Ric Salmon was recently promoted to chief growth officer at ATC Group, where he’s worked since 2015.
As well as co-founding livestream business Driift, he’s managed acts including Laura Marling, Glen Hansard and Frank Carter.
Here, in an expanded version of our print interview, the industry veteran discusses the post-IPO expansion, supporting artists in multiple areas and the role of labels…
Congratulations on the new role, what’s your current focus in terms of growth?
“It is a nice, wide role. I’ve always touched on various parts of business, and I’ve always been excited about the entrepreneurial aspect of being part of a business like this. So much of being a manager is about being entrepreneurial and, hopefully, working with artists that have that kind of same spirit. There are loads of areas that we’re focusing on – continuing growth of the rosters, continuing growth of partnerships and acquisitions that will be coming along in the future. The growth of the business internationally is a big area of focus, in the US and in other markets.”
How do you reflect on the evolution of the industry in your 10 years at the company?
“We’ve seen huge transformation across every sector. I feel like I’ve learned more in the last five years than I’ve learned in the previous 25, it’s been that transformative, really. That’s exciting, but it’s also incredibly challenging. I think in all sectors of the industry, whether you are a major label, which are going through enormous changes at the moment, or an indie label, promoter, agent or a manager – and obviously for every artist – it feels like you’re under downward pressure from every angle.”
ATC Group reported a 111% increase in revenues in 2024, what was driving that result?
“It’s a mix of things. Again, rewinding to 10 years ago when I joined, we had around 30 to 35 management clients and the live agency had started maybe a year and a half prior to me coming to the company. Fast forward to today, we’ve got 125 management clients. The live agency has got 600. And then Sandbag, which is a company we acquired a couple of years ago, represents around 350 artists for merch. So across the roster, there’s not far off 1,000 artists. The rosters have grown organically other than, of course, the acquisition that we did with Raw Power last year.”
Has the IPO in 2021 helped with the expansion of the company?
“Going public has been a great experience for the company. You have to grow up a lot when you do something like that, you’re under a lot of scrutiny. That process we went through to restructure to ensure that we were robust enough as a business to handle being a public company was a really good thing for us. Adam Driscoll coming in as Group CEO has just been transformative. He’s an unbelievable operator and has been incredible for the company.”
With ATC Group working across multiple areas, how are you bringing them together with your artist clients?
“A big area of focus is that integrated services concept, which has been a very natural process. We identified that there were real opportunities to collaborate and cross-pollinate between the different business units. About a year ago, there was a very little interaction between the different business units. If you were to simplify it into three core disciplines – management, live touring and then services, which includes merch – I think I’m right in saying there were no artists that we did all three disciplines for really. That has since grown quite quickly, though.”
We identified that there were real opportunities to collaborate and cross-pollinate between the different business units
Ric Salmon
What can you offer clients when you combine those services?
“It’s not something that we’ve been pushing or forcing. It’s just when an artist feels that an ATC agent is the right person to work with and that Sandbag is the right person to do their merch, then we’ve found that, actually, providing two or more services is working really well. And that includes artists at the moment like The Smile, the Radiohead guys, Polly Harvey, Black Country, New Road, Glen Hansard – some of our key clients. We can be more efficient in the way that we work, cross-pollinate between the businesses and, crucially, we’ve got our heads around the internal systems that we’ve been able to create to be able to ensure that we’re delivering a better service.”
So in those cases you mentioned you’re working with artists across two or three areas of the business?
“Correct. It’s very much a natural process. If there is a consideration that an artist is looking for an agent, we would always suggest that artist meets a selection of agents, and one of those might be an agent from ATC Live. But looking to the future, there’s no doubt in my mind at the moment that the direction of travel in which the industry is going is predicated so heavily on how an artist can utilise and control data and how they can better develop a relationship directly with fans.
“I know the superfan thing is just a big buzz word at the moment. It’s an exciting area of the business, but it’s something that we’ve been doing for many years. If you look back even as far as when Brian [Message] and the Radiohead team did the In Rainbows album release 17 years ago now. That was a direct-to-fan strategy, and that was prior to Spotify, prior to Facebook; it was just a very pure, clever, simple direct-to-fan strategy. I think that kind of philosophy is something that has informed everything we’ve done at ATC. So this is really what we’re talking about here with this more kind of integrated services approach. It’s just a natural continuation of that thinking, really.”
You can cover a lot of ground with your artists, would you go into the label business?
“I don’t think we would ever start a label to be a rights owner. We’ve set up various distribution partnerships so that when artists need some sort of funnel to put music out, then we can support that. In some cases, we’ll invest in that ourselves to help them in the early stages. But we love to work with every type of label. PJ Harvey is signed to Partisan, the Radiohead guys are signed to XL Recordings. We’ve got artists signed to Def Jam, we’ve got artists signed to Interscope, Polydor, Beggars Group. It’s a broad church and there are some amazing people running some great labels out there. We love the idea of supporting artists through distribution partnerships, we’ve done a lot through AWAL, The Orchard, Secretly Distribution, we’ve got a great relationship with them. It’s entirely dependent on the artist and the project.”
I feel like I’ve learned more in the last five years than I’ve learned in the previous 25, it’s been that transformative
Ric Salmon
You launched the Driift livestreaming platform a few years ago, how is that evolving?
“It was an amazing learning curve, starting Driift and running that through the pandemic. We had a fair amount of success with it, we did something like 75 to 80 shows through those first three or four years. It’s an incredibly challenging business model to get right. Tech is not cheap to run, but we were able to find a solution that enabled us to keep the brand going as a part of the group’s offering, mainly so that we can provide that as a service for the artists that we were working with. That’s not to say that we won’t work with artists outside of the group. But a good example is we did a livestream with You Me At Six, who the group manages through Raw Power. We livestreamed their last show from Wembley Arena, and it was a huge success. We sold over 6,000 tickets to 70 countries around the world, and we did 1,200 pieces of merch through the livestream. It generated £150,000 worth of additional revenue for the band.
“It’s a shame that [livestreams] dropped off as quickly as they did at the end of the pandemic, which we kind of expected, if I’m honest. I think we spoke quite candidly about that through the pandemic, but I was nonetheless quite surprised at the rate at which it just kind of stopped. But we’re really pleased that we’ve been able to find a route to keep Driift as part of the group and keep the technology ticking over in the background, because the platform is amazing and it works really well for the right project.”
ATC is focused on what the company describes as ‘mid-market’ talent. Is there a cap on how much further you will expand?
“The answer to that is no, but I think we’re always very mindful to ensure that the culture of the business remains on solid ground. If you look at our leadership team, most of us have been there for 10 years or more – I’ve been there 10 years, Alex Bruford has been there for 12 years. Brian [Message] and Craig [Newman] started the management company 26 years ago. Phil [Middleton], who works very closely with me, has been there for 25 years. Most of our leadership team have been there for a couple of decades. In many ways, the most exciting thing that’s happened to us through this period of growth over the last couple of years has been that we’ve been able to attract even better and more exciting young executive talent, whether that’s a manager or an assistant or an agent. That’s so important and crucial for us as a business as we go forward.”
Finally, you recently expanded into live by taking a majority stake in Brighton’s Concorde 2 and Volks venues. What was the thinking there?
“It’s a natural area for growth. We acquired a promoter called Joy Concerts in Brighton last year. James McKeowen is the founder and runs that business – he’s an amazing talent. So expanding on the offering that Joy had been doing through their promoting work into the running of venues felt like a natural fit. Adam Driscoll’s background ostensibly comes from that world at MAMA Group. Fundamentally, it’s just another way for us to be able to support younger artists in their development through those early stages of their career.”
