\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Thomas](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/thomas-maxwell-2026-1800.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\tAt the show, over a dozen of the leading lights of French hip-hop from the past three decades performed a mix of their own tracks and their recorded collaborations with Werenoi, while his DJ stitched together sets by playing Werenoi\u2019s biggest hits to the jubilant young crowd. Interspersed, unseen footage played on the big screen from an upcoming documentary on Werenoi\u2019s life that Believe helped produce and is currently shopping to streaming services, with scenes from his first-ever show in 2023, of him in the studio and on the road \u2014 an intimate portrait of a young man both coming into his own as an artist and struggling with the demands of fame and celebrity.<\/p>\n
\n\tWerenoi had the No.\u00a01 album in France in both 2023 and 2024 and ended 2025 with two of the top five \u2014 successes that helped to cement Believe as the dominant music company in the country, where it had four of the top five albums last year, including the top three. And the deep passion for him at the tribute show \u2014 from both fans and other artists \u2014 is emblematic of what Believe has aimed to create throughout its two decades in existence: local stars, in local markets, whose influence can extend beyond their roots and into the brightest lights of the industry, starting, first, at home.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-billboard-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tThe Werenoi tribute show at Paris\u2019
\nAccor Arena on March 25.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDan Rys<\/p>\n
\n\tBelieve has spent 20 years building and cultivating these local scenes and has become a major player far beyond France: The company boasts leading labels and artists in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, India, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil and Mexico, among others, with artists such as JUL, GIMS, Jo\u00e3o Gomes, Craig David, Adekunle Gold, Tinie Tempah, Grupo Frontera and Sault under the company\u2019s vast umbrella. That success has validated a business model that has allowed the company to spend the past 20 years digitizing, distributing and promoting local music in local markets all around the world. The blueprint often involves going into emerging areas early \u2014 establishing business relationships with local labels and creating a pathway for traditional, physical-first industries to get their music online and build their business and market share in their own countries and regions.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe invested a lot in technology, we invested a lot in product \u2014 we wanted to be able to distribute music faster and in the most accurate way, so that we could bring music to DSPs [digital service providers] quicker than our competition,\u201d says Romain Vivien, Believe\u2019s global head of music, who joined the company in 2008 after a lengthy stint at Virgin EMI. \u201cAnd that\u2019s exactly what we\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tOver the past two decades, that strategy has transformed Believe from an early digital adopter into one of the biggest, most consequential music companies in the business. Yet to date, that blueprint has not included the biggest, most competitive, most complex and fastest-evolving market in the world: the United States. But that is about to change. Believe is now looking to flip the script and establish itself as a major player in the U.S. music business \u2014 if it can.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt faces an uphill battle. The company is virtually unknown stateside but for two facts: that it owns TuneCore, one of the world\u2019s largest DIY distributors; and that it was the subject of a $1.8\u00a0billion preliminary takeover proposal from Warner Music Group (WMG) in the spring of 2024, which turned heads among casual industry observers as to what, exactly, the company had built that was so coveted.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cLet\u2019s face it: In the U.S., Believe is not a known brand,\u201d Vivien says, sitting in a Parisian recording studio around the corner from Believe\u2019s headquarters. \u201cTuneCore is, Believe is not. It became a little bit more identified a couple of years ago, when suddenly someone wanted to acquire us, and so our name was everywhere in the press. And so the U.S. markets said, \u2018Who are those guys?\u2019 But this is not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFor those who had been paying closer attention, though, Warner\u2019s proposed acquisition seemed like a savvy bet on a player that had been blooming in the background. (For myriad reasons, it ultimately retracted the offer.) By mid-2024, Believe\u2019s business had grown to more than $1\u00a0billion annually, with offices in 50 territories, more than 15 owned labels operating around the world and a robust label services business. It had also expanded well beyond its initial distribution roots into a full-service music company offering DIY distribution in the form of TuneCore, which it bought in 2015; label distribution and services for independent companies around the world; and artist development and artist services for those who wanted to sign direct deals with the company. In 2023, it acquired U.K.