WME
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WME has signed pianist, composer and activist Chloe Flower for global representation. The signing comes just ahead of the release of Flower’s sophomore album, Chloe Hearts Christmas, out Nov. 1 on Sony Masterworks. The album follows Flower’s most recent single, “Christmas Tree,” which was released on Sept. 22. In 2021, Flower released her eponymous debut album, which […]
Peggy Gou has expanded her WME representation and is now globally represented by the agency. Based in Berlin, Gou’s 2023 tour schedule has included EDC Mexico, Sónar Barcelona, KappaFuturFestival, Lollapalooza Stockholm, Electric Castle, Creamfields North and ARC Music Festival. Upcoming plays include Australia’s Beyond The Valley and Wildlands festivals. She’s also played events including Primavera, […]
WME has acquired Austin, Texas-based True Grit Talent Agency, signing its entire roster including Cody Jinks, Charles Wesley Godwin, Whitey Morgan and the 78’s, Ward Davis, Dexter and The Moonrocks, Bart Crow and Mitchell Ferguson.
True Grit’s team, including agents Mike Krug, Carrie Creasey and Shelby Vanek, have also joined WME and will continue to work out of Austin.
“We are very excited that what we do caught the eye of a company like WME,” Krug said in a statement. “We are proud of all we have built here in Austin and know that joining WME will create exponentially more opportunities for our clients.”
“We’ve long admired the business and roster that True Grit has developed, and we are excited to bring their artists and the team into the WME family and expand WME’s footprint in Austin,” Jay Williams, WME Partner and Nashville office co-head, added in a statement.
The move deepens WME’s presence in Texas, following its acquisition of Red 11 Music earlier this year.
Jinks, known for songs including “Loud and Heavy” and “Hippies and Cowboys,” has been opening shows on Eric Church’s Outsiders Revival Tour. Jinks will headline Red Rocks Amphitheater this fall, and will be among the openers on Luke Combs’ Growing Up and Getting Old Tour next year. Meanwhile, Big Loud artist Godwin is gearing up for the release of his album Family Ties next month, and is opening shows on Zach Bryan‘s Burn, Burn, Burn Tour; Godwin also recently inked a publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music.
WME represented all three headliners at Stagecoach in 2023; in 2022, WME clients represented over 60% of all headlining slots at the top-country music festivals. Meanwhile, the company’s country music clients have earned the most categories at the ACM Awards and CMA Awards for multiple years.
Lucy Dickins, the highly respected agent of Adele, Mumford & Sons and Olivia Rodrigo who serves as global head of contemporary music and touring at William Morris Endeavor (WME), has been named this year’s recipient of the U.K.’s Music Industry Trusts Award (MITS).
Dickins — whose clients also include Stormzy, Rex Orange County, SAULT, Little Simz, James Blake, Jamie T, Hot Chip, Bryan Ferry, Mabel and Laura Marling — will receive the award on Nov. 6 at a gala ceremony at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel. The event will benefit U.K. charities the BRIT Trust and Nordoff Robbins.
“I’m truly humbled by this recognition and honoured by the many colleagues and clients I’ve gotten to work with throughout my career and at WME,” Dickins said in a statement.
MITS Award committee co-chair Toby Leighton-Pope said Dickins’ “impact on the industry is undeniable and her contributions continue to shape the industry landscape.”
Dickins regularly appears on Billboard’s Women in Music, International Power Players and Power 100 lists.
Previous recipients of the annual MITS award include Lucian Grainge, Ahmet Ertegun, Simon Cowell, Michael Eavis, Elton John & Bernie Taupin, Annie Lennox, Roger Daltrey, Rob Stringer, Emma Banks, broadcaster and DJ Pete Tong and Dickins’ uncle, legendary British music executive Rob Dickins. Last year’s MITS award was given to entrepreneur Jamal Edwards, who had died earlier in the year at the age of 31. It was the first posthumous award given in the event’s 32-year history.
Dickins relocated to WME’s Beverly Hills office from London last year after being promoted to global head of contemporary music and touring at the agency, making her the first woman to lead a talent agency’s music division. Her responsibilities include overseeing all aspects of the agency’s contemporary live business.
Last year, Adele played two sold-out shows at London’s BST Hyde Park Festival in front of 130,000 fans. That was followed by her delayed Las Vegas residency, which began in November and has been extended to wrap this fall. In total, WME’s music division says it booked more than 40,000 live dates in 2022.
Prior to joining WME in 2019 — initially as head of its U.K. music division — Dickins spent more than 20 years at International Booking Talent (ITB), the London-based agency that was founded in 1978 by her father Barry Dickins and his business partner Rod MacSween.
