Key Takeaways
- Elliot Grainge’s Leadership: Elliot Grainge became chairman/CEO of Atlantic Music Group at just 30 years old, surprising many in the industry.
- Digital Focus: Under Grainge’s leadership, Atlantic has shifted towards a more digitally-focused approach, implementing significant layoffs and restructuring.
- Market Share Recovery: Atlantic’s market share improved from 5.24% to 7.75% in the past year, aided by successful new artists.
- Artist Development: Grainge emphasizes the importance of patience in artist development, recognizing that not every artist will become a superstar.
It’s been exactly one year and one day since Elliot Grainge became chairman/CEO of the Atlantic Music Group. At the time, it was a move that shocked many in the industry — Grainge was just 30 years old, had only a year of experience within the major label system, and was replacing a longtime respected leader in Julie Greenwald. Not to mention the fact that his music industry pedigree, as the son of one of the industry’s most powerful men in Universal Music Group chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge, loomed large over him.
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One thing detractors couldn’t take away from the younger Grainge, however, was that he knew how to make a song go viral. As founder/CEO of his own independent label, 10K Projects, of which he sold a 51% stake to Warner Music Group in 2023, Grainge and his team achieved a string of digital hits with songs like “In Ha Mood” by Ice Spice, “Sunday Best” by Surfaces, “Miss The Rage” by Trippie Redd, “Lemonade” by Internet Money, “Mad At Disney” by Salem Ilese and more. He was early to identify and champion the SoundCloud rap scene, and hit his stride during the pandemic lockdowns with TikTok anthems.
Still, in a traditional label world of radio promotion campaigns and corporate red tape, success at AMG did not feel guaranteed for the young executive.
One year later, his vision for Atlantic Music Group — which includes Atlantic Records, 10K Projects, 300 Entertainment, Roadrunner and Fueled by Ramen — is starting to take shape. During his tenure, Grainge has overseen a series of sizable layoffs and restructures to remake the major in his image. Today’s Atlantic is more digitally-focused, with a smaller staff and a number of 10K top brass installed at the top, like Zach Friedman as COO and Tony Talamo as general manager. (The two previously served as 10K’s co-presidents and also provided the indie with digital marketing services through their own firm Homemade Projects.)
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It’s hard to deny the success. In the last year, Atlantic’s sagging current market share, which had fallen from 9.16% at the end of 2021 to 5.24% as of mid-year 2024, has improved to 7.75% (with the addition of 10K’s 1.51%) through the end of September 2025, and Grainge’s regime has broken still-emerging Atlantic artists like Ravyn Lenae, Alex Warren and The Marías to new heights. In the last two weeks, two different Atlantic signees have held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 with Breach by Twenty One Pilots and Am I The Drama? by Cardi B. “APT.” by ROSÉ and Bruno Mars and “Azizam” by Ed Sheeran have furthered the success of already-cemented stars. Clairo and Hilary Duff have just joined the fold.
Several of those artists were already on the roster before Grainge joined, but since he has taken the helm, there has been a measurable upward shift in the company’s performance and a number of chart hits.
To talk through his first year as the Atlantic CEO, and how he envisions the future of labels, Grainge sat down for an interview for Billboard’s new music business podcast, On the Record. Excerpts from the conversation are below. (Disclosure: this writer worked at 10K Projects from 2020 to 2021.)
Watch or listen to the full episode of On the Record on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts here, or watch it below:
SoundCloud rap was such a defined online scene while it existed. I’m wondering, do you think that local scenes are still strong in 2025 or have they basically all migrated to 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 southern Florida in 2014 to 2018–2019. You can taste that moment. I think maybe now today less so. After the pandemic it really pushed artists to instead of starting their first two or three concerts in local venues with capacities of around 100–200 people; now what they’re doing is waiting for larger venues to try their first concert. They’re able to get there by building fan bases online slightly quicker than they were before.
The challenge that we saw after the pandemic was that when you don’t do your ten thousand hours in tiny venues and you’re then put on giant stages it’s very intimidating with a large learning curve.
I agree with you. It’s been great and it’s also been not so great where artists were having incredible streaming moments online but they weren’t able to actually touch fans during that eighteen-month pandemic period worldwide. They weren’t able to perform their songs live for fans which made it very difficult.
I feel like there was this time period of early TikTok which I think we exited now between around late twenty nineteen to twenty twenty-three where you were seeing many one-hit wonders created overnight. Exiting the pandemic has been challenging for these artists.
I would agree. It’s funny if you look at artists who are now established over these last twelve to eighteen months like Sabrina Carpenter or Chappell Roan — these are artists who talk about those ten thousand hours; they were signed almost five six or seven years ago releasing music and touring before and during the pandemic. If you look at their success now along with their consistency and fan base growth it shows how it takes several years of artist development for fans to really connect with artists at that top tier level. A big focus we’re trying to maintain is being patient with artist development because it can take several years and that’s okay.
But I imagine that makes it really hard as a label to know when it’s time to cut an artist or when its time to keep investing. What kind of conversations are you having about that inside of Atlantic? How long should you give an artist to develop and how many resources should you give them while they are developing?
The partnership with the artist is very important; as a record label we have responsibility to be patient — support not just fund but also support on sonic and creative levels — being very patient with artists is crucial. The answer is: it should take as long as needed; not every artist that labels work with will break into being superstars but we have responsibility if we’re going into business with an artist to be great partners.
These days is it important to also pursue kind of that middle tier of artists as well? I often hear when talking to majors people saying ‘We’re in business for superstars’ as selling point; that’s true but in this fragmented market is there increasing value in having middle tier acts who have strong fans but will never be No.1?
This middle market has always existed but definitely gotten larger; considering macro industry where we are today there are [100000] tracks added daily; looking at this you see many layers/tier artistry from test songs up through A-list stars… The answer is yes; our team looks at middle tiers thinking maybe today they are middle tier but with right partnership/timing/support could an artist from that middle tier reach superstar status?
