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Alexander Gumuchian, aka bbno$, always felt called to help people. After his initial dream of professional swimming ended, he wanted to become a chiropractor. The Vancouver, B.C., native did graduate with a degree in kinesiology, but solidified his future in music upon completing his education. Since, successful albums like recess, eat ya veggies, and most recently, bag or die have earned the 27-year-old agency to fulfill his original purpose — both in his music and in giving back to his community. “I’m definitely helping more people than I ever could have touched,” he says.
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Foundation
Growing up home-schooled by his mother, bbno$ was encouraged to learn how to read music and play piano. In 2008, as a young teenager, his brother’s friend suggested music production, too. But it wasn’t until high school, when he broke his back and derailed his aspirations of professional swimming, that he considered it. Soon enough, playing around with AutoTune during a casual hang with a friend led to an “epiphany” for bbno$ — and helped ease his depression following the injury. “I wish I had started earlier,” he says, “because I didn’t know there was this much fun in creating.”
Discovery
While studying at the University of British Columbia in 2017, bbno$ started writing two songs a day and releasing one a week. The momentum, he says, was fueled by the success of his now-friend and collaborator Yung Gravy, who bbno$ initially cold DM’d. (The two have since created two full projects and numerous singles together, including recent releases “touch grass” and “C’est La Vie.”) “I was like, ‘I’m going to spend every breathing moment trying to make [music] work.’ ” The payoff came two years later, when he released his cheeky, melodic rap single “Lalala” with producer Y2K on his college graduation day. By the summer of 2019, it debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent 21 weeks on the chart, peaking at No. 55. The song’s success earned him five record deal offers, though he ultimately remained independent.
Future
“My financial adviser just told me I am essentially rich forever,” says bbno$, who in October released his seventh project since 2018, bag or die. He’s now thinking about his impact beyond music, including a desire to create a nonprofit organization on the downtown east side of Vancouver to combat the city’s opioid crisis. But don’t expect his output to slow: He’s already working on music for next year, starting with a project full of ballads that he hopes will draw in listeners outside of his current fan base. His 2023 goal, he says, is simple: “Drop as much music as I humanly can.”
This story will appear in the Nov. 5, 2022, issue of Billboard.
After being the lead vocalist of norteño act Grupo Arranke for four years, Carin León is certain that going solo in 2018 was the best thing to happen in his career. “There’s a time to make those kinds of decisions,” he says. “I made it when I felt capable. I felt that I could dominate a stage. I felt that I could compose, produce [and] make my product by myself … And I didn’t have to deal with people who didn’t have the same vision as me.”
To help launch his solo career, the regional Mexican artist born Óscar Armando Díaz de León Huez signed to Tamarindo Rekordsz, the independent label owned by his manager, Javier “El Tamarindo” González. He found quick success, scoring his first entry on Billboard‘s Regional Mexican Airplay chart in 2019 with “Me La Aventé” and since collecting eight top 10 hits, two of which reached No. 1 (“El Tóxico” with Grupo Firme in 2021 and “Ojos Cerrados” featuring Banda MS in March).
Starting next year, León will expand his independence with the launch of his own label, through which he will sign and develop new talent — primarily from his hometown of Hermosillo, Mexico. He also plans to release a new studio album (his first under his own label), where he will experiment with other genres such as vallenato, bachata and bluegrass, but with, as he says, “a lot of soul.”
“The moment you have the freedom to make the music that you like, it gives you a very strong power called ‘sincerity,’ ” adds León. “When your essence is really there and you are not satisfying the needs of the industry and you are the owner of your image, people feel it and connect with it.”
Most of your Billboard hits are collaborations. As an independent regional Mexican artist, why is this beneficial?
I’ve always noticed it in the urban market, but in our genre, a lot of artists are territorial with their work. After I began collaborating, I realized that I can progress a lot and I could solidify my audience. It’s not so much that collaborations have benefited me, but it’s simply the model of the music that is being used now.
As you’ve gained momentum, why did you remain independent?
I was never open or closed to the possibility [of signing a major-label deal]. I think things began to happen in my solo career, and I don’t know why, but no record company paid attention to what I was doing at the time. Then I began to see that the path could be achieved independently. I personally think that being independent is the best thing that can happen to any artist because it means developing your art in the freest way possible and not depending on many things.
What is key for indie artists when building a team?
It’s letting the artist develop, taking care of them to a certain point and always trying to polish and exploit the best things about them. In the end, there are many people who can influence the final product but might not really trust or love it the way that you do. Make sure that the interests are not only for business or numbers but that there is also chemistry for making art. Everyone on your team has to like how the music and the product are being made and feel proud of it.
What’s your advice for emerging indie artists?
Learn from the opportunities that life gives you, and pay attention to what the music industry is lacking. I feel that looking within, you’ll realize what type of music fans want to listen to. But truthfully, be sincere with your music. Learn how to express yourself and discover what makes you different. Regardless, after any good deal or promo plan, I believe that when you make good music, there is no human power that can prevent something from working.
This story will appear in the Nov. 5, 2022, issue of Billboard.
While attending law school at the University of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia native Reynold Jaffe was booking DIY shows at least three nights a week — including Bright Eyes’ first performance in the city in 1999. Through that key booking, he met agent Eric Dimenstein, whom he stayed in touch with over the years as he became more immersed in the music industry. After first working in the business affairs department at Rykodisc, Jaffe later started independently managing Kurt Vile (whom he met at the indie record store his now-wife ran at the time) and Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield.
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By 2017, after years of encouragement from Dimenstein, Jaffe finally turned his passion into co-founding his own company, Another Management Company (AMC). Today, the firm has 10 employees and a roster of just over 20 acts, from Mdou Moctar and Alvvays to 2022 breakouts Blondshell and Horsegirl. “I never thought managing bands would or could be a career,” says Jaffe. “We identified a gap between the big management companies and a bunch of rogue one-man shows … Indie labels used to be thought of as junior varsity. I don’t think that is the case anymore at all. Some of the most artistically and commercially viable records can happen in the independent sphere, more so now than ever.”