-based publisher Sentric, rebranding it Believe Music Publishing earlier this year, in order to add more services to its portfolio. (The publisher is Djo\u2019s longtime home and just signed Janet Jackson.)<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI want to make sure that we are able to fully support the teams across the full stack of music services, because a lot of our artists are also writers,\u201d says Denis Ladegaillerie, who founded Believe in 2005 and has served as CEO since. \u201cWe want to maximize revenues for our artists in all of the markets today. And we don\u2019t think that\u2019s the case with all of our competitors.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Believe executives Vivien,
\nLadegaillerie and Az Cohen.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJohn Richard<\/p>\n
\n\tStill, the United States is a different animal entirely. \u201cThe first challenge is to explain who we are, what we do, our approach to the business,\u201d Vivien says of coming to America. \u201cBut honestly, that was the challenge everywhere else. The difference is, the competition is massive in the U.S., so we\u2019re going to have to prove ourselves. It\u2019s one thing to say we can do a better job than the others; it\u2019s another one to demonstrate it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe company, then, exists as something of a sleeping giant from the U.S. industry\u2019s point of view \u2014 one that is now beginning to stir. After years of false starts and delayed promises, Vivien and Ladegaillerie know the challenge that poses for them. As the company starts truly building out its efforts here, all that\u2019s left to ask now is: Will anyone in America believe in Believe?<\/p>\n
\n\tOn a sunnier afternoon the day before the Werenoi tribute, Believe\u2019s headquarters \u2014 located in a bright, contemporary building called Konect, in northern Paris\u2019 17th arrondissement \u2014 is bursting with energy. A ping-pong game can be heard somewhere off the lobby; a handful of people are playing foosball in the cafeteria; dozens of young employees are on the terrace, chatting and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. It\u2019s a physical manifestation of a digital-first business and a galaxy away from where things stood for Believe two decades ago.<\/p>\n
\n\tAt the turn of the century, Ladegaillerie, a trained lawyer, worked at French media giant Vivendi as its chief strategy and financial officer for some of the first digital music companies in existence, including eMusic, mp3.com and Get-Music. That initial digital wave was much maligned by the industry and ultimately sued out of viability, but two lessons made a deep impression on Ladegaillerie. \u201cAs a user, I was very convinced that music would go digital, because it was higher value \u2014 you could have more music available,\u201d he says, sitting in a bright, expansive office space on Konect\u2019s sixth floor. \u201cThe second element was, mp3.com catered to a large space of musicians. And because it was the third-most-trafficked site at the time in the U.S., it was being used by major record labels to promote the releases of big artists, and in many countries independent, unsigned artists charted better than some of the bigger stars. And that drove the thinking for me around, \u2018Digital music creates an opportunity for new artists.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 2005, Ladegaillerie launched Believe, aiming to provide those unsigned, independent artists a way to reach the digital masses. Initially, the company consisted of three people in his Paris apartment, digitizing CDs onto hard drives and delivering them to online stores like those run by Apple, Google and Amazon \u2014 sometimes in person. \u201cI had a motorbike at the time, and I would take the motorbike and get the hard drives to the local digital music services, and then ship them by mail to some of the DSPs,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThat was where the technology was.\u201d Network speeds were so slow that uploads often failed or took hours per album; even the most advanced phones only had enough space for a handful of ringtones. But the company \u2014 self-financed by Ladegaillerie for its first several years \u2014 found ways to make it work. \u201cOur first server was in the toilet, because it was the most refrigerated place in our office space,\u201d he says. \u201cYou had friction pretty much everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBelieve quickly gained a foothold in France, then steadily expanded, acquiring digital businesses in Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom and bringing on labels throughout Europe to help them with their digital distribution. But the company\u2019s fortunes changed abruptly in 2012 with a phone call from Apple. \u201cOliver [Schusser, then vp of iTunes international] was telling us, \u2018Apple is going to open in 56 new territories in December,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Ladegaillerie recalls. \u201c\u00a0\u2018We\u2019re not going to sign any direct deals with any artists or labels in all of these new countries. We need your help to be able to source content in all of these territories.