Dickins’ lineage in the music business goes back to her grandfather, Percy Dickins, who created the weekly magazine New Music Express (NME). Her uncle Rob Dickins served as chairman of Warner Music UK for 15 years, while her brother, Jonathan Dickins, is chief executive of September Management, which counts Adele, Glass Animals and producer Rick Rubin among its clients.
Musician David Kushner has signed with WME in all areas. The Chicago-born Kushner continues to be managed by Brent Shows of ALTAR MGMT. In April, Kushner broke onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart with his single “Daylight” and plans to take his talent on the road this fall. After releasing his debut EP Footprint I […]
WME’s music department has promoted seven to partner and 12 to agent across its global offices in Beverly Hills, New York, Nashville, London and Sydney.
Agents recently promoted to partner are: Dave Bradley (co-head of WME’s pop division based in London, with clients including Dua Lipa, Kim Petras and LCD Soundsystem); Brendan Long (London-based and representing electronic music artists including Richie Hawtin, Eric Prydz and Adam Beyer); Henry Glascock (Nashville-based, with clients including Parker McCollum, Catie Offerman and Randy Rogers Band); Doug Singer (Beverly Hills-based, with clients including Orville Peck, Blood Orange and Vince Staples, also appointed department lead for podcast and book tours); Bradley Rainey (who leads WME’s music for visual media group, with a roster that includes Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Randy Newman and Max Richter); Levi Jackson (who leads the tour marketing team for all WME clients including Adele, Luke Combs, Travis Scott, Bruno Mars, Foo Fighters and more) and Jared Rampersaud (Beverly Hills-based and working across the agency’s roster, specializing in live performances for private events and brand activations).
Those promoted to agent in contemporary music include Kidder Erdman, Phillip Richard and Henry Delargy in Beverly Hills; Anna Horowitz and Josh Sanchez in New York; Tom Larner in London; and Brendan Moylan in Sydney. In Nashville, Becca Chisholm, Caleb Fenn, Carter Green and Kanan Vitolo became agents in the country music department and Morgan Carney became an agent in Christian music.
“These promotions showcase the breadth of our client roster and how far we can go in servicing our artists,” said Lucy Dickins, WME’s global head of contemporary music and touring, and Becky Gardenhire, co-head of WME’s Nashville office, in a joint statement. “We are so proud of the leadership and ingenuity each of these individuals has demonstrated, and we look forward to what they will achieve.”
Amid a broader economic downturn, Endeavor — the parent company of assets like agencies WME and IMG, sports league UFC, events firm On Location and online gambling platform OpenBet — is pausing new hires through the end of the year.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter by phone while attending an RBC Capital Markets investor event, Endeavor president Mark Shapiro said that the firm will put in place a hiring freeze until 2023 but noted that the Beverly Hills-based conglomerate will be backfilling positions. The Endeavor executive emphasized that no broader cost-cutting would be instituted and travel/expenses, bonuses and spending would not be subject to review at this time for the company’s roughly 8,000 employees.
“The state of the business is strong, but we have to be responsible given the time of the year and the national economic environment,” Shapiro told THR.
The Endeavor exec stressed that the move was being made from a position of strength, as the firm — unlike other Hollywood giants — has been insulated from economic headwinds like those impacting advertising-reliant companies. And the time frame for the hiring pause, as the holiday season approaches, arrives at a typically slower cycle for major agencies, which tend to mostly close up shop in the last couple weeks of the year.
“We need to really be prudent, we’re in — or walking in — to a recession,” Shapiro said about the hiring freeze during a panel moderated by RBC’s Kutgun Maral. “There’s a lot of fear out there, there’s a lot of fearmongerers. And we just need to keep a lean cost-structure, frankly. As tight as we can have it. And hiring over the holidays does no good, you’re just giving them vacation anyway.”
Shapiro added during the panel that, “at a time like this of uncertainty, we need to be conserving cash and just working on the balance sheet.” The Endeavor exec forecast that the focus in 2023 would be more free cash flow — a profit metric showing an ability to fund operations without outside financing — and expanding margins in each business unit.
But the hiring freeze does arrive as Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal and others are instituting belt-tightening measures, including cutting back on spending and staff reductions. Disney CEO Bob Chapek warned in a memo to staff on Nov. 11 of “limiting headcount additions through a targeted hiring freeze” while layoffs have been ongoing at the David Zaslav-run Warner Bros. Discovery, impacting multiple divisions including CNN, whose chief, Chris Licht, forecast in late October that restructuring will “accelerate” and will result in layoffs and budget cuts.