Horsegirl
Horsegirl
Cheryl Dunn
During Thanksgiving dinner in 2020, Jaffe excused himself to hide in the bathroom and listen to a Bandcamp link his friend had sent. “I immediately fell in love,” he recalls of hearing Chicago-based teen trio Horsegirl’s first three songs. “I DM’d the band on Instagram from the table and said, ‘Please, can we talk?’ ” He hadn’t felt that surprised since hearing Snail Mail five years prior, subsequently signing the then-teen act to AMC in 2016. After partnering with Horsegirl in 2020, Jaffe helped the group score a record deal with Matador this year. “My experience with Snail Mail is not a small part of what made them comfortable with pursuing this.”
Blondshell
Blondshell
Daniel Topete
Welcoming indie-rock act Blondshell into the AMC family in June was pivotal for Jaffe. “Blondshell marks one of the first instances of a band that I’m not the manager of,” he says, praising AMC’s Holly Cartwright and Shira Knishkowy. “The passion was exuding from them for this demo …They’ve been in the driver’s seat, and that was my goal for AMC.” Jaffe believes the success of Blondshell, the Sabrina Teitelbaum-fronted act recently picked to join Spotify’s Fresh Finds emerging artist program, proves what can happen when the right team comes in at the right moment “with a vision and relationships to put gasoline on the fire.”
Mdou Moctar
Mdou Moctar
Atiba Jefferson
Though AMC started working with Niger-based Mdou Moctar in the summer of 2018, Jaffe had long been a fan of the Taureg songwriter and musician. “I’ve always liked music from that part of the world, but Mdou combined the traditional sounds of that part of the world with raging Western guitars, which I also love,” he says. “I would always go see him and the band as they came to town.” Following encouragement from musician Matt Sweeney, who “was a huge early proponent” of the musician, AMC added Mdou Moctar to its roster with the goal of signing the act to a new label. In 2020, Mdou Moctar signed to Matador and in late 2021 released its sixth album Afrique Victime. “At risk of being hyperbolic, it really is that sort of rarified air of seeing that band play,” continues Jaffe, teasing that after playing an estimated 200 shows this year the band is already back in the studio working on an album he hopes will arrive in 2023.
Poison Ruïn
Poison Ruin
Courtesy of Another Management Company
The Philadelphia punk band Poison Ruïn had been on Jaffe’s radar for some time. “It was one of those things where it’s like, your little brother’s doing something cool and you don’t immediately pay attention because it’s just your little brother’s thing and then you step back and you’re like, ‘Holy cow, this is really special,’ ” says Jaffe. He recalls how the act’s first album, I, uploaded to Bandcamp in 2021, sold 300 vinyl copies in under five minutes, prompting a repressing. He and AMC manager Dan Oestreich agreed the group could transcend the DIY punk scene, and now, much like Horsegirl and Blondshell, anticipate the band’s major breakthrough in 2023. Says Jaffe: “It could definitely be their year.”
This story will appear in the Nov. 5, 2022, issue of Billboard.
Last summer, Ethan Curtis of the firm Plush initiated a management conversation with an unknown artist named JVKE (pronounced “Jake”), whose unfinished song had just been used in a TikTok video by influencer Charli D’Amelio. It quickly went viral, and Curtis was eager to move just as fast. He reached out to the 21-year-old Cranston, R.I.-based singer, challenging him to flesh out the song in just one day.
“I spent the next 24 hours nervously hoping the song didn’t suck,” recalls Curtis, who had previously launched the TikTok marketing agency PushPlay, “but it was great.” The resulting hit was “Upside Down,” a bouncy, hip-hop-inflected pop song that has garnered 48.8 million streams, according to Luminate. What followed was even bigger.
COS t-shirt, Acne denim jacket.
Nicole Nodland
After officially signing with Plush’s Curtis and Aton Ben-Horin for management, the artist born Jake Lawson turned in his next song, the unabashedly romantic “golden hour.” Underpinned by a sweeping piano and violin melody over which Lawson sings about a lover with “glitter for skin,” the ballad similarly took off on TikTok — only this time, it raised the stakes to unexpected highs.
In September, “golden hour” scored JVKE his first hit on the Billboard Hot 100, soon sparking a major-label bidding war with offers in the multimillion-dollar range — all of which the artist rejected. And while many considerations came into play (including a desire to reap a bigger cut of his earnings), his decision to remain indie ultimately came down to accountability. “I’m a little scared that if I were to bring on a big team that I wouldn’t be as tenacious, or if I got a really big check that I would slack off a bit,” he says.
Even so, he notes that his eventual decision to remain unsigned, despite the flashy offers, “was against the counsel of some people.” Curtis and Aton-Horin admit they were less certain. “Obviously, long term, we don’t know what’s going to happen. But our job as manager is to always support our artists’ vision, whether or not we agree with it,” says Aton-Horin.
JVKE has shown a rare knack for promoting his music through TikTok ever since he launched his account in early 2020 — and that sort of knack is becoming increasingly valuable to record companies as the platform balloons. Now, with over 8 million followers on the platform, he and his older brother/co-writer Zac have been churning out a steady stream of content to promote the remainder of his relatively small catalog, which includes streaming hits like “this is what falling in love feels like” and the Galantis collaboration “Dandelion.” The former opened JVKE’s debut album, this is what __ feels like (Vol. 1-4), which arrived on AWAL in September.
JVKE got his start playing music in church growing up, exclusively listening to contemporary Christian artists before later discovering hip-hop on his brother’s iPod. Though he played piano, drums and guitar as a preteen, it wasn’t until he began using Logic Pro to create his own songs at age 14 that his desire to pursue a career in music took root.
Now, with his debut album behind him, JVKE is already working on new music and linking up with collaborators he won’t name yet but hints are well-known. In the live space, he and his management team are looking to take a cue from TikTok by architecting “viral elements” for in-person performances. Curtis teases that fans can expect “a scaled-down version” of a JVKE tour early next year before hopefully bringing on partners for a bigger outing later on. Already, he has teamed with MTV on a Push campaign in October, and in December, he’ll be American Airlines’ artist of the month, with his music given prime placement on in-flight entertainment screens.
KENZO sweater, COS T-shirt and pants.
