Introduction
At the end of 2019 we released the first edition of The World’s Leading Artist Management Companies. Half-way through 2020 we’re back with Part II.
In this report we use data from ROSTR - where we’re tracking more than 3K MGMT Co’s - to analyse the wider MGMT ecosystem & highlight a few of the outliers. We look at roster size, Spotify & YouTube reach as well as dive into how rosters break down along genre, gender & record label lines.
This report is interactive so hover, click & tap on the charts to explore the data & while this works on mobile devices we recommend checking it out on a bigger screen for the best experience.
An important note before diving in - artist management is incredibly varied & ROSTR’s data doesn’t (yet) do that variance justice. For example, we’re not currently tracking data around concerts & the data we are tracking has a clear western bias. As a result we’re missing large parts of the picture which we hope to fill in as ROSTR grows.
In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the report.
Mark Williamson
Co-Founder & CEO | ROSTR
Roster Size
How Big Are MGMT Rosters?
✪ 85% of the MGMT Co’s we’re tracking have fewer than 5 artists on their roster
✪ Fewer than 50 MGMT Co’s we’re tracking worldwide have more than 20 artists on their roster
The vast majority of MGMT Co’s are relatively small operations with (fewer than) a handful of artists on their roster. This makes for a very fragmented ecosystem with thousands of independent players
Roster Size vs Artist Size
To explore the relationship between the size of a Co’s roster & the size of their artists we plotted 700+ MGMT Co’s on the chart below.
The higher a dot is, the bigger the roster. The further a dot is to the right, the larger their artists’ Spotify audience is.
ⓘ Hover or tap the dots to see more info. Use the control & the bottom to flip through the slides.
Largest Rosters
We’ve seen what the overall picture looks like, now we take a look at the MGMT Co’s with the largest rosters.
ⓘ Use the tabs at the top of the chart below to see the largest rosters in each region
✪ Red Light is the clear outlier with a roster that’s 4.5X larger than the next company (Maverick)
✪ 7 of the top 10 biggest rosters are HQ’d in the USA
✪ The largest 40 companies here represent 2.6K artists in total. For reference, Paradigm talent agency alone has 2.6K+ artists on its roste
Spotify Rankings
In addition to tracking rosters, we also track artist data from platforms like Spotify, YouTube & Instagram. In this section we analyze companies based on their rosters’ aggregate metrics.
ⓘ Spotify Monthly Listeners: While this isn’t a perfect way to measure artist size, it is a good proxy for overall reach & audience.
Total Spotify Audience
We added up the Spotify Monthly Listeners across over 3K MGMT rosters to see which Co’s have the biggest Spotify reach.
ⓘ Use the tabs at the top of the chart to see the top companies per region (based on a Co’s HQ location)
✪ Maverick are #1 with $565M Spotify ML across their roster
✪ Full Stop come in at #2 with just over half a billion Spotify ML
✪ YM&U Group & Tap Music are the only non-US Co’s in the Global Top 10
2020 vs 2019
✪ Maverick stay at #1 adding over 100M Spotify ML in the last 6 months (+25%). Their biggest artists include The Weeknd, Doja Cat & Miley Cyrus
✪ Full Stop leapfrogs Red Light into 2nd place, adding ~155M Spotify ML (+45%) . Artists include Travis Scott (co-mgmt), Nicki Minaj & Harry Styles✪ TMWRK are the only new entry in global Top 10 vs 2019. Artists include Diplo, MØ & Dillon Francis.
⚠️ Note - Changes since we last ran the report are a combo of new signings and/or drops, artist growth / decline & in some cases more accurate tracking of rosters by us.
“Maverick stay in the top spot for 2020, adding over 100M Spotify ML since we last ran this report in Dec 2019. ”
Average Spotify Reach
How does the Global Top 10 from the chart above shape up in terms of the AVERAGE size of their artists?
✪ SB Projects top the chart averaging over 12M Spotify ML per artist
✪ Full Stop (9M) & Maverick (7M) come in 2nd & 3rd respectively
“SB Projects have the smallest roster in the group, but on average their artists have the largest audiences.”
Small But Mighty
Larger rosters naturally lead to larger overall audiences. In the chart below we take a look at Co’s with smaller rosters packing large punches.
1-5 Group
✪ OVO Sound come out top, largely down to Drake’s huge audience
✪ Method Music (Sam Smith, Disclosure) & latin/reggaeton focused Vibras Labs (J Balvin, co-managed with SB Projects) are #2nd & #3
6-10 Group
✪ London Ent. top the group thanks to Post Malone & Tyga
✪ The Shalizi Group (Marshmello, Surf Mesa) & BEST FRIENDS. (Billie Eilish, FINNEAS, Ashe) round out the top 3
Share of Spotify Top 100
Who manages the hottest artists? In the chart below we look at who manages Spotify’s Top 100 artists (by monthly listener).
