PANEL - Money: Cashflow & Access to Finance
How do artists and their teams access funding and the cashflow needed to develop the artist’s career? Signing rights to labels and publishers? Maxing out credit, crowdfunding? With an increasing range of financing options available, competition, digital metrics, and the growth of cultural asset classes, is creating opportunity for artists.
New services offer artist’s funding without asking for rights ownership in return, and can also disconnect service provision (i.e. A&R, distribution, marketing, etc), from the financing ‘deal’, placing more responsibility on the artists team to run the business, but providing greater flexibility in deploying finance to build an audience and revenues. The better you run your business, the better you can take risks with your art. If you raise finance using new services, do you also need to raise your game as a business? What are your backers offering you, and what are you offering them?
Featured Speakers:
Evan Kaye, Managing Director at Sound Royalties
Evan graduated from American University in Washington D.C with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications. He then began his career with Smith Barney and Paine Webber in 1997 where he offered estate planning and investment advice.
Evan’s extensive background in Financial Services and love for music came full-circle with the development of Sound Royalties. Serving as Managing Director, he has been an integral member of the company since inception in 2014. He works directly with artists, producers, songwriters, composers, managers, attorneys, business managers, and more, to help customize artist-friendly funding for all creatives
Prior to Sound Royalties, Evan was a National Sales Manager at Stone Street Capital in Maryland and later joined the specialty finance company, Novation Capital in 2006 where he served as National Sales Manager and Senior Funding Executive. While at Stone Street and Novation, Evan worked with structured settlement recipients and lottery winners to convert future payments into upfront cash.
Matthew Tilley, Head of Artist and Industry Development at beatBread
Matthew Tilley is an experienced music industry veteran who has spent almost twenty-five years developing compelling and innovative marketing and development campaigns for some of the best-known artists in the world. He has worked at the crossroads of technology and music to create global initiatives that drive successful artist outcomes, and has a proven track record in building effective relationships between artists, labels and the wider music industry ecosystem.
Matthew is Head of Artist and Industry Development at beatBread, with a remit to help more artists gain access to funding, empowering them with enhanced choice and control. Since launch in 2020, beatBread has helped almost [xxx] artists with advances against streaming revenues from new and catalog tracks, giving them the financial freedom to build the team and partnerships that work best for them.
Prior to taking his current role, Matthew worked alongside beatBread founder Peter Sinclair at Universal Music Group as Vice President of Consumer Engagement. In that role he ran a team of ten, working across all of the company’s labels to create innovative direct-to-consumer campaigns that significantly enhance an artist’s direct relationship with fans. The division scaled revenue from less than $10 million to more than $160 million within four years, and built meaningful revenue streams for artists including Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and The Weeknd.
He spent two years as Senior Vice President of Business Development at Disciple Media, leading the start-up’s relationship advancement with key music and entertainment artists, managers and partners. Through Matthew’s work, the subscription-based app service built deep relationships with a series of artists, including Luke Bryan, Rufus Wainwright and ODESZA.
Matthew was previously Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at EMI Music, developing worldwide campaigns for a series of international artists including Pharrell Williams, Beastie Boys and Norah Jones. Standout successes for Matthew and his team included the global success of Katy Perry, 30 Seconds To Mars and Lady Antebellum (now Lady A).
Before joining EMI in 2006, Matthew held a number of roles in both London and New York with Universal Music Group labels Island Def Jam and PolyGram International.
Matthew has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Studies with a marketing specialism from Thames Valley University in the United Kingdom. Matthew is married with one son, and lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Moderator: Jake Beaumont-Nesbitt, Director of Innovation & Education at the International Music Managers Forum
Jake is an artist manager from London, UK, he also advises artists and technology companies on business strategies.
Jake has worked with self-releasing, and signed artists in Asia, Europe, and the USA. He has taken self-funded, self-releasing artists to #2 album chart success in the Netherlands, major label deals in the UK, and leading indie label deals in the USA. With a background in financial markets, he consults for rights technology companies, and rights holders: clients have included Beyonce, Rihanna, and The Clash. Jake has been part of music industry stakeholder dialogues with WIPO, EU, UK, US policy makers; and regularly speaks on artist management, and music industry innovation topics around the world. Jake is Director of Innovation & Education at the International Music Managers Forum (IMMF) connecting artists and managers from 60+ countries.
As part of Project Zero, supporting Ocean conservation projects, Jake was involved in the first ever launch of a social token by a registered charity, using Web3 to organise communities, including artist’s fanbases.