Nicole Nodland
One thing JVKE is sure he won’t be doing, however, is releasing another conventional full-length. “The way that people consume music is a lot different nowadays … so we need to change how we release music,” he says. Instead, he plans to consistently tease song snippets on TikTok to get input from fans on what he should release next — which he sees as key to connecting with them as an independent artist. “I think if you’re going to go independent, you really do need to … listen to the [fans] because that’s where you’re going to find the most success,” he says.
And though “golden hour” has climbed to No. 28 on Billboard‘s Pop Airplay chart, Curtis says that radio promo is one area they may need help in to scale even higher. “We can spark our own fires, but the question becomes, ‘How capable are we at keeping them burning? For how long?’ ” he says. “To be clear, we’re not saying we’ll never need a label. But I know Jake wants to see how far we can push it on our own.”
JVKE photographed October 20, 2022 in London. Kenzo vest, COS pants, H&M socks, Reebok sneakers.
Nicole Nodland
This story will appear in the Nov. 5, 2022, issue of Billboard.
High above Broadway near the southern tip of Manhattan, perched atop what’s known as the Standard Oil Building, sits a particularly privileged slice of Old New York history. The top two floors of the 31-story structure once served as sanctuary for the Rockefeller oil tycoons: The lower has 360-degree panoramic views of New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty and Governors Island and used to house an executive conference room; the upper, known as the Tower Club, was once home to John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s squash courts, with some ball marks still scoring the walls. In the stairwell connecting the two hangs a sign: “IF WE SEE SMOKE AROUND YOU WE’LL ASSUME YOU’RE ON FIRE AND DRENCH YOU WITH WATER.” It appears to have only recently been taped to the wall.
It’s a clear mid-June morning and the place, rather than a shrine to opulence, looks more like a construction zone amid a teardown. Sun streaming in through the bare windows illuminates stripped gray walls and exposed concrete floors, with architectural renderings and white chalk outlines hinting at what’s to come. The space is being transformed into a state-of-the-art recording studio owned by Downtown Music Holdings, the umbrella group that handles distribution, publishing administration, royalty collection, neighboring rights, and label, publishing and artist services; and houses the digital rights management platform Songtrust and recently acquired companies CD Baby, FUGA, AdRev, Soundrop and DashGo. The studio — where the former squash courts will turn into one of the few loud rooms in the city large enough to accommodate a Broadway cast or symphony orchestra — will eventually become Downtown’s latest flag planted in its New York home.
But this is just a preview. About 50 people — Downtown executives, New York municipal employees and a few members of the media — mill around, slugging coffee and taking in the views as Downtown’s chief engineer, Zach Hancock, gives tours and explains the company’s vision. “As prices have skyrocketed in historic neighborhoods where recording and music making has happened, we have lost the vast majority of venues for making music,” says Manhattan borough president Mark Levine in one of the speeches made to those assembled. “To take a space that could have been vacant for years and to turn it into this hub of creativity, it’s going to become iconic in the music industry.”
Downtown outstripped its New York roots long ago to become a global company, and now has 22 offices around the world. But its home ties run deep: Founder and chairman Justin Kalifowitz grew up delivering food from his father’s luncheonette in downtown Manhattan and co-founded advocacy group New York Is Music in 2014 to promote government support of the business and culture of music in the city and state; longtime general counsel, COO and current CEO Andrew Bergman is a product of the New York public school system and has lived in every borough but the Bronx. So, having a studio in the city — and in such an iconic location — means a lot.
“The music industry has been centered in New York for more than a hundred years, and I think a lot of people took for granted, and take for granted, the fact that it is the largest music industry in the world,” says Kalifowitz. “If you’re running a business here and you don’t invest here and you’re seeing people leave for other places, I think it’s just going to be harder — harder to run your business, harder to enjoy what you’re doing here.”
Justin Kalifowitz photographed on October 19, 2022 at Downtown Music in New York City.
Wesley Mann
It’s ironic, in a sense, that Downtown got to this moment by divesting from the business on which it originally staked its name: owning publishing copyrights, which helped it become one of the most successful indie publishing companies of the past 15 years. But as the city, and the music business, have changed, Downtown has, too. And, over the past two years, the company has undergone its biggest transformation yet, morphing from a traditional publisher with 145,000 owned copyrights — including shares in songs such as Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger,” Beyoncé’s “Halo,” Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” and Lady Gaga’s “Shallow” (from A Star Is Born) — into a full-suite company that owns no rights and aims to help creators at all career levels navigate the music industry’s choppy waters.
But shifting from the traditional business — where ownership was king and hit songs could paper over any cracks — into a new digital world where scale and support are key isn’t easy, and the company’s current status is the culmination of a yearslong transition that’s not yet complete. In the process, Downtown found itself caught in some of the murky corners of the business that the digital revolution created, while trying to remain true to its service-minded core. The path hasn’t been linear, even if the goal is clear — and the transition is a true gamble on the future.
“I’d like Downtown to be this ubiquitous service provider that anyone could tap into, that’s best in class, that’s transparent and that’s easy to port in and out — that’s what we’re trying to build,” says Bergman. “That’s what everything that we’re doing is geared toward. So that all those services are available to you and that anyone, any company or individual, would want to work with us, because we’re filling a need that they have.”
The story of Downtown begins, in a way, with the story of Gnarls Barkley.
In summer 2005, Josh Deutsch and Terence Lam started indie label Downtown Records and quickly signed and starting working the duo’s single “Crazy.” Released in March 2006, “Crazy” reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for record of the year at the Grammys, ultimately winning for best urban/alternative performance — and giving Downtown the type of early success indies rarely see.
It also fueled a desire to expand, and in 2007, Kalifowitz joined and founded Downtown Music Publishing. Initially, the company signed a few acts affiliated with the label — Santigold, Cold War Kids, Miike Snow’s Andrew Wyatt — along with the writers behind Miley Cyrus’ Hannah Montana album and the producers of Mims’ No. 1 hit, “This Is Why I’m Hot.” But signing writers wasn’t the company’s main focus.