ⓘ Hover over or tap artist images for names
✪ Maverick, SB Projects & Full Stop each have 5 artists in Spotify’s Top 100.
✪ In total, these 9 Co’s represent 1/4 of the Top 100. While this might seem concentrated, it means the other 3/4 are split across over 70 different MGMT teams
✪ This is almost the exact opposite of the story with labels, where ~2/3 of the Top 100 are signed to one of the three major companies.
YouTube Rankings
In our second (briefer) ranking section we take a look at YouTube audiences.
ⓘ For these rankings we use YouTube Channel Subscribers as a proxy for overall reach on the platform.
Total YouTube Audience
We added up YouTube subs across 3K rosters to see which companies have the biggest YouTube audiences.
ⓘ This is a new section for this edition of the report & is not broken down by region like the Spotify data.
✪ SB Projects is top with 179M subs across their roster.
✪ Maverick & Full Stop take 2nd & 3rd place.
✪ Half of the Co’s here are different to the Spotify Global Top 10: YG Ent, Modest!, Three Six Zero, Walter Kolm Ent. & The Shalizi Group make appearances here where they didn't in the Spotify ranking
Average YouTube Reach
How does the global top 10 from the chart above shape up in terms of their AVERAGE YouTube Subscribers?
✪ Walter Kolm Ent. has the highest average YouTube subs per artist. Artists include Maluma, CNCO & Wisin
✪ SB Projects is a close second & k-pop powerhouse YG Ent. third
Demographics
In the final section of this report we dig a little deeper into the makeup & demographics of the management ecosystem + some of the companies we’ve highlighted in this report.
Genre Overview
The chart below breaks down the rosters of the Spotify Global Top 10 companies by genre.
ⓘ We’ve grouped some genres together based on how often they appear on the same artists
✪ Perhaps surprisingly, Alt/Rock/Indie make up the largest share of genre across the top co’s rosters
✪ Pop is a close 2nd but Hip-Hop & R&B is a more distant 3rd
Of note is the tiny share of Latin artists across these 10 rosters. With the global growth in Latin music in recent years will these leading companies take on more latin artists? Or will the latin focused management co’s retain their talent & begin to climb up these rankings?
Genre by Company
How does genre break-down on a per-company basis?
✪ SB Projects, the Co with the highest average artist size, have the largest % of Pop artists
✪ Maverick, the Co with the largest overall audience, has a roster that is 2/3 Pop & Hip Hop
✪ Tap's core roster is mainly Pop (Dua Lipa, Lana Del Rey & Ellie Goulding) but their dedicated electronic division - The Weird and The Wonderful - give them a large Dance/EDM share
✪ Full Stop have a relatively low Pop share thanks to a number of large legacy Rock & Country acts
✪ Again, a lack of Latin artists is of note here with just 3 Co’s having a high enough % of Latin artists to show on this chart
Major vs Indie
How do the top Co’s rosters break-down in terms of major vs indie artists?
✪ Full Stop has the highest share of major label artists with 3/4 of their roster signed to a major
✪ On the other side of the coin, 3/4 of Red Light's artists are independent
✪ Across the top 1K MGMT Co’s we analysed the average roster was circa 1/4 major & 3/4 indie (or unsigned)
There's a clear alignment between a higher % of major artists & how high the Co is ranked. It will be interesting to watch whether the trend towards independence & rights ownership shifts this balance over time.
Major Label Share
How do these rosters shake up in terms of individual major labels?
✪ The splits align closely with major label market shares with UMG representing the highest % of artists, followed by Sony & then Warner
✪ While some rosters are fairly evenly distributed, our data shows that some Co’s have clear repeating relationships with particular majors
ⓘ In future reports we’ll include some of the larger independent players like AWAL & BMG.
Gender Balance
For our final data point we take a look at gender balance.
A Note On The Gender Imbalance
Recently, there's rightly been a lot of discussion about the gender (im)balance on festival lineups & elsewhere in the music industry (we covered this in our analyses of the Reading & Leeds lineup & the GRAMMYs).
It’s clear that this is a conversation that should also be happening across the MGMT world. Managers are often an artist’s gateway to opportunities & if MGMT Co rosters are significantly imbalanced, as our data shows, then there will be downstream effects on this throughout other sectors of the industry - from festival lineups & brand deals to who gets signed by labels & agencies in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle, but better gender representation on MGMT rosters could be a key lever to pull to help disrupt that cycle.
At ROSTR we have made an internal commitment to do what we can to help redress this imbalance. A forthcoming product we’re building is, in part, designed to help brands, bookers & music companies more easily discover non-male artists. If you have thoughts on this, or feel we might be able to help with something you’re working on in this area, please get in contact at mark@rostr.cc.
(Also, please see the following section on #BLM)
