Top 50 Music Angel Investors in November 2024

Scooter Braun is one of the entertainment industry’s biggest entrepreneurs and innovators and the founder of SB Projects, a diversified entertainment and media company with ventures at the intersection of music, film, television, technology, brands, culture, and social good. Braun has a roster of the top pop culture icons under his management,record label, and publishing companies that include Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Zac Brown Band, and Karlie Kloss.Braun has broken more new artists than any other music executive in the last decade and has expanded his reach by establishing a fund, which invests in some of the largest management, media, and rights companies in the industry. SB Projects houses a film and television production division and also continues to impact new verticals under its tech incubator, Silent Labs, which holds investments in Uber, Spotify, Songza, Casper, Waze, and Pinterest.Braun also leads Ithaