG restructure affected you and Def Jam?
The biggest changes are in radio promotion, where now we work with Republic’s rhythm and pop staffs. We retained our urban team, which now services the whole group. Since this is Def Jam, the vast majority of these records are going to start in that urban radio space, so it actually, so far, has been really seamless. The other major change is in the publicity space, where we now share resources with the Republic Corps team. From the inside looking out, it has been pretty smooth, and there hasn’t really been much of a drastic change. We’re very much continuing on that path that we’ve been on since I got here.
What’s an example of how the new structure has worked?
A great example of the synergy has been the work that we’ve done with Muni Long’s “Made For Me” record, which our team got started. We got it to No. 1 at R&B and urban radio right as the transition was happening, and then we seamlessly passed the baton to [Republic’s] Gary Spangler and his team, and they got it to No. 1 at rhythm and now they’re building at [adult top 40] and top 40 radio. The creative and the energy and the ideas are still coming from Def Jam, but once we reach certain thresholds, we collaborate with the larger team. That song is still going from strength to strength. It’ll end up as one of the biggest R&B songs of the year, and it’ll set up Muni’s album. It feels like we have more tools in terms of artist development, and now we can approach things from different angles, depending on what the most effective strategy is.
One of the consequences of planting seeds, as you put it, is that Def Jam’s market share has been dropping. Are you worried you’re not going to have the time and space to watch these seeds grow?
No. It doesn’t change the conversation I had with Lucian at the beginning. That’s something that everyone that I deal with understands. I’m also not a dictator who thinks he knows everything. I’m willing to learn and grow, and for me, this [restructuring] is another opportunity to grow. There are things that I’m excited to work on with some of the other labels now that there’s a possibility of doing things together. I’m already moving like that.
Def Jam scored best new artist Grammy nominees in each of the past two years. What does that signify for you?
We are making progress. But every single person who I’ve spoken to who has gone through this [experience] has said it’s probably going to take three, probably four or five years. We’re at the beginning of year three. My biggest fear was, “Am I going to be able to go in there and break new acts?” Now I know we’re able to do it. Every time I’ve bet on myself, I’ve found success. I’m confident in that, and I’m confident in my team and in our artists. We’re already on an incline, so I don’t see how that stops.
How do you want the next 40 years of Def Jam’s artists to define the label?
I want Def Jam to be the destination for the next generation of global Black music. That is my mission statement. In many ways, it reflects what the label has always been, but it brings in all the new scenes and sounds and strains of music — everything from U.K. R&B, to Nigerian drill, to amapiano from South Africa, to a really special country act from Missouri, the next incredible lyricist from New York or the next really special female MC from Atlanta. All these different worlds and sounds need to exist within this label. I truly believe that we are the only major label that’s synonymous with pushing Black music forward.
This story originally appeared in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
As a former executive at music companies in Singapore, Hong Kong, New York and Los Angeles, Wendy Ong certainly has the globe-trotting credentials to help a roster of music artists including Lana Del Rey, Ellie Goulding and Noah Cyrus navigate an increasingly global business. But Ong charted the flight path she took to her current role as global co-president/chief marketing officer of the artist management and publishing company TaP Music largely on her own because, she says, mentors for an Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) music executive were virtually nonexistent then.
As a result, Ong — who was raised in Malaysia and Singapore and worked at BMG, Arista, RCA, the Metropolitan Opera, EMI, Capitol, Interscope and Roc Nation — says she makes it a priority to be one herself, particularly for Asians and Asian Americans. Her mentorship has been aided by her participation in Gold House — a community of Asian Pacific entrepreneurs, creatives and other leaders — after, she says, she was invited to one of the organization’s dinners “by accident.” She adds that when opportunity presents itself, “it depends on what you do with it.”
Trending on Billboard
Ong sat down with Billboard to discuss the continued importance of music festivals, the work of Gold House and the promise of artificial intelligence (AI), among other topics.
Lana Del Rey returned to Coachella this year as a headliner. Do festival bookings still move the needle?
When you’re strategic about it, it allows you to make getting into smaller markets cost-effective. It’s hard to do proper global touring these days, and even in the U.S., festivals allow an artist to complement their overall touring strategy. From the TaP perspective, it’s still a very key component, especially for developing artists. It’s the same reason that collaborations work because it’s crossing over to other artists’ audiences. And not just for young people. I’m supposed to be the jaded music executive, but I’m not. The Justice set [at Coachella] blew me away. I actually went and checked immediately [to see if they’re touring] because I wanted to see it again.
Prior to Coachella, what other major wins has TaP scored in the past 12 months?
