How Atlantic Records Cracked the Code on Artist Breakthroughs w/ Elliot Grainge

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0:42I don't know what's going to happen. I want my fairytale ending. Married at First Sight, now streaming. New episodes Thursdays, only on Peacock. Welcome to On The Record, a new music business podcast from Billboard and Sickbird Productions. I'm your host, Kristen Robinson, and today we are joined by a very special guest, Elliot Grange, CEO and chairman of Atlantic Music Group and founder of his own label, 10K Projects. I wanted to have him on to chat because Elliot became the CEO of Atlantic almost exactly a year ago today, a move which shocked many in the music industry when it happened. Elliot was just 30 years old at the time and hadn't spent that much time working within the major label system before his hiring.

1:20Instead, he cut his teeth building his own independent label, 10K Projects. working with artists like Ice Spice, Trippie Red, and Surfaces. His first foray into the major label system was when he sold a stake in his company to Warner Music Group in 2023. But if any 30-year-old could take on the CEO job at a label as big as Atlantic, it might be Elliott. That's because he's been raised in one of the most storied music industry families in history. His father, Lucien Grange, is the CEO and chairman of Universal Music Group, the largest major music company in the business and a competitor of Warner Music Groups.

1:54And Elliott also has other industry ties. His grandfather ran a record shop. His cousin was an early champion of Amy Winehouse. And his uncle founded Ensign Records, home to Thin Lizzy and Steve Miller Band. In just a year at Atlantic, Elliott has already put some impressive wins on the board. He propelled Ordinary by Alex Warren to the top of the Hot 100 and Pop Airplay charts. He's also broken other songs, like No One Noticed by the Marias and Ozzy Zom by Ed Sheeran and many more. Plus, Atlantic has the number one album on the Billboard 200 this week and last week. So last week it was 21 Pilots that was in the top spot, and this week it's Cardi B at number one.

2:32So it felt like the perfect time to have Elliot on and to review his first year at Atlantic, and also to talk about the future of record labels at a time when the industry seems to be changing very fast. But before we get started, as a journalist and a host, it's very important to me to disclose that previous to my role at Billboard, I did work at 10K Projects starting in spring 2020. But weirdly, because of the COVID lockdowns, I worked entirely remotely. So this is my first time meeting Elliot in person. It's a real full circle moment for me and kind of crazy that that happened. But enough for me.

3:04Let's go ahead and bring in our guest this week. Please welcome to the show, Elliot Grange.

3:14Welcome, Elliot, it to On The Record. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I love that we're doing this today because back in the day, about five years ago, at the height of the pandemic, I did actually work at your label, 10K Projects, but I didn't get to meet you in person because of the weirdness that is COVID lockdowns. So this is a fun moment of meeting for the first time five years later.

3:37Elliot Grainge:You promised me five years ago when we didn't meet that if we were to ever do a podcast together, you would ask me easy questions and you would make me look very good. Yes, I remember promising that. Yep. I wanted to get into this by talking about 10k. I'm wondering for you as the CEO of the company, what was it like actually running it during the pandemic? What kind of things had to change? It was a very interesting time. We were having a lot of success with some artists um so from the artist and song breaking perspective it was it was a really really good time it was a very difficult time because so many of us who loved coming into the office we weren't able to do so yourself as a good example we weren't able to be with each other i think that was one of the one of the real stresses of the pandemic so i remember our office building we weren't able to actually physically go into the office they had closed all of the close the building down yeah um so i think that would be one of the stressors um i think one of the good things that happened is we as a as an independent label super nimble we were able to pivot and we were able to see that people weren't in their cars as much um they were at home they weren't necessarily at schools or in the office consumers and so we were able to figure out that they were online they were on tiktok they were on instagram and so we were able to um use some of the savings that we had from our office not we didn't we didn't go to the office we weren't paying the rent and we invested 100 of those savings into into influencer marketing at which we'd already been doing before so we were really able to press that and as a result we had um tremendous success with some of the, I think I'm biased, I think they were some of the greatest songs of the pandemic with Surfaces, Sunday Best, we had Salem Elise, Matt at Disney, we had Peachtree Rascals.

