Music investment enterprise Firebird acquired a stake in JET Management, the Los Angeles-based company that boasts a roster including Justice, Madeon, LP Giobbi and Suki Waterhouse.
Launched in 2023 by founders Nathan Hubbard and Nat Zilkha, Firebird is a multi-sector music company that includes labels and publishing, with an emphasis on management and label services.
In 2023, Zilkha told Billboard that he and his partners are building Firebird to respond to a changing industry in which artists are moving away from label structures to partner with companies that can provide label services and artist development, as well as help them tap into additional income streams, such as publishing, merchandising, branding and live events.
“Firebird partners with artists and their teams to build longer lasting, higher impact, and more profitable careers,” Hubbard said in a statement on the new partnership. “JET is on the cutting edge of building the brands of the most respected artists that influence culture. Tyler, John and their team have an impressive track record of partnering with artists of all types to ignite both their fan bases and businesses in harmony.”
“The music industry is evolving rapidly, and power is continuing to shift towards artists and their teams. Firebird’s artist-first ethos and ambitions around empowering the core team is what drew us in at the start, but the people are what kept us around,” added JET Management co-founder John Scholz. “This is a great group of sharp industry veterans walking the same path as us that we couldn’t be happier to lock arms with.”
“Firebird’s strengths complement JET’s vision seamlessly,” adds JET co-founder Tyler Goldberg. “This partnership allows us to streamline operations, broaden our reach, and ultimately deliver greater value to our clients.”
JET clients including Waterhouse, Justice, Neil Frances and Blond:ish are all slated play both weekends of Coachella later this month.
Thus far, Firebird has acquired stakes in companies including Coran Capshaw’s Red Light Management, which represents roughly 400 artists including Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Brandi Carlile and Chris Stapleton; Mick Management, which specializes in independent singer-songwriters such as Maggie Rogers and Hamilton Leithauser; Transgressive Records; and U.K.-based electronic label Defected Records.
“We are maintaining separate brands of the companies that we invest in,” Zilkha told Billboard last year. “We allow their creative process to remain very independent from us; but we’re giving those companies an ecosystem that helps them create opportunities for themselves and the artists that they work with.”
Firebird says it generates $2 billion in gross revenue annually across its businesses and with its collective of artistists reaching a global audience of more than a billion fans.