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tApple\u2019s move \u2014 selecting Believe and then-independents TuneCore and The Orchard as its sole distribution partners in the new territories \u2014 doubled the iTunes Store\u2019s reach to 119 countries and moved iTunes\u2019 availability from 27.1% of the world\u2019s population to 61%, according to news reports at the time. And it sent Believe into overdrive. Within weeks, the company hired new heads of Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, as well as country-level leaders within those regions (almost all of whom are still with the company), mirroring Apple\u2019s global expansion.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe locked in our technology team and we told them, \u2018You\u2019ve got two months to translate all of our interfaces for labels to the various languages that we\u2019re going to need to develop to be able to support our artists and labels,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Ladegaillerie says. \u201cI went through 12 to 15 meetings per day in all of these territories to understand the labels, who they were, what they were doing and then tell them what we were doing as a company and how we could support them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFollowing the DSPs around the world became part of the company\u2019s expansion blueprint. \u201cWe looked at the five biggest DSPs: Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Deezer and YouTube,\u201d Vivien says. \u201cAny time two or three of them were opening and investing in a market, we said, \u2018All right, that market is going to switch to become more and more digital.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cOver the last two decades, Apple and Believe have built a strong, trusted relationship rooted in our shared commitment to empowering artists and helping them reach audiences around the world,\u201d says Schusser, now Apple\u2019s vp of music, video, sports and international. \u201cBelieve\u2019s innovative approach to supporting artists has made them an exceptional partner, and we\u2019re proud of what we\u2019ve achieved together.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tBelieve president of artist services and label and artist solutions Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAnis Martin<\/p>\n
\n\tBelieve also sought to educate players in local markets and the DSPs looking to enter them, as well as to fill in gaps where major labels had weaknesses. \u201c[The DSPs and Believe] had the same goal: to have good local experts,\u201d says Viktoria Siniavskaia, who Believe initially hired to oversee Eastern Europe and is now president of the Middle East, Africa, Eastern\u00a0& Southern Europe and Latin America for the company. \u201cHaving local experts was key, because you can\u2019t really promote the music if you don\u2019t know what it is, the history, its importance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 2015, Believe acquired TuneCore, the DIY distributor launched in 2006 that had helped democratize access to the digital industry for anyone willing to pay a small annual fee. The company aligned with Believe\u2019s ethos of providing the indie community access to the digital landscape and complemented its main business of digitizing and distributing independent record labels. But just as importantly, TuneCore operated in the United States, giving Believe both insight into the world\u2019s biggest market and scale to help it negotiate with DSPs.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cTuneCore helped us elevate our relationship with everyone,\u201d Ladegaillerie says. \u201cIt\u2019s much, much easier when we are having conversations with all of our partners now, because our market share globally in digital music is close to 10%, which means that when we are talking about doing specific things they translate in tens of millions of dollars of value, not in sub 1\u00a0million. TuneCore was really critical for us in taking that step.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIt also helped get the company into markets that would have been traditionally more hostile to digital-first upstarts like Believe. \u201cTuneCore is actually the third-largest player in terms of market share in Japan,\u201d says Sylvain Delange, Believe\u2019s head of Asia Pacific. (Japan, the second-biggest market in the world, remains around 60% physical, compared with 12% in the United States.) \u201cJapanese labels have always been extremely conservative with digital, and Japan is a very, very traditional market on many levels. If you want to really make it big, it\u2019s actually tough to stay fully independent. So our objective is to be able to bridge that gap.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tStill, though Believe had established roots around the globe and was pushing the industry toward further digitization, it had a key evolution ahead: transforming into an artist development company that could compete with the major players and shifting from providing access to the market to providing the tools to break through.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAt the time, we were not competing with major record labels,\u201d Ladegaillerie says. \u201cWe were not in the artist development business; we were a distribution company, and the core of our value proposal was, \u2018Your content will be available, we will pay you royalties associated with your music, and we will promote it and do all of this in a way that\u2019s transparent, that\u2019s respectful, that\u2019s fair.\u2019\u00a0\u201d Now, he says, \u201cthe ethos has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn mid-March, Vivien, Delange, Siniavskaia and more than 40 of Believe\u2019s regional leaders gathered in Tokyo for an annual global leadership strategy meeting.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe four-day seminar, led by Vivien and president of artist services and label and artist solutions Elsa Bahamonde Bourgain, was filled with presentations and case studies from the heads of various territories around the world, discussions about strategy and industry trends and team-building outings \u2014 drinks at the Music Bar Cave in Shibuya and a team dinner at Gonpachi, commonly known as the Kill Bill restaurant. The seminar culminated in a closing party on the roof of Shibuya\u2019s Sequence Hotel featuring five Believe artists from the region: Offo Tokyo, Pami, A.G.O., Sandei and Chameleon Lime Whoopiepie, the lattermost of which offered a delightfully strange, unforgettable performance, complete with technicolor visuals and Donnie Darko-esque rabbit masks for band members Whoopies\u00a01 and Whoopies\u00a02.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt was a poignant moment: IFPI was a week away from releasing its annual global music report, which would show that growth in the United States and other Western markets had slowed significantly, while emerging territories \u2014 particularly in Latin America, Asia and Africa \u2014 were finally arriving to the table and seeing huge upticks in revenue.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Believe executives Delange,
\nSiniavskaia and Vivien in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tToshikazu Oguruma<\/p>\n
\n\tBelieve, in some ways, saw this coming \u2014 and is well-positioned for the moment. During the company\u2019s rapid expansion in 2012, it arrived in a dozen Asian countries at a time when the only digital business to speak of there was in ringtones, and educating local label leaders about the concept of digital music at all, much less its importance and viability, was paramount. \u201cThe biggest seller in Indonesia back then was KFC,\u201d says Delange, who joined Believe during that period. \u201cThey would bundle chicken with CDs. For some artists, they would essentially sell their entire inventory through KFC.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tInitially, Believe\u2019s mission in Asia was a familiar one: digitization. \u201cWe were participating in bringing to the world some content that has been unknown and completely locked in boxes, sometimes literally, for decades,\u201d Delange says. \u201cThis is content that bears cultural value \u2014 it\u2019s legacy, it\u2019s history to some extent, so we had a responsibility to make it available.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tNow, those early forays into the region are poised to be a huge driver of Believe\u2019s future. Already, the company\u2019s bets have paid off with massive growth: Between 2020 and 2024, as the streaming music model fully matured in the West and began to gain traction in those emerging markets, Believe\u2019s revenue exploded, growing 124% across that period to $1.05\u00a0billion in 2024 (the latest figures available), crossing a threshold that traditionally would have put it among the world\u2019s largest music companies.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cBuilding a portfolio in Thailand or in Mexico takes time, and having a portfolio that is aligned with the market dynamics takes time, and I think everything came into place within that five-year period,\u201d Vivien says. \u201cWe had done a lot of [mergers and acquisitions]. Physical was shrinking. The independent sector was more dynamic. The growth in streaming was super, super high. The numbers of subscribers within the DSP sector was also growing at a faster pace. And our artist services business started to pay off at a stronger pace.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThat artist services business \u2014 effectively a high-touch record label, with Believe signing artists directly \u2014 was the final piece of the pyramid that Ladegaillerie envisioned the company to evolve into: TuneCore\u2019s volume at the base; Believe\u2019s traditional label services business in the middle; and big artists at the top of their game at the peak. And it is what spurred Believe to add the services and offerings that would attract talent of that level and keep them within the Believe ecosystem as they grew.<\/p>\n
\n\tAlong with that growth, however, came some upheaval. In 2021, amid an unprecedented surge in new public listings in the music sector, Believe filed for an initial public offering, a move to raise more money for additional mergers and acquisitions but that ultimately underwhelmed. Ladegaillerie didn\u2019t agree with it at the time, believing that it gave the company\u2019s competitors access to information that helped them understand its business. And the move coincided with an industrywide lurch toward the distribution model: That same year, Sony, already the market leader through its 2015 acquisition of The Orchard, purchased AWAL for $430\u00a0million, while Universal relaunched Virgin Music Group as its flagship distribution engine, ultimately absorbing [PIAS] and Downtown Music under that umbrella, too. A slew of indie competitors also entered the space, many backed by private equity. Ladegaillerie says that going public was designed to help Believe \u201caccelerate on acquisitions,\u201d but that the amount raised \u201cdidn\u2019t allow us to have a level of valuation that was at the right level\u201d to do so.<\/p>\n
\n\tWithin three years, Ladegaillerie had mustered up the cash from institutional investors EQT and TCV to take the company private once again. (The experience \u201cmade us more mature as a business,\u201d Ladegaillerie says.) Warner kicking the tires on an acquisition and then walking away \u2014 WMG CEO Robert Kyncl cited several reasons, including a too-brief timeline to conduct due diligence \u2014 also caused headaches by forcing Believe to open its books once again and led some to speculate that Believe\u2019s tech was not as advanced as some had thought, though others said Warner walked away because the price tag was higher and scale was bigger than what it wanted. (WMG ultimately bought Israeli distributor company Revelator in March for a much smaller figure.)<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd the company has also come under scrutiny due to TuneCore. Over the years, the DIY distributor has served as a breeding ground through which artists like Ed Sheeran, SZA and Chance the Rapper have started their careers \u2014 and where, increasingly, artists can remain to maintain and grow them. (In the last year, TuneCore artists won at the BRITs and Grammys for the first time, by way of Sault and Avery.Sunshine, respectively.) \u201cIt\u2019s been perceived as being for earlier-stage artists, but we have a good number of artists who are making careers, or they have meaningful catalog on the platform, or they signed, went and had that [label] experience and then came back,\u201d says Brian Miller, TuneCore\u2019s newly minted chief business officer. \u201cDistribution is table stakes. Now you need to get music heard, and we\u2019re putting more and more resources to make sure that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tMiller<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Believe<\/p>\n
\n\tBut TuneCore has also become a lightning rod in the fight against streaming fraud, which WMG president of Europe, the Middle East and Africa Simon Robson recently called \u201cone of the greatest threats of our time\u201d and \u201cfar more damaging than people realize.\u201d In a $500\u00a0million copyright infringement lawsuit filed against Believe in 2024, Universal Music Group alleged that TuneCore was \u201coverrun with fraudulent artists\u201d and that its DIY business model was \u201cfueled by rampant piracy,\u201d with sped-up and remixed knockoff recordings by slightly misspelled versions of Kendrick Lamar and Ariana Grande flooding it.<\/p>\n
\n\tBelieve strongly denied the accusation, and the two sides settled the lawsuit in April 2026. (The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.) And while the issue is in no way limited to TuneCore, the problem has been exacerbated by both AI (Deezer said in April that 75,000 fully AI-generated tracks were being uploaded to its service each day, and Apple said one-third of its daily uploads are AI-generated) and the difficulties in combating bad actors looking to dilute the royalty pool.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn response to the problem, TuneCore and Believe have tried to harness the collective power of the industry, joining with DistroKid, Downtown\/CD Baby, Symphonic, EMPIRE, Spotify, Amazon and more to form the Music Fights Fraud coalition in 2023 with the goal of sharing data through a collective database to root out bad actors and stop them from hopping from distributor to distributor any time one bans their actions. Believe has also participated in Music\u00a0Biz\u2019s annual Trust\u00a0& Safety Symposium (the third edition was held in January), where industry leaders have convened to discuss the fight against fraud.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt has evolved to a level of sophistication where we discover new cases of what could be qualified as fraud probably every week,\u201d says Romain Becker, chief product and operations officer at Believe. \u201cIt\u2019s been a serious area of investment for us, and we\u2019re trying to have a leadership position where we share and educate the rest of the industry on how to fight against this. But we need to collectively find solutions to address the issue and need people to abide by the same principles and the same rules. If we have one player in the room not playing with the rest of the ecosystem, it\u2019s not going to [work].\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe problem is ongoing and will require further industrywide action to root out entirely \u2014 which not everyone is convinced will happen. (Historically, the music industry has often failed at collective action, with competition dooming consensus.) Meanwhile, TuneCore has continued growing, announcing last year it had paid out $5\u00a0billion in royalties to independent artists in its 20 years of operation and, as of this year, signing up more than half a million artists globally to its TuneCore Accelerator program, aimed at boosting artists and finding them new audiences. And as Believe eyes its big move into the United States, executives say that TuneCore accounts for 4% market share in the United States, which would put it alongside DistroKid and EMPIRE among the biggest non-major-affiliated music companies in the country.