Crush Management bio
There’s no question that in today’s world of unlimited broadband access, digital downloading, and MySpace, the entertainment industry is evolving at a rapid clip. If you don’t adapt, you disappear. No one knows that better than the guys behind Crush Management. Jonathan Daniel and Bob McLynn are two former musicians who have been through the major-label wringer and lived not only to tell, but to apply what they’ve learned to creating one of the most successful and innovative music management companies in the business — one whose reach extends beyond music to fashion, technology, television, and film.
These are the guys that brought the public the Grammy-nominated, best-selling rock bands Fall Out Boy (who took home the Viewer’s Choice Award at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards) and five-time VMA nominees Panic! At the Disco (who won “Video of the Year”). Crush also represents Decaydance Records, founded by Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz, as well as Wentz’s fashion line, Clandestine Industries (which showed its wares during New York’s Fashion Week), the social networking website friendsorenemies.com, and a developing film production company.
McLynn and Daniel also have their hands in film and television, having served as music supervisors for the much talked-about movie Snakes on a Plane, as well as executive producers for its chart-topping original soundtrack, which featured many Crush artists. In addition, they helped create the hit reality TV show Rock Star: Supernova, starring Daniel’s former bandmate Gilby Clarke. Another Crush client, Butch Walker, wrote and produced the Rock Star Supernova album.
Crush’s influence even extends to supplying information about media consumption to other industry professionals via BigChampagne, an online media measurement company that has become the leading provider of data about popular entertainment online through its partnerships with Nielsen Entertainment, Yahoo!, Billboard Radio, and MTV.
So how’d they do it? When the Internet emerged as a new distribution model several years ago, Crush took the then-pioneering action of embracing it rather than viewing it as a threat. “Our artists have made building a strong web presence a priority as a way to communicate directly with fans and make them feel like part of a special community,” McLynn says.
Crush applied that community model to their company, giving the organization a familial, self-contained vibe where the artists do for themselves and each other. “When you’re on tour, everyone in the band moves the amp,” Daniel explains. “When Butch Walker made a record, he played all the instruments, he built the website. Whatever it took. It’s a very punk-rock work ethic to do it yourself.”
Both men absorbed such DIY values through their experiences as touring musicians. Daniel got his start on the Sunset Strip in the ’80s playing in a series of hair bands, including Candy, which included future Guns ’N Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke, and Electric Angels, who were signed to Atlantic. Daniel soon turned his hand to producing his friends’ bands and trying to score them record deals. When the digital music revolution exploded with Napster and file-sharing in the late ’90s, “I felt there was going to be a big change in the way the music business operated and the way musicians were paid,” he says. “I wanted to launch a company that was based on promoting music, putting it on the Internet, and working with artists to figure out how to take advantage of the burgeoning technology.”
In 2000, Daniel partnered with Joe Fleischer (who now runs BigChampagne) to form a web consulting company they named Crush. They consulted for “the scrap heap of web music companies,” as he puts it, including Napster, mp3.com, e-Music, and listen.com. Meanwhile, Bob McLynn was battling it out on the touring circuit with his post-hardcore trio the Step Kings. McLynn booked his band’s tours, raised the money to record, and landed the record deals after becoming fed up with false promises from various managers. “I’m definitely a control freak,” he says, “and I realized that I really enjoy being the business guy.” McLynn was introduced to Daniel by a mutual friend and Crush version 2.0 was born.
“Bob and I have both been in bands and we both know what it takes,” Daniel says. “We know the pain when the pier diem doesn’t show up or when the van breaks down.” Adds McLynn: “We wanted to be the type of managers that we always wished we had, but could never find. We’re artists working for artists. We protect our bands so that they don’t fall into the same traps we did when we were artists.”
That philosophy proved highly effective when it came to the phenomenal success of Fall Out Boy, whose 2005 album, From Under the Cork Tree, has sold two and a half million copies. In 2002, Daniel discovered the Chicago-based quartet’s music on mp3.com, brought them to Crush, and asked McLynn to steer them to stardom. “For so long, Fall Out Boy got no breaks,” Daniel says, “it was really just Bob against the world, fighting for them.”
“My attitude was, ‘Be a real band, make real fans. Get in the van and tour,’” McLynn says. “And they built it the whole way through the Internet and touring.”
McLynn and Daniel had found a kindred spirit in Fall Out Boy’s co-founder and bassist Pete Wentz, who understood the power of the Web early on and used it to build a core following of loyal fans to spread the word about the music. “Pete has the same philosophies as we do,” Daniel says. “Fall Out Boy really embody our spirit as a company.” Wentz brought Crush the Las Vegas alt-pop group Panic! At the Disco and signed them to Decaydance Records, which released their 2005 debut, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. The album cracked the Billboard Top 20 and has sold more than a million copies.
“Our bands are the best A&R people out there because they’re on the road all the time,” McLynn says. “They know what the kids want because they’re interacting with them every day.” Crush artists like Cobra Starship, The Academy Is…, The Hush Sound, Gym Class Heroes, and Armor For Sleep take each other on tour, guest on each other’s albums, and talk up one another to the press. “You’re basically building a subculture within this family,” McLynn says, “and when it’s true and genuine, kids gravitate towards it.”
Call it the hip-hop family ties method put to work in the rock world. Incestuous and nepotistic, sure, but undoubtedly a business paradigm that other companies have already sought to emulate.
“It’s important to us that as the future changes, our bands are protected and can concentrate on making music,” Daniel says. “Because the reason you get into rock and roll in the first place is so you don’t have to get a job!”
(October 2006)