The New Music Business with Ari Herstand

Today my guest is DJ Swivel. He is a producer, engineer, songwriter, most notably for BTS, Beyonce, The Chainsmokers, Mary J Blige, Kanye West, Fabolous, Bow Wow, Redman, Jay-Z, Ghostface Killah, Mariah Carey. The list goes on. We talked a lot about getting started in the industry as a producer and engineer, and what it takes and what it means. He discusses diversifying your business and what it m...

Today my guest is Felicia Bennett. She is an artist manager and formerly a tour manager. She now manages Tanerélle, the breakout R&B artist. This last year they've had an incredible year. Tanerélle toured with Ari Lennox over Europe. She had a massive sync in Insecure, which propelled her song to No. 1 on the Shazam charts. She was the December 2020 playmate of Playboy. She's also an actress a...

Today's guest is Ari Nisman. He is the founder and president of Degy Entertainment. They are one of the largest booking agencies for colleges and military. They have hundreds of artists on their roster and book thousands and thousands of shows every year.  But in today's conversation we talk about how the college entertainment market works; how the military booking market works; how much they...

Today we are re-running an episode. This is the first time we've ever done this. It's an episode that initially premiered last July with artist manager Jonathan Azu. This is in honor of Black History Month this month because Jonathan and I had a really illuminating conversation about how to repair racial inequities in the music business. We also discuss how our industry, at the executive level, is...

Wow! Today my guest is superstar music attorney Dina LaPolt. If you don't know who she is, she is one of the most well respected, well known music attorneys in the world. The amount of awards she has is unfathomable: Hollywood Reporter, Billboard's Power 100, Variety, MIDEM, Recording Academy, GRAMMYs. She's also been the attorney for 2Pac's estate, deadmau5, 21 Savage, Britney Spears, and Steven...

My guest today is Brian Vickers. He is a music supervisor at Disney. Yes, thee Disney; Walt Disney Studios. He works on the in-house trailer department, which they call "The Hive." He's going to talk more about that. He's worked on a number of Disney films, including The Avengers, Star Wars: The Last Jedi & The Rise of Skywalker, Black Panther, Soul, Hamilton, Frozen II, Black is King, and man...

My guest today is Tracy Patrick Chan. He is currently the Head of Music at Twitch. He is the top honcho; the dude; he's the guy in charge of the direction of all things music at Twitch. He started at Twitch at the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020.  He has a very impressive resume. He was the guy that created Spotify for Artists. Before that, he was at YouTube and created the artist too...

Welcome to season two of the New Music Business podcast! This first episode of the new season is with Mothica. She is an incredible artist in the pop realm. She kind of blew up in 2020 from TikTok and is one of those crazy TikTok success stories. After her song went viral on TikTok, she gained a lot of traction on streaming platforms. Just in 2020 alone she garnered more than 25 million streams on...

Today's guest is Anwar Sawyer. He started as (and still is) a songwriter and producer. He's based in New York and is a classically trained pianist. He studied classical piano and composition at Westminster Choir College and New York Institute of Technology. He's signed to Roc Nation Publishing and has now started a management company, SMG Entertainment, where his breakout artist is Audrey Nuna. Sh...

Today's guests are Sam Hyken and Jacomo Bairos of the Nu Deco Ensemble based in Miami, Florida. This episode is for all of you orchestra nerds out there. I'm guilty of that. I played in an orchestra for most of my life. For those of you who don't know, I'm a trumpet player. I love going to the LA Phil and love orchestra music.  The Nu Deco Ensemble does something quite different. They were fo...

Today's guest is Clare Means. She's a Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter. She got her start performing on the Santa Monica Pier. Now she's known for her success on the livestreaming platforms, specifically Twitch, Facebook, YouTube Live, and Periscope. She's actually one of the most watched musicians on Periscope. Since quarantine started, she went all in on livestreaming.  Clare talks all a...

Today on the show is Marshall Betts. He is an agent formerly of Paradigm, but after Paradigm dissolved its entire music division and laid off hundreds of employees Marshall Betts along with a few of his co-workers at Paradigm launched a new agency... TBA Agency. Get it? They got a lot of press when they came out of the gates, but they launched on September 1st of 2020. They took their roster with...