5:49Elliot Grainge:We were able to help put some great music out that got a lot of people through some tough times. I mean, it's kind of crazy to look back at that time because TikTok was just taking off. It sounds like y 'all were already doing some influencer marketing there beforehand invested more into it during the pandemic at what point did you end up coming into contact with homemade projects which is zach friedman and tony talama's company my partners um they're the greatest we crossed paths in i would say middle of 2016 and they were managing a couple of influencers one of the uh people that they were managing young very young guy and um I sort of watched how they moved when it when it came to seeing the power of influencers channels and how they could monetize their channels and one of the mediums that they would look at was through music we noticed each other you're doing that that's pretty cool we're doing this and we stayed we stayed super close and then about a year later they bought an artist to me that they were managing that we signed great artist who was it and then it was ours called austin oh yes okay austin without the it's like a u we had we had to we had to change exactly yeah we had to change the uh we had to change the name and the song there was a great record called in between and he was very very young great super talented very good songwriter so we had some initial success there and then afterwards um they they called me and they said there's another great artist that that that we really want to do a partnership with you on a great duo called surfaces based in texas and so um we signed that was the first real big big success that we had with them and i just said to them you guys are you guys are so you're so brilliant we should do this instead of you just managing we should do this in the form of a partnership and so i gave through 10k i gave Zach and Tony through their company, Homemade Record, Homemade Projects, the venture, which ended up, we ended up merging, consolidating.

7:59And as part of that consolidation, Zach and Tony stayed on and essentially became co-presidents of the company. Before Homemade kind of came in, or I mean, even during that period, you were signing a lot of SoundCloud rap. I wasn't in the industry at the time when you started doing that, but was there a lot of competition in that space to sign SoundCloud rap? Or were you one of the earliest people on that? I'd say my junior senior year of college, 2015 era, all of the kids in college were discovering new music. Everyone wants to be first. And the platform that everyone was discovering the music from was SoundCloud.

8:40So I sort of became infatuated with it. You'd look at the charts, You'd look at what was hot and trending. And so it became a very important website, a platform for me to discover artists. Were other people looking at the artists on SoundCloud? Yes. So I think Billie Eilish was one of the artists that started to cultivate her audience. I know Post Malone was. It was a great platform, still is, where artists could go and test with their fans, put music up, put snippets up. Yeah.

9:14Elliot Grainge:Not necessarily released on Spotify or other DSPs or Apple Music. So there was competition at that time for signing those. Without question. Yeah. Without question. So how did you beat them out as someone who was so young at the time, still in college when you're working on starting the label, right? I grew up as a kid loving punk rock. I was a very nerdy kid, still am, living in London. And I love the Clash. I love the Sex Pistols. I loved hearing the stories of if you were at a concert in the Hammersmith Apollo in 1977, if you weren't, didn't get a drink thrown on you or someone spat on you in the mosh pit at these sort of punk rock concerts.

10:00To me, that was really cool. And I could see something forming through the sort of, I'd say, almost the subculture of SoundCloud, where you had these artists, controversial artists like XXXTentacion, and you had artists that were incredibly talented, part of this sort of subculture of SoundCloud. Trippie Red was one of them, which was the first artist on SoundCloud that we sort of worked with. And it reminded me when I went to some of the shows, it was very, very early. It reminded me of the energy reminded me of what the stories I had heard from that mid to late 1970s, that sort of anarchy, punk rock, that real youth culture energy.

10:47And for whatever reason, as someone who had just finished college, that was obsessed with the music industry and always wanted to find the next thing, I was very drawn to that energetically, sonically. Some of those copyrights today, they're special records. They'll be songs that our kids and our grandkids will be listening to one day. So I was infatuated by that movement at the time. But how did you beat out some of the more established players who are also going after your Trippie Reds of the world? I would say a lot of the executives, and we'll sort of go through how the business has historically worked and how it's sort of moving now, they weren't looking towards the subcultures of SoundCloud.

