Milk & Honey now represents Travis Kelce and 80 other sports stars – but its world still ‘revolves around the songwriter’
Just turned 10 years old last year and now quickly has nearly 50 employees, headquartered in Los Angeles Milk & Honey just made its biggest deal yet.
The firm – best known for representing songwriters, producers and music artists – this week confirmed acquired VMG Sports.
The acquisition brings 15 NFL athletes above Milk & Honeybooks by, including ones you may have heard of, no matter where you live: Travis Kelce.
That's one global celebrity right there (obviously romantic interest) has nothing to do with the music business.
So what's going on here? M&H?
The agreement is built on Milk & Honey existing sports talent agency business, launching in 2021, which M&H founder/CEO, Lucas Kellerhas been quietly building with an executive team of 20 dedicated employees.
With that, the company now represents more 80 athletes total – roughly the same volume as its music playlist.
Based on Keller, VMG's move confirms his company's growing stature in the world of big-money sports entertainment.
Yet, he said, the “backbone” of Milk & Honey's global operation remains unchanged: the music and, more specifically, the musicians.
“As we grow our stature across the entertainment world, our influence and ability to advocate on behalf of our musicians – the leverage we can wield on their behalf – has only increased. go up.”
Lucas Keller, Milk & Honey
“Musicians are always our top priority,” said Keller, spoke to MBW following VMG's announcement. “If anything, they are an even person bigger focus on us. At 10, we continued to dig deeper and deeper into music.”
“I think some people look at the size of the sports world and wonder if we're giving up on music, but there's nothing more than that,” Keller added. We just realized that we can offer the same great support, personal service and guidance to athletes as we do to musical talent.
“As we grow our stature across the entertainment world, our influence and ability to advocate on behalf of our musicians – the leverage we can wield on their behalf – only increases. go up.”
Milk & Honey launched in 2014 with one customer – Keller's friend and business partner, who became the godfather of the M&H team – David Hodgesthen best known as a member of the band Evanescence.
Hodges has since composed songs for/for superstars, including Ed Sheeran, Carrie Underwoodand more – with his work selling more 150 million File.
Meanwhile, Milk & Honey lists in music have mushroomed.
Run one finger down Billboard Hot 100 in any given week and you'll quickly find a song written or produced by a Milk & Honey songwriter, from Hodges to Felder Oak, Stuart Price, J. White did it, Jamie Hartman, Andres Torres & Mauricio Rengifo, Jenna Andrewsand more.
Additionally, over the past eight years, the company has been quietly building its artist representation business – led by Dave Frank (pictured inside) – focuses on DJ/dance acts.
The 30+ artists represented by Milk & Honey today include artists such as Oliver Heldens, Benny Benassi, Massano, Chris Avantgarde, HI-LO, Gioli & Assia, Wuki, KAS:ST, Slushii and the recent signing Maya Jane Coles.
The company's artist list will be distributed gradually 1,500 this year's show, which includes more than 50 shows in Ibiza this summer.
Joel Corrywho boasts numerous international hit singles – including a UK number 1 Head & Heart with MNEK – recently signed a contract with Milk & Honey through the company's London-based office, due to Hippsley Ant. (Corry is managed by Dave Frank with London-based George Corten.)
Other British contracts at Milk & Honey includes multi-Grammy Award winner Stuart Price, along with Easy Fun, Tom Mann and The Elements.
Frank commented: “Joel marks our commitment and flags representing great UK artists – and there are many more to come.”
When Keller started Milk & Honey, he was happy to put his past life of managing rock artists behind him — transforming it into an experience he calls “a higher-octane version of touring and artist management” through the dance space.
Keller adds “When we started our electronic division, we had a thesis about cross-fertilizing our roster of great musicians with artist talent.
“DJs are tour producers and so the electronic dance artists we manage can 'leap' to the best songs from our musicians. Over the years, we've included a lot of famous songs [DJ/dance] community and will continue… but Milk & Honey Artist customers are given priority!”