“The majority of what we were doing at Downtown Music Publishing was building a global, independent music publishing company,” Kalifowitz says. “The premise really was, there needed to be a young, nimble company that thought technology-first, but also had a creative hat in the business, and a more bespoke solution would make sense.”
Over its first few years, Downtown built its publishing business traditionally: writer by writer, catalog by catalog. But several early investments and partnerships also helped it grow its administration business. Downtown was an early investor in indie publisher PULSE Music, which has writers like Starrah, Brent Faiyaz and Kehlani on its roster; it also became the U.S. administrator for Trevor Horn’s Perfect Songs, a U.K.-based publisher with hits by artists like Seal, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Marsha Ambrosius in its catalog. Rather than rely solely on an owned, or inherited, catalog, Downtown took a partnership and investment approach early on, which gave it both insight into other businesses in its sphere and a diversified income stream.
In 2011, Downtown launched Songtrust, a tech-based global administration platform to help songwriters and producers get paid for the exploitation of their works. The service soon began cutting direct deals with collection societies — today totaling 65 deals across more than 245 countries and territories, with clients in 173 countries — that allowed its clients to receive publishing royalties directly and much quicker than traditional admin deals. “When we started Songtrust it was like, ‘How come those mid-tier artists or earlier aspirational artists can’t have access to the same kinds of service that a more prominent artist would have?’ ” says Bergman, who joined Downtown as general counsel in 2008, rose to COO in 2012 and became CEO in September 2021. “We started to build that technology out as more egalitarian, and today it is essentially the backbone for all of our publishing administration activities.”
Andrew Bergman photographed on October 19, 2022 at Downtown Music in New York City.
Wesley Mann
Songtrust, in its early days, was essentially a Downtown side hustle, co-founded by Kalifowitz and Downtown’s chief strategy officer, Joe Conyers. But it would become important in the company’s evolution as the first true service-first, nonownership-based offering it launched. In 2013, Downtown sold its record label back to founders Deutsch and Lam and, the following year, forged a partnership between Songtrust and CD Baby to provide publishing administration and royalty collection in the same way that the indie distributor collected royalties on master recordings.
That deal was when “we started to deal with creators en masse, thousands of clients as opposed to dozens, and it fundamentally changed how we thought about the service we were offering,” says Kalifowitz, who transitioned from CEO to executive chairman in August 2021. “That was also somewhat of a watershed era for us; we started to really expand to other markets — we opened in the U.K., we opened in Amsterdam, we opened an L.A. office — and we picked up the rights to the John Lennon and Yoko Ono catalogs. It really very much cemented our plans of being a stand-alone business. That partnership taught us a tremendous amount about the growing artist services space.”
It also led the company to expand what it could offer creators, often through acquisitions. In 2015, Downtown introduced Neighboring Rights — public performance rights for sound recordings — through the purchase of London-based Eagle-I Music, and now represents artists like Justin Bieber, Ryan Tedder and Ella Fitzgerald in that area. The company also executed direct licensing deals with YouTube, Apple, Amazon and Pandora, and through Songtrust’s expansion, began aggressive international growth, buying local repertoire in Europe and Japan while inking admin deals for the Wu-Tang Clan, the Miles Davis and George Gershwin estates, Shaggy, Tori Amos and Big Yellow Dog Music, publishing home to Meghan Trainor and Maren Morris. In all, according to Kalifowitz, Downtown worked in some form with over 36 million songs, through distribution, administration, royalty processing or other offerings.
“They made really smart deals; I think Justin Kalifowitz is still regarded as probably the smartest guy in publishing,” says one manager of the company’s success as a publisher. “They were really profitable in that sense. I don’t think they overspent for anything. Just a really smart company.”
By 2019, Downtown began to shuffle the decks. Molly Neuman — the onetime drummer for riot grrrl groups Bratmobile and The Frumpies who went on to various roles in the indie music community — was promoted from head of business development to president of Songtrust. She started turning the “side project” that sat “in the back of our Soho loft space, kind of in the corner, with less than 20 people” into an educational platform for music publishing at a time when the Copyright Royalty Board rate trial and the Music Modernization Act were dominating industry headlines.
“There were all these things about publishing as a required understanding starting to accelerate, while we were marketing Songtrust with education at our core,” Neuman says. “Because it’s fundamentally confusing, people don’t know why they would need it, so we kind of peeled it back as part of our strategy.”
Molly Neuman photographed on October 19, 2022 at Downtown Music in New York City.
Wesley Mann
The same year, Downtown spent around $200 million to purchase AVL Digital Group, the umbrella company that housed CD Baby, AdRev, DashGo and Soundrop, which were collectively responsible for distributing and monetizing over 10 million tracks from nearly 1 million artists. The acquisition dramatically expanded Downtown’s offerings into digital distribution (CD Baby), YouTube monetization (AdRev), social video support (Soundrop) and digital marketing and label services (DashGo) and swelled Downtown’s headcount to north of 300 employees. Less than a year later they brought on FUGA, a business-to-business tech and distribution platform for labels that gave Downtown a twin-engine service offering — one aimed at creators themselves, the other at music business clients — and doubled the size of its staff. Steadily, Downtown had begun to morph from traditional publishing toward a more services-oriented model.
The final piece of the puzzle came in April 2021, when Downtown announced it had sold its 145,000 owned copyrights to Concord in a deal worth $350 million, according to Billboard estimates. (Billboard estimated the owned catalog generated around $30 million per year; Downtown is still in the publishing administration business.) Its remaining businesses, the company said, would pull in $600 million in revenue and collections in 2021 alone. (The company declined to disclose its 2022 revenue projections, but said it is profitable.) Just as money was flooding the catalog acquisition space, Downtown was out. But it had a different vision for its future.
“[The owned catalog] was a small minority of the revenue of the company, it was a very significant cost to run, and it was a business model — the acquisition and ownership of rights — that was incongruous with a fast-growing services business,” Kalifowitz explains. “Our view was, there’s this one aspect of our business that is very crowded, has a tremendous amount of capital and is willing to accept very low returns, and it’s quite distracting to this other thing we’re doing, which is so much bigger and growing so much faster, and that we think, as a business, has a lot more potential, and as a product-market fit, there are so many more people who need what we’re building.”
