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We differ through being real partners and perfectly transparent with artists, so all our expenses are the exact dollars we spent, and we show that. How do you run your current business differently from your rivals? He said, “The music industry needs this, and someone’s got to be first, so I’ll do it.”Ĭustom KAWS Air Jordan 3s by Damian Sim and BespokeIND, one of the 100-plus pairs in Millette’s collection. I went around and pitched my idea, and how it could work and what a tour could look like - and I got a lot of, “That sounds great, come back to me when I can be No. 2.” It took about 12 months before I got client 1, Jason Isbell, to whom I will always owe the largest debt of gratitude. I was just seeking proof of how it worked.
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Seeing the tickets flow directly to me in the thousands per show, before the on-sale, was eye-opening. I started by putting myself out there to people in the industry and my future competitors as someone who could help them sell tickets. I thought I needed a perfect understanding of how it all functioned before I could possibly concoct a plan to make it better. But they’re making $1 billion-plus from the secondary market and they need to grow that as a public company. Minimally, it could be an option for artists who want to sell tickets to fans at reasonable prices. I think that if Live Nation woke up tomorrow morning and decided there should be no secondary market, there wouldn’t be. Through sponsorship, through direct-to-broker deals. As I started to learn how it worked, I quickly became obsessed and started a mission to clean it all up.Ĭredentials for several of Millette’s shows, including the Nashville Comedy Festival, which his company put on in April. I was looking for a life that would be a little better than the power plant business, with better travel and less regulation, so I landed on live music. I wanted another big challenge in a new market, so I started to look at the monopolies, or so-called monopolies out there, to see what looked the most vulnerable. Now working with nearly 100 acts - including Alan Jackson and Alabama - through Outback Presents, Millette spoke with Billboard on his plans to become the third bidder for major tours.įive years ago you were building power plants. Artists often “only see 50% of the actual revenue” from a show, says Millette, when a promoter might have promised 90%. Millette promoted Isbell’s tours through 2018, while pitching a wide range of top acts and their teams on why they should let him promote their concerts. That landed Millette’s stealth unit in the press for the first time - and hurt business, he says.īut then he landed his first big artist client: Jason Isbell. Millette backed out and sued the Prince estate and its former administrator and advisers for fraud. Andrea BehrendsĪs he armed himself with insight, he launched Jobu Presents in 2016, and was hired to produce the Prince tribute concert following the pop star’s death that April. He started by helping promoters distribute thousands of tickets to the secondary market before they went on sale widely.Ĭampbell’s soup sculpture by Nashville-based artist Herb Williams. Scouring the business world for industries to disrupt, Millette became intrigued by live music and set out to understand it from the inside. “The main theory is you’re trying to achieve relative supremacy before the opponent knows you’re there.” Millette merged his small startup, Jobu Presents, with the 20-year-old, Nashville-based indie promoter Outback Concerts in December, acquiring the majority of the shares, quietly relaunching with Outback founder Mike Smardak as Outback Presents in January and doubling staff since then.Ī former wealth adviser, Millette first tested his special-ops skills in another industry - the energy sector - founding a power-plant-finance startup that competed “with the Shells and Chevrons of the world” before selling his pipeline to Panasonic in 2014. “I’m kind of a self-taught, obsessive student of military special operations - a small unit trying to take out a bigger army with a quick strike,” says the soft-spoken, 42-year-old father of three. Vaughn Millette, though relatively new on the scene, may be better prepared than most. With the touring business increasingly dominated by concert promotion giants Live Nation and AEG, it ain’t easy being an independent promoter.