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- [00:00]
Elliot Grange
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Dan Runcy
I'm Dan Runcy, and you're listening to trapital, and you're going to hear my conversation on stage at the trapital Summit with the CEO of Atlantic Music Group, Elliot Grange. This talk was several months in the making. It was Elliott's first public talk since taking over as CEO of Atlantic Music Group in late 2024. And I knew that Trapital was the perfect place to have that conversation.
- [00:27]
Interviewer / Host
And.
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Dan Runcy
And there were three big things that I wanted to get out of the conversation that I thought the audience would appreciate as well. The first is the transition that brought Elliot into Atlantic Music Group. This was a pretty big deal in the industry, not only because of Elliot, but because of who left as a result. Julie Greenwald, who had led Atlantic for years, was now out. Craig Kalman had moved into a different position, and Max Lusada, who oversaw recorded music for all of Warner Music Group, had now left as well. This was a pretty big transition for Warner Music Group, but it clearly showed that there was a direction that they wanted to go in with Elliot. So I wanted to talk about what that looks like and what specifically he plans to do differently as opposed to those that were running the label before him. Second, you'll hear us discuss his experience selling his company 10K Projects. This is his baby. And of course, from the outside, this is a successful exit. But anyone that's been involved with M and A or selling businesses understand that this is a very emotional decision that can have a lot of mixed feelings. So I really wanted to get into that from a founder perspective, since Elliot is still running 10k projects today, but under the umbrella of a major record label. And then third, we had to discuss how does that 10k projects playbook adapt? It worked well for Ice Spice. It worked well for Trippie Redd. But how do you tweak the model so that it can still work for. For Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran, Cardi B, and those type of artists at Atlantic Music Group. It was a really fun conversation, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. Here's my talk with Elliot Grange. I would like to introduce the CEO.
- [02:06]
Interviewer / Host
Of Atlantic Music Group, Elliot Grange, for a conversation about making the right bets. Elliot Grange. I wasn't sure if you were going to come out to this song or a song from the Prince of Pop at Atlantic Music Group, Hilary Duff.
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Elliot Grange
Oh, yes, that's exciting.
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Interviewer / Host
Her comeback, especially for the millennials that grew up watching Hillary Duff.
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Elliot Grange
She's incredibly talented as well. But we're very excited about Hillary. We're very excited but this is my song of the summer, Reverend. It's my personal song of the summer.
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Interviewer / Host
I appreciate making the time.
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Dan Runcy
This is your first public talk that.
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Interviewer / Host
You'Ve done since becoming CEO of Atlantic Music Group.
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Elliot Grange
With you. It's an honor to be here with you.
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Dan Runcy
Thanks for having me to start things off.
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Interviewer / Host
Let's go back to August 1, 2024, because there were some big announcements that went out that day.
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Dan Runcy
A lot of people in this room.
- [03:00]
Interviewer / Host
Probably saw the press release. Big moves happening at Atlantic Music and Warner Music Group. Elliot Grange is now the CEO of Atlantic Music Group. And two of the legends of Max Lusada, Joey Greenwald, no longer in the business. And once that announcement went out, there was a lot of discussion. People had a lot to say about that. Were you surprised by any of that?
- [03:22]
Elliot Grange
No, not really. They're brilliant, brilliant, brilliant executives. They've done some incredible things. They're going to continue doing other incredible things. I wasn't surprised about the fanfare and the surprise around the announcement. They're formidable, brilliant executives. For me, I was very excited to start and very excited to lead with my team. I think Atlantic's the best record label of all time, the most historic, storied label, personally. So it was very exciting.
- [03:53]
Interviewer / Host
I know that a lot of the fanfare, as you put it, was more put around who you are, your age, last name, a lot of things that capture headlines. But something that didn't get talked about as much was the fact that you were a founder of company in 10K projects that you had started yourself. You seemed very happy continuing to run that business as a founder. Someone else then acquires that company. And not only do you continue to run that, you are then put into a new role itself. And for anyone that has ever sold a business, sure, outside exits all get celebrated, but there's still a lot of mixed emotions that founders have in that situation. So what was that like for you?