11:33They just, they weren't. And so I think a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of young people, they're the ones that are really pushing the sound forward.

11:44Elliot Grainge:as much of uh as incredible amount of respect that we have as an industry for some of the incredible executives at the top of their of their pyramid i think it's the youth culture i think it's i believe it's a lot of the younger people in the company that are able to sort of smell what other younger people are listening to in real time so i think i was poised i was very fortunate where i could see that. And it was very difficult for all these artists to get real attention from some of the other labels. There weren't that many independent labels around that were looking in that system, in that genre in 2016.

12:27So I was very fortunate. I think it was the right, I was fortunate. I think it was the right time and the right place for 10K. And you're talking about the importance of being a young person and being able to sense where culture was moving. I often think about how music is such a young man's game, oftentimes, and you're still very young. I'm wondering, your father has been able to age really gracefully, continue to have success, and continue to have perhaps the most success he's ever had. Have you learned anything from him about what it takes to kind of surpass moving from just being that young person who's young and eager to making it to the next level as an executive?

13:05I can't speak for him, but some of the things that I've noticed around his, I would say, how he manages is he really respects the opinions of a lot of his leaders and a lot of people around him.

13:22Elliot Grainge:so to your point um who is closer who has the best um understanding of what the younger generations want to consume it's the younger generations and i think he's wise enough to know that these people that are going to pick who the next generation want to listen to that's going to be a younger generation so he i think it's similar to what what what we do and what we and what a lot of the smart people do is you've got to back that generation. You've got to back the younger people. As you say, I agree with you. I think it's a young man's game, a young person's game. Not only do you have to pick the right talent to sign, you also need to pick the right talent in your building, your research A &Rs, your A &Rs who can pick out the right stuff.

14:11Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. It's all about the team. um one thing that that we we did um really well we continue to do really well with 10k and now at atlantic is um we've put together an incredible team we're we're a team of of um fans entrepreneurs winners but ultimately the one common theme that we all have is we love working with artists we like to back artists in any form that we can um every company can say we've got the best team and

14:46Elliot Grainge:experience and i'm 100 experience is very important but i i i'd love for you to come up to the the office at some point and see it there's a really special energy that that we have of just people that love music, that love working for artists. And I guess going back to that SoundCloud rap bit, that was such a scene, but it was on a online platform. Of course, there were a lot of people in SoundCloud rap who are from similar areas. You saw a lot of South Florida going on there. But I mean, Trippie is from Ohio, right? 6ix9ine was from New York. You have people from all over. Do you think that local scenes are still a thing in 2025 or have local scenes migrated to just niche online spaces local scenes are and have been historically incredibly important they will continue to be important i think sonically you can taste something that came out of of southern florida in from 2014 to 2018 2019 you can taste that that moment maybe now today less so i think after the pandemic it really pushed artists to um instead of start their their first two or three concerts their shows um in the local venue 100 200 cap i think now what they're doing is they're waiting for for the larger cap to try their first concert.

16:24Elliot Grainge:And they're able to get there by building a fan base online slightly quicker than they were before. When you don't do your 10 ,000 hours in the tiny venues and then you get put on a giant stage, it's very, very intimidating. And a lot of artists are not up to it. There's at least a large learning curve for starting in those larger venues. But most things are taking place online post-pandemic. And the pandemic quickened that movement online. It's been great. And it's also been not so great. Where artists who are having incredible streaming moments and online moments, they weren't able to actually touch the fans.

17:02They weren't able to go out for that sort of 12, 18 month period of the pandemic worldwide. They weren't able to go and perform their song and touch the fans. And so I think that was very, very difficult. There was this time period of early TikTok, which I think we've exited now, like 2019 to maybe 2023-ish, where you were seeing a lot of one-hit wonders, a lot of artists that were popping off that didn't have any movement before, which is very exciting. But then exiting the pandemic must have been quite a challenge for a lot of these artists, given they'd never made that fan connection in person.

