The Industry Connection

This week in graphs:

ROSTR has released their highly anticipated Who Booked Coachella graphics, which includes a breakdown by Agency, Management Company, Label and Gender.

Twitch streaming hours have steadily dropped since the Pandemic. Fans are watching less creator-led streams, leading to a consolidation of companies and the shut down of others.

Apple announced their Podcast download metrics have been inaccurately calculated/reported by up to 40% due to a “technical change.” They deflated their numbers in an announcement that will certainly cost a lot of podcasters some $$ in ad revenue.

Interview with Morgan Freed & T.J. Petracca from Emo Nite

Morgan Freed and T.J. Petracca launched Emo Nite in 2014 to create a new nightlife option in LA that played strictly pop-punk and emo music. By their third event they had to scale up venues, moving from a dive bar to the Echoplex, a 780 cap venue. The rest is history.

Their story illustrates the power of community, and how building something authentic from a place of passion can evolve in ways even they could hardly imagine. T.J. and Morgan have grown their Tuesday night parties from a bar in Silver Lake to the stages of Coachella, Lollapalooza, EDC, a residency in Vegas and recently signed a deal with Insomniac.

You may want to throw this playlist on while you continue to read..

AvA: How did you first get started in the music industry? 

T.J.: I took an unpaid job at the Windish Agency a week after I graduated college, then moved over to a management company called the Artist Organization. I was working as a digital strategy coordinator for a bunch of bands that I liked, and grew up listening to. My boss ended up starting his own agency, which is where I met Morgan. 

AvA: How did the idea for Emo Nite start?

T.J.: Morgan and I bonded over our love of Emo music, and kept getting into battles with the metalheads who worked in the office over who was going to control the Sonos. We found ourselves always listening to that style of music at the pregame, but when we went out, it was all top 40 or EDM. It seemed like there was a gap in nightlife, and the goal from the beginning was to make a party that we wanted to go to. We never intended to grow an entire business around it though.

When we first approached The Short Stop in Echo Park about doing an emo night, the bartender there, who was a friend of Morgan’s, said “I don't know, you guys can maybe like try it out on on a Tuesday night..” 

Morgan: We were using Spotify and an iPad for the first six months. We didn't even know how to DJ at the time. 

AvA: What were some of the biggest challenges during the growth of Emo Nite? 

Morgan: The biggest challenge was that something like this didn't exist in the world. We had to come up with how we were going to create an event using zero resources, with no real social media presence at the time. A lot of it was word of mouth for the first couple. 

T.J.: When you start anything that's different and new, people are going to doubt you. Just winning people over and proving our ideas were good and going to work was a big challenge early for us. 

Morgan: We also did things that were different, like having people on stage or DJing rock music. Those were crazy things for venues to wrap their heads around. 

AvA: You guys have always had an incredibly tight-knit community. How important has the cultivation of that community been to your success? 

T.J.: It's everything. It's the most important thing. We were never promoters before this, and are still doing this because we care about it. It’s the same reason why we started the party: let’s create an event that we would want to go to. When you approach something with that level of authenticity, passion and care, people are going to see it, relate to it and connect with it.

Morgan: The thing about emo music is that it holds a space really dear to a lot of people that I don't see in a lot of other genres. So it means that much more to them when they come to the events. 

AvA: You just wrapped up Grave at The Torch at the Coliseum, a co-pro with Insomniac and played at a handful of A-level festivals What were those experiences, and creative partnerships like? 

T.J.: We got the offer to play 40 minutes in the Sahara tent at Coachella and we're like “alright, how do we translate everything we’ve been doing into a 45 minutes set, probably in the daytime, at the dance tent at Coachella.” That was a challenge for us, and we ended up working with some really great producers, visual artists and put together a show that was very different from what we’ve done.  

We took the show that debuted at Coachella, expanded into a two hour set, and took it to Las Vegas for a residency at Zouk, to Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and other festivals. Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would be performing as an artist at some of the best festivals in the world. It’s been an amazing, amazing experience for sure.

