MBW’s Inspiring Women series profiles female executives who have risen through the ranks of the business, highlighting their career journey – from their professional breakthrough to the senior responsibilities they now fulfill. Inspiring Women is supported by Virgin Music Group.
Mariesa Stevens, Partner and Vice President at independent agency Liaison Artists, accidentally entered the music business in her late twenties after being captivated by the atmosphere at a club night.
While growing up in Washington State, Stevens wanted to be a teacher, then merged into acting, which she did in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and eventually found her way into music.
It was a show by US DJ Mark Farina that marked the turning point.
“My idea of a club was that you’re going somewhere and having drinks at the bar,” she remembers.
“To see these people building this community on the dance floor was just something that I had never seen. That feeling when you’re in rhythm and in dancing is one of those things that, when you’re doing it as a group, can be really powerful. That’s what drew me in.”
After desperately trying to break into the music industry by working for free at club doors, Stevens landed a job with a small agency called Listed in San Francisco.
Later, she met Liaison founder and President Andrew Kelsey through a friend, who hired her as his third employee. That’s where she’s been for the last 16 years.
During that time, the agency has grown from a bedroom office to a globally respected independent booking agency with a roster of more than 140 house, techno and indie electronic artists.
Liaison, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, books 5,000 shows a year, including at major festivals like EDC Las Vegas, Ultra Music Festival and Coachella (for the latter, in 2022, they represented 7% of the total artists on the festival).
Recently, Stevens has been working on a tour for British DJ Hot Since 82 in North and South America, DJ and producer Jayda G’s final shows before going on maternity leave, and tours for German techno act Stephan Bodzin and up and coming Afro house DJ Nitefreak.
Here, we chat to her about lessons learned across her career, the role of an agent, challenges in the live music space, and much more besides…
What are the biggest lessons that you’ve learned across the evolution of Liaison?
One of them is: Don’t take things personally. This was my whole identity, my job. I’ve put my heart and soul into building the company and my artists. But it is a business. You’ll be friends with someone, and maybe represent them, and then they drop you.
Also, trying to be more grateful. In this industry, it’s very cutthroat, so try to take in those small moments and really enjoy it. Remember why you got into it. Those are my biggest lessons.
Do you have any habits or rituals that ensure that you bring your best self to work?
Yes, definitely. These are things I’ve started in the last couple of years. Pretty much every morning, I wake up and meditate immediately. I try to visualize how I want my day to go and what I want to accomplish. Sometimes I’m better at it than other times, believe me.
Then I walk about four to six miles every morning, which clears my head. I take my dog out. I’m a morning person, annoyingly, so I start my day at like five thirty or six am so I have a couple hours to gear up before I start work.
What do you think makes a good agent?
You have to be very tough. You are going to have to work incredibly hard and be incredibly disciplined. I think people look at it and it seems you’re just traveling and getting to do all this fun stuff and going to festivals. Yes, there are a lot of very fun things about the job, but it is very hard work.
“You’re holding people’s careers in your hands and you can’t really have bad days.”
I don’t know a single casual agent, it takes over a really large percentage of your life. You’ll get calls from people at important [life] events, on the weekends, and at night. You’re holding people’s careers in your hands and you can’t really have bad days. There’s immense pressure for you to produce and produce at a high level. So you should love this. There are far easier things that you could do for more money, especially when you start out, than being an agent!
Tenacity and being thick-skinned are also important. Being able to have good relationships with people and manage difficult situations. There are times where your artist and the promoter are opposed and you’re the person in the middle that has to make it happen.
How have you seen the role of an agent change throughout your career, if you have?
I do think it’s changed. The electronic scene has changed a lot from when I first got into it. There were major agencies that were always doing what they’re doing, but electronic music is much more mainstream than it was when I started. Along with that comes bigger fees, bigger opportunities, bigger deals. You have to learn how to evolve.
Agents also give more of their perspective in terms of building a strategy for an artist, really getting in-depth and delivering very intricate plans for two and five years – building careers and not just booking shows. There’s a lot of strategy that is involved in this.
What are the biggest challenges that come with building live careers, especially in the electronic music scene, in 2024?
Coming out of Covid, this scene has had to rebound. The way people throw events, what artists are looking for and the way fans interact with artists is different.
In some ways, it is easier to break through, because you don’t necessarily have to have representation to get noticed or to get booked. Social media has changed the game incredibly. People have far easier access to artists, and artists can promote themselves much easier than in the past.
At the same time, having talent and having an agent were things that maybe people thought would automatically make you successful or breakthrough, and that isn’t necessarily the case.