In a way, Downtown was jumping from one boiling-hot segment of the business — catalog ownership — to another: distribution and services. And it was hardly alone. In the past two years, a slew of record labels — all three major groups, in addition to Republic, 300, Interscope, Capitol, Virgin and others — either started or bolstered their distribution offerings, while companies like SoundCloud, Tencent and TikTok shifted their business models toward services or added distribution capabilities.
It’s a plan with a forward-looking view of how the music business seems to be developing. In February 2021, Spotify’s global head of music, Jeremy Erlich, said that 60,000 tracks per day were uploaded to the platform, or some 1.8 million each month. (Recent reports now put that daily number at 100,000.) Earlier this year, Spotify said that in 2021 it had 72,700 DIY artists, and that 28% of artists who made more than $10,000 per year on the service alone — a total of 15,140, up 171% from 2017 — self-distributed their music to Spotify using CD Baby, TuneCore or Distrokid.
“Catalog decays over time; granted, there’s been exponential sales on a Phil Collins or a Bob Dylan, but it feels like that bubble is beginning to burst,” says one former distribution executive. “So to invest in an infrastructure that supports the emerging, new music industry, which is the DIY music industry, which in aggregate will represent more market share than the three majors combined in the future — that’s a spot I’d want to be in. And if you have a company where you have a flat fee upfront, and you don’t have to worry about if it sells, it becomes a numbers game. Some will pop and take off and you can find different ways to upstream those through administration or label services, and you can create a very robust and lucrative business.”
With more and more companies entering that business, success becomes about differentiation. “Getting your metadata out to the [digital service providers], that’s been commoditized; it’s about everything else that you do,” says Bergman of Downtown’s philosophy. “We probably have the broadest service offering already and we’re really just getting started on that front. Instead of looking to see what’s the next catalog we can buy, it’s about, what’s the next improvement in the service offering, whether that’s international expansion, or localizing the offering, or a service we don’t currently provide or an enhancement of a service we are providing? That’s how we think about the world going forward.”
Downtown has also forged relationships and partnerships across the industry spectrum. Through its various services, the company works with labels like Sub Pop (Songtrust, Neighboring Rights); Beggars, Epitaph and Domino (FUGA); artists like Phish (publishing), Maggie Lindemann (Songtrust), Lindsey Buckingham (Neighboring Rights), Cheat Codes (distribution) and Atticus Ross (publishing); and companies like Secretly Publishing (Songtrust), Symphonic Distribution (publishing for its catalog and its clients), Concord (publishing in Africa) and Hipgnosis (video monetization). What sets it apart from other services-based companies isn’t just the range of what it offers to individual creators, but to the industry at large, allowing them to plug in to its various outlets without having to go the major-label route.
“Organizations like Downtown, through services like CD Baby and FUGA and their admin business, make it possible for independent companies to grow globally without being put into that local bucket that the majors scale, but are unable to deliver the services on, because it’s a 1-inch pipe with 8 inches of water going through it,” says Allen Kovac, CEO of Better Noise Music, label home to artists like Five Finger Death Punch and AWOLnation, and a client of FUGA, Downtown Music Services and Downtown Neighboring Rights. “They offer a workaround — the ability for an indie company that may not have offices to be able to get focus from another independent company.”
Adding these capabilities through acquisitions is one matter; incorporating them into a broader company structure — one that grew fivefold in just a few years — is another. So Downtown underwent a major restructuring in the past few months, aligning itself into two distinct divisions, one business-facing, the other for creators. Neuman was promoted to chief marketing officer, in charge of spreading the gospel of what Downtown offers to the masses; FUGA chief Pieter van Rijn was named president of its new business unit, which includes FUGA, Downtown Neighboring Rights, AdRev and Downtown Music Services’ artist, label services and publishing administration units. Its remaining businesses, including CD Baby, Soundrop and DashGo, fall under its creator unit, overseen by the Downtown Holdings executive leadership team. Currently, Downtown says it works with 1.7 million creators and businesses across 30 million tracks and 14 million YouTube assets and continues to be a strategic investor, most recently in the $34 million funding round for alternative funding platform beatBread, and opened a $200 million fund intended for artist advances for the indie community in partnership with Bank of America in March.
“We have everything already there through various operating companies, and successful businesses, profitable businesses, but because of the acquisition spree that Downtown went on, there is room for opportunity to really create a few very clear business lines that determine how we’re going to go to market,” says van Rijn. “Over time, we want to be the best and most reliable and most forward-thinking service provider for the professional music industry, combining music DNA — which we all have — with technology and services. And understanding that we are a services business means you really have to understand your clients and how to develop with them, how to be innovative, but at the same time be practical about what are today’s needs of our clients.”
Peter van Rijn photographed on October 19, 2022 at Downtown Music in New York City.
Wesley Mann
“Downtown was always seen as a good, have-their-sh-t-together publishing administrator: They seemed very like-minded in caring about the sector that they were in, caring about the artists and putting together an infrastructure that put the artist and the songwriter first, as opposed to an ROI,” says the label-services executive. “And it allowed the company to grow in a very fastidious, credible way.” But growth can also, in turn, reveal unexpected problems. “It’s happened so recently — the catalog sale wasn’t that long ago,” the manager says. “So I think Downtown 2.0 has a lot to prove.”
In just a few short years, Downtown had completely transformed its model and its staff, if not its core philosophy, from the relatively stable publishing world to the constantly evolving services realm. But such rapid growth, as well as the rapid evolution of the digital music business, isn’t always smooth — and Downtown soon ran into a particularly rough speed bump.
In August 2022, Billboard published an investigation into MediaMuv, a company that took advantage of a loophole in YouTube’s royalty collection system to defraud artists and songwriters of $23 million in unclaimed royalties for which it did not own the rights. MediaMuv claimed these royalties between May 2017 and November 2021, when its owners were indicted by the IRS, and used AdRev to claim the money.
