Sarah Stennett
Rita Ora · Ellie Goulding · Zayn Malik · Iggy Azalea
Sarah Stennett is a music lawyer turned manager who founded TurnFirst in 2003, developed Rita Ora and Ellie Goulding from the start, and in 2015 merged into a joint venture with Len Blavatnik's Access Industries to create First Access Entertainment.
“For me personally to want to work with someone, it has to be based around an emotional connection.”
Stennett came to management from law and A&R, which shows in how she structures things. TurnFirst, founded in 2003, developed Ellie Goulding, Rita Ora and Iggy Azalea — artists built from nothing rather than signed at the point of obvious traction, which is the harder and less fashionable half of the job.
The 2015 move is the one other managers study. Rather than selling to a major or staying subscale, she took investment from Access Industries — Len Blavatnik's group, which also owns Warner Music — and formed First Access Entertainment as a joint venture. That gave a management company balance-sheet capacity: the ability to fund artist development itself instead of trading equity to a label for an advance. Zayn Malik's post-One Direction solo career was run through it.
It is a structural answer to the oldest weakness in artist management. Managers earn a percentage of income they have no capital to create. Stennett went and got the capital.
Fund your own development
Every advance you take is equity sold at the worst possible price: before the thing works. Stennett went and got outside capital so First Access could develop artists itself rather than trading masters for a cheque. Underground version: keep one month of runway ring-fenced specifically for making the next thing, so you can say no to the deal that arrives while you're broke. Leverage is mostly just not needing the money this week.
A manager with a balance sheet is a different animal
Most management companies are cash-flow businesses commissioning someone else's risk. Funding development in-house changes the negotiation with labels entirely, because you are no longer asking them to pay for the thing you need them to believe in.