Episode 9: Jacob Snell

Interview Transcript

Interviewer: Welcome to The Cockatoo, your source for all things Australian music in the USA. We publish from Hollywood, California, which is Tongva and Chumash country, and in these interviews, we get into musical journeys from Australia to the United States. Today, we are joined by Jacob Snell, an artist manager originally from Perth in Australia's West.

Jacob founded Monster Management back in 2011, which he moved to the US with his life and business partner, Apple Baggios, managing bands including Hatchi, Methyl Ethel, The Beths, and Cloud Nothings. In 2023, Monster merged with Lookout Kid, another Australian-owned management company here in LA, which represents artists including Courtney Barnett and Faye Webster. Let's add some details to this journey. Welcome, Jacob.

Jacob Snell: Hey, how are you doing?

Interviewer: I'm good, I'm good. Great to have you here. Let's get into it. You grew up in Perth, right?

Jacob: I did indeed, yes.

Interviewer: Okay. How did you get into artist management?

Jacob: I played in music like so many people in artist management have, and I kind of have a very vivid memory of playing music in various bands and always like seeking opportunities to play with friends and being like, oh, I could start again or, potentially, I could be on the other side of this and do what I had thought I'd like to have someone do for me at that moment in time. Rather than continuing on a fresh batch of songs with a fresh group of people, I was like, why don't I find someone and do what my ideal situation would be if I were to do this? That was the start of it, to a degree.

Interviewer: Great. You sort of see yourself heading more in the artist services direction, in 2010, 2011. Then in 2011, you formed Monster Management. How did that go down?

Jacob: It's somewhat convoluted because the company that I joined was started by Jeff Healey, who has long been so much an employee who became a mentor, and it's been very helpful to me over the years. He really just let me out of working for him, booking venues, and promoting shows, and doing what was required there. He let me explore management. I grew underneath that umbrella.

It split out and became its own business operating within that group around that time. It was operating. It's been operating for a while. Yes, it was a process of it becoming something that all of a sudden could become its own entity. It was not just this thing on the side. It wasn't just like one Perth band helping them out, it all of a sudden became an international artist management business, years later.

Interviewer: The Monster emerges, 2011. Let's fast forward. When do you come to the US?

Jacob: We moved in 2018, actually, just a month after Apple and I got married. It was something that we'd wanted to do for a really long time. The culmination of, I'd been traveling a lot. I had realized that businesses were global, even though I was operating out of a remote place in Western Australia. I was just like, careers are global, I need to get out there and start building them and was enjoying it and having success doing so.

Apple was in Perth and working in other music industry jobs, and being in Perth for a couple of months, half of the year, but the rest of the time, you're traveling around is a whole different experience to being in Perth without your partner for six months of the year. She quickly was like, "I wouldn't mind changing it up." We'd spoken about like moving, it's such an exodus always from moving from Western Australia to Melbourne or Sydney.

Interviewer: 2018, what a year. On a personal level, you get married and move across the world. On the logistical level, you plan a wedding and plan a move across the world. Tell us about how the moving part went and how you went about it that year.

Jacob: We had the O2 visas, the O visas. We jumped in, basically got them and jumped on a plane with two suitcases and a cat. It was that simple. I think we realized that if we were to overthink it, we would immediately find reasons not to do it. As a result, it was like, what's the easiest way that we can do this? Interviewer: What part of town were you in LA when you--?

Jacob: We were in Echo Park.

Interviewer: Okay, got it. You're in a pretty friendly part of town for the music industry.

Jacob: Yes, totally. Totally. It was one of those things where we had a huge backyard and extra rooms and stuff that we didn't actually need. We were like, "We're paying a premium for like a yard in LA that we when we have an indoor cat, we don't really need this."

Interviewer: You've got you've got Hatchie from Brisbane, Methyl Ethel from Perth, and Beths from Auckland. You've got artists from different parts of Australia and New Zealand. Are they are they back home? Are they in LA at the time?

Jacob: They're all touring fairly regularly. It was at a point and still is where they are actively touring. It was a case of they'd be in our vicinity, once or twice a year through their touring schedules and, over the years, though not immediately, all of those artists have spent extended periods in LA. I think having some-- I think that's a nice rite of passage to do as an artist to spend some time and to experience what it's actually like, because it's unique.

