Nadia Prescher
Amelia SteinMadison House co-founder and president Nadia Prescher is joining SaveLive, the company created by former WME co-head of music Marc Geiger after he left WME parent company Endeavor last year.
Geiger hasn't said much publicly about SaveLive since first debuting the idea to buy distressed indie venues, backed by a $75 million fund, in a New York Times article last October. Prescher will run SaveLive's music division, Billboard has learned, with more details to be released in the coming weeks and months.
Prescher will join SaveLive on July 1 and shift to a board member partner position at Madison House.
"I’m joining Marc to build out his vision of the SaveLive network to support independent music venues," Prescher tells Billboard. "Over the last 25 years as an agent, I’ve worked closely with the independent community, and more so since the pandemic with the National Independent Talent Organization. Marc and I agree indie venues should have a safe guarded opportunity to grow their businesses."
Prescher, who is a co-founder and vp of the National Independent Talent Organization (NITO), added, "We believe indies should have the options of a national network, without having to give up or alter their unique local brand or independent spirit. Our backgrounds will make sure the plan is very agent-friendly and artist-friendly, working across all genres."
On a personal note, Prescher said that "like many people, I have admired and respected Marc for a long time. An opportunity to work with someone who has made such a significant impact on our industry would already be an attractive opportunity. But the ability to pair that with working with my long-term industry promoter friends, and a bunch of different independent venues, in the business I love, was too good to pass up. I’m incredibly excited and inspired. I will be in touch about the SaveLive launch.”
NEWS
No matter what you thought of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, there was only one undisputed winner by the end of it all: the reaction community in the worlds of streaming and YouTube. Your favorite content creators broke down the bars, reacted to all the most shocking moments, and helped this showdown become one of hip-hop's most culturally significant and resonant moments in a long time... For better or worse. See, the battle's technically not over yet, but only because the 6ix God's idea of victory is clearly quite different. In his federal defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group – his label – for releasing K.Dot's "Not Like Us," he named various content creators who allegedly helped boost the track's widespread popularity and, as a result, its supposedly defamatory nature.
Furthermore, the specific allegation that Drake brings up in this highly controversial lawsuit is that UMG "whitelisted" copyright claims for YouTubers, streamers, etc. concerning "Not Like Us." This means that they would be able to monetize their content without facing a copyright claim from UMG over "Not Like Us," and this isn't really an allegation because various creators have backed this up. But a few important (alleged) caveats that people are talking about online need to be clear. First, "whitelisting" supposedly happens on behalf of a record label behind a song like the West Coast banger, and UMG is instead the distributor of that track. Secondly, as rapper and online personality ScruFaceJean brings up as seen in the post below, tracks like "Push Ups" were also "whitelisted" by its team.
Along with Jean, many other of your favorite content creators spoke out against this Drake lawsuit. Zias! and B.Lou, for example, spoke with their lawyer about the possibility of countersuing for emotional distress, as they found the Toronto superstar's accusations and his implication of them very disturbing and misguided. NoLifeShaq also dragged The Boy through the mud, calling him "soft" and positing that, whether "whitelisting" happened or not, they would react to "Not Like Us" accordingly as they did to his own tracks.
In addition, it's important to bring up that many others fans have pointed to how Drake excitedly used streamers to generate hype and reaction clips for his own diss tracks against Kendrick Lamar. The most direct example is with Kai Cenat, whom he texted to "stay on stream" before dropping "Family Matters." Ironically, the Twitch giant appears in this clowned-upon defamation lawsuit as an example of what the OVO mogul's accusations and implications are. And one more thing: there is no direct link between monetization and algorithmic boosting on sites like YouTube. With all this in mind, content creators seem to feel almost insulted at the idea that they only reacted to the two biggest rappers in the world beefing with each other because one of them would allow them to make money. If Drizzy knew the first thing about the reaction community, maybe he wouldn't have included this...