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe demonstrated that we could do this everywhere else in the world,\u201d Vivien says about the company\u2019s approach. \u201cThere\u2019s no reason why we cannot do that in the U.S. as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tSitting outside a neighborhood bar on an early-April afternoon in Manhattan\u2019s Seaport district, Thomas Maxwell is laying out his vision for how, exactly, Believe can do that.<\/p>\n
\n\tMaxwell has experience in bringing a French distribution company to America. For the past decade, he served as head of U.S. for the Paris-based label distributor IDOL, becoming its first American employee in 2016 and steadily scaling its U.S. business. But IDOL, while a global company, was always intended to be a boutique, catering to a smaller clientele.<\/p>\n
\n\tBelieve, then, represented a far bigger challenge with far larger ambitions. \u201cI was really impressed by some of the things they were doing from a technological standpoint,\u201d Maxwell says. \u201cThey did the reverse of what most distributors were doing, which was open in key markets and try to grow from there. Instead, they focused on becoming a top player in developing countries and territories, which makes it, I think, a much more appealing option to U.S. artists and labels, because they have the global infrastructure that artists need in this global economy and global ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tMaxwell<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRanon<\/p>\n
\n\tStill, the U.S. market is fiercely competitive. The Orchard alone commands a U.S. current market share of 10.96% through April\u00a016 \u2014 far higher than any individual major label \u2014 while the indie sector as a whole by ownership has north of 44% of the U.S. business so far this year, much of which comes from labels distributed by major-owned divisions, according to Billboard estimates based on Luminate data. But that major-owned distinction is a big one, and is where Believe, as an independent company, sees a big opening: Universal\u2019s long-gestating purchase of Downtown Music for $775\u00a0million, approved this spring, was fiercely derided by the indie music community. Several organizations launched a campaign last November against the deal, saying it \u201cposes a serious threat to competition, diversity and fair access across the music industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBelieve executives feel that acquisition has created an opening for another independent player to enter the market, one that can match the bigger ones already here in terms of reach, power and possibility. \u201cWe\u2019ll plan to compete on quality of service,\u201d Ladegaillerie says. \u201cIt is no longer about access. Distribution, like artist services, has to drive success.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThere\u2019s also the opportunity for new business, which is where Believe hopes to make its initial mark. \u201cIn the U.S., we\u2019re still seeing new labels come to market very frequently. I\u2019ve talked to four labels in the past two weeks that are either brand-new or about to launch, and that\u2019s a very exciting thing, because other territories aren\u2019t experiencing that,\u201d Maxwell says. \u201cThe name of the game these days is much less about just the infrastructure that a music company can provide, but more about the artist services and the strategy and all of the extra ancillary things that artists and labels need.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe want to empower the next generation of A&Rs and executives who are building labels to become the future winners in label development of tomorrow,\u201d Ladegaillerie says. \u201cThat\u2019s where we think that we can carve out space.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tBelieve Music Publishing CEO Chris Meehan<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Believe<\/p>\n
\n\tTwo weeks later, over drinks at the swanky Midtown Manhattan hot spot Fasano, Az Cohen lays out his own vision for what that next generation will look like. Cohen, the son of industry legend and current global head of music at YouTube Lyor Cohen, has spent the past 13 years rising through the A&R ranks at 300 Entertainment, the label his father co-founded independently in 2013 that WMG acquired in 2021, most recently overseeing 300\u2019s indie artist distro business, Sparta.<\/p>\n
\n\tCohen is the other major piece of Believe\u2019s coming-to-America strategy: Moving forward, he will head up a joint venture<\/a>, which he is calling AZTEC, that will serve as the sharp end of Believe\u2019s U.S. pyramid, signing artists directly to a front-line imprint and hoping to bring those artists to the apex of the global music industry.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n
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