Interviewer: Absolutely. You come across with three, basically three Australian and New Zealand artists, and then you're in Echo Park. It's time to get in the mix in LA. How do you go about that, integrating yourself into the city, into the music scene? Who are the key contacts? What were the key moments when you were living in LA for the first time?

Jacob: I'd done a lot of that in trips earlier. It's something that I thought about and I've made connections with people, and I'd been speaking about moving to LA for maybe a year, two years before, or something I'd like to do. I now realize that a lot of people do that and don't actually end up making the move. People were probably being nice to me and treating me seriously, even though I realize that it doesn't always pan out. A lot of it was set up previously.

We moved there when I was like mid-30s, and that was as well, we don't have kids and we're already going through a process of people who we'd grown up with were, lack of better word, settling down. We still wanted to engage with culture as a core driver of our happiness and the things that we do day to day. By that extension, it was hard. We were going through the process of having to find new friends in our 30s anyway, or other friends, to have these experiences with. We just did it in another place. We compound, we put two problems together, and just was like, "Let's just sort it out and try and meet people." It's been wonderful. It's been really nice.

Interviewer: You'd laid a pretty good foundation. How many professional trips do you think you took to the US before you made the permanent move?

Jacob: I couldn't even count, to be honest, it would be that kind of number. I'd fly in for half a week, or something like that, like regularly, I'd really just spend as much time as I could. It was a lot of time, it felt very familiar.

Interviewer: 20 plus.

Jacob: Yes, I'm sure of it. Yes, I spent a lot of time. I was working it out and it's not perfect math, but in retrospect, just before we left, it would be close to half the year, I was away outside of Perth. That was a lot of time, whether it be like a month in the UK and a month in the US and then, all of a sudden, it starts to add up when you do that in spring and that in the fall.

Interviewer: Roughly, you've been a manager for around about the same time in Perth as you have been in LA, give or take a year or so. How would you compare the job in-- I know that your bands have moved in different directions and whatnot, but just in terms of your day-to-day work as a manager, how would you compare doing it in Perth to doing it in LA?

Jacob: One of the advantages is that like and why I-- to speak of the traveling again is that everyone is in LA or comes to LA. The requirement to travel is not so high, and I think that's great. It means that you can spend more time working and thinking about work as opposed to constantly being in the flow of travel, which is wonderful, but I think it's important to pick your moments because it's hard to constantly travel while also working on big projects. It's just difficult to do such a thing.

I think that's given me more bandwidth within my days and more office time, more focused work time. Of course, there's been lots of changes to the methodology of people work with remote work and things like that. That's also, I think, been-- I guess it's hard to like unlink that from the experience of working in 2024 as well. I think you're dealing with time zones that are different. I relate to the time zone of being on the West Coast and they're also being the East Coast, which are three hours ahead.

The cadence of my days feels very similar to that of being in Perth where you have these things really work very similar in that I'd be in Perth, I'd get up and I'd look at things and work on in the US. That would work because the East Coast would start and I'd be able to get going, and then by five o'clock, the UK was open. Now, it's like I get up, the UK, I make sure everything that we're doing there is rolling. I have US time as New York is three hours ahead, and by midday or going into the afternoon like four o'clock depending on daylight savings then, all of a sudden, conversations are happening with Australia. It's very similar to the routine, but it's in LA, which is always nice.

Interviewer: One of the things about, obviously, the move here that you spoke about earlier is to start signing US talent. How's that gone and what's that process been like?

Jacob: It's been really great. It's hard to not state the pandemic of it all in that we moved in 2018 and 2019. Everything changed, and so the ways in which we've worked with North American artists initially were very much helping businesses that weren't subject to the same levels of funding that Australian businesses were. It was in looking at that through a positive lens, it really helped us immediately understand what it was like to be a North American artist without various funding available to you and what happens when you need to do X and it could be a great opportunity but the money's just not there.

