On… Elliot Grainge, primary labels, megastars, and a untouched past at Atlantic Track Staff

MBW Reacts is a sequence of analytical commentaries from Music Business Worldwide written based on primary fresh leisure occasions or information tales. Most effective MBW+ subscribers have limitless get admission to to those articles. the under article initially seemed inside the unedited MBW+ Per 30 days Overview electronic mail, issued completely to MBW+ subscribers.

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”

This slice of knowledge, in most cases attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, is one among my all-time favourite quotes.

It’s pithy, it’s tough, it’s right kind. It’s a credo to are living through, and I dare say it runs during the veins of MBW.

Now for a witchery trick!

Observer my implausible shrinking thoughts in 3-2-1…

K: let’s discuss Elliot Grainge. Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why can’t We…

… is only one vintage report from the Nineties that’s used than Grainge Jr., who’s but to show 31. He’s additionally more youthful than Doggystyle and Increase! Shake The Room.

Grainge’s adolescence is obviously incorrect impediment to the religion installed him through Robert Kyncland WMG’s board, who announced the other week that he’ll change into CEO of Atlantic Track Staff in October.

A 30-year-old boss of AMG dramatically reduces the antique of US primary label heads. Grainge is part the week of a few of his competition.

There’s been unending chatter amongst bizniks about Grainge’s surprising ascent inside the WMG hierarchy, however, summoning the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt, I aim to seek out a lot of it significant.

• Sure, there’s a nepo-baby dialogue available. Later once more, Grainge has bona fides: on the while WMG invested in Grainge’s 10K Projects in September 2023, his sovereign label had racked up over 30 platinum-certified hits – from artists like XXXTentacion, Ice Spice, Iann Dior, and Trippie Redd. 10K has since delivered successes at WMG like Artemas (flow Spotify per thirty days listeners: 33.2 million) and Forrest Frank (5.9m);
• Sure, there’s additionally a dialogue available in regards to the blended marketplace energy of Grainges Jr. and Sr. Later once more, Atlantic Track Staff has a home marketplace proportion in the USA of round 7-8% (of all music); throughout all the globe, AMG’s marketplace proportion will likely be considerably smaller. (A reminder for US-fixated readers: Republic of India is heading in the right direction to overhaul the United States as the arena’s biggest music streaming market through quantity within the nearest twelve months);
• Sure, as Robert Kyncl lately mentioned, outgoing Atlantic CEO/Chairman Julie Greenwald leaves “big shoes to fill”, and Warner was once duty-bound to ransack the trade’s best possible to be triumphant her. However exactly which alternative imaginable applicants have (a) registered as many multi-genre sovereign successes those life few years as Grainge and (b) would even be unhidden to a label CEO activity at WMG? (That ‘multi-genre successes’ bit is impressive: pros who’ve thrived in a US frontline soil ruled through hip-hop over the life decade now see that style’s marketplace proportion shrinking as nation and Latin tune ascend. In keeping with Luminate, ‘hip-hop/R&B’ claimed a 25.8% proportion of on-demand audio US streams in H1 2024; again in H1 2018, that determine was once as top as 37.5%.)

So what does hobby me about Grainge?

How he is going about tackling a giant query: What’s the number one goal of a US frontline primary label in 2024?

I’m now not being facetious. Book solutions to that query unwell the years have in most cases integrated: ‘To have massive hits, dummy’ and ‘To break global megastars, dummy’.

But it surely’s simply now not that straightforward anymore… dummy.

For something, the definition of a ‘hit’ assists in keeping on getting muddier, exacerbated through labels’ ceaseless obsession with temporary markers of luck (aka: weekly charts).

Meals for concept: Luke Combs is a celebrity. He sells out stadiums, is one among Sony Music‘s biggest global money-makers, and even has his own British tribute act (real name Liam).

The RIAA just announced that two of Combs’ songs (When It Rains It Pours and Typhoon) have surpassed Diamond condition in the USA.

But neither of those tracks ever were given upper than Disagree.30 at the Billboard Scorching 100.

So are they ‘hits’ or now not?

In the meantime, increasingly untouched artists are it sounds as if having ‘hits’. Spotify introduced latter while that 79 acts charted in its International Supremacy 50 chart for the primary while in H1 2024 – greater than the similar length in 2023 (63), 2022 (65), 2021 (54), and 2020 (41).

Bloomberg suggests those numbers let us know that ‘new pop stars are breaking out for the first time in years’.

However in addition they would possibly let us know that, pushed through streaming, TikTok, and all that jazz, client consideration is flitting between extra untouched artists than ever prior to – ravenous rising acts of the sustained folk consideration they want to change into really remembered.

Streaming’s disaggregation of listening plus the arise of ‘glocalization’ (local music gaining popularity around the world) are retirement the winner-takes-all famous person an endangered species.

Because of all of this, may we see the method of majors like Atlantic Track Staff now tip additional against breaking the next frequency of ephemeral streaming stars – and extra clear of ‘pulling every lever’ to start enduring cultural tremendousstars?

That end result could be a statistical inevitability. In 2022 Warner Music Groupconfirmed that its 5 greatest celebrity acts contributed simply 5% of its recorded tune revenues. A decade prior, that quantity was once at 15%.

The truth that Meta simply axed top rate tune movies from Facebook – implying that big-budget promos for celebrity artists are a nugatory relic of your uncle’s tune biz – handiest provides to this narrative.

The chance of the ‘more stars, fewer superstars’ technique at primary labels, after all, is that it items enterprising independents (see: EMPIRE, Pulse/Concord, Bulky Noisy, Believe, Beggars Group and so forth.) a greater prospect of competing.

That is one thing Elliot Grainge and 10K Tasks know really well.

In an interview latter yr, Grainge said that 10K Tasks may run rings round its greater festival as a result of, to him, primary labels have been “a conveyor belt with 100 other priorities” and “mediocre-at-best product management departments”.

Now, as Atlantic Track Staff CEO, Grainge will function that conveyor belt and run the ones areas.

One wonders whether or not, on the supremacy of his record of priorities, he’s ambitious to assemble and crack abiding international megastars – or if he sees such an aspiration as the previous day’s recreation.Track Industry International