17:35They had their moment on the algorithm, and I would say some of them probably weren't ready to capitalize on it. I forget who told me this, but they were talking about how you never want to have your viral moment too early. You want to always have a bunch of songs ready to go as soon as it happens. And I think that there was this weird period where people were trying things out online. You even saw artists performing unfinished songs on TikTok that would do well. And then they would get into that challenging space where they have to go record it and try to be as faithful to their random video as possible.

18:11But yeah, I feel like we've exited that time period a little bit. If you look at the artists that are now established over the last sort of 12, 18 months, if we look at the Sabrina Carpenters or the Chapel Rhoans or the Marias, these are artists that talk about 10 ,000 hours. they've been releasing music. They were signed, I think, almost five, six, seven years ago. And they were releasing music and touring before the pandemic towards releasing music during the pandemic.

18:52Elliot Grainge:And then afterwards. And if you look at their success now and their consistency and their fan base, it shows you now it's taking several years of artist development for the fans to really connect and take artists to that top tier. So I think what a big focus that we're trying to do at the moment is really, really stay true, be very patient with the artist development. It can take several years and that's okay. Yeah. I mean, I imagine that makes it really hard to know when it's a right time to cut an artist where it's not working anymore or when to keep investing what are those kind of conversations that y 'all are having inside of Atlantic about how long should you give an artist to develop and how many resources should you give them while they're developing I guess so I think the partnership with the artists it's very very important um and we as a as a record label we have a responsibility to be very patient to support not just to fund but to actually support on a sonic, on a creative level, and be very, very patient with artists.

20:02The answer is, it should take as long as it needs to. Not every artist is going to break to that level of superstardom. But we have a responsibility, if we're going to get into business with an artist, to be the greatest partners that we can for them. For major record labels now, is it important to also pursue kind of that middle tier of artists as well not just being i often hear when talking about majors people be like you know we're in the business of superstars and that's true but given we now have a much more fragmented music market is there also increasing value in having kind of those middle tier acts that have a strong fan base but will never be probably a radio number one so it's funny this middle market i think it's always been there i think it's definitely got larger if you think about the macro industry and where we are you have a million tracks being added to dsps every day so you have several hundred thousand to a million new tracks added on a weekly basis when you look at that you're 100 you're going to see so many layers and tiers of artistry from uh songs and test songs to the a-list stars that recording and releasing and then that sort of is what you define as that middle tier the answer is 100 see i look at the middle tier and our team looks at the middle tier as that may be middle tier today with a niche fan base but with the right partnership and the right time and the right support could an artist from that middle tier that we partner so the answer is yes we should partner can that be does that artist want to be in the superstar category and the answer is 100 we're finding a lot more artists in that tier waiting helping support helping put the plans together the goal is to get them to the superstardom I find Atlantic to be so interesting because you're very forward-thinking very tech focused very data focused label executive but also you have come into Atlantic which is a very storied older label so I'm wondering have you examined the history of Atlantic much and thought about that and how that informs our strategy today.

22:21Tell me a little bit about that transition. It was started by an entrepreneur, Turkish entrepreneur, Ahmad Erdogan.

22:29Elliot Grainge:And he was, in many ways, a very, he was a huge disruptive force in the music business. some of the artists that he signed how he viewed the business and so i think if you look at the history of atlantic from the very very beginnings of it to where it is today it's been a company that has always backed entrepreneurial spirit because that's where it's come from i never viewed atlantic even when we were competing with atlantic i never viewed them as a an old school brand I always viewed Atlantic as a storied incredible incredible label I think it's personally as a fan of music I think it's the best most diverse label of genres of artists of all the labels so when you marry that history and that entrepreneurial spirit which we've got now obviously um with the greatest team great entrepreneurial team we start to see magic happen and so it's been one year um we we've had to go through a lot of restructure at the company difficult restructure um but in the last 12 months i i can't think of as a fan of the music industry and as a fan of atlantic i can't remember the last time a record label has had such quick success with such a great variety, different variety of artists.