Ellie [Goulding] is one of the most multifaceted artists anywhere. She had a No. 1 single and album last year [with “Miracle” featuring Calvin Harris and fifth full-length Higher Than Heaven] in the same week in the U.K. That was stunning. And Caroline Polachek’s album [Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, which debuted at No. 9 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart]. I love that Caroline and Mookie Singerman, who manages her, have been together since the beginning of [Polachek’s former band] Chairlift. There’s something to be said for loyalty. Sometimes when an artist gets bigger, they feel they need to switch up their teams. They are the CEO of their own company, so they need to make tough calls sometimes. But it’s nice to see those that remain loyal.
After Ong spearheaded a Fifty Shades of Grey classical compilation at EMI, she says author E L James’ lawyer sent her a cease-and-desist notice. “I flew to London,” she says, and successfully proposed releasing Fifty Shades of Grey: The Classical Album, which put her on the radar of radio departments at Capitol when programmers called to say, “ ‘We heard you released a BDSM classical album.’ ”
Yasara Gunawardena
How are label layoffs affecting management?
Significantly. I always look to partner with our major labels in the best possible way, and when things are up in the air, it makes it very challenging to understand how much support we’re going to have. The company that [TaP co-CEOs] Ben [Mawson] and Ed [Millett] have built is very much on the ethos of self-sufficiency. Going back to Lana, at the beginning of her career, they had a lot of pushback. She signed to Universal Germany because nobody believed in her. And that was and still is today a big takeaway for how we function as a company. We try to do as much for our artists as we can without overly relying on third parties, whether it’s a label, a brand, a social [platform] or a [digital service provider]. We need that agency to be able to make a difference.
What does that entail today?
All anybody wants to talk about right now is superfans. And it’s such a wake-up call. Fans want that close, direct relationship with the artist, and we were all slow in realizing that we need to take control of this relationship. We, as a management company, have made big strides in CRM [customer relationship management]. We have someone employed specifically at our company to do CRM. We’re platform agnostic, whether that’s OpenStage or Community or Laylo. What is important for us is to be able to take back the data. I say “data,” but that’s the fans. Artists need to be able to talk to their fans directly, and I think we’re leading the charge on the management side. It’s a testament to how [much] we value our artists’ fans.
Ong’s great-grandmother, with whom she lived in Malaysia while attending preschool, gave her this pendant.
Yasara Gunawardena
You’ve talked about not having a mentor in the industry. When you switched to management, was it even more apparent?
It was glaring. I wish that wasn’t my answer, by the way. I wish I could say that, “Oh, yeah. So-and-so really lifted me up and helped me out so much.” Younger people, whether it’s on social media or in real life, often reach out to me, and I do my best to play whatever small part I can because I think that my path may have been a little less rocky if I had more guidance early in my career. And the very reason I had no mentors is because there weren’t enough people that looked like me when I was coming up in the industry. Now there’s K-pop, so that has changed things in the best possible way.
How does Gold House encourage more mentorship and visibility of the AAPI community in music?
With Gold House, I think it’s the first time that I became a part of something greater for the AAPI community. It makes it easier to give back and to spotlight minority communities like ours. I’m also very proud to be part of the Gold House Music Accelerator program. The spotlight K-pop has put on the AAPI community is wonderful, but being a judge on the Gold House Music Accelerator program helps to shine a light on other types of artists, whether it’s indie-rock or R&B.
Why has K-pop become an umbrella term in the United States for all Asian music right now?
Because we’re dealing with the greater media that is not Asian, it eclipses all these other interesting artists and music that’s coming out from countries like Indonesia and the Philippines and Taiwan. Nowhere else in the world would you put South Asians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Filipinos, Indonesians all under one umbrella. It makes no sense outside of America. We have to do it in this country because we’re all minorities and we can have a bigger voice if we band together. It’s a challenge, though, because K-pop has changed so much of what we think pop music looks like. So now that we have a sliver of an opening, I hope that we get to demonstrate through Gold House efforts, for example, other types of music made by Asians.
A sweatshirt embroidered with the face of Ong’s recently deceased dog, Patches, whom she rescued 16 years ago on the island of Tobago and “was my rock through and through.”
Yasara Gunawardena
What genre would you like to see gain prominence?
I’m so excited about South Asian Desi music. It is so much fun and joy and rhythm and bass. That joyousness is similar to how I view a lot of Latin music. It’s inevitable that a Desi artist is going to break through, and I’m excited for that to find its way into America.
TaP has its publishing, philanthropic, fashion and sports divisions, but is there another sector you would love to see the company tackle in the future?
I am very excited and a huge advocate for all the positive changes that AI can bring. But I also have that personality of an early adopter. I think that in two years’ time the music industry is going to look extremely different — maybe more so on the publishing side because that’s where it’s the most scary. When things are challenging, that is when opportunity comes. It’s whether we can find a way to leverage it.
