Trapital Podcast: "Building Businesses Around Artists with Firebird Music CEO Nathan Hubbard"
Host: Dan Runcie
Guest: Nathan Hubbard
Date: November 6, 2025
Episode Overview
This episode dives deep into the new paradigm of building scalable, sustainable businesses around music artists, not just through music releases but via holistic brand development and long-term equity creation. Host Dan Runcie interviews Nathan Hubbard, CEO and co-founder of Firebird Music Holdings, about how Firebird invests in artists, management companies, and labels. They touch on case studies (like Youngblood), deal structures, talent discovery, data’s role, and why certain artists—like Taylor Swift—are models as CEOs of their own brands.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
The Mission of Firebird Music Holdings
- Purpose: To help artists build longer, more impactful, and ultimately more profitable careers by transforming them into fully realized brands ([04:08]).
- Core Observations: Artists are massive direct-to-consumer brands but fail to capture full value due to:
- Infrastructure gaps (need for tools, systems, capital)
- Incentive problems (short-term thinking from fragmented partners)
- Infrastructure Fixes:
- Building out management and label alliances, investing heavily in data science, digital marketing, and finance to help artists reach and monetize fans.
- Incentive Alignment:
- Structuring relationships around long-term equity, not just one-off revenue splits.
Quote:
“These massive direct to consumer facing brands are not fully capturing the value of that brand… It is an infrastructure problem and it is an incentive problem.”
— Nathan Hubbard, [04:08]
Structuring Artist Businesses: The Youngblood Example
- Business Model: Artists put all revenue and intellectual property into an entity (Artist Inc.); Firebird partners with capital and expertise for shared long-term growth ([07:07]).
- Upfront and go-forward investments, both primary (into the business) and secondary (direct to artist).
- Joint investments in projects like a documentary, fan club space, merch retail; not all are immediately profitable but build sustainable engagement.
- Results:
- Streams up 2.5x; audience grew 40%; direct fan relationships doubled in a year ([08:33]).
- Core Insight: Moves focus from “how do I sell tickets in Omaha tonight?” to “how do we build legacy and brand value?”
Quote:
“We are making a lot of money on a go forward basis because of the world building…we’re seeing it just in the data from his label. Streams are up two and a half times this year.”
— Nathan Hubbard, [08:33]
Rethinking Deal Structures
- Ownership Focus: Artists want maximum ownership; Firebird's equity approach helps artists move from short-term royalty advances to long-term brand thinking ([10:15]).
- Flexibility: Artists can buy out IP if desired; deal models are meant to be fair and “artist-friendly.”
Quote:
“Artists can’t do this alone. They are the chief creative officer...but you need support and infrastructure. In all of those other businesses, there are partners who have equity ownership in what gets created.”
— Nathan Hubbard, [11:14]
Capital Deployment & Asset Strategy
- Capital Use: $400M already deployed; $500M more in "dry powder" for future assets ([14:35]).
- Deployment Phases:
- Early phase: Investing in core infrastructure (management, labels, data).
- Current phase: Deploying capital to artist projects/assets after proving value-add to artist partners.
- Investor Approach: Backed by major LPs wanting to place large bets in music through Firebird’s ecosystem.
Investing in Management Companies
- Why Managers? Managers are “the CEO of the artist business.” They're best-placed to coordinate across all artist revenue streams ([19:44]).
- Ideal Profile: Proximity to artists, entrepreneurial, aligned with next-gen multi-hyphenate brand building, not just logistics.
- Deal Nuance: Not mere roll-ups—seeks operators who want to scale, not managers who want out.
Quote:
“If the CEO of a business doesn't have ownership in the business…the CEO is going to make decisions that are inherently short term and not in service of a longer lasting, more impactful, more profitable career.”
— Nathan Hubbard, [19:44]
Talent Discovery: Data + Human Judgment
- Data Role: Heavy investment in advanced fan/market data (credit card spend, real-time search queries) to analyze and segment artist audiences ([21:21]).
- Human A&R: Data guides investment, but in-club managers, boots-on-the-ground staff remain key to spotting artists with “potential to become an artist” versus viral-but-fleeting creators ([22:30]).
Quote:
“We solve that problem, yes with data, but…mostly with human beings making those gut judgments, informed by data.”
— Nathan Hubbard, [22:59]
The Taylor Swift Model: Artist as CEO
- Best-in-Class Example: Taylor Swift is highlighted as the top CEO in music, meticulously managing her brand, controlling engagement, and bringing more business functions in-house ([24:00]).
- Key Practices:
- Deep fan listening/engagement
- Ownership of live, merch, and recorded music arms
- Setting artist-ownership models for the industry
Quote:
“She’s the best CEO in the music business...she’s deeply embedded in listening…it runs through her. And so she makes really great creative and marketing choices as a result.”
— Nathan Hubbard, [24:00]
- Open Question for the Future: Will Taylor move into scalable consumer products, as Chris Stapleton did with whiskey? Something to watch next ([25:27]).
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
“Every artist wants to be like Jay Z. ‘I'm not a businessman. I'm a business, man.’ But how many people are actually doing it at that level?”
— Dan Runcie, [00:13] -
“A lot of managers are coming to understand…the old model of guy with cell phone isn't how you manage a giant direct to consumer facing brand.”
— Nathan Hubbard, [18:02] -
“If the CEO of the business doesn't [have ownership] and can be fired tomorrow and is just on a salary…that CEO is going to make decisions that are inherently short term and not in service of a longer lasting, more impactful, more profitable career.”
— Nathan Hubbard, [19:44]
Key Timestamps for Important Segments
- [04:08] — Firebird’s mission and infrastructure/incentive philosophy
- [07:07] — Youngblood/Artist Inc.: Structure and world-building case study
- [10:15] — Artist deal structures, equity, and IP buybacks
- [14:35] — Capital deployment strategy and scale
- [17:25] — Unique role of management companies in Firebird’s ecosystem
- [21:21] — Talent discovery: data investments and A&R approach
- [24:00] — Taylor Swift as the prototype artist-CEO
Tone & Style
The conversation is candid, direct, and often pulls back the curtain on standard music industry processes, with a bias toward transparency and tough evaluation (“there’s a lot of bullshit in this industry…” — Nathan Hubbard, [15:26]). Hubbard uses detailed examples and possibilities to illustrate the high standards of selectivity and partnership Firebird expects and offers.
Summary Takeaway
Nathan Hubbard’s Firebird seeks to evolve the music business from transactional, record-centric deals to true, scalable business building—treating artists as the top-line brands they are, equipping them with infrastructure and incentives aligned with long-term growth. Their methods blend capital, data, hands-on expertise, and the lessons of artist-entrepreneurs like Jay Z and Taylor Swift, setting a playbook for a new generation of multifaceted music brands.