Jake Udell (born February 21, 1989) is an American music manager, entrepreneur, founder of TH3RD BRAIN (a talent management company), former head of activation at Community.com, and founder of Metalink Labs. [1] [2] [3] [4] At the EDMbiz conference in Las Vegas in June 2014, Udell moderated a panel featuring panelists in the industry under the age of 30. After viewing the panel, music industry analyst Bob Lefsetz included an excerpt about Udell in his newsletter, "Jake is a new Shep Gordon, maybe a new Irving or Geffen." [5] Udell was featured in Forbes 2016 30 Under 30 list in the Music category, and was listed as one of Billboard's 40 Under 40 in 2017. [6] [7]
At the age of 13, Udell began selling autographed sports memorabilia, most of which he attained by encountering athletes in-person, on eBay. Initially operating out of Chicago, by the time he was 16 Udell had hired a team of people in different cities which allowed him to cover most of the major sporting events in the United States. [8]
Udell attended Indiana University and briefly pursued a career as a performer before getting involved in music management and promotion. In 2011, Udell graduated from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business with a degree in entrepreneurship. [9] After graduating, he worked for Campus Candy for one year as the company's chief marketing officer.[ citation needed ]
In early 2012 Udell founded TH3RD BRAIN, a talent management firm, claiming his motivation for becoming a manager was that Krewella was the first act he believed in more than his own performing career. [10] Udell had attended Glenbrook North High School in Chicago with Krewella. He vacated his CMO role at Campus Candy and assumed management responsibilities. TH3RD BRAIN has helped launch the careers of the platinum-selling electronic music group Krewella, Grammy-nominated musician ZHU, and Spotify Spotlight Artist Gallant. [11] [12] Billboard noted Udell's social media strategy for Krewella and chronicled their meteoric rise in 2013, focusing on TH3RD BRAIN's work with blogs, narrative building, and free downloads. [13] Udell's recording artist roster also includes Pegboard Nerds, Stephen, and others. [13] [14] [15] [16]
After a bidding war, Krewella signed to Columbia Records, and released their first album Get Wet in 2013. The album debuted at number 8 on the Billboard 200 chart. After selling out all 55 dates of the group's first North American headlining 2013 Get Wet Live tour, Krewella's single "Alive" reached platinum status in 2014. [12]
While still managing Krewella, in 2013 Jake Udell began developing TH3RD BRAIN's next client ZHU. [17] In December 2014, "Faded" was nominated for Best Dance Recording at the 57th Grammy Awards, and ZHU continued to perform with a hidden identity and embraced non-traditional advertising methods with street art, flash announcements, and guerrilla digital marketing. [18]
In November 2016, Udell interviewed music manager Shep Gordon. [19]
In 2017, Udell signed 2016 America's Got Talent winner Grace VanderWaal to management under TH3RD BRAIN; [20] and led the marketing campaign for her debut album Just the Beginning . [7] VanderWall said of Udell, "Jake doesn't think the way most people in the industry do, that makes him stand out to so many young artists." [7] Udell was named one of Billboard's 40 Under 40 leading media industry executives in 2017. [7]
Udell writes a daily newsletter covering topics for the music industry. [21]
In 2016, Udell launched TH3RD BRAIN Accelerator, a twelve-week program aimed at helping the development of promising musicians, modeled after tech entrepreneur Paul Graham's Y Combinator. [22] The program helps teach artists how to grow their business and maximize their impact on culture and in the marketplace. [23]
Udell became head of activation for Community.com, Inc., a SaaS company specializing in outreach, after launching a text-messaging campaign to reach musician's fans due to limitations he saw with social media algorithms. [24] "The thing I kept noticing was that the algorithms were making it really challenging for us to reach our audiences," Udell told dot.LA. [24]
In July 2021, Udell founded Metalink Labs, becoming the company's CEO. He later left Community.com in September 2021, going full-time on "The place where NFTs hang out". [25]
Kyrre Gørvell-Dahll, known professionally as Kygo, is a Norwegian DJ and music producer. He garnered international attention with his December 2013 remix of the track "I See Fire" by Ed Sheeran and his December 2014 single "Firestone". In late 2015, he reached one billion streams on Spotify faster than any other artist, and by June 2016, he had reached two billion streams.
Krewella is an American electronic dance music band from the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, Illinois, United States, that formed in 2007. Their musical style has been mainly described as EDM, dance-rock, and dance-pop. However, Krewella's style has been influenced by a number of electronic sub genres, including progressive house, electro, dubstep, drum and bass, trap music and future bass.
Life in Color was a United States–based EDM event company, best known for their "paint party" Life in Color concert tours. The company was founded by Sebastian Solano, Paul Campbell, Lukasz Tracz and Patryk Tracz as Committee Entertainment and the concert tour Dayglow in 2006. Billed by its organizers as the "world's largest paint party", the tour features performances by electronic musicians, joined by artistic performers and the tour's signature spraying of the audience with paint throughout the show. The company changed to its current name shortly after it was acquired by Robert F. X. Sillerman's SFX Entertainment in late 2012, with the original founders remaining as partners.