Keller passionate about A&R and looking forward to talent management companies like Milk & Honey play an increasingly large role in creating hits in the years to come.
“We have great relationships with the major labels, but as they scale back and rely more and more on data, great A&R will have to happen outside of that system,” he said. .
“This is why we invested in a 16-person in-house creative A&R team within our 'management' company – with a fully staffed admin department tasked with monitoring and tracking every transaction we do.”
“We predict that [the centralization of A&R administration at major labels] will create a bottleneck in talent and access to manufacturers. Companies like ours will have to step in and solve this problem.”
Lucas Keller, Milk & Honey
“We are particularly seeing a push in housing,” he added [majors] to focus A&R admins on labels now. It might make economic sense for them but it would make each of those brands more spokes on the 'corporate wheel' than they already are.
“We predict that will create a bottleneck in talent and [access to] producers. Companies like ours will have to step in and solve this problem.”
Milk & Honey list of musician-producers who in recent years have co-created global breakthroughs such as by Dua Lipa Fly up, BTS' Butter, Luis Fonsi and Yankee's dad Despacito, by James Arthur Say you won't let goand more – the sum total of what the company prides itself on being north of one billion equivalent album sales.
With five offices – Los Angeles, London, New York, Nashville and Dallas – and employees in 15 states in the US, Keller claiming that “no other music management company has [Milk & Honey’s] footprint and real reach in many key markets.”
“We export more songs to the international market than any other songwriter producer management company,” he added.
Are there any common threads between representation musicians, artists and athletes? Keller say yes.
“It's pretty simple: Our job is to enhance the value of our clients' brands and help them tell their stories to the world.”
In addition to the talent representation business, Milk & Honey has been a serious player in the music catalog space for the past few years – both by selling catalogs to its own customers and as a third-party broker when it comes to deals.
Keller estimates that M&H's brokerage business has oversight 250 million USD in portfolio transactions since 2020.
“We have become one of the industry's leading experts on pop musicians selling that product. 2 million USD ARRIVE 40 million USD Keller said. “It's a very regular business for us and we believe we're one of the best at doing it.
“Plus, we know our way around: we leave nine-figure 'iconic' deals to investment bankers and entertainment lawyers, but we can really help propping up active pop musicians who are selling.”
The main focus for Milk & HoneyStill, it attracts musicians and producers to create hits – and then pays them.
With that in mind, we ask Keller on a hot topic today: Spotify'S there are plans to reclassify its current Paid subscription as a ‘bundle’ – that is, a music package plus an audiobook.
Through this reclassification, Daniel Ek'S The company will be able to pay lower mechanical licensing fees in the United States for each of these spin-offs thanks to the 2022 agreement with the publishers.
“Musicians are tired of being lied to. What nonsense.”
Lucas Keller, Milk & Honey
Speak Keller: “Spotify may have a good view of plans and they also think their margins are too low. Let's not forget that big brands are doing business with Spotify from the beginning and I think there's good reason to blame them [for this situation] also.
“I think they should all get in the room and find out, but the end result won't be down to the musicians.”
“Musicians are tired of being lied to,” Keller added. What nonsense.”
Speaking more generally about the economic situation of the writer/producer he represents, Keller said: “The world is changing now, where FM radio is written on the wall. As everyone knows, there is a huge gap between the value of a No. 1 radio song to a songwriter or producer versus a record with billions of streams on Spotify.”
“You can't just sit there and complain about that reality,” he added. It is our job as songwriters and producer managers to be progressive in arranging the business for producers and writers so that they are not solely dependent on publishing money from their work. streaming.
“It is extremely important to Milk & Honey that musicians remain a job well into the next decade.”
Nic Warner, Keller's business partner and General Manager of Milk & Honey, gets the last word: “The next 10 years managing musicians is really the most important thing. There will be more changes to how writers get paid and things will get harder; The next 10 years will not be like the past 50 years.
“Serious musicians and producers will need the most experienced managers they can find.”Music business worldwide
