Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dustin Boyer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Dustin, appreciate you joining us today. So, let’s start with trends – what are some of the largest or more impactful trends you are seeing in the industry?

Right now there is a huge shift in how music is marketed. Musicians are now expected to release mountains of short form video content. One viral video can do so much for marketing a song, far beyond ads. Short content can not only help fans connect with the artist, most of the platforms help develop community amongst all the fans.

As a marketing company its something we’ve worked with artists on over the last three years. Developing a strategy to help artists create this community has helped many of a legacy acts become relevant again.

Dustin, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Once an aspiring musician myself, I found a lot of love in marketing and branding of the musical projects I was in. I would often dread rehearsals and writing sessions but get excited about going home and marketing that music. I used this passion to enter the music industry as a manager, managing acts with Hubbub, a management company based in Atlanta. After 10 years of managing acts I found that I enjoyed the short lived relationships where I could help see an artist grow through my marketing expertise. Leaving Hubbub, I set out as a marketing freelancer which I then sold to Venture where I’m currently a partner and Marketing Director.

At Venture Music we focus on full scale marketing; treating ourselves like the artist’s internal marketing team that is pivoting and adjusting based on the their needs. This approach allows us to be flexible in a time where music marketing is evolving very quickly.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

As I mentioned, i was manager for over a decade. I had a lot of success and failures but what really turned me away from the profession was how bizarre and risky the business model is. I found myself launching multiple artists, which were really businesses, bringing them to successful revenue then losing them to other managers. In no other industry do you build a business and not own a bit of equity. A lot of this had to do with not being associated with larger management firms and how many artists felt they needed to outgrow our company.

I found myself a decade in and very little to show due to the cut throat nature of music management and decided to pivot. Since I made the change to music marketing in 2019 and joined venture, we were able to expand our business to 10 employees and over 600k a year in revenue.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

My partners, Chris and Brian, had actually been running Venture Music for almost a decade as management firm. Our acts used to tour together so we spoke occasionally. Chris and I would often speak on our frustrations of artist management, where they found themselves in a similar boat I found myself.

This is what makes our business partnership work so well; we have a shared experience we lean on. We see eye-to-eye on most everything but are often great and playing devil’s advocate to push ourselves further outside our comfort zone.

Contact Info:

• Website: venturemusic.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustyb/
• Other: tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@venture_music

Image Credits
Brian Massengale