AvA: And you tour Emo Nite too? 

Morgan: We're always on tour now, but at the same time, we’re not really on tour. The first two to three years that TJ and I were doing Emo Nite, we were the ones traveling to different cities on Tuesdays, doing the event, and then flying back and doing our day jobs. We were out there in-person forming communities in different cities and finding people that would be great to run these shows. We flew out to all those cities and set them up like little.. fight clubs. 

T.J.: We now have a team of extremely dedicated and awesome local people that run these shows for us. When we were looking for who would do these shows for us, we never went to promoters. Instead, we went to the kids who were showing up early, or coming up and screaming on stage. Kids that had the same level of passion and energy that we do. I think having the right people to run those shows has been really important to build those communities. 

AvA: What can we look forward to in 2024 & beyond? 

T.J.: We entered into a partnership with Insomniac last year. We've now done a few co-pros with them combining both dance and emo/pop-punk. The Grave Rave at the LA Coliseum was fantastic and we were both shocked at the response.  

There's a lot of parallels between how Pasquale [Rotella] and the Insomniac team approach their events, and what we’ve done with Emo Nite. They truly care about their fans and the people that come to their shows, which has made it a great partnership. 

We made this hoodie a couple of years ago that says before you liked EDM, you liked emo. I think that’s true for a lot of these ravers that grew up on emo or pop-punk, and seeing both worlds come together is really special. 

What is one piece of advice you have for someone just getting started in the music business? 

Morgan: If you really believe in something, trust your gut and follow it. Especially if you're trying to break into the music industry, you've got so many outside voices telling you this is cool or that is cool. Creatively if you don't think that it's cool, it probably isn't. If you really give a shit about something, your gut will know. Follow it. 

T.J.: My first few years in LA were extremely difficult. I wasn’t getting paid for my internship at the agency that I was at, and I was driving Uber and Lyft to try and make my rent. Those years sucked, but I put my head down and I did the work. 

When you’re just starting out, it’s going to be tough and maybe you're going to be working on stuff that you don't think is cool. But it's all learning. It's all cumulative. And when you're ready to take the leap into something that you truly believe in, you'll have the knowledge to do it right. 

Open Jobs and Internships

💼 = Job | 🎒 = Internship

💼 Design Project Coordinator - Insomniac - Calabasas, CA - Apply Here

💼 Integrated Festival Marketing Manager - Goldenvoice - LA - Apply Here

💼 Coordinator, Music Programming - SiriusXM - NYC (Part-time) - Apply Here

💼 Marketing Assistant - Red Light Management - LA - Apply Here

💼 Project Manager, Comedy - Live Nation - LA - Apply Here

💼 Entertainment Marketing, Account Manager - Endeavor - LA - Apply Here

💼 Executive Assistant - Production Club - LA - Apply Here

💼 Artist Management Assistant - Space Camp Management - LA - Apply Here

💼 A&R and Streaming Partnerships Coordinator - GROUP SPEED - Remote - Apply Here

💼 Digital Marketing / Social Media Assistant - Amigo Records & Prescription Songs - LA - Apply Here

💼 Video Production Assistant - Sony Music - LA - Apply Here

💼 Director - Creative, Latin - BMI - LA - Apply Here

🎒Summer 2024 Internships - Endeavor - Various Locations - Apply Here

🎒Summer 2024 Internships - Red Light Management - LA - Apply Here

🎒Various Internships - Tomorrowland - Belgium - Apply Here (Must speak Dutch)

🎒 Global Partnerships Intern - IMG - London - Apply Here

🎒 Intern - Music Supervision - Supe Troop - LA - Apply Here

🎒 Intern - Music Publicity - Fly PR - LA - Apply Here

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This newsletter is written by Warner Bailey (connect with me here). Edited by Malik Figaro. 

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