On Nov. 10, Endeavor disclosed its third-quarter earnings, with its WME and IMG representation unit seeing revenue fall year-over-year to $388 million from $664 million — due to the sale of 80 percent of Endeavor Content to South Korea’s CJ ENM as part of a deal with the Writers Guild — even as the core agency business made strides. Meanwhile, the company’s owned sports properties, like UFC, saw revenue gain from $288.5 million a year ago to $402 million in the third quarter this year and its events unit stayed about even year-over-year with $440 million in revenue for the frame.
Overall, citing foreign exchange rate changes, Endeavor posted a loss for the quarter of $12.5 million compared to a gain of $63.6 million in the same time frame in 2021. During an earnings call, Endeavor chief Ari Emanuel noted “our business continues to perform well despite the macro headwinds,” and touted comedy bookings as well as growth in music touring, experiences and demand to attend live events.
“Spending habits have shifted, but our company has a presence at every point on the purchase chain,” Emanuel added. “During COVID people were buying stuff, and post-COVID, they are more focused on experiences, and we are the benefit of that side of the equation.”
Since Jan. 3, the first day of trading this year, stock in Endeavor has fallen about 34 percent, from 34.81 a share to 22.92, while the New York Stock Exchange Composite Index has dropped about 10 percent.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
WME has signed Snoop Dogg in all areas, the agency announced Tuesday (Nov. 8).
The multi-hyphenate rapper, who previously worked with agent Bobby Dee, recently acquired his original label home Death Row Records from Blackstone-controlled MNRK Music Group in February, with plans to turn it into an “NFT label.” According to a press release, Snoop is handling all label and catalog-related business in music, film, apparel and merchandise for Death Row as well as signing new artists and re-releasing music that was put out under the original Death Row regime. He is additionally developing a Death Row TV series.
“WME is the only place that can handle the career I’ve built and grow it even further,” Snoop said in a statement. “I look forward to gettin’ it with the WME team to continue innovating across music, film, TV, business, and digital and break barriers across entertainment.”
Snoop Dogg’s output extends far beyond music. Since breaking through with his multi-platinum 1993 debut album Doggystyle, his career has branched off into acting, producing for film and TV, esports, fashion, food and beverage, cannabis and Web3, among other ventures. Most recently, he starred in the Netflix original movie Day Shift opposite Jamie Foxx, launched the YouTube children’s show Doggyland and landed a spot on the board of directors at gaming and esports collective FaZe Clan. Earlier this year, he opened a storefront in Inglewood, Calif. called Snoop Dogg’s Clothing, with plans to open a Snoop-curated Funko store in the same plaza in early 2023. He also recently launched Broadus Foods, a family-owned food product company.
But the rapper has made some of his biggest splashes as of late in Web3. Over the past year, he’s launched multiple NFT collections, including Dr. Bombay (the name of his NFT character from Bored Ape Yacht Club) as well as his NFT album BODR (Bacc on Death Row) — a partnership with Death Row’s exclusive metaverse partner Gala Games — which reportedly grossed over $50 million. A recent trademark application suggests Snoop is planning a digital store that sells NFTs centered around cannabis, virtual clothing and more (with possible plans for a physical retail location as well). In April, he also partnered with metaverse platform Sandbox to create a virtual world called “Snoopverse.”
In the philanthropic space, Snoop has launched initiatives including the Snoop Youth Football League, which aims to provide opportunities for inner-city kids in football and cheer.
WME says it will leverage the Endeavor network to further Snoop’s work across a number of ventures.
WME has signed Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Yusuf/Cat Stevens in all areas.
Yusuf is embarking on a global tour in 2023 and is working on myriad other creative endeavors, including a new album that will mark his first set of new music since 2017’s Grammy-nominated The Laughing Apple.
Over the last few years, Yusuf has focused on revisiting his catalog as projects reach their 50th anniversary. In 2020, he released a re-recorded version of 1970’s Tea for the Tillerman as Tea for The Tillerman 2 and put out a boxset heralding the album, which includes his breakthrough U.S. hit, “Wild World.” Following the release of 50th-anniversary boxsets for Mona Bone Jakon and Teaser and the Firecat, a newly remastered 50th-anniversary edition of his 1972 album, Catch Bull at Four, will come out in December.
Last year, Yusuf, who is managed by his son, Yoriyos Adamos, landed on the New York Times’ Best Seller list with his children’s book Yusef’s Peace Train; he is also finishing work on his autobiography. As he told Billboard in a 2020 interview, with his book, “I’m trying to fill in the gap for so many people who almost have a mythological view of me so I’m trying to clarify who I am and how it happened. I’ve been illustrating [the book] as well.”
As Yusuf told Billboard in the same interview, the same quest has guided his musical exploration — and life — from early on. “When I started looking up at the sky from very early on, one of my biggest questions was where does the sky end? It was a metaphysical question I had from a young age,” he says. “And that’s been my task and my mission: to go explore the universe to find out where it’s leading to.”