Madonna and U2 manager Guy Oseary has joined forces with eight other music managers for the Maverick project, named after the record label co-founded by Madonna in 1992, Live Nation's most aggressive attempt to shake up an industry that has been plugging holes for years.
Laffitte Management's Ron Laffitte, I Am Other's Caron Veazey, Blueprint Group's Gee Roberson and Cortez Bryant, Reign Deer's Larry Rudolph and Adam Leber, Quest Management's Scott Rodger and Spalding Entertainment's Clarence Spalding will collaborate with Live Nation for the plan, Billboard reports.
Collectively, they manage more than two dozen of the planet's biggest artists. And as of Oct. 17, all nine will be joining their companies and rebranding them and their respective employees as "Maverick".
Maverick is convening experts in pop, rock, R&B/hip-hop and country to make an unprecedented bet on the role of live events and technology in music's future. (
The managers' clients are just now learning of the new formation.) Leber believes they'll find opportunities "beyond music, such as tech or consumer goods."
Music's main money source is at its starkest, most irreversible crossroads in history: Record sales hit an all-time low for the Nielsen SoundScan era in August, and year-to-date unit sales have dropped 14 percent in 2014. And with record-label marketing budgets practically nonexistent these days, managers, whose standard fee remains 15 percent of earnings, have taken on chief marketing officer roles for their clients.
The business incentives for Maverick's nine founding partners, who will leverage their collective assets and skills to build business, are undeniable. They won't detail the financial arrangements among the managers, Maverick and Live Nation, but their creative cross-pollination is already on display. In July, Oseary and Laffitte teamed up to co-manage Alicia Keys, Laffitte is connecting Oseary with radio consultants for the next U2 single, and Roberson is consulting on Madonna's next album with Oseary.
Oseary's tech savvy may cement the new unit's legacy. A-Grade is currently valued at $150 million, according to an industry source, and includes investments in Airbnb and Uber. Maverick's members will have a direct pipeline into those resources. Rodger, for example, has key clients (Paul McCartney, Arcade Fire) who own their catalogs and are poised for big moves in areas including copyright administration (A-Grade has investments in Spotify and SoundCloud, while Oseary has a personal investment in digital-rights firm INDmusic.) And Leber has been working with Sherpa Ventures, whose founder Shervin Pishevar helped fund Uber, Warby Parker and Tumblr.
MAJOR CHALLENGE
“There are a lot of people who operate with an outdated mentality, where even though they’re fully aware that a certain business is dying and in need of innovation, they’re scared of new possibilities. The industry is full of people with a lot of power who don’t engage well with innovation. And I wish they had a support group who could be at the other end of the phone when they’re confused.”
SIGN OF THE TIMES
“No. 1 albums are selling less than 100,000 units a week. That’s not just a change; that’s a wake-up call. If you’re a manager out there that isn’t aware and getting involved in new ways to do things, you’ll be left out. You have to pay attention. There are all sorts of new ways to reach an audience.”
MAKING THE TECH SCENE
Since 2010, *Oseary has doubled as an influential tech investor with A-Grade Investments, a fund he started with Ashton Kutcher and billionaire Ron Burkle, and which was valued at $100 million in 2013. Today, an industry source says, that valuation has soared to $150 million. “Not dissimilar to music,” says Oseary, “supporting a startup can at times be like supporting an artist. They have to have a voice and a vision so you can back them. It’s your job, like in A&R at a record company, to identify the voice and to say, ‘That voice speaks to people. Let’s get it out there to as many people as possible.’ ”
GOING ALL-IN
”One day I walked into Ashton’s office and he said, ‘I was just sent this really cool company called Airbnb.’ I didn’t know if they had 10 people using it or thousands -- I just fell in love with the idea immediately. We flew out with Ron Burkle to meet with the guys in San Francisco and I pretty much offered to invest every dollar I had in the company. That was the only time I was willing to put everything into an idea. They didn’t take everything, but they took enough.”
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