MBW’s World’s Greatest Managers series profiles the best artist managers in the global business. In this feature, we meet Sam Denniston, founder of Verdigris Management and manager of Jungle. World’s Greatest Managers is supported by Centtrip, a specialist in intelligent treasury, payments and foreign exchange – created with the music industry and its needs in mind.
It’s Coachella 2024 and Sam Denniston has a problem.
The Verdigris Management founder is watching his clients Jungle smash their set on the Outdoor Theatre stage, but an issue with the side screens has sent him off to find the festival’s production manager. Except he can’t get to where he needs to go, because of a huge security presence.
“I was like, ‘I need to get through’,” he chuckles. “And then I clocked Taylor Swift dancing with her huge boyfriend and was like, ‘OK, I get it!’ Donald Glover was in the audience as well – it was pretty cool…”
Denniston is getting used to rubbing shoulders with A-listers. After 11 years of operating happily under the radar, Jungle and their manager are suddenly gaining access to the industry’s inner sanctums.
Certainly, the campaign for Jungle’s fourth album, Volcano, has been remarkable by any standards, let alone those of a veteran dance music act that has always done things its own way.
Earlier this year, they won their first ever BRIT Award (Best Group) and played live at the ceremony on prime-time Saturday night ITV, and were then asked back for more on The Jonathan Ross Show.
Their smash hit single, Back On 74, has flown past 225 million streams and 7.1 billion TikTok views, while cracking sales, Spotify and Shazam charts everywhere from the UK to New Zealand and most points in between (including Costa Rica, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Lithuania and Peru).
They now have over 14m Spotify monthly listeners and over 750,000 Instagram followers. They have their own Fortnite emote and a massive GAP sync/brand partnership, featuring superstar Tyla recreating the Back On 74 video moves. And they’ve sold out venues across Europe, Australasia and America (including Red Rocks), with their biggest ever UK show coming up at London’s O2 Arena in September.
“We’re talking 11 years of meticulous planning, hard work and constantly touring.”
“When a lot of artists blow up, the public perception is that it’s an overnight success,” Denniston says as he welcomes MBUK into Verdigris HQ, hidden behind an anonymous door on a Shepherd’s Bush side street. “But I’ve been working with Jungle literally since day one – we’re talking 11 years of meticulous planning, hard work and constantly touring the globe. It feels great but, dare I say it, well-deserved after a lot of hard work…”
Denniston has certainly put a shift in. He grew up in Putney, South-West London and went to an arts-friendly school that encouraged his interest in music. Further inspiration came from his dad’s funk/R&B record collection and his mother’s mission to help opera reach a more diverse audience by broadcasting performances to outdoor audiences via big screens.
Enthralled by the 2000s indie-rock explosion – Kings Of Leon, The Libertines and Razorlight – he set his heart on an artist career, only to discover he was a “truly terrible songwriter”. Instead, he joined production company Blink Productions, working on video shoots and running errands, until he met Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland.
At the time they were in five-piece indie rockers Born Blonde and smarting from an ill-fated major label deal. Denniston recommended they try a new direction – three of the band weren’t interested, but Lloyd-Watson and McFarland listened and, between them, they developed the Jungle concept.
Two successful albums on XL followed before they left the indie label, signed with AWAL and headed for the stratosphere.
Denniston has been there every step of the way, going to every show, anywhere in the world in the early years – despite a rare neurological autoimmune condition that means he has to visit hospital every two weeks for intravenous treatment.
“We became a very tight trifecta,” says Denniston. “Every decision would be made between the three of us and, more often than not, we could move forward very quickly because the three of us were thinking the same thing at the same time.”
Jungle’s line-up has since been supplemented by Lydia Kitto – whose songwriting prowess Denniston credits with making a huge impact, not least on Back On 74 – while Charlie Di Placido’s creative work with Lloyd-Watson on Jungle’s videos and the GAP campaign, is also cited as key to their success.
Verdigris has also grown. It’s set up like an artist services company, with specialists in particular areas and Denniston keeping a watchful eye across each project. He praises senior director Adam Faires for his work on the band’s sync and brand business and overall growth, and hails the entire team for “working in perfect harmony” on the Volcano campaign.