- [04:36]
Elliot Grange
It's a very. It's a good question. I've got to. I've got to really think about it. When you're selling a company, it's your baby. So finding the right home for it was. There's two parts of my brain. There's the emotional side. I want this thing to be taken care of, which I'm very fortunate because we moved it into the Atlantic Group. And then it's got to make sense for the artists as well as an independent label, we distributed through Caroline. Our first distribution deal was with Jacqueline Satin. It was a very good place for the artists, and it continues to be a great place for other artists for where we were going as a team and for the artists that we were with. We were looking at exploring alternative options so it had to make sense for the artists that we were with. And we had great success during right after we had done that deal and continue to have great success afterwards. So it's got to be artists first for me personally and for our team and the additional leaders of the company. We wouldn't have exited or partially exited that company if we didn't know a that the parent company was a true great custodian of the artisan of the art, which is Warner Music Group. And that we could also still have a say in the day to day operations of the company, which we've been very fortunate to keep.
- [05:53]
Interviewer / Host
And I'm sure that having a say and just being able to have strong influence was key because I know back when 10k was your sole job, you've spoken about your impression of major record labels as being slower operations clunkier as an alternative to how you were running things at 10k. So now that you've been there for a year now, what is your read? How do you feel about how major record labels run?
- [06:19]
Elliot Grange
I don't know who that person was. I don't know what he was talking about. That guy's crazy. Look, when you're from the outside looking in, you can be very quick to judge. I think being on the inside of the major label side, there are certain levers that executives can pull that you're just not able to on the outside. I'm not saying that's good or bad. I can't speak for my team, but I will. We just love working with artists. So for us, if you give a bunch of people that love working with artists some additional levers to pull on their careers, ultimately I think that's a good thing. Now there are some great things that we were able to do as an independent and I think bringing some of those things into the major label sequence, having the two nukes essentially next to each other, I think that's really where our superpower is becoming. Through Atlantic. It's got the scrappiness of the indie, but the power and the might of the major.
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Interviewer / Host
What's an example of one of those things that you brought from 10k that is now in place at Atlantic?
- [07:24]
Elliot Grange
There's so many examples. I think Alex Warren's a very clean example of an artist that had been building a great fan base prior to us getting there. When we came in and we looked at the artists There were a few that stuck out. Why aren't they streaming more? Why aren't they bigger? Why aren't they selling more tickets? What's the story here? And I think with a big company, a huge roster, not everyone can have the attention that they deserve. So we came with a fresh pair of eyes and said, look, there are several artists here that we think should probably be bigger. Alex was one of those artists. And I think what we were able to do is we were able to marry the scrappiness of our sort of indie roots through leveraging our influencer marketing department that we had built and cultivated through 10K into the Atlantic system and couple that and marry that with traditional radio and all of the other incredible global. We talk about levers that the majors have and one on one equal 10 for Alex. And for one of the songs in particular, Ordinary, it's been, I think it's almost 13 weeks number one at radio. It's the biggest selling single of 2025. So that gave us great confidence that there is a formula here that others don't have that we can continue building on. But I think Alex was probably one.
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Interviewer / Host
Of the first because it seems like for you all, especially in the past year, it's been a mix of artists like Alex that. Not that he was new necessarily, but this is the biggest hit that he was. And I think a lot of people knew him that didn't know him before. But a lot of your success the past years also come from artists that have been on the label for a minute but are pushing more. Whether it's Bruno Mars, his collaboration with Lady Gaga, maybe some of this was in place.
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Elliot Grange
He's already.
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Interviewer / Host
But it does feel like there has been some momentum there since you all had came in.
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Elliot Grange
I think the Rosie record that Bruno collaborated with her on, I think that reminded people how incredible Bruno Mars is. No one needs any reminder to that. But he's very selective with when and how he puts music out. And so when he does put a song or when he features on a song, it gets so much eyeballs. And it was such a massive global success, that song that you could see the weeks months after the release of that. And as that song Apat became bigger, his catalog was littered within the top 50 global charts.