Outside of new music, what are you looking forward to this year?
The Gold Music Alliance. It was really encouraging when [the organization] had the chance to do the event around the Grammys this year. It was the first experience for me as a member of the Recording Academy to realize that there was interest in growing the AAPI membership base. Because I don’t think we’re very represented.
Yasara Gunawardena
Do you think that will change with this year’s nominations?
In 2023, two AAPI trustees were elected to the academy’s national board of trustees. I think that is a sign that we are getting more representation. And I want to use my platform to encourage more AAPIs to become members of the Recording Academy. I know K-pop dominates in terms of consumption, but recognition is what I’m speaking about. I would be really excited to see a non-fan-voted award with K-pop. We should be represented not just in Billboard sales charts, but also in critical acclaim. Once again, I hope that K-pop forges the path for other types of Asian music.
The academy added a best African music performance category this year. Would you like to see a similar addition for K-pop?
How amazing would that be, but it’s a double-edged sword. Like, why isn’t K-pop just part of pop? It’s [like asking] why is there a best actor and a best actress at the Oscars? Sometimes I think it’s necessary because we can’t [bestow] the right amount of acclaim and recognition by putting everyone in the same bucket. We’ll see more changes due to AI than we’ll see anything else. I wish technological advances could help advance this type of conversation — maybe that’s the challenge.
This article originally appeared in the April 27, 2024 issue of Billboard.
On Feb. 5, 300 workers from North America’s music industry gathered at the inaugural Music Sustainability Summit to discuss the impact of climate change on their business. “People were always asking where to start, what to do and how to do it,” says Amy Morrison, co-founder and president of the Music Sustainability Alliance, which organized the symposium. “We saw a need to bring people together in order to not duplicate work, to share best practices and to spotlight the good work everyone is doing.”
Morrison formed the 501(c)(3) nonprofit MSA with co-founder Mike Martin during the pandemic and near the end of her 23-year run as senior vp of marketing at Concerts West/AEG. While semiretired, she still consults for the company and continues running tour marketing for The Rolling Stones, including their North American Hackney Diamonds trek this summer. The touring shutdown enabled her to complete a certificate program in sustainability at Presidio Graduate School, and she now dedicates most of her working hours to the MSA. (The alliance is currently collaborating with a nonprofit fundraising consultant to raise money to pay staff.)
The MSA’s mandate is the creation of “climate-focused professional resources and community,” Morrison explains. “It’s a relatively simple concept, but nobody ever saw the need for it. The downtime we had to reflect during COVID was helpful, and the timing now couldn’t be better to accelerate and lift everyone up together to do this.”
Trending on Billboard
The Music Sustainability Summit will be an annual gathering that takes place in Los Angeles — where the MSA, like Morrison, is based — on the day after the Grammy Awards, and MSA will organize a number of year-round initiatives and track environmental regulations that will affect the industry, with the two most pertinent being truck emissions and phasing out single-use plastics. It also offers a music-industry resource guide.
“It still blows my mind that I get to work with the Stones,” Morrison says. “Living in L.A., this poster beautifully marries the SoCal vibe and the greatest rock’n’roll band in the world.”
Maggie Shannon
By mid-April, the MSA plans to have three to five working groups dedicated to promoting sustainability practices in the industry. Each will share solutions and actionable recommendations. In collaboration with the Eller College of Management, MSA is also conducting an analysis of the economic impacts of extreme weather on the live industry and how environmental regulations will affect touring practices. Morrison is also a member of the advisory group for the Sustainable Production in Entertainment Certification, which is being developed by the U.S. Green Building Council-Los Angeles in partnership with experts to develop SPEC’s green certification program for workers across the entertainment industry.
Beginning in May, MSA will hold a series of webinars that will focus on merchandise, food choice impact, easy ways to green events, regulations and incentives, among other topics. Plans are also underway to launch quarterly member happy hours in L.A. and New York.
“I oversimplify things a lot, which I think is a gift and a curse,” Morrison says, “but it makes me not scared and it motivates me to try things because it’s like, ‘We can do this.’”
It’s often said that despite the music industry having a very small impact on climate change, it has an outsize influence on the culture that can be leveraged. What are your thoughts on that?
I agree as a general statement. I feel it’s really important, though, that we have our house in order and that the industry can walk the walk, speak with confidence and be legit and authentic in getting that message out. I think that supports artists who want to speak out as well because they have the confidence that the industry is behind them.
The MSA wants to create that confidence. The mission is to have a net-zero music industry by 2050 [with] lots of milestones along the way.
“This clock commemorates The Concert of a Lifetime, Simon & Garfunkel’s 1993 residency at [what is now] The Theater at Madison Square Garden. I grew up listening to them, and being a part of this historic reunion was a career highlight.”