The Verdigris roster also features the likes of Hot Chip, Priya Ragu and rising star Bea And Her Business, as well as a producer/mixer/songwriter roster and a publishing division, but Denniston is eying further expansion.
“We’ve always got space for more,” he says. “I’d love to welcome in an established client that wants their career to take a new path or needs reinvigorating.”
First though, he sits down with MBW to talk us through the lore of the Jungle…
How has it been seeing Jungle welcomed into the mainstream after all those years on the underground?
It’s been wonderful to have a seat at those tables. That’s always where I thought the band should be and have always pushed them as their manager.
“I see them as a Glastonbury headliner and we’re not going to stop until we get there.”
I see them as a Glastonbury and Coachella headliner one day, and we’re not going to stop until we get there. Our BRITs performance is up there as the most viewed performance along with Dua Lipa – Jungle can quite happily hold their own amongst the pop stardom we’re normally used to seeing on these programmes.
How have you managed to translate social media virality into real-world success such as ticket sales?
Well, Jungle have always done incredibly well live. They’ve been that sleeper artist; often promoters are taken aback by how big they are.
We’ve tended to work with independent promoters globally, we haven’t gone in with big promoters because we like being nimble and being able to dictate what price we do tickets at.
Their live trajectory has been slow and steady, but the growth has continually been there. They’ve never not sold out a London show and, with their agent Ed [Thompson, ATC Live], we’ve been incredibly strategic, never going into rooms that we can’t sell out.
On the last campaign, we sold out four Brixton Academys, which is 20,000 tickets, and now we’re doing the O2, which is slightly less. But the O2 holds much more resonance!
How often do you disagree with the band?
We’ve always had a relationship where we can argue with each other, in a good way. It’s like politics: it’s good to have a strong opposition party to make you think and make sure you’re able to justify your decision.
Ultimately, as a manager, you have to trust your artist and back them. I will always do what they want to do, as long as I feel they’ve listened and had the chance to process what I’ve said. Equally, sometimes you can be dead sure about something as a manager, have a conversation with your artist, turn around and go, ‘Shit, maybe what they’re saying is the right thing’.
So, we have a very healthy respect for each other and a very open relationship where we can all be honest, without anyone getting too bruised by it.
How big a decision was the split with XL?
It felt like a fairly mutual decision. We just got to the point where there was creative difference between where the label felt they should be going and, with Josh in particular, what he wanted to be putting out visually.
The relationship was a bit fractious, and it was hard to see how they could move forward. I don’t think either party was to blame, that’s just what happens sometimes. You grow up, take a look at your business partner and go, ‘This relationship isn’t right anymore’. But I adored working with XL, they were brilliant as a label. I would hope there’s no bad blood.
So presumably AWAL is the right fit?
Yes. I’d worked with AWAL across some other clients. I’d really enjoyed the autonomy we were given as a management company and we’d had success.
When it came to figuring out the best partner, we didn’t really need A&R-ing. The band have a very strong sense of the records they want to make, and the proof is in the pudding: they’ve made great records time and time again, and had success.
What we needed was a brilliant international structure, people who’d been in the game long enough to know what they were doing, but a younger company that was forward-thinking and able to adapt to the modern climate.
AWAL have been a huge component to Jungle’s success, the whole team are brilliant to work with. [AWAL COO] Paul Hitchman’s got vast experience within the industry, but he’s always treated me like an equal, which I’ve really respected. We’ve always been able to have honest, frank conversations with him.
I approached it with a level of trepidation, for sure. Not because I’m anti-major labels, but with any bigger corporation buying a slightly smaller corporation, you worry that the culture would change. Thus far, I haven’t found anything different – the Sony presence seems to be very much in the background.
Does the AWAL deal mean Jungle are making lots of money out of Back On 74’s streaming success?
They are. Jungle have always been in this amazing situation where they’ve actually made money from all of their businesses fairly early doors.
We recouped our XL deal pretty quickly, because they hit that sweet spot where they sold records but also did great synchronisation business globally. So, from day one, they’ve made money from the recording side and the publishing side – I’m very aware this is unusual!