Martin Joseph Léonard Bresso, better known by his stage name Tchami, is a French record producer and DJ from Paris. A founding member of the Pardon My French collective, he is best known for his solo work and regarded as a pioneer of the future house genre – the term for which he coined – alongside Dutch DJs Oliver Heldens and Don Diablo.
Steven Zhu, known mononymously as Zhu, is an American electronic music producer and singer who has been active since the beginning of 2014, signed to Mind of a Genius Records. Until mid-2014, Zhu remained anonymous, asking to be judged by his music alone. His debut album, Generationwhy, was released on July 29, 2016 and first premiered at Coachella during his closing set in the Sahara Tent. Zhu's Coachella performance was praised, with a writer for the New York Observer suggesting that he could be "the next Daft Punk".
Pegboard Nerds is a Dano-Norwegian electronic music group, consisting of Norwegian DJ Alexander Odden and Danish DJ Michael Parsberg. The name Pegboard Nerds is an anagram of the duo's surnames, Odden and Parsberg. The duo first met in 2005 and formed the group in 2011. Previously, their records were released under separate projects and both have been producing since the 1990s.
The Committee is an EDM event production group founded in 2006 as Committee Entertainment by Sebastian Solano, Paul Campbell, Lukasz Tracz, and Patryk Tracz. At the time all four founders were friends and college students in Florida, and they originally started the Committee as an informal party promotion team. Since then, Committee Entertainment has founded the Dayglow tour series and Life in Color, an international EDM concert company. After jointly selling Dayglow/Life in Color to SFX Entertainment in 2012, all four members remained partners, and as of 2015 they continue to operate both Life in Color and Committee Entertainment. On January 5, 2015, Forbes included Life in Color CEO Solano on their annual list of "30 Under 30 In Music" for 2015.
Monstercat is a Canadian independent electronic music record label based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Niles Hollowell-Dhar, known professionally as Kshmr, is an American musician, DJ, songwriter, record producer, former rapper, and singer. He was ranked 23rd on DJ Mag's 2015 Top 100 DJs poll and was awarded highest new entry for the year. In the same poll he elevated to 12th in 2016 and 2017, and again in 2020. He was ranked 11th in the same poll in 2021; and in 2022 in same poll he ranked 12. In July 2017, he launched Dharma Worldwide, a sublabel of Spinnin' Records. Kshmr performed live at many music festivals like Coachella, Tomorrowland, EDC, Ultra and Sunburn.
This is the discography for American electronic dance music band Krewella.
Ammunition is the third extended play by American electronic dance music band Krewella. It was released on May 20, 2016 by Columbia Records on streaming and digital download music services. Ammunition was preceded by the release of the single "Beggars", on April 28, 2016, shortly followed by the promotional single "Broken Record", which was released on May 10, 2016. It is a six-track extended play, and the duo's first major release since the departure of former member Kris Trindl. It is also their first major release since their debut album Get Wet.
Julian Michael Scanlan, known professionally as Slushii, is an American musician, DJ, songwriter, and music producer based in Los Angeles. He is best known for working with various artists managed by Moe Shalizi, such as Marshmello, Ookay and Jauz, and for gaining support from notable musician and Owsla-record label founder Skrillex.
Christopher Comstock, known professionally as Marshmello, is an American electronic music producer and DJ. His songs "Silence", "Wolves", "Friends", "Happier", and "Alone" have each received multi-platinum certifications in several countries, and peaked within the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. His musical style includes groove-oriented, synth and bass-heavy electronic dance music.
Sam Vogel, also known by his stage name Jauz, is an American DJ and electronic dance music producer based in San Francisco. He founded his own record label, Bite This, in 2017.
Udyan Sagar, better known by his stage name Nucleya, is an Indian electronic music producer.
Bitbird is an independent record label and creative company based in The Hague, Netherlands founded by Sander van Dijck in 2014. The label is jointly run by Sander van Dijck's manager Budi Voogt and his longtime friend and associate Thorwald van den Akker, who is also the label's creative director and co-founder.
Tyler Marenyi, better known by his stage name Nghtmre, is an American DJ and electronic dance music producer from Raleigh, North Carolina.
Lost Kings are an American DJ duo consisting of Robert Abisi and Nick Shanholtz, based in Los Angeles. The duo gained popularity beginning in 2014 through their official remixes for artists such as Imagine Dragons, Krewella, Halsey, Vance Joy, Echosmith, Rihanna, and Tori Kelly, and through their original progressive house music. Managed by Disruptor Management, a joint venture at Sony Music Entertainment, they signed to Disruptor Records/RCA Records in October 2016.
Lucas Keller is an American talent manager. He is the president and founder of Milk & Honey Management which represents a number of prominent songwriters, producers, and artists. He was included in the 2018 Billboard 40 Under 40, an annual list of the top young executives in music, and was named one of seven fast-rising executives on the Billboard Power 100 list that same year.