24:03Yeah. Between Raven Lanay, Alex Warren, The Marias, some incredible success with Charlie XCX. We're in the midst of rolling out the albums now with Cardi B and Ed Sheeran, 21 Pilots at the moment. So just obviously I'm biased, but I think it's the most incredible, incredible brand in all of the recorded industry in the world. We're very, very, very lucky to work in this industry. And to sort of help bring back some of that entrepreneurial energy

24:38Elliot Grainge:to that incredibly historic storied brand, I think we're seeing great success and I hope to continue showing even more success. If you could walk me through kind of what your first few days were at Atlantic, If you can think back to a year ago, what were some of the things you immediately thought, OK, I need to reshape this part of the company to be a little bit more in line with what I'm thinking? You know, can you walk me through what immediate changes you kind of noticed that you wanted to make? two things is we had to examine um why um to your point earlier why the the the atlantic perhaps um had had felt a bit tired now i don't think it did but a lot of people may have may have felt that way um you had an incredible leader before formidable character who had been there for for I think almost two decades, incredible success.

25:40Elliot Grainge:It was very, very difficult for us to examine not necessarily what the issues were, but how we could build on how good the company was and how we could make it better. And so we had to look at the most important thing about record companies, the artists, are the artists being serviced? And so we had to take some very, very difficult decisions We had to downsize some of the staff so we could reinvest back into the artists. And so that was really what we were able to do. Very, very, very difficult to do that. We've got some incredible people we had to say goodbye to. If we didn't do that, we wouldn't be able to, as a record label, efficiently allocate our resources to our artist partners as well as we could do.

26:31So I think that was something that was very difficult, but something that we had to do. Got it. So you invested some of the money from staff cuts into more signing new artists or investing in the artists that you had on the roster? Sure. Okay, got it. And also, I'm curious, as the restructure continues to take place, where are the areas that you are most interested in investing in on the staff? Is it digital marketing? Is it research A &R? What kinds of things are you looking at? We sold half of the business prior to our team moving into Atlantic. we'd sold half of the company 10k to one music group which is the parent company and so what we were able to do after we took over atlantic was move 10k into the atlantic music into into that group it's atlantic it's 10k 300 300 and we're adding a couple more brands still a thing or electra absolutely is still thing okay um we were we were able to consolidate a lot of the incredible teams together and i think part of the consolidation with 10k and having 10k move into that that collective of all the atlantic brands it it allowed us to bring our i think best in class influencer marketing digital marketing department it allowed us to bring an incredible incredible super young adaptive research team so these are the tools that that and these are the teams that we've really been able to bring in to this storied brand we're seeing incredible results already in the first year there were some wins that you guys put on the board immediately but also i'm sure there are some people who are like well but are we sure it wasn't under you know stuff that julie greenwald set up or something when do you feel like was that dividing line where you felt like you could fully claim, like, I really feel like I set up these hits.

28:24I feel like my team did this in the last year. So I think it was a really great collaboration between the sort of the new team that were coming in and also the previous team that were exiting. I think both teams were really able to hold hands during the handoff period. So I think that there's a lot of shared success with outgoing and incoming team with some of those early wins um it's very very hard to say i think some of these artists that that we will um that we've had we've seen great success this year they're incredible artists would have they had the same success with the with the previous regime or another company i think 100 i think they're incredible artists i don't really look at it like that of who should get the credit for it i think if an artist is doing well with a specific label or a specific team not worth looking into it I think it's great it's excellent you keep going you keep doubling down you work with that as we said before it takes several years yeah to to really be on that journey for an artist to to hit that that moment Alex Warren he's he's been in it for for a few years he just won best new artists at the VMAs we see a lot of excitement for him in the long term as well.