Maggie Shannon
What initiatives is the MSA working on?
We’ve been working on a Get Out the Vote working group. There’s a lot of interest, and it involves everything from message targeting, deciding on markets and the intention of activating younger people to vote [with consideration for] the climate. We’re also talking about how to use the channels we have: What can a venue do to get the word out? What can a promoter do? Then the campaign needs to be created for them to actually have something to share. It could even be picking a city that needs the impact and finding a local artist there [to get involved] who could be just as meaningful as getting a superstar to do it. We’re working with folks that create campaigns, along with political experts.
You work in the touring industry. What initiatives do you have in that sector?
In the next couple of months, we’re launching a campaign for [tours] to have one less truck. It’s about flipping the narrative that [the goal] is no longer having the biggest tours with the most trucks — it’s about still putting on a beautiful show, but with fewer trucks. That’s something we can measure over time. It’s a ways down the road from launching. We’re also working on courses for worker education on how to be green, like a certification you get in how to do your job in a green way. We need operational change, and it only comes from education.
“Running the marketing for a festival of this magnitude with these artists was an incredible experience. I got to draw on my touring experience while learning new things.”
Maggie Shannon
What would a curriculum like that teach?
It could be how to set up composting backstage, or how to go down your supply chain and source items, or how to measure energy use. Really basic stuff, starting on the production side.
Because production has the biggest impact?
Yeah, and it’s easier to adopt. It’s important for systemic change that the people who are doing the work, who are really making operations hum, understand the work. And if their bosses or management see the value in funding this type of program, then it’s also coming from the top.
How do you see the music industry generally becoming greener?
I see it in the expansion of departments, with more people being hired and more resources getting put behind it. [Live Nation’s touring program] Green Nation is starting to really empower its production teams to lead in the green space, and they’re putting green coordinators out on the road. It’s not like, “The runner or the [production assistant] can do it.” There has been a shift in the acknowledgment that this is actually a job.
The MSA is working with big companies that compete with each other. What has that been like?
We’ve found that in the production vendor world, it’s a no-brainer. They’re all game to be on the same calls and do things together. At the summit, the panel with the [sustainability leads from AEG, Live Nation, ASM Global and Oak View Group] was a good start. A secret mission of mine is to find a project for the four of them to work on. Maybe to find a city where they all have a property — I’m sure there’s more than one — and work on [climate-minded] infrastructure together. It can be a small thing to do as proof of concept. I think the working groups will bring some of that because a lot of our role is to facilitate, convene and set the table for people.
A friend gifted Morrison this Al Hirschfeld drawing of Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia. “As a longtime Deadhead and Hirschfeld fan, it makes me smile to see Jerry doing what he loves.”
Maggie Shannon
I think part of the road map for us is to come up with some science-based, peer-reviewed recommendation to take to the C suite and say, “Here are a couple of projects that maybe if all the venues work together on, this is the impact it could have, and all it will cost you is X, Y or Z.”
I can see how having such options would be useful for busy people who don’t know where to start.
Maybe I’m dreaming, but they really should all work together on this, and I think they will, with the right projects and the right impact.
Climate change can feel so overwhelming. How do you avoid existential dread and stay in a place of progress and optimism?
I’m a half-full gal. I am optimistic, and I’m fed by support, good work and successes. The summit was amazing. I couldn’t have dreamed of it to be any better. And everyone still showed up during a crazy rainstorm. There were a lot of years of banging the head against the wall around all this, but change is happening. So I’m not driven by fear — I’m driven by making a difference.
This story will appear in the March 30, 2024, issue of Billboard.
When Condé Nast announced in January that it was folding the nearly 30-year-old music website Pitchfork into GQ, music fans and journalists decried the downsizing of a revered media outlet that gave voice to a diverse array of music genres, styles and artists that it praised and panned with its decimal system rating scale.
The shake-up also resulted in the departure of another woman from a leadership position in the music industry. Puja Patel, whom Condé Nast named Pitchfork’s first woman editor-in-chief in 2019, was among those laid off after presiding over an expansion both in staff and coverage. A veteran of Spin, which she also ran, and The Village Voice, Patel — the daughter of a Zimbabwean father and Indian mother — advocated for “more conversational and accessible writing,” ensuring that the publication’s tagline of being “the most trusted voice in music” rang true for a wider range of readers. She also empowered her staff to shape that coverage and widen its focus from the once-male-dominated space of indie-rock to include, for instance, regional rap, Latin and urbano music, while also supporting indie’s current generation of stars such as Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski, Adrianne Lenker and HAIM.
In her first interview since leaving Pitchfork, Patel, 38, discusses her impact on the brand and why music journalism is here to stay.