Today's guest is Nick Gatfield. He has been in the music industry for decades. He was a major label executive for 25 years, most recently Sony Music UK, which he left in 2014. He's worked at various majors over the years, including Universal and EMI. He was there when they signed Radiohead and was also part of Amy Winehouse's team.  But now he's out of the major label game and runs an investm...

My guest today is a my good friend Victoria Canal. She is a 22-year-old artist, singer, songwriter, and now producer based all over the world. She was based in Los Angeles, but when the coronavirus shutdown hit, she moved to Amsterdam where her parents live. Victoria and I discuss how she's been handling the last six months. This was supposed to be her breakout year. She had two massive tours sche...

I don't have a guest today, but I'm going to talk about the new law that was signed, AB2257, in California that amended AB5. AB5 is a California law but has implications all over the states. If you haven't heard about AB5 I'm going to talk all about it.  -- Referenced articles:  California's Music Economy is About to Crash: https://aristake.com/ab5/ I Met with AB5 Author Assemblywoman Go...

Today's episode was a live podcast episode for Ari's Take Academy students with guests Rogét Chahayed and his manager Greg Katz. Rogét is a Grammy-nominated producer and songwriter whose songs have sold over 30 million copies. He's worked with some of the biggest names in the business, including Halsey, Travis Scott, Drake, Miguel, G-Eazy, Ke$ha, Calvin Harris, Carly Rae Jepsen, and more. We got i...

Today my guests are Malaysian singer Yuna, Ben Willis, and Carlo Fox, the founders of indie-pop!, a management company based out of Los Angeles. This is the first time I've had a conversation with three people at once for the show. Yuna was coming to us from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Ben and Carlo tuned in from Los Angeles. Yuna is an incredibly talented artist. She's done collaborations with Ty...

Today my guest is the multi-talented Emily Kinney. Most people know her as an actress. She starred in The Walking Dead from 2011-2015. She's also been on Masters of Sex, The Flash, Arrow, Law & Order: SVU, and many others. She was also in Spring Awakening on Broadway. She just launched a podcast of her own called My Caffeine Withdrawal where she interviews musicians, actors, and other friends...

In today’s episode I discuss the controversy surrounding the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek’s comment: “you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.” I also go into how Spotify’s payment model actually works and if it’s fair or not. -- Quick links: 1:56 - What Daniel Ek said 3:20 - How the music industry reacted to Ek's statement 9:10 - Art creation and new...

Today my guest is Allie X. She's a Canadian singer-songwriter and artist who's been living in LA for the last few years. She is an incredibly talented artist and has over 100 million streams and 1.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify. We talk about what her journey has been like the last few months and how she's shifted her plans and release strategies. Then we go into her background, how she be...

Today my guest is John Funge. He's the CEO and co-founder of The Music Fund, a startup company that issues advances to artists for their streaming revenue. They're not a record label even though labels are typically the ones offering advances to artists. They are innovating and disrupting in the music industry, and John goes over their business model.  As I dug deeper and interviewed artists...

Today's episode was recorded live in Los Angeles in my guest's, Jonathan Azu, backyard. This was the first in-person interview I've done since the coronavirus shutdown and we've all been locked in quarantine. But Jonathan has a beautiful backyard where we could safely social distance, so we set up there. It was nice to be in the physical presence of somebody for once. I've missed that so dearly. J...

Today on the show is Laura Escudé. She is a fantastic violinist, producer, and Ableton's first ever official certified trainer. She was hired by Ableton to teach people how to use Ableton Live. She then went on to tour with artists like Kanye West, The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Harry Styles, Mariah Carey, Logic, Herbie Hancock, and Jay-Z to name a few.  Now she teaches people how to do what she...

I recorded this week's podcast guest Nick Bearden live from his studio, Retro Lab Studios, in Nashville, Tennessee. He's a sideman, bassist, guitar player, producer, and sound engineer. Nick Bearden has played thousands of shows with Jamestown Revival, but we go heavy on the business side of managers, where he shares a story on one of the shadiest managers I've ever heard of. We also discuss how f...

This week's guest is Bina Fronda. She's the marketing director for Ultra Records. Ultra Records has released artists like Steve Aoki, Alexandra Stan, Alan Walker, Lost Frequencies, and more. This was recorded live from Bina's apartment in Brooklyn, NY. She had just gotten back from a concert and festival. We talk about a bunch of stuff, but specifically we dig into influencer marketing. The thing...