There was little creativity or inspiration in the financial crisis of 2008 — especially in the real estate foreclosures of southern Florida. But it was from this low point that an innovative music tech companies was sparked — a company that has been in the trenches working with prolific artists and iconic companies such as Mondelēz International, PepsiCo, and Red Bull to bring new music industry revenue models, new fan experiences, and new value back to music as the culture creator it is and always will be.
That agency is Nue Agency, which was born in earnest from the events of 2008. That year, Jesse flew down to Miami for WMC and helped Alex packed up his car and drive back to New York City, where Jesse had begun creating a music booking agency with a forward-thinking angle.
In the late 2000s, the live music industry was taking off like never before as more artists began to hit the road to supplement dropping recording and distribution revenues. From the start, Nue Agency was focused on working with emerging artists who had big social followings and booking them shows across the country.
At the time, bigger agencies weren’t using tech and social to find talent the way Nue was. Nue Agency was interested not only in artists who were passionate about building their live brand, but also in artists who were forward-thinking — artists who were embracing tech such as streaming, social, and other disruptive new ways to make their music careers sustainable. Nue Agency was looking for these social artists who knew how to galvanize their tribes to a cause — artists who were driving culture with their music and engaging their fans in a more holistic and connected approach.
With these guiding principles, Nue Agency was able to curate a roster of artists, including Clipse (Pusha T), Wale, Big Sean, J. Cole, Action Bronson, Mike Posner, Chiddy Bang, Capital Cities, Hoodie Allen, Logic, and The White Panda. In many cases, these artists were not only represented by Nue Agency, but Nue Agency was also an early member of their team, willing to take a risk on emerging talent and be a real incubation hub. Rolling up their sleeves to help those artists attain the next level of credibility and notoriety, the Nue Agency team propelled these artists further into the music industry.
Of course, that’s the quick and glossy version. The reality, as anyone in the live music industry will tell you, is that there is a lot of work involved — long, hard hours that seem to never end. Live shows have many moving pieces, from approval processes, tour routing, grabbing venue holds, and maintaining ticket counts to advancing shows, tearing down, and doing it all again the next day. There’s no shortage of work to be done quickly, and it can become rather monotonous in the Kirshbaum brothers’ eyes. In the booking world, perfection is standard and expected, and little feedback is given — if ever. A lot of the time, when you hear something from artists or management, it’s because something is going wrong, which, of course, becomes the agent’s fault and responsibility to deal with immediately.
But in addition to the mountains of work involved in booking live shows, there are also a few mountainous companies to be conquered. Slowly, many of the acts Jesse and Alex found, fostered, and developed were lured away by larger players who potentially offered more scale but far less imagination.
Booking became less of a passion, but luckily, Alex and Jesse were still as passionate as ever about music, emerging artists, the live space, and innovative revenue models via tech. Through innovative properties such as SoundCTRL and FlashFWD, Nue Agency was embedded into the growing New York City music tech scene. This allowed Jesse and Alex to see the oncoming avenues they could move toward. Just as the inevitable burnout of the booking world began showing its head, Nue Agency saw an opportunity to focus on music as a brand amplifier in its strategies.
Nue had already started consulting with newcomer streaming service Spotify pre-launch in the U.S., when Spotify was looking to establish more authentic music events and experiences in the NYC influencer scene and college markets in the early 2010s. The brothers saw a place where they could step in and consult for music tech entities by bridging the gap between platforms and artists, as well as platforms and brands — where they could be curators of the culture in a much larger way than they could ever be as simply a booking agency.
After years of working in the music industry at its most volatile juncture, Alex and Jesse saw the future of music working hand-in-hand with technology, not running away from it. If the right data, numbers, and input points were accessed, music could become much more profitable than it’s ever been.
Early on, Jesse and Alex saw the multiplying effect when smart strategy was paired with data-driven technology and great music — even in the old-guard world of talent booking. Working with socially savvy musicians allowed Nue Agency to get more fans informed, more artists paid, and more sales made while connecting with the new tech companies that were paving the way for the new music industry.