Trending on Billboard
What were your goals as Pitchfork’s editor-in-chief?
I really knew what I wanted to do with it when I went there, and I think having some security of vision and a strong sense of the legacy of a publication — being able to keep that alive while also growing the thing — is the biggest task of anyone taking on an institution like Pitchfork. But I was mostly excited about taking an incredibly talented staff and [helping build] an even more expansively minded staff.
“I would hang out in my uncle’s records and tapes store while visiting my mom’s family in India. I grew up influenced by the mixtapes he’d make and send to her.”
Krista Schlueter
How did you see the impact of those changes during your time there?
The work of changing a place that is so beloved and such an institution is slow and purposeful. Often when someone new comes in, people expect some kind of bombshell explosive reinvention. The harder and more meaningful version of that is keeping the best parts and changing the parts that can be changed. The staff is very obviously more diverse than it has ever been. The taste on the site — it has gotten weirder and more engaged with popular music. And the readership has also become a lot more inclusive.
What were your ultimate goals for Pitchfork’s growth and evolution?
I wanted Pitchfork to be the destination for the discerning music listener — a place where you could discover an artist, listen to our staff debate and contextualize new releases; hear from the musicians themselves; see them live at one of our shows; and become part of our community online and in person. It was important to me to be deliberate about expanding the scope of our editorial while also advocating for brand expansions in audio, sponsored activations and consumer growth.
“It takes so much work and curation to build a unique festival,” Patel says of Pitchfork’s annual Chicago event. “The lanyards remind me of some of my favorite live-music moments and seeing our vision come to life.”
Krista Schlueter
Indie music is currently more diverse and dominated by women. What role did Pitchfork’s coverage play in that evolution?
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Pitchfork is the reason why that has happened, but I think we did make a really pointed case in recent years to say, “We’re going to give this artist what might be their first interview for a major publication. And we might also go ahead and book them for the festival.” We’ve heard from labels that they have signed artists based on Pitchfork album reviews and that tickets to shows have sold out once [an act] got Best New Music or once Pitchfork gave a glowing recommendation. Part of the way we curated the festivals during my time at Pitchfork was to give at least one [artist] their first headlining set at a festival. During my time there, that was HAIM, Big Thief, Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski. All folks who are vitally important to the conversation around music right now.
What role will the album review play going forward?
I find that music criticism and, specifically, the role of the album review is so important for anyone who cares about music. Every single day at midnight, we saw an uptick in traffic when we published our new album reviews. They are a way for fans to gauge their own understanding and opinion of how they feel. Beyond that, they contextualize an album against the artist’s own discography, explain the nuances of lyricism or that a [song sounds] intentionally familiar because it’s a callback to some other piece of art. I also really believe that the album review is a way for people to soundboard their own instincts. When they see, in Pitchfork’s case, a score, or they read someone who is talking about how a piece of music makes them feel, it’s a way for them to viscerally say, “I agree” or “I don’t agree” and explore why.
“I saw around 50 shows last year and always hold on to ticket stubs from special shows.”
Krista Schlueter
Why is it important to have a wider and diverse group of people pick Best New Music?
When I started at Pitchfork, I really made the idea of the album review scoring and consideration much more inclusive and collaborative. We would invite the entire staff to listen to an album. Bringing more people and more perspectives into the conversation opens up new windows and lanes to consider the piece of music, which always in my mind made us like it more. That’s not to say that there wasn’t an executive decision made from time to time.
With music publications shuttering or shrinking, does that create more space for independent voices to thrive?
It has been hard to watch the most iconic music publications slowly being pared down more and more. I’ve found a ton of inspiration and joy from the way that younger folks are using social media as a place to make music discovery and discourse accessible to more casual fans — especially as we’re seeing labels encouraging artists to take ownership of their narratives through some of the same formats. And while that sort of push from the music industry makes the industry ostensibly or optically less reliant on a journalist’s viewpoint, I still believe that journalism and arts writing is extremely valuable. At the very least, it acts as a historical record. So much of music right now is repurposed from other music, and knowing what you’re listening to and where it comes from is exceedingly valuable. I really believe that even very good marketing can’t replace very good music journalism.
Krista Schlueter
Who are your must-reads?
I want to shout out Mano Sundaresan’s blog, No Bells, which started as this tiny, friends-talking-about-rap thing but has evolved into a collection of some of the most interesting and spirited young people with a massive curiosity for new music. It’s done with the humor and levity and general alt-counterculture spirit that is missing from so much “capital s” serious writing.
How have you shaped the future of music journalism?