There are so many artists coming out every day. We’re inundated with people who want us to sign them. Every single day, I probably get five or six emails about some new artist. So, even though the access is greater, because of that, it’s attractive to more people, and it’s harder to break through without having a team. For young artists, it takes a lot of resources to do that.
What’s your perspective on the health of the live music scene generally, post-Covid? I hear that it’s booming for the acts in the top 1% and it can be very challenging for medium to small acts to make a profit. Are you feeling that?
Absolutely. Post-Covid, we all had to evaluate, how are we doing this? Alongside the small- to mid-range artist, the small- to mid-range promoter also struggles. Now, you’ve got artists who have been out of work so they’re going to want to be aggressive with their fees and sometimes, the small- to mid-range things get priced out on the promoter side.
People are also not able to casually club-go as they used to. I feel like people are looking for big events, all day and all night, like festivals. In some markets, that every weekend casual club-goer doesn’t really exist anymore. People are like, ‘I’ve only got so much funds that can go to entertainment. Am I going to go to this one little random club somewhere, or am I going to save up my money and go to this festival or 24-hour party?’
There’s a whole bunch of day-into-night events that are huge across New York, Chicago and places like that. So they’ve had to get more creative. I do think that clubs are still trying and working, they’re just a little more conservative with their offers, which affects artists as they’re being paid less in most cases.
How are you navigating that with the acts that you’re working with, especially the ones early on who need to build up a career?
For my younger artists, we do the things that we can do, which is, being in the studio making music, being out there, taking all the opportunities that you can get and maximizing them.
For the financial side of things, we’re doing a lot more bonuses or things like that on the back end so that promoters aren’t losing out. That could mean, say, if a club has a 500 capacity, they’re going to give you $3,000 as a guarantee and if you sell 450 tickets, you get an extra $2,000. If they do well, then everybody does well and that helps give them a little bit of protection.
It also helps the artist see their value and how their ticket sales are. So everybody’s incentivized to promote the event and ensure its success. We don’t want to lose that small- to mid-range promoter because that’s how you grow the artists.
On the subject of representation, which I know is important to you, what would you like to see from the wider music industry that would improve diversity both on the business and artist side?
On the artist side, that’s gotten a lot better. There are many talented Black women who are doing their thing and we’ve seen that improve incredibly since the pandemic.
On the business side of it, I take mentorship really seriously and try to interact with younger women. In my last round of hiring, I saw a lot more women applying for these jobs than ever before. When you see there are women who are agents, managers or any of these sorts of roles, you feel, ‘OK, yeah, I can do that’. So it’s super important.
Can you pinpoint the best career-related advice that you’ve been given?
A good friend of mine and a mentor who doesn’t work in the music industry, although she did for many years, said always stay true. That could mean a lot of different things but for me, it’s meant to be good with my word: saying what I’m going to do and try to be really impeccable with that.
“keeping your passion for this is the most important thing.”
Also, keeping your passion for this is the most important thing. We have to put so much energy into our work and knowing that what you’re doing makes a difference [with] those little things, like treating people really well, being fair and being honest. That type of stuff is what she meant.
What would you say is the most exciting development happening in the music business right now?
I love seeing how far dance music has come, to see how it’s taking over. You have these huge festivals, whereas before we would have maybe had one little tent somewhere, off to the side. Now, these are the main headliner acts. It shows that this is not a fad.
This is a very serious genre, just as anything else, and people have gravitated towards it. I never would have thought that some of the main Coachella headliners and major festivals in the world would be showcasing electronic music in the way that they do.
Is there anything that needs to happen to ensure the continued growth of the electronic music sector?
As fees and these scenarios grow, at a certain point, we are going to price people out and then we start getting into a dangerous pattern. We all want to make money, and that’s a super important thing, but we need to watch out and take care of the fan experience, because that is ultimately the people who give us our jobs.
What would you change about the music industry and why?
It’s very cutthroat. That’s not great, it’s not fun. It’s probably the hardest part of the job. You can sign someone, build them up and pour everything into them and then they’ll go to another agency. It hurts every single time. That would be really hard to change because it’s just human nature.
Do you have any advice for any aspiring agents?
Be sure that it’s what you want to do. Being an agent and breaking into the music industry takes a long time. Before you’re making decent or liveable money or even have a roster, you’ll probably be working on your own for a six or seven-year period.
Have a really clear vision. Be highly organized and very focused. You have to have a strong work ethic. You have to be a self-starter. No one’s going to pass you a task and tell you what you need to do to get from A to Z. You’ll have guidance, hopefully, but you have to really want to learn. Be hungry and go after it each and every day, because it’s highly competitive.
Virgin Music Group is the global independent music division of Universal Music Group, which brings together UMG’s label and artist service businesses including Virgin and Ingrooves.
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