Embracing a new model is the direction Alex and Jesse would choose to go in next. They had developed so many relationships with artists, bands, venues, promoters, tech entrepreneurs, labels, and brands over the years that they had become their own API — a hybrid of the meatspace of relationships and contacts and the tech space of analytics, virality, and trending predictions. It’s in this blending of tech, music, and branding that Nue Agency’s future was cemented.
In early 2014, Alex and Jesse went back into the lab and did a full brand overhaul, including a new logo, a new look, a new website, and a new positioning to reflect that world.
“We wanted to outwardly face what we felt like we were doing internally, which was much more creative work,” says Alex. “The conversation on the street was always about the same old paradigm of who you’ve just signed or who you’ve lost, but nobody knew more about the innovative deals we were working on.”
Nue Agency was done with its old world and position in the music industry, and it was moving into strategic deals with platforms and brands and innovative tech partnerships that would help enhance artists’ careers through disruptive revenue streams, new exposure and marketing mechanisms, and enhanced live performances.
“We love to partner with artists and brands around a concept that we can flesh out and make come to life, not only in terms of ideation, but also in terms of marketing, promotion, artist alignment, connecting brands emotionally with their consumers, and really seeing the power of earned media — the power that music has to cut through the clutter for brands and get bigger results than they could just buy,” says Alex.
That is the core value proposition that Nue Agency has been offering the brands it works with. You could buy a 30-second commercial, but with music, Nue Agency can guarantee the engagement and raw emotion that will be more impactful than bought media could be.
The team at Nue Agency understands the musical landscape so well that it’s able to access talented emerging artists and tech platforms and utilize their hype and fan base. Those fans are far more engaged by emerging artists. They feel like they have some type of ownership in emerging artists’ success than that of a huge superstar. A superstar-type artist may tweet about a product, but his fans are already jaded to the message. There isn’t the feeling that they’ve been there since day one, which limits the reach of the message.
Emerging artists’ fans, however, feel like they’re the ones who are doing the discovering and sharing. That insider knowledge makes fans of emerging artists more fanatical. That power is only growing as the Internet matures and becomes even more connected and as streaming music becomes ubiquitous on every phone and device.
“Music is at such an exciting place; it’s one of the lowest barriers of entry to really shift and shape culture,” proclaims Jesse.
But Nue Agency isn’t satisfied and is currently developing its own proprietary technology. Together with a talented team of programmers, Nue Agency is working on a yet-to-be-announced tool that combines its strengths in the live and tech spheres. The technology will pull global data to allow brands and platforms to align with artists seamlessly, mixing data with taste to help clients make more impactful decisions about who to procure or curate for their various campaigns and events.
“In this new culture, every brand needs a music strategy in the same way it has an SEO strategy, a social media strategy, and a youth marketing strategy,” Jesse claims. “If brands want to help shape culture in a meaningful way, they need a music strategy.”
Through music strategy, Nue Agency is committed to helping brands create deep emotional connections with consumers. They’ve began to prove out this with a recent program they built with Sour Patch Kids and partners called The Patch which recently won a Clio Award.
In retrospect, this all may seem quite obvious. Since pairing the Beatles with lunchboxes, it’s been clear that artists drive power. It’s simply because music is a very personal thing. It taps into a deep place. It works on our soul. It moves us to listen to what the artist is saying — to follow the culture he’s sharing. Music spreads an idea, a message, and even a product. It’s the primal spiritual nourishment for all humans.
Everyone loves music in some shape or form. That’s why we tune in when we hear about our favorite artist doing anything. That’s why artists can cut through. Having a well-thought-out music strategy is so obvious yet so rare. It’s, in fact, the strongest way brands can give themselves a distinguished look, feel, touch, and sound.
The Beats by Dre model is here to stay because artists’ communities are rabidly engaged. And you can utilize that rabid engagement to launch a product that could end up being bigger than the artist ever dreamt.
These experiences hardwired music into the DNA of Nue Agency and propelled it as it navigated the waters of the new music landscape.
Disclosure: I have no financial stake of conflict of interest by posting about the NUE Agency