There tends to be a lot of acclaim awarded to people who are the first of their identity to step into some role that has historically been reserved for a certain other kind of person. And, honestly, almost everywhere I worked, I’ve been the first of some kind in my position: the first woman, the first person of color, the first Asian American. In most cases, I’m two of those things, sometimes all three. So you’re proving yourself to the systems that were made with other people in mind, and you are also bending those systems toward the future. You are de facto acting as a representative or a sounding board for people who might be or have felt underrepresented in the past. And just by way of that, you’re also reshaping the industry that you’re a part of.
This article originally appeared in the March 2, 2024 issue of Billboard.
Artist development isn’t dead, but it sure has changed. Two decades ago, a 20-something jazz musician named Norah Jones became a breakout star for Blue Note Records, a traditional route to stardom when people still bought CDs and social media didn’t exist. Last year’s breakout jazz artist, Laufey, cultivated a fan base on TikTok and posts sheet music for her songs online so fans can download it before the recordings come out.
To AWAL CEO Lonny Olinick, Laufey’s success is a sign of the times. The Icelandic singer built an online following by herself, but she needed a team to develop her career and handle marketing and promotion logistics. Her second AWAL album, Bewitched, topped Billboard’s Jazz Albums and Traditional Jazz Albums charts in September. “We’re seeing this real inflection point where artists are starting to, with their own teams and then between the team and AWAL, realize that there are no barriers in what can be achieved,” says Olinick, who earned an MBA from Stanford Business School and worked at consulting firm Bain & Company before joining Kobalt in 2016.
Artists such as JVKE, whose “Golden Hour” reached No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022, and Mercury Prize winner Little Simz have used AWAL to find success outside of the major-label system. AWAL’s services-focused approach is becoming the norm as major labels increasingly provide distribution, marketing, promotion, accounting and even financing without needing to own the rights to artists’ recordings as part of standard deals. Sony Music acquired AWAL in 2022 to complement its labels and its distribution business, The Orchard. Universal Music Group is also building its own artist services business, through a revamped Virgin Label Group.
A pingpong table that Olinick says “we have artists sign when they’re in the L.A. office.”
Maggie Shannon
Paradoxically, services-based music companies still have to do many of the same things as traditional labels — just with different deals. Only recently, Olinick says, has the 16-year-old company truly met that challenge. “Last year and the year before were probably the first years where we fully realized that vision, where I’m confident that we can do all of the things that exist in the traditional world.”
Most people in the music industry understand record labels and distributors, but services-based companies are a bit harder to get. How would you describe AWAL to the uninitiated?
The most important part of music in my mind is artist development. You try to find artists who have great music, compelling stories and a work ethic and try to help them forge their own path. And throughout history, the best artists have been artists who don’t fit in a box, and the path that they take is completely bespoke. And you can’t do it again the same way. What we’ve tried to do is build a company that’s the best in the world at doing that — at finding outlier artists who have great stories to tell and helping them grow. You need a great marketing team, a great digital marketing team, radio, synch and branding — all the things that exist in the traditional world. What we’ve tried to do is build a company that can do all those things, just with a different business model to keep the economics in favor of the artist.
You don’t have an everyone’s-welcome model — you choose who you want to work with. How do you do that?
We’re very opinionated about music. It’s really important as a company to have that creative, A&R-driven aesthetic. There’s three dimensions to it in my mind. There’s the music: Does the music speak to people? Two, is there a story to be told, and does this person want to communicate something beyond just the music that’s interesting and compelling? And three, does the person have a work ethic? Being successful in music requires relentlessly hard work on all sides.
“I love art of all types and take a lot of inspiration from culture,” Olinick says. “These books cover amazing music, art and sneaker culture.”
Maggie Shannon
Tell me about the staff on the creative side, as well as the administrative one.
We do everything, but the majority of our staff is focused on A&R, marketing and creative. That’s where we think we can be different and where we can help our artists tell stories. There’s 180 people across 14 offices. It’s run as a global company. If we find a record in Sweden, the U.S. company can jump on it, or the U.K. company or the Canadian one. Everyone is working collaboratively to try to do the best they can for the artist. And in each of those offices, we have traditional marketing, digital marketing, synch, brand partnerships, publicity — we basically do everything that an artist needs largely in-house. And then to the extent that we feel like we need something beyond what our 180 people can do, we will partner.
What’s the financial commitment when you work with an artist? Are you always writing a check?
It depends. Some of the deals are unfunded. We’re fortunate to be a part of Sony, so if it makes sense and we believe in the opportunity, there’s no check we couldn’t write if it made sense. But each deal is bespoke for the artist. We try to put as much money into marketing as we possibly can because we believe that that’s the thing we can do that hopefully makes a difference.
This “thing with eyes is something my son made for me,” Olinick says. The feeling of being watched “keeps me motivated every day. The small trophy is from our office awards for ‘Person on the Phone the Most.’ I take great pride in that.”