But the revenue from being on a far more artist-friendly deal dwarfs what you’d get on an old-school deal. As a manager, I’d find it incredibly difficult to justify doing those 80/20 deals; they’re a thing of the past. I don’t think any label system that clings on to that belief will be around for that much longer.
Some majors are probably still doing them…
Yeah, but at least they’re now moving to licences where you get your rights back after 10, 12, 15 years. Labels owning masters in perpetuity is criminal, quite frankly.
In general, does streaming generate enough money for artists and songwriters?
I sit somewhere in the middle on this. People forget that we were at a period of time in the music industry where piracy was huge. There was the potential that, if the DSPs hadn’t come along and solved the problem, there would have been no music industry, because everyone had got used to whatever music they wanted being totally free.
Spotify came along and offered this revolutionary model, where every single record was at your fingertips for a reasonable price. That’s a brilliant thing and that entrepreneurship should be celebrated.
“I don’t think DSPs get enough credit for the problem that they solved.”
The DSPs can always be paying artists and songwriters more, and that needs to be constantly examined. There’s a lot of talk at the moment about the bundling system and there being a reduction to songwriters in the US from Spotify – that’s shocking. But I don’t think the DSPs get enough credit for the problem that they solved.
I see artists wading into the conversation and taking aim at Spotify and I’m like, ‘You should check the deal you did with the record label before you go banging the drum against the DSP’.
How about TikTok? Have Jungle made any money from their huge popularity on the platform?
It remains to be seen! TikTok is such a young, explosive platform – Universal pulling all their catalogue sent quite a signal, but TikTok seem to be pretty sure of themselves as a company. They’re pretty fierce with the image they portray.
There’s no doubt that, with the virality they achieved on the platform, there was a benefit to the artist on more traditional streaming platforms. But there hasn’t been enough time to see how much money Jungle have made from their Back On 74 moment.
Are you worried about the impact AI could have on the industry?
I might be being incredibly naïve, and these might be words I regret, but I don’t see it as a threat at all.
From everything I’ve seen, AI can’t compete with human ability; it’s miles off. I’ve messed around on Suno and it’s so clearly created by artificial intelligence. Judging by the rate it’s evolving, it might be a threat in the future. But there will always be a want for a human to connect with a human.
Tell me about your experience working in the music industry with a neurological condition…
I was diagnosed at the age of 16, so I can’t really remember life before it, but it would be remiss of me to say it hasn’t shaped the way I am.
When I was a younger manager, I was very conscious of it. I worried – I hope needlessly – that I would lose a client because of it. I was very conscious of making sure I came across as strong and stable and as if there wasn’t anything wrong.
As I’ve got older, I’ve realised that, for the most part, people are incredibly understanding that people’s health goes wrong and that’s not their fault. Josh and Tom have always been incredibly supportive.
I would have never spoken about it at the age of 24 – it’s only now I’m 35 that I can talk openly about the fact that, from the age of 16, I haven’t been able to use my right hand properly.
My condition, which is called multifocal motor neuropathy, [affects] between one in 100,000 and one in a million people, which makes me feel incredibly special!
But I don’t want it to define my success. I want it to be a sidenote but, if my brief achievements in music make other people who have any form of mental or physical disability go, ‘That’s cool, that guy has had to adapt to life with that, maybe I can have a go at it too’, that would be wonderful.
If you could change one thing about the music industry, right here and now, what would it be and why?
More transparency. When our publishing company was coming out of its deal, we were potentially looking to go off by ourselves and set up with all the different PROs and societies around the world.
And then we found it was such a spider’s web of complexity. There were all these different people taking from the artists at different points.
The deeper you go into the mechanics of the music industry, the more depressing it gets, and the more you realise it’s made complex on purpose, so that artists and managers can’t understand it.
We need to make sure more cash is flowing back to the artist because, otherwise, there won’t be a fresh crop of talent. There won’t be new artists coming through if artists can’t get paid properly, without all these bottom feeders taking money from them at each point.
I sit here understanding that I work in the service industry; I take commission from the artist, but at least I take after the artist earns. I don’t take before the artist earns.
There’s a lot of stuff that needs to change and there’s an old guard that sits there profiteering off stuff. If more people knew about it, they’d be quite shocked.