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Dan Runcy
Let's take a break for our chart metric stat of the week. Golden Voice just released the 2026 lineup for Coachella. There are a number of things that we can dig into about the lineup, but I want to talk about Young Thugs. He is on that first row in the first position on that row, just under Justin Bieber's name for Saturday, who's the headliner for the day. That's a spot that generates millions of dollars per weekend. Not as much as Bieber or Sabrina Carpenter or Carol G, but that is still a very lucrative spot. And it's a full circle moment because it was just four years ago on this podcast that Mike G, Young Thug's touring agent, was talking about trying to help Young Thug get to that next level and getting him on different festival lineups like Lollapalooza on the time and what that could look like. So it's especially cool to see for Thug. He spent the past two years doing time. So this is him coming out, bringing him back into the world, back in front of fans. So it was cool to see him be in this level of spot. His biggest song on Spotify is Havana with Kamila Cabello. That song has over 2.3 billion streams on the platform. As a Young Thug fan myself, really dope to see. So congrats to him and congrats to all the artists that are included in this year's lineup. Let's get back to the episode.
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Interviewer / Host
Is there anything you're doing differently then from a marketing perspective there? Because at least on the 10k side, a lot of your marketing work was okay. The world doesn't know about this artist. We have to make this artist the thing here. You have this artist that already had 24 Karat Magic, Uptown Funk, all this stuff. What does that look like and how do you go about that for someone like him?
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Elliot Grange
I think there are moments that that artists have that really pierce through the zeitgeist. They become pop cultural moments. We saw that last year. We see that all the time with Taylor Swift. We felt that with Chapel Ron and with Sabrina. I think we're feeling that with Bruno. I think we're the best of the business at it. We're very good at reading that, understanding where it's coming from and why, and pouring gas on it. So how we do it, quite nuanced, quite technical, but on a macro. To answer your question in real time, we're able to spend wisely to talk to that audience. We're able to identify why these moments are happening. And Bruno's, he's such a genius. There's something very mysterious about him. Even though we know who he is, there's a mystery to him. So this is the first or the last time we're gonna feel that with Bruno Mars.
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Interviewer / Host
And you talked a bit with how you think about Priorities. And I've read you talk about how you think about focusing on three key things for Atlantic. Specifically, you want to partner with great artists, you want to offer them creative freedom, and you want to help them build fan bases. Because this is clearly a declaration of where Atlantic is moving forward. Was there anything that was a priority before in the business that you've shifted since to make room for these priorities?
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Elliot Grange
No. No. I think as a record label, we have brands. There are half a dozen very important iconic brands in music. And when their names come up or when their logos come up, it makes you feel a certain way. I can remember an Atlantic logo in a vinyl store on Bleecker street in New York when I was first time I'd ever been to New York, and I could still smell the lyric sheet and I remember where I was. So I think there's a very emotive connection to the record label running one. You have the responsibility of treating each artist very independently. So I couldn't say there was any more excitement to your words. An artist that may have felt like an older priority versus a newer priority, there's difference in urgency. I'm a huge Pete Wentz Fallout Boy fan. It'd be great to get another album with them. I don't know if that's gonna ever be a thing. Hopefully it is. Hopefully. Who knows? But it's not as urgent as a cardi b releases or as a turnstile releases, so just managing that. But the respect that we have as a team, as human beings. Not just a sign on the door or sort of a name text in the PC LAN on Spotify. As human beings, we have a responsibility to prioritize everyone.
- [14:03]
Interviewer / Host
We talked a bit about marketing and just making sure the label's in the best position to do that. I've heard you talk about this label influencer opportunity, and this is something that we've seen Warner Music Group has invested money in specifically to help with this. And that, of course, is helping to break records, create moments. A lot of the same things that we've talked about throughout the day. But what does that look like on your end, that label influencer opportunity?