Investigators charged the two owners with 30 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft, and while neither YouTube nor AdRev were charged with wrongdoing, the story was met with incredulity by some who questioned how AdRev could allow fraud of that scale on its platform. In a plea deal, one of MediaMuv’s founders admitted to falsifying several documents submitted to AdRev “for the purpose of deceiving [them],” and sources tell Billboard that the complexity of the fabrications helped MediaMuv skate through AdRev’s regular monitoring processes.
Much of the fraud — though not all of it — took place prior to Downtown’s acquisition of AdRev, but its scale still put Downtown on the defensive. AdRev’s longtime president, Noah Becker, left the company, though Downtown said the move predated the indictment. In some respects, AdRev’s issues in this particular case reflect the increasingly complicated nature of royalty collections online, particularly on user-generated content platforms like YouTube, and point to real concern the business model presents to services-oriented companies: the sheer number of artists and copyrights companies are dealing with, and the cost-benefit analysis and likelihood of fraud that comes with that much volume.
“It’s an activity that’s growing quickly and the people who are committing the fraud are getting much more sophisticated,” says one distribution executive, who stresses it will take an industrywide campaign to shut down, or just get ahead of, the practice. “It’s not as easy to catch them anymore; their tactics are not as obvious anymore. Unfortunately, we’re playing catch-up with the technology that the people who are committing the fraud have access to, and a lot of what the aggregators do today is reactive.”
Downtown has moved to be proactive in combating this type of fraud: In April 2020, it acquired Simbals, a France-based audio fingerprinting company whose technology Downtown uses to better track its copyrights across the digital spectrum. Downtown has also developed a continuously evolving quality control program over the past several years, which is involved in both onboarding and continual checks for red flags, and in the spring implemented an assurance process to help codify that quality control process across its business units. It has internally developed tools to check for fraud patterns in streaming data prior to distribution, in-house data teams and fraud examiners to monitor for fraud patterns and third-party tools to prevent fraud at scale. (The company also notes that it began working with MediaMuv on a recommendation from YouTube, which referred it to AdRev.)
MediaMuv’s fraud, however, evaded several of those protections, while other safeguards have been strengthened since AdRev was acquired and the fraud was exposed. And it is unlikely to be the only or last issue that Downtown has to deal with in the services space, where fraud can be rampant and rights not always clear. But in a sector of the business where relationships and trust are paramount for adding and retaining clients, it’s been a tough storm to weather.
“We’re a known quantity in the business, so I think that the bulk of the industry will recognize that Downtown and its constituent businesses and people are known as ethical, well-run businesses that are all about trying to connect creators with their rightful share of the pie,” Bergman says. “That is why we exist. So I’m not naive about this sort of stuff, but I expect that our reputation for all the good work that we do — our attention to detail and all the systems and the technology that we provide to do that — will remind people that that’s what Downtown is.”
Moving forward, Downtown plans to continue to build out additional services to help clients navigate the ever-changing digital ecosystem, with social music and Web3 constantly evolving and new platforms continuously reshaping music consumption online. Predicting how the world will look in five years is not always simple, and certainly not static. But creating tools for the future — whether a simplified global publishing admin business, an all-in-one suite of services or even a new, state-of-the-art studio high above Manhattan — has always been in Downtown’s DNA.
“I’ve always believed that we were building a forever company,” says Kalifowitz. “I think the future for us is a continued streamlining of what we do and continued expansion of what we do, primarily geographically. And then continue to build out our platform. That’s critical. One of the things you learn as a service provider is that there’s no ‘build it and you’re done.’ It’s continuous improvement. So I think the future holds continuous improvement.”
This story will appear in the Nov. 5, 2022, issue of Billboard.
In May of 2019, Pat Houston — Whitney Houston’s sister-in-law and the executor of her estate — and music publisher and marketer Primary Wave announced a partnership that gave the company a 50% stake in Whitney’s assets — including her publishing, master recording revenues, name, likeness and brand — in a deal that valued the estate at $14 million. Since then, Primary Wave says it has quadrupled the estate’s fortunes — a figure it hopes will only explode further after a series of projects that will begin rolling out this fall, including a perfume line, a MAC Cosmetics partnership, an archival book and a biopic out Dec. 21: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, starring relative newcomer Naomi Ackie.
Centered on Whitney’s relationship with her mentor Clive Davis (portrayed by Stanley Tucci) and written by Anthony McCarten — whose previous blockbuster biopics (The Theory of Everything, Darkest Hour and Bohemian Rhapsody) have all yielded Academy Award wins — the film is being produced by Pat, Davis, McCarten, Primary Wave, Sony Tristar and Compelling Pictures. “My interest with the biopic has everything to do with Clive Davis,” says Pat Houston, noting the film will also contain a previously-unreleased song. “When she was here, he was always a fighter and always leading her career, and musically, he has that same vibe and feeling. You can’t mention Whitney Houston without mentioning Clive Davis, and I wanted it to be about the music and that relationship and how she got there.”
Davis, who worked with McCarten to develop the script and consulted on the historical aspects of the film, spoke to Billboard about bringing “the full picture of who [Whitney] was” to the big screen.
How did the idea for this biopic come about?
It was time that a full-fledged theatrical biopic be done on Whitney. And by total coincidence, one of my best friends was doing some production work with Anthony McCarten, who had done so well [as screenwriter of] the Queen film, Bohemian Rhapsody. So I started meeting with Anthony, and he was very, very interested in writing it. It was my task to really inform him, make sure that every aspect of Whitney was researched. I introduced him to the family, to everyone that had worked with Whitney, including her counselor, so he really embarked on a year to two years of research about Whitney and her life. When we both agreed that we had a final script that was authentic, honest and understood the full nature of Whitney’s life, I introduced him to Pat Houston and to [Primary Wave founder and CEO] Larry Mestel.
Were you involved in the casting?
I met and spent some time with Stanley Tucci, who plays me — and who was everyone’s primary choice, though I did not meet him until after he agreed to do the part. Before he and I spoke, he wanted to and did read my autobiography and saw my documentary [Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives]. And then we Zoomed, and then I went up to Boston, where they were filming, and I met with him in person. I’m extremely pleased with the performance that he gives.
With respect to Naomi Ackie [who plays Houston], we knew it would be Whitney’s voice in the film, so we were not appraising musical performance, but acting strengths. When we watched the audition tapes of the leading candidates, we all agreed on Naomi being very, very special.