Maggie Shannon
Sony acquired AWAL in 2022 and it already owned The Orchard. How do the two work together?
The whole Sony ecosystem makes a ton of sense, and AWAL and The Orchard are great examples of that. The Orchard is best in class at supporting record companies. And if you look at the scale at which they operate, and the quality of what they do on behalf of labels, there’s just no one who’s doing that kind of work. It’s an incredible team led by Brad [Navin] and Colleen [Theis], who are just incredible executives. I look at us in a very similar way: the best at doing artist development in this nontraditional way. Being able to work together on tools and distribution is a great advantage for our clients and for The Orchard’s clients.
Some artists have gone from majors or big indies to AWAL, including Nick Cave, Cold War Kids and Jungle. Have some artists gone from AWAL to majors?
Our job is to develop the best artists in the world. And I think if we do that — especially if we do that at any scale — there’s going to be certain artists where the deal offered by a major is really compelling. Early on, we saw a lot more artists who would migrate and go do another deal. We developed Steve Lacy, Omar Apollo and Kim Petras — artists who have gone on and had real success at majors.
“The Marshall cabinet is actually a refrigerator,” Olinick says. “My office tends to have items from our artists, but the exception is that Beatles collectible — I don’t have anything to do with The Beatles, but it reminds me to aspire to work with the greatest artists.”
Maggie Shannon
You’ve had some time to integrate into Sony. How has being part of this larger company changed your life as a CEO?
Anytime you go into these things you have aspirations for what it will be. At the same time, [merger and acquisition] deals tend not to be what you expected them to be. People think that I’m sometimes saying the company line, and it couldn’t be further from the truth: The experience has been phenomenal. That comes down to two dimensions. Rob [Stringer, Sony Music CEO] is just an incredible music executive who comes from an A&R perspective. Being a part of a company where he sets the tone that music is at the center of everything you do has made us a better company. And because of that, it has basically been, “Here’s all these resources that Sony has that you can take advantage of, but continue to run the company the way you have because we’ve had tons of success doing it.” It has all been additive.We have more resources to invest. We have better technology. We can partner with Sony in certain markets where it makes sense. We’re out there building local businesses in Spain, Brazil, Nigeria and India. The Sony team has been incredibly supportive. Everyone sees that this is a meaningful part of the business and because AWAL is so music-centered and so is Sony, there’s just a lot of mutual respect and collaboration. It has been nothing short of reenergizing in an already energized business.
The music business is undergoing some contraction with layoffs and consolidation. Do you foresee laying people off, or are you hiring?
We’re actively hiring. We hired a head of hip-hop and R&B last year in Norva Denton. We hired a senior vp of A&R in Chris [Foitel]. We hired Cami [Operé], who’s our publicist. We just hired a new CFO [Sumit Chatterjee]. We’ve hired in Spain, Brazil and Nigeria. We bought a company in India [digital distribution firm OKListen]. So, we’re actively in the market because the business continues to grow. We had our best year last year; we’ll have our best year this year.
As the son of veteran agent Dennis Arfa, whose clients include Billy Joel, Metallica, Def Leppard and Rod Stewart, Jarred Arfa felt the pull of the entertainment business early on but wanted to make his own mark. And though he joined the family business, Artist Group International (AGI) — after a stint at Robert F.X. Sillerman’s licensing and rights company, CKX — he didn’t quite follow in his father’s footsteps, choosing to focus on agency management and business strategy instead of the day-to-day work of an agent.
In June, those responsibilities doubled when Jarred, 39, was promoted to executive vp/head of global music at Independent Artist Group (IAG), the talent firm formed when billionaire Ron Burkle’s The Yucaipa Companies merged AGI and the Agency for the Performing Arts, more commonly known as APA. (Yucaipa purchased AGI in 2012 and had been financing APA since 2020.)
The combined agencies now represent approximately 400 acts — a big jump from the 270 or so on AGI’s premerger roster — now that APA’s artists — among them, 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, Ne-Yo, Robert Glasper, Kamasi Washington, Cypress Hill and D’Angelo — have been folded into the mix.
That said, Jarred points out that “my role isn’t just signing clients, it’s signing agents” and growing the business as a whole. He also oversees the music division’s day-to-day operations and continues to work with his father, who is now IAG’s music division chairman. (Both manage Joel.)
Jarred, who lives with his wife and son in Manhattan, spoke to Billboard about the changes he has made at the agency. He also sized up his main competition and weighed in on WME and CAA agents’ dissatisfaction with their treatment after their companies’ initial public offering (IPO) and sale, respectively.
How did the IAG deal come together?
