Interview With
Dave Frank
Manager, Milk & Honey
New York Law School
Arts, Entertainment, and Media Management
Barry University - Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law
Doctor of Law (JD), Entertainment Law, and Copyright
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I got my start in the music industry during my senior year of college, in the spring of 2010. After graduation, I went straight to law school, having no idea music would turn into a career. I started working with a local college DJ doing everything we could to be seen. As law school progressed, things became more serious with music, and my roster started to expand. By the time my 3L year came about, I was interviewing with notable management companies trying to figure out the next chapter of my career. During my three years of law school, I worked on my management clients’ projects all day and read law books at night to keep up, then traveled across the US on weekends to continue building my network.
In 2011, I met and became close with Pete Kalamoutsos, one of the owners of Club Glow, Echostage, and Soundcheck in Washington DC. Pete has been an incredible mentor and really helped accelerate my growth in the industry. Thanks in large part to Pete, once I graduated from law school I accepted a job with Tiesto and decided to hold off on taking the bar exam, as this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Eventually, I went back and sat for the NY Bar Exam passing it on the first try whilst continuing to develop my roster. In early 2016, I joined Milk and Honey, bringing my clients with me.
When I first got into managing DJs, it was all about Beatport and Soundcloud. At the time, if you had a few Beatport Top 10s and were doing over a million plays per record on SoundCloud you had a real chance to become a successful international touring DJ in a short time. For example, my client Mike Hawkins had seven Beatport Top 10s in 2014 and went on to do a 24-date debut US tour and landed a residency at Drais Las Vegas. Nowadays, it’s not that simple. It’s all about Spotify and Apple Music. But these platforms are still not the end all be all. There are a lot of artists with massive streaming numbers, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to ticket sales and touring growth. An artist must have each pillar of their project (branding, merchandising, press, radio shows, social media, streaming & record sales, touring and down the line) firing on all cylinders to break into this extremely crowded marketplace.
I also feel like artist development has become somewhat of a lost art. Back in the day, the majors were signing artists to three, four, five-album deals and investing a lot in their careers to break them over time. Today, it’s become such an on-demand world with the majors signing less and less artist projects instead opting to pick up singles with a few options attached thereto or signing established artists with a real history of charting, sales and streaming. We’re seeing a lot of the record companies taking independently released songs and licensing them once they start to research —it’s become all about analytics and what is working now, not what’s going to work down the line after careful planning and development. It’s more about the one song rather than the artist as a whole, leading to so many one-hit-wonders and less career artists than ever. It’s a slippery slope.
Yes, that’s correct. And it’s the ideal set up for me. At the end of the day, it’s all about the song. If you don’t have the song, nothing else matters. When you are able to manage the biggest songwriters and producers in the world it becomes that much easier, since you are able to control the flow of what is pitched and who works with who.
We encourage our producer and songwriter clients to collaborate with our touring artists, but the collaboration has to make sense. Since there aren’t outside third parties involved, getting in the room or pitching songs from writers and producers to touring artists is a seamless and transparent process.
“In My Mind” is a special song for us and one of the seminal dance records of the decade, ending up with a Grammy nomination. To see the Dynoro version go on to do more than 1.5 billion streams in one year and top the pop radio charts around the world has been so rewarding. It’s incredible to see song get the attention it deserves all over again!
Re-working classics has been a big trend in recent years, and I’m all for it. After the breakout success of the Dynoro version of “In My Mind,” the original got re-added to all the marquee playlists on Apple Music and Spotify and a lot of DJs started playing it in their sets again. The original version was the sixth most played song at Tomorrowland this year! Furthermore, it opens up the conversation with clients to have some of their classic titles re-worked into current versions, which increases the monetary value of copyrights.
Vision. But it’s also essential that the artist can listen, take advice and be willing to collaborate. It’s impossible to become a global star on your own. It’s standard for the biggest artists to have 40 plus people working on their teams to facilitate the global strategy and vision.