How did you feel watching this film come to life?
It hit home. It’s realistic. Scenes between Whitney and me, obviously, were emotionally impactful, from the time we first met to going through the musical, personal relationship we had, the more difficult times in dealing with her problems. I think the film is very accurate in its portrayal of the dialogues we had.
What was it like working with Larry Mestel and Pat Houston?
Larry and I got along extremely well. With our outlook, our goal, our mission, our sense of fulfillment, we were pretty much on target. I found him understanding [of] the big picture. Pat attended every meeting I did. We would all meet together, see drafts of the film, exchange viewpoints and have dialogues as to accuracy. It was obviously a very emotional experience with Pat, too.
What effect do you think the film will have on Whitney’s legacy?
I would hope a very positive effect. I think it shows real depth and understanding of who she was, as well as the magnitude of what her musical life represented. I was an admirer of Bohemian Rhapsody and the Elton John film [Rocketman]. A well-done biography film reviewing the totality of a life as far as the music certainly adds to the legacy of the subject.
With this film and the other Whitney projects coming soon, how does it feel to see her celebrated again?
It’s a combination of enormous pride, enormous regret at her premature passing, wonderment at the uniqueness of her incomparable voice and the impact she had on musicians, artists, singers everywhere, even young ones coming up today. It’s been quite the emotional human experience.
This story will appear in the Nov. 5, 2022, issue of Billboard.
In May, regional Mexican act Grupo Frontera performed at Houston nightclub El Rodeo Disco to approximately 300 people. Three months later, in August, the act returned, and this time, much to the surprise of 19-year-old vocalist and bajo quinto player Adelaido “Payo” Solis III, the crowd had increased to 3,000. “I had to take off my in-ear to listen to everyone sing with us,” he remembers. “This was a dream come true.”
The experience would have been unfathomable a year ago, when Grupo Frontera was a local band from the Texas border town McAllen, creating music merely as a hobby. After recruiting Solis, fresh out of high school, into its now six-man ensemble — also comprised of Juan Javier Cantú, 29 (vocalist and accordionist), Julian Peña Jr., 26 (percussionist and animator), Alberto “Beto” Acosta, 30 (bajo quinto), Carlos Guerrero, 28 (drums), and Carlos Zamora, 32 (bass) — the group officially launched this March with an independently released debut EP that contained four cover songs, including Diego Verdaguer’s “La Ladrona.” “When choosing our covers, we decided to focus on timeless pop songs,” says Peña.
But it was a one-off released just one month later — their norteño rendition of “No Se Va,” a 2019 single by Colombian folk-pop group Morat — that catapulted them to fame. “We practiced that song just 16 hours before recording it,” says Peña. “Payo began singing it, then I added rhythms with the congas, and then Beto followed with the bajo quinto, and we all stared at each other thinking, ‘Wow, this sounds cool.’ We practiced it three times on a Wednesday, and the next day we recorded it live in one take.”
Following its release on April 28, its music video gained steam on YouTube on the heels of the EP, though at first the band still “didn’t understand why” it was performing so well, says Peña. “Then we went on TikTok.” Its engagement has sustained momentum on the platform, ultimately exploding due to a video from September that shows a suave man named Elmer and his dance partner, Erika, moving in rhythm to the song in Chihuahua, Mexico. The clip, which has now amassed more than 12 million views, “gave the song the push it needed to get to another level,” says Peña.
“No Se Va” debuted on Billboard‘s Hot Latin Songs chart in September and has since climbed to No. 4. Meanwhile, the track became only the fifth regional Mexican song in Hot 100 history, reaching a No. 57 high after entering the all-genre songs chart in early October. “Honestly, I think it was the seasoning that we put with the congas,” Cantú says of its runaway success. “It doesn’t sound like your typical norteño song; in fact, it sounds like something fresh with that reggaetón vibe.”
Despite Grupo Frontera’s success with its cover version, Morat’s original “No Se Va” has yet to appear on any Billboard charts (though the band did reach the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart in June with “Paris,” a collaboration with Argentine rapper Duki). While Grupo Frontera has not had any communication yet with Morat, Cantú insists the act deserves all the credit. “We wanted to pay tribute to a group that many of us admire,” he continues.
Amid all of its recent success, Grupo Frontera has added indie record label VHR Music founder Victor Ruiz as its manager. Ruiz — also the vocalist of Grupo Zaaz and manager of a handful of other Texas-based groups — additionally serves as the band’s booking agent and has already secured various performances in Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, New York, California, Florida and Mexico. Plus, he’s worked with the group to help boost its visibility, insisting on the importance of vlogging for each member. “I want them to get to the point that everyone can identify who’s who in the group,” he says. “People love seeing the intimacy of an artist, how they prepare for their shows and how they are behind the scenes.”
But beyond touring and vlogging, Grupo Frontera wants to keep testing its success as an independent act — even after multiple record labels have made generous offers, according to Ruiz. Adds Cantú: “I’m not saying that we won’t ever sign with a label but for now, we’re very happy this way. We want to see how far we can get as indie artists.”
Todd Spoth
The band plans to flood the space with new material, starting with a recent song titled “Vete.” Grupo Frontera aims to release at least five more original tracks before the end of 2022, with some help from reigning Latin Grammy producer of the year winner — and fellow McAllen native — Edgar Barrera. “I’m worried that they’ll become a one-hit wonder, and that’s why I tell them they need to release music constantly because if not, the momentum fades away,” Ruiz says.
“You’d think we’ve been playing together for 10 years, but we’ve only been out for eight months,” Cantú adds. “I still can’t believe everything that’s happening to us.”
A version of this story will appear in the Nov. 5, 2022, issue of Billboard.
With his debut studio album Ivory, Omar Apollo shows listeners exactly who he is.
The previously elusive singer from Indiana leaned into all aspects of his identity throughout the 16-track effort — from raw, genre-defying cuts like “Invincible,” alongside Daniel Caesar, to Spanglish trap banger “Tamagotchi,” which reveals a refreshingly playful Apollo. But it was “Evergreen,” a soulful, R&B-tinged deep cut, that captured the hearts of fans and catapulted Apollo onto the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time, through what every artists hopes for in 2022: a viral TikTok moment.
