EMPIRE president Tina Davis took part in a keynote conversation during ADE 2024, speaking before a crowded audience at the annual dance music industry conference in Amsterdam.
The Saturday (Oct. 19 )talk spanned many facets of Davis’ career, starting when she was a 25-year-old running the A&R department at Def Jam and taking the bus to work.
“I didn’t have a car. I was sitting in a bus going to work every day, running Def Jam on the West Coast, making pennies,” Davis said while talking about pursuing her career despite feelings of self-doubt. “I think it’s just all about how much you want it, how much drive [you have] and how much you believe in yourself. Even though you might doubt yourself, just try anyway.”
The conversation, moderated by journalist Pay Komüs, focused largely on Davis’ work as president of EMPIRE, a position she ascended to in the summer of 2023 after five years at the independent Bay Area-based label, publisher and distributor. The executive spoke about working on EMPIRE’S global business, the importance of authenticity for artists and how such authenticity helped Shaboozey become one of the breakout artists of 2024. The hip-hop/country artist signed to EMPIRE IN 2021, and three years later his hit single, “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” made him famous. The song is currently in its 15th week at No. 1 on the Hot 100.
Davis was one of the thousands of industry executives who traveled to Amsterdam for ADE, which has already announced dates for next year’s event: Oct. 22-26, 2025. These are five key takeaways from her keynote.
Working Globally Means Working Collaboratively
With teams in the U.S., Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Davis stressed that it’s crucial that each territory takes the lead in its own decision-making. “We’re not in San Francisco telling the people in Africa, ‘This is how you need to do it,’ or telling [our team] here in Amsterdam, ‘You need to do it this way,’” she said. “We can’t tell you how it needs to be done. We have a structure in mind. We know how we like it. We know it’s about authenticity. We know it’s about being culturally significant. But for the most part, we make sure we work with the people we have in our company and take their advice, listen to them; they listen to us, and we work together as a strategy in everything that we do.”
Every Artist Is a Partner
“We don’t sign artists, we sign partners,” Davis said of bringing new acts onto the roster. “We look at them as partners. We look at their business and figure out how we can help them scale up, just as we’re doing for ourselves.” For this type of structure to work, Davis stressed that trust is essential to “make sure that relationship is strong. We want to make sure that our artists feel our presence, and they understand how much we care about their future.”
Artist Authenticity Is Crucial
EMPIRE, Davis said, “is a company that leans heavily on authenticity and culture. If you’re not true to yourself, you can’t be true to us, and you can’t be true to your consumer.” The company “isn’t against” artists who consistently change styles, she continued, “but at the same time, it’s sort of like, ‘Okay, is that really who you are?’ Let’s figure out how we can get a middle ground, or figure out how you can present yourself in a different way, but still not lose the fan base you have.’”
On The Success of Shaboozey — And the Patience Required to Get Him to This Point
Expanding on her thoughts on authenticity, Davis said that EMPIRE is “intricate when it comes to making sure the direction fits the talent.” She recalled that when Shaboozey was presented to the company, “he had wicks in his head, he’s a tall African American, and he came in doing country and hip-hop. Nothing really was working at that time. It had happened before, but nothing at that time was really at the top of the charts that sounded like him.”
But Davis says that when the team met him, they felt his authenticity. “So you can’t tell somebody that looks like that, ‘Hey, you’re not country. You can’t do country,’” she said. During the three years Shaboozey was signed to EMPIRE before blowing up, “we honed in and allowed him to just continue on his journey and keep growing. He was putting out music, and the first records and project did okay, but it took a minute for it to get to this point, and we had the patience for that.”
Artists Don’t Need a Major Label to Succeed
Davis questioned the need for artists to be on a major label to be successful, suggesting they shift their mindset about major label deals being essential — particularly when it comes to artists maintaining control of their masters by staying independent. “I cannot tell you why someone like Justin Timberlake still has a record deal at a major,” Davis observed. “It makes no sense. Mind you, his deal probably is a little bit better than most of the newer artists that are coming up, but it still makes no sense; he should be distributing himself. He could go on TuneCore and make a lot more money than he’d make with that major from that big check that they give him.
She continued that changing artists’ mentality around major label deals has been “a process. It’s been an old rule for years that only majors can break you, but Shaboozey shows you right now that you really don’t need a major.”
Not Paying Attention To What Other People Are Doing Can Be a Key to Success
Davis observed that you’ve “got to kind of have blinders on when you’re working on your own thing, when you’re focused on your own vision, when you’re trying to accomplish something. You can’t look to the side, because you’re going to lose a race. You have to stay focused and look at what you’re working on because you have to figure out how you make your lane in the highway where everybody is still driving in the same direction.”
She also emphasized EMPIRE’S position as an innovator and leader, continuing that other companies “look at us. They follow us. They’re all turning toward where we have always been. When they started hiring DEI departments, we didn’t need it. We were already diverse. When they were like, ‘We need more women.’ We were 51% women. We were like, ‘We don’t need to worry about that.’ We’re purveyors of taste. We’re leaders; we don’t like to follow.”