As managers, it’s not our job to create the vision, but rather to help the artist shape it, carry it, and execute on it. The artist has to be the hardest-working member on the team and be willing to invest the time and resources in each vertical of their career. They need to want it and work for it more than anything else they’ve ever done. There are no shortcuts, and it takes years to develop into a global star. In a saturated climate, you need to be willing to put in more than the next person, and if you don’t, you’ll quickly get passed by. With that said, it all starts with the music—end of conversation. The music needs to be great.
In terms of release formats, I still believe in the album and love developing those projects. But at this time “the single” is driving the market. The album has to come at the right time and takes far longer to develop and mold into an accurate representation of the artist than singles. Typically, the most prolific artists are the ones who continue to grow at an exponential rate, for example, DJ Snake, The Chainsmokers, Tiesto, David Guetta, Martin Garrix, Oliver Heldens etc.
In classic terms, “electronic” producers like Diplo, The Chainsmokers, Zedd, have a significant influence on the sound of pop music and are driving what’s charting. You also see remixes of pop songs that didn’t make inroads on pop radio catapult artists into global stardom–like the Seeb remix of Mike Posner’s “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” or Felix Jaehn’s remix of Omi’s “Cheerleader”. Overall, the music has shifted from being produced with live instruments to digital ones. This is the basis of electronic music, so naturally, the top electronic producers are going to be able to compete with your mainstay pop producers.
A lot of people like to say the EDM bubble has busted, but in my opinion, we are only just getting started. The pop charts are filled with electronic artists and producers, new festivals are popping up left and right, and the established ones are only getting bigger.
I also feel that with agency consolidation, the touring and sponsorship business for electronic artists has become more opulent. There are so many fresh opportunities to position yourself for sustainable long-term growth outside of the traditional music revenue verticals like merchandising and recorded music.
Something that I’m also very proud of is that electronic artists and their teams have taken a deep dive into the charitable and philanthropic world, helping to bring mental health awareness to the mainstream. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised and donated, and it’s becoming OK to talk about mental health it was once considered taboo.
Joey is a longtime friend, and I couldn’t agree more with his thoughts. Watching him grow in this industry has been awesome. I’m proud of everything he has built with Peter Rugo and the success their artists have achieved.
Going to law school has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, on both a personal and professional level. The Esq. title brings credibility and respect, and my education has empowered me to understand the daunting legal details of the music business. This is something many managers don’t have the expertise to navigate.
Being able to advise and explain to my clients the practical business aspects and issues of the industry is invaluable. The experience has allowed me to operate in a unique way—whether that’s dealing with contracts, labels or publishing deals, collections, neighboring and performance rights, and trademarks, or using negotiation skills. It’s also made it easier to understand the complex ad and synch world, which is still a marquee way to launch a song and generate significant revenue. Balancing law school and working full-time in the music industry further enhanced my time management and organizational skills, equipping me with the leadership qualities required to guide an artist’s career at the highest levels.
Milk & Honey is currently represented in China by a company called Outustry, who we continue to build a great relationship with on the A&R and song side. We put a lot of records into the Chinese market in 2018 and put almost double so far this year. Our head of international strategy, Peter Coquillard, runs that department for us stateside. As the Chinese pop market continues to grow, both on western and local music, we look forward to the possibility of building our dedicated team in China.
The president of Milk & Honey, Lucas Keller, has done a fantastic job scaling the business, and we are always looking at expansion opportunities. With current offices in LA, NYC, and Nashville, we are highly motivated to continue building on our success in Europe and developing Milk & Honey’s presence in the continent. Opening an office in London is imminent, and we are continuing to look at opportunities to open outposts in Amsterdam and Stockholm.
These three major music hubs are not only at the center of my daily work, but Milk & Honey’s as well. Some of the best artists, creatives, execs, writers, and producers in the world are based in the EU and my friends living in Europe are significantly impacting the way our industry moves forward. I very much look forward to the continued development of Milk and Honey while continuing to push boundaries and break down barriers.