It took a few tries for the bridge to take off, with Apollo’s own trendsetting efforts on the platform with “Evergreen” proving futile. “I remember my day-to-day [manager] showed me a TikTok, and it was the same part that I had already been posting, but someone else did it,” explains Apollo from his sunny Los Angeles home. “And then it started going and going. I didn’t expect that at all.”
An influx of users began posting compilations of a hardship soon after — be it depression, body image issues or heartbreak — followed by their post-struggle glow up, to the track’s climactic bridge. To date, “Evergreen” has soundtracked more than 370,000 TikTok videos, also clocking in at over 65.8 million plays across streaming platforms.
It’s proof that the 25-year-old singer’s vulnerability paid off, showing that the longtime alt artist with a cult following is fully equipped for a mainstream breakthrough. The sonically cohesive Ivory‘s popularity on the charts prove as much: after debuting atop Billboard‘s Heatseekers Albums chart in April, it returns to No. 1 for a third week on the chart dated Oct. 15. (“Evergreen” also reaches a new No. 51 high on the Hot 100 this week, after debuting on the Oct. 1-dated chart.)
Below, Omar tells Billboard about the making of “Evergreen,” leaning into his cultural identity, what pushed him to get active on TikTok and more.
What were your intentions while making Ivory?
I knew that it was definitely gonna be something that I put all my effort into. I knew I was going to be proud of it. In terms of how it was received, honestly, I wasn’t really sure. But when I was done, I knew I gave it all that I had. That made me [secure] about what happened after.
The project wasn’t heavy on features, but the two you had, Kali Uchis and Daniel Caesar, fit so beautifully. Tell me a bit about “Invincible.”
That song has a special place with me because the structure is really weird. That’s why I really loved it. [Daniel] told me come to the studio, so I pulled up and started playing a guitar riff. And then we made an eight-minute demo of “Invincible” and it had all the parts in it, but they weren’t structured. Then three or four months later, I opened it back up, added drums, restructured it and sent it to him.
“Tamagotchi” is a Tyler, the Creator-approved hit. It also felt like the song more likely to go viral on TikTok — but it ended up being “Evergreen.” Did you expect that?
When I wrote it, definitely not. It was kind of like a post-rationalize thing. I was like, I”‘m on TikTok all the time. I feel like this would be something that would work.” I tried to make a few TikToks and they didn’t really go up. I was like, “I guess I was wrong, whatever.” Then I remember my day-to-day [manager] Jake showed me a TikTok, and it was the same part that I had already been posting, but someone else did it. And then it started going and going. I didn’t expect that at all.
Tell us about the process of writing “Evergreen.”
I rented a house in Idyllwild [Calif.] to make music with my engineer and my childhood best friend [Manuel Barajas] who plays bass in my band. It felt like how I [made] music in the beginning. I made “Evergreen” and “Endlessly” in the same day. It was so simple. Being far away from everybody, not having access to do things, things become clear.
[For] the part people use on TikTok, I had another song called “How Do You Live in Your Skin” — I was like, “I’ll take [those lyrics] and put [them] on my bridge.” Then I brought in my friend Tao Halm, we got a studio a couple months later — Larrabee Studios — and we hired a band. We focused on [the bridge] so much. There are so many textures — if you listen to background vocals, even Teo [Halm, producer] is singing on that part. It’s beautiful to see that all the effort I put in with Teo, Manny and my engineer Nathan [Phillips] is the part that’s blowing up. That literally makes me so happy.
When you earned your first Hot 100 entry, you tweeted out, “my first hot 100 entry, b–ch. Wow.”
[Laughs.] You already know that was a real reaction in real time, as soon as I got the news.
How did you find out about it?
Like four texts from my manager Jake, my A&R, everyone. I was with Manny. I’ve known him since I was 11. This is like my brother. He’s the one that wrote the chords on the bridge. He’s the one that told me “Evergreen” should have a bridge, and I don’t really do bridges. It was just so crazy being with him. It’s very surreal. It’s bizarre, the feeling of, “Oh, my God. I did this.” I worked with a lot of great people in my life, but it really mattered for my career when I did it with my best friend. That’s why it was so cool.
Before Ivory, you had a pretty low public profile, but it seems that has changed. What inspired you to be more active on socials?
These damn numbers got me over here making TikTok videos! Before the pandemic, I was just touring, I wouldn’t really be on the internet like that. I was like, “I want to make music, I don’t want to be on the internet.” And then it just started popping off. I’m like, “Let me let me get these TikToks together. What we doing? What’s the vibe today?”
Your Twitter followers are loving it.
Literally, please don’t ever take anything I say on my Twitter seriously. [Laughs.] My Twitter is a place for empty thoughts. There’s no there’s no backbone to the thought.
Did you ever consider that singing in Spanish would impede your mainstream growth?
When I was very young, I think so. I thought that people weren’t gonna take me seriously because I didn’t see any Mexican artists that were buzzing at the time [in the mainstream]. I also wasn’t around the music industry, I was in Indiana. And now it’s funny because it’s like, oh, “first-generation Mexican artist!” It’s like, “Well, I was wrong.”
Now, it’s clear you’re leaning into your cultural identity more. In your recent NPR Tiny Desk Concert, you had a mariachi of all women. What has inspired you to make the change?
I started off [making] traditional Mexican music. That’s how I started dancing — I was in ballet folklórico, which is like Mexican folk ballet. My culture was traditional Mexican, Juan Gabriel type of thing. You grew up on that, you take it for granted. And I lived in Indiana, so I really fell in love with R&B music: Aretha Franklin, Lauryn Hill, Sly and the Family Stone, Bootsy Collins. As I got older, I found a new love for the corridos. It was healing for me. Especially that all my songs are about longing, that’s what all that music is about. And I wanted to start the Tiny Desk like that because I love the Mariachi Lindas Mexicanas — I literally hired them to sing at my brother’s birthday. That is something you’re definitely going to hear [more] in the future. It just feels like home.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Oct. 8, 2022, issue of Billboard.