United States this winter and spring and
will next play a destination concert in Cabo
San Lucas, Mexico, on Memorial Day.
Scooter Braun
Chairman/CEO, Ithaca Holdings
Allison Kaye
President/partner, SB Projects
SB Projects began 2019 with Ariana
Grande’s Thank U, Next debuting at No. 1
on the Billboard 200 — a statement of
female empowerment arriving by way of a
management company whose staff is 70%
women, notes Kaye — and closed the year
with Grande wrapping her Sweetener world
tour, which grossed $146.4 million from
97 dates. (The tour also tallied a record
33,000-plus fan voter registrations and ac-
tions, according to advocacy group Head-
Count.) SB Projects saw Justin Bieber in
January hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100
with “Yummy,” Karlie Kloss host another
season of Project Runway, while Demi
Lovato and J Balvin joined the company’s
roster. But the topmost accomplishment
was Braun’s Ithaca Holdings’ $300 million
purchase of Big Machine Label Group, with
minority backing from The Carlyle Group
(see page 120), in the biggest industry deal
of the year. Of her work with Braun, says
Kaye, “I don’t think there is any other major
management company that has a female
and male partnership, so I’m very proud of
what we have created together.”
Mike Caren
Founder/CEO, Artist Partner Group
Caren’s APG is a publishing and A&R
powerhouse that broke acts including
Bazzi, Ava Max, Lil Skies and Alec Benjamin
the past two years and boasts star clients
including Charlie Puth. “It’s an honor to
see people flourish, and it’s equally fulfill-
ing [whether] it happens quickly or takes
years,” says Caren, whose future goal is to
be “fully vertical from incubation to execu-
tion” across all sectors of the business.
“Incremental progress adds up.”
Daniel Glass
Founder/president, Glassnote Music
Glass, 63, credits the “hustle infused in [my]
DNA” from growing up in Brooklyn for his
drive to make Glassnote — a recording,
publishing and artist management firm —
“the best independent music company in
the world.” During 2019, Mumford & Sons
followed up 2018’s Delta, which topped
the Billboard 200, with two top five hits
on the Triple A chart. The Teskey Brothers
received a 2020 Grammy nomination for
best engineered album, non-classical, for
their sophomore set, Run Home Slow. New
signee Jade Bird’s self-titled debut reached
No. 1 on the Heatseekers Albums list, and
up-and-coming artist Aurora was featured in
Frozen II, singing a duet with Idina Menzel,
“Into the Unknown.” Recognized for his work
with the UJA-Federation of New York and
with LIFEbeat, the industry organization pro-
moting safe sex, Glass also subscribes to the
carbon-offset platform Climeworks, “to send
a signal to our employees and the industry
that Glassnote is working to become carbon
negative, so you should too.”
JAY-Z
Founder/chairman, Roc Nation
Jay Brown
Vice chairman, Roc Nation
Desiree Perez
CEO, Roc Nation
In December, Perez was honored as
Executive of the Year at Billboard’s annual
Women in Music event. Roc founder JAY-
Z, 50, shuffled his C-suite: Former chief
Brown, 46, was upped to vice chairman,
and Perez rose to CEO. Other 2019 high-
lights include the Roc’s inaugural S. Carter
Foundation gala in November, which
raised $6 million in scholarship funds for
low-income college hopefuls, as well as a
new long-term partnership with the NFL,
inked in August, for the league’s live enter-
tainment and social justice activism. “They
have 125 million viewers during the Super
Bowl,” says Perez. “I want to talk to those
125 million people.”
Justin Kalifowitz
CEO, Downtown Music Holdings
Kalifowitz, 38, runs the parent company
of Downtown Music Publishing, which
secured the catalogs of George Gershwin
and Miles Davis this past year, as well
as the global royalty-collection platform
Songtrust, which is now used by over
300,000 songwriters. In April 2019, Down-
town acquired AVL Digital Group and its
subsidiaries AdRev, CD Baby, DashGo and
Soundrop, which collectively distribute and
monetize over 10 million tracks. Kalifowitz
says the company’s pool of 1 million cre-
ators is now supported by a global network
of nearly 400 people in 16 cities worldwide.
“Everything we do is in service of creat-
ing a more equitable and innovative music
ecosystem,” he says.
Hartwig Masuch
CEO, BMG
Masuch, 65, has guided Berlin-based BMG
since the company was created (as BMG
Rights Management) in October 2008.
The company began with a small number
of master recordings retained by parent
company Bertelsmann after the dissolution
of the Sony-BMG partnership earlier that
summer. It has grown significantly since.
The past year, notes Masuch, has brought
achievements including an increased pres-
ence in Brazil and Mexico, the creation of a
team to boost the activity of U.K. reper-
toire in the United States and an expan-
sion into artist management. BMG’s focus
has been on “putting artist needs at the
center of what we do,” says Masuch. “I am
more and more convinced that companies
who fail to do that are, like the dinosaurs,
doomed to extinction.”
BRAUN
TRAINOR
AHDRITZ
AZOFF
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COLLINS
KAYE
LEIWEKE
Kerry Trainor
CEO, SoundCloud
Trainor, who has been SoundCloud’s
CEO since 2017, has grown “subscribers,
platform usage, global app ranking and
revenue” at the streaming service to all-
time highs in the past year, he says. The
gains were driven by integrations with top
DJ software companies (Serato, Native
Instruments and Pioneer) and a recent
expansion of SoundCloud Premier. That
platform now gives “tens of thousands”
of creators the ability to distribute via all
major music services,” says Trainor, citing
SoundCloud’s focus on “our core mission
to empower audio creators to share and
connect.” The decision to make Pandora
an exclusive U.S. advertising partner for
2019 “tripled the number of brands” on the
service, says Trainor.
MULTISECTOR
Willard Ahdritz
Founder/CEO, Kobalt
Kobalt, under Ahdritz, 55, has grown
in market share and industry influence.
Named the 2019 independent publisher of
the year by ASCAP, Kobalt ended the year
at No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Publishers
tally. From its thriving neighboring-rights
division to rising revenue at its recorded-
music arm AWAL (see page 114). “Howev-
er, [what] I am most proud of is seeing the
music industry transform,” says Ahdritz.
“When we started out, words like ‘trans-
parency,’ ‘artist-first,’ ‘technology,’ ‘app’
and ‘portal’ were all foreign to the music
business. Now they are commonplace.”
Irving Azoff
Chairman/CEO, The Azoff Company
Susan Genco
Co-president, The Azoff Company
Elizabeth Collins
Co-president, The Azoff Company
Tim Leiweke
CEO, Oak View Group
Azoff’s portfolio scored multiple wins in
2019: The performing rights organiza-
tion Global Music Rights continued to
grow its roster, adding Childish Gambino
and Nicki Minaj; Oak View Group, under
Leiweke, expanded its venue business with
several arenas in development, as well
as a financing deal from private equity
firm Silver Lake; while Genco and Collins
played a key role in the creation of the
Music Artists Coalition, an independent
creators-advocacy group. Azoff highlights
the growth of his Full Stop Management
firm, which he runs with son and co-CEO
Jeffrey and has kept him “young, vibrant
and going” in a business that’s “never been
better or more exciting,” he says. His client
the Eagles have achieved recent record
grosses in concert, adds Azoff. The band
will play Hotel California on tour in the
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