Allen Kovac is a 40-year veteran of the entertainment industry, having managed a wide range of artists including Blondie, The Cranberries, EnVogue, The Bee Gees, Mötley Crüe and Meatloaf.
He is the founder of indie label Better Noise Music, formerly known as Eleven Seven Records and home to AWOLNATION, Mötley Crüe, Five Finger Death Punch and The HU, and has also promoted artists as diverse as Tom Petty, Talking Heads, Willie Nelson and Boston.
Allen Kovac: Management beginnings
Allen Kovac’s first management client he broke was singer Richard Marx. Speaking to Music Business Worldwide as Manager of the Month in 2015, he recalled how he took the uncommon step of negotiating a brand partnership deal with Polaroid for the artist. He said: “We were using advertising industry techniques, data, when everyone else was relying on their gut.”
Kovac began managing Mötley Crüe in 1994, and by 1998, he had helped the band negotiate their way out of a contract with Elektra Records and acquire complete ownership of their master recordings, with the band able to re-release their catalogue on their own label, Mötley Records.
Similarly, Kovac began managing Blonde in the late ’90s, and enabled their next LP, No Exit (1999), to be self-released by the band 20 years after Heart Of Glass became their first chart-topper.
Allen Kovac: From Eleven Seven to Better Noise
Allen Kovac created Eleven Seven Records, a full service independent label that handles everything from radio and licensing to publicity and marketing, in 2006.
Eleven Seven Music and Eleven Seven Label Group (E7LG) rebranded to Better Noise Music in 2019.
Better Noise Entertainment launched a film division in 2020 called Better Noise Films, with projects including a drama about opioid addiction, a thriller-horror movie and several documentaries.
Allen Kovac: Personal philosophy
Accepting the Innovator Award at the AIM Awards in 2019, Allen Kovac, urged the independent companies and artists at the ceremony not to drink the major label Kool-Aid by judging themselves with their same metrics.
We develop artists. Majors manufacture them. Don’t play their game, and thank you.
Allen Kovac at the 2019 AIM Awards
Speaking to Music Business Worldwide in 2015, Kovac described how his management style does not include friendships: “When I first sign an artist I let them know that I’m not their friend.
“Too many artists don’t measure their manager on their performance; they measure them on how many times they’ve been invited to their house. That’s not my style.”Music Business Worldwide