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Elliot Grange
I think we saw the power. It was happening. Our team were very early on the power of influencer. Influencer marketing, before the pandemic. And then the pandemic hit and we saw TikTok explode. And we saw these influencers post a dancing clip or a fan edit to a song in the background. And then we saw the daily streams that week compound and go to the Moon. So I think that triggered something in all of us here, pretty intelligent. And we all saw there's something there. You can see real time ROI on influencers posting songs. That's the context of what influencer marketing is and the importance of it. We have and we continue to invest. I can't say that we've cornered the market, but I think Atlantic and all of our artists have, I would say an industry leading edge on that type of marketing for artists in the business. I think there's no question there.
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Interviewer / Host
Another big topic is AI. This is a topic that you've spoken about a few times before and from a high level. It's the desire to have your music, the Atlantic music that comes through, not just received by the market, but also earn meaningful revenue, whether it's compared to not just AI music, but functional music, but things that maybe aren't in your views, the premium label quality music that you're putting out there. So with that, I'm curious. I think a lot of those takes have been understandably defensive. You want to protect the rights, but is there anything on the pro side, is there anything where you see opportunities or enhancements for what AI can do for your artist, for the business that you're running?
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Elliot Grange
Everyone has a very intelligent opinion about AI in the music industry. So there's two things where my brain goes. One is on the near term, which is to your point, how can producers and songwriters and artists use AI tools to help better their craft in the form of either vocal producing or mixing, engineering, songwriting? That can help in the near term, I think that will promote creativity. Then there's the deeper question of AI agents that are using content that they're training on. That's a whole nother conversation. Where my long term brain goes is we're in this room, I really can't see, but there's probably boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, gen Z, maybe ST, gen Alpha, long term, gen Beta, maybe they're one or two years old now, if we're using ChatGPT right now, and it's slowly starting to become a way of our life. So I think within music, how will Gen Alpha and Gen Beta, how will their relationship with art and artists be different to these generations that have grown up understanding the importance of artistic integrity and real energy and real people making real music and their art form? Because it's very important to everyone in this room. That's why I'm in the business. So long term is how will the future generations, what will their relationship be like as they've become so accustomed to Artificial, maybe even augmented reality. Will they be able to connect with Taylor or Bruno Mars the same way how our generations do? Or Led Zeppelin? Or will they connect the same way to an AI bot? So that's where my brain goes probably. Hopefully I won't be worrying about it or there'll be answers that will be made for us. But that's long term where my brain.
- [18:00]
Interviewer / Host
Goes in a full circle. Trapital Summit theme Troy Carter was on the same stage last year and talked about synthetic artists and people developing relationships with synthetic artists. And you're saying something similar with this, not necessarily a true prediction, but just where things could be going.
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Elliot Grange
So I think today they're gimmicks. I find it very difficult and I have yet to see a strong listening community fall in love and break a synthetic artist or knowingly break a synthetic artist. Still think that humans of our generation how our palette for music. We have to connect with an individual or a group of individuals. Synthetic music. I think it's interesting. It's a gimmick. We were all pretty interested with NFTs four or five years ago, I think. I think in the future, as long as we as an industry stick together and we protect artists rights and artists copyright sellers, they are able to play a part in the foundations of what AI will do for the artistic community and for making sure that artists, as we've said and publishers and songwriters, producers are fairly compensated. On the near term, that's important. On the long term, we've got bigger things to worry about.
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Interviewer / Host
I'm sure you and I could continue this conversation, but we'll likely pause there. And with that, your first public talk since being in this role.
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Dan Runcy
Ladies and gentlemen, Eliot Grange.
- [19:25]
Elliot Grange
Thank you, thank you, thank you for having me.
- [19:29]
Dan Runcy
And that is a wrap for my conversation with Elliot Grange. Thanks again to Elliot for joining me. Thanks again to all of our partners who helped make the trapital Summit possible, including our event producers, speakers, sponsors, attendees and more. Thank you as well to our audio and video producers G and Eric for everything that you do to help make this trapital podcast work and thank you for listening. Like we always say, if there's one person you know that would really enjoy trapital, get a lot out of it, then send them a link to the show. Word of mouth is still the best word to grow, so please send the link and if you have some more time and want to help trapital reach the right people, then leave a review, rate the show, leave a comment that helps make sure that Trapitol reaches the right people. Thanks again talk to you next time.