There's not a grant application that you can write. There's not these other ways to solve the problems. Although it proved to be a challenge immediately, it did frame an understanding of what it was like to be an artist in North America and the requirement to treat your career as a business, and I think, yes, there are a lot of other ways in which the US industry works, and I think we've always wanted to like to be off of the best of everything. I think from being where I'm from, I've walked into every situation going like, "I'm not from the place that has a big industry. What's your industry like?"

It's been a lot of observation and trying to understand like what's been effective, what works for other managers, what works for other artists, what the labels appreciate in the management system, what the labels in another territory appreciate in the management relationship. It's been a lot of just investigating and kicking the tyres of what the best practices are across this broad-- management is effectively the same but also incredibly bespoke and different in every different iteration. I think being in LA allows you more and more access to see those things and see how different components of the industry intersect.

Interviewer: Speaking of that concept of integration into a different economy a different country, you're part of a little clan of Australians. You've got the Future Classic guys and, as we mentioned earlier, you guys have teamed up with Lookout Kid. Tell us about those relationships and how-- well, first, what's happened with the teaming up with Lookout Kid and also the way that group has done such a good job of integrating into LA into the US music community.

Jacob: Yes, Lookout Kid felt it made a lot of sense, I've known Nick and Katie for-- they started managing about the same time that I did, and so we've been very much aware of each other. I could see that we shared values, and I think that that's like if you share your values with people and especially in management, which is I guess there are ethics involved in that, maybe if you share values and you know that even if things from different angles, which is additive because you get different perspectives, you are always coming at it from the same place. Your desires are the same. How do you build real careers for artists and offer them the duty of care that they deserve ultimately?

That's been great to partner up and I think to consolidate rosters and, in that process, really learning from each other and enhancing our own skill set and what we can offer as a group. That's been a wonderful experience. I've been really happy with how it's all come together, and it's wonderful when you imagine something, and it exceeds and does things that you could only imagine at a certain point to be able to be in LA and work with people that I respect greatly and be able to share ideas and thoughts and know that we're aligned is great.

Future Classic are people I've connected with for many years and just I'm impressed by the way that they've been able to integrate into LA with a really strong emphasis on building a community in a true sense. It's not like a hyperbolic online buzzword. It's being in the orbit of their office and seeing the way that they're trying to very legitimately and legibly build a framework that a community can flourish out of is like very-- I think they've done an amazing job.

Interviewer: Yes, and it's an American community, isn't it? It's Australian-led and Australian-created, but it's very LA at the same time, isn't it?

Jacob: It is. It's the right balance. It feels very true to them as an Australian label and management company, but it also is not isolated. I think that's something that we thought about when we moved over is that we didn't want to end up in a position where we were only with other Australians. Interviewer: Yes, that balance between familiarity and new horizons is important in any journey, isn't it? If you were to go back to around 2018 and the time you guys were making the move, looking back, any advice you'd give yourself?

Jacob: I think I probably wouldn't like-- in retrospect, I was holding on so tight. I was just like, "Oh my god, we've just got to make this work. We've got to make this work." I was so stressed and anxious for that first year, which then broke into stress and anxiety for the rest of the year from the COVID and the pandemic.

In hindsight, I'm like, "Oh, you should have enjoyed that year. You had no idea what was coming. You should have just gone into it and really just had a great time." I think that's a balance, right? In moving, it's like, how do you make the most of your time? I moved here for work. I want to make sure I'm working and getting a lot of stuff done. I also moved here to have a life here, and finding that balance was difficult at first, because--

Interviewer: It is. Yes, it's a lot. Yes. Well, on that note, there is a community here and there are people such as you who come and lead the way and show others how to do it. It's been a real pleasure to be talking to you today, Jacob. It's been great to hear the story. As with many of our guests, we're catching them really early in the long journey that they'll be on. I think that Lookout Kid has got a very bright future.

Jacob: Thank you very much.

Interviewer: Yes, well, thanks so much for your time. This is The Cockatoo newsletter interview where we talk to Australians who have made the journey from Australia to the United States and we find out how they went about it. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so you can support us in all the ways that you support nonprofits, but most importantly, listen to what we put out there, share it, like it, and subscribe. Thank you very much, and we'll catch you on the next edition.