[Yucaipa co-founder and managing partner] Ron Burkle made an investment in APA during the pandemic. Frankly, we were not interested in them at first. The way their music department was run was not the way we ran ours, but I also saw they had some nice pieces of business. We met with Jim Osborne, who’s now [IAG] CEO, and we were really impressed by what he did with 50 Cent and Mary J. Blige — reinvigorating their brands through film and TV and how that enhanced their touring. So we started very organically. We decided not to commingle our music departments, but we had some artists interested in film and TV and started working with projects for Jane’s Addiction and Ghost. Eventually, we became agreeable to doing something bigger with APA if they handed the reins over to us in music. We merged, and Jim and Ron bet on me as the guy to help clean up their current music business in terms of who to keep and who not to keep.
How did Yucaipa’s culture affect IAG?
Their mantra has always been to let entrepreneurs be entrepreneurs and stay hands-off in the running of the business. We have one person from Yucaipa who works with us on a day-to-day basis, and then we go direct to Ron for bigger-picture things. When we sold the business to Yucaipa in 2011, I was still in my 20s, and I never felt he judged me by age. It was simply, “Are you smart? Can you get the job done?” If you deliver for him, you continue to rack up credibility. If I email him on something work-related, I’ll usually get a response quickly. It’s incredible, honestly, to have access to someone at that level.
How many clients does the company currently oversee?
In terms of touring, we have over 400 clients. That said, there were another 400 that were cut from the roster. We scrapped APA’s territorial system — which revolved around adult contemporary [acts] — and parted with some of the people in that model that didn’t work with our culture. We shifted some of the workforce and resources to where they were needed, which was their thriving urban department.
AGI was a music-first booking agency. How has merging with an agency involved in branding, film and TV benefited your roster?
Initially, [our music focus] served us well. We got a lot of clients who were promised the world by the major agencies, and when nothing was delivered for them, they’d come to us and say, “At least we know you’ll handle our touring well.” At the same time, it made it difficult to attract younger clients who were looking for [film/TV opportunities] and hoping for a branding deal. We need those other assets now to get us in the room for touring, which the APA partnership unlocks for us. And then we show them how much of a difference we can make on the touring side.
You have said that one of your most important responsibilities at AGI is to “stay neutral.” What does that mean?
It means I’m totally neutral when it comes to how we use our resources. A lot of times when we do sign an artist and I’m involved in the signing, I’m the one deciding which agent makes the most sense for the project because I’m the most versed in our agents’ skill sets and which one’s personality type suits the artist.
Billy Joel’s Madison Square Garden residency was a huge success. How will its completion affect business?
Nothing in our strategy changes. Obviously, you can never replace a once-in-a-lifetime-caliber artist on the level of Billy Joel, but as he recently said, he plans to continue to work after his residency at MSG is complete. We also have many other arena and stadium headliners.
How does IAG stack up against a competitor like Wasserman Music?
They’ve inherited a very strong music business. I think the problem they have — and they can dismiss it all they want, but it’s the same problem we had at AGI — is that they’re attached to a sports business. They don’t have the traditional film and TV core that is so important to so many of our artists. That’s an impediment.
Both WME and CAA have come under fire for how employees were treated during WME’s second IPO and CAA’s sale to Artemis. Agents at both firms were extremely disappointed with the amount and value of the shares they received. What’s your take?
First, I want to acknowledge that CAA’s $7 billion valuation is amazing for the agency business. As far as taking care of their people, when it comes to bonuses, I’ve always believed in the split model because there’s no arguments at the end of the day. The agent knows, based on a set formula, what they’re going to earn. There’s no gray area to be worked out, and that leads to a lot less headaches come those year-end conversations.
You’ve been public about your support of Ticketmaster. What is the government doing wrong in its constant probing of the ticketing space?
They should be focusing on the secondary market. That’s where the real problem lies. But they get lobbied hard by companies like StubHub. As agents, the best we can do is get as much of the high-end revenue for our artists that otherwise would go to the secondary market while keeping enough tickets available at affordable prices. Ticketmaster tools like Dynamic and Platinum are very helpful.
Do you think programs like Verified Fan are here to stay?
As much as I like Ticketmaster programs, this is the one that I don’t think works. Look at the backlash from Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen fans. Ticketmaster is making people take an extra step, and in exchange, the fans believe they’ll get a ticket at a fair price — neither of which is necessarily true. Verified Fan creates this false hope for the fan, and while the intention is noble, it ends up creating a lot more frustration than reward.
How often do you communicate with your father on agency business?
We speak a couple of times a day about what’s going on in his artist world and what his needs are. I would say we spend at least one phone call a day talking about Billy Joel and strategy. It is always a lot of fun.
When you two get together for family events, do you talk business?
It’s a blend. We could be talking about my son for one minute, then it goes back to the business. Then we talk about sports, and it’s back to business again.