29:49Would have Alex made it with another team? I think 100%. I think he's brilliant. Yeah. So are you one of the people that believe that kind of like good talent will always rise to the top? Absolutely. The team is very important. An artist has to have an excellent management team. They've They've got to have the right people internally guiding them. But I think it's a very important partnership, that label-artist relationship and partnership. I think it's incredibly important. The trust is important. Record labels can pull levers internationally and domestic through, you would say, old-school mediums and also new-school mediums like digital marketing, old-school mediums sometimes being domestic, terrestrial radio.

30:37But there are things that the labels can do that really help artists find their audience. I think that's our job. Can you walk me through creating a hit? Like, let's use Ordinary by Alex Warren as an example. It's been at the top of the Billboard charts most of the summer. What are the steps along the way to getting it to radio?

30:58Elliot Grainge:He's extraordinary. He's not ordinary. He's extraordinary. I would say he's extraordinary, not ordinary. He's an amazing, he's got an incredible voice. he's a star when you feel him he's a true artist and he was able to collaborate with some other incredible writers and producers to make this one specific song we use ordinary as the example um he releases the song to a massive amount of fanfare okay so was there like kind of a pre-save campaign or uh him teasing it out beforehand so there was momentum before it even i shouldn't go into too much of the detail Alex who um he really understands social media he's cultivated a great fan base online um he's doing massive massive shows but he's also has an incredible audience on online and so what I think part of his magic trick is is he allows he will tease songs if he feels like it and I think what that does is it that allows his fans to to feel as though they're with him during the writing process so it makes them feel more engaged with the song before it's even been released from there you can tell immediately within the first several hours to the first week how big a song can be you can also hear a song and go that makes sense for this types of audience you can analyze what that that type of audience is and so to answer your question with radio um we we have just broken the uh the media base record last week that we've made history with alex run and ordinary i think it's now 15 or 16 weeks at number one at top 40 um so an incredible story we'll hear that song in 15 25 50 years time and we will remember when where we were when that song was number one at the charts now.

32:57So very exciting times and everyone's different, but he's an extraordinary example. I feel like over the course of the last 10 years of your career, you've worked with a lot of great singles, a lot of viral internet hits, but also with stuff like Ordinary that has succeeded in more of a traditional way with stuff like radio. What is the longevity of both of those types of hits is the longevity of that copyright the same or do you see a different decay i guess

33:27Elliot Grainge:um as those songs age i think good music good songs good artists i think they are forever they are with us um when you go to a wedding when you go to a birthday party um when you listen to the music you can be there for two three four hours these are songs that have been there since the 50s and the 60s to last month that you're hearing next to each other. I think a song like Ordinary by Alex Warren will be in both birthday parties and weddings forever. I'm very, very confident of that. I'm sure this quote has come back to haunt you a few times the la times interview a few years ago you said that major labels are a conveyor belt of 100 other priorities i'm wondering now that you're out of major label how you feel about those quotes do you feel like i don't recall saying that i will stand by what i have said before one of the things that we're doing at atlantic is we're making sure that we are we've said it before so we are doubling down on the artists that we that we truly believe in that we have a great partnership with whether that's 150 100 1000 it doesn't matter the last few years with with social media and I think the rhetoric around record labels has been slightly negative and being on the independent side and now being on the major side and having that experience in both.

35:10What I can tell you is a record label is a collective of one to several hundred individuals that love music, love working with artists. They're human beings. Do they get it right all the time? No, they're not robots. But these are people that care about artistry. These are people that care about doing good business with artists and helping them find not just their voice but also their audience so you always hear about the the big bad wolf the label this the label that and that's fine that's how people vent that's how people sort of it's easy to pass blame on on on things i think that's human nature but i think being outside and now being inside this is a collective of of people of all walks of life, of all ages, they're working every day, sometimes 70, 80 hours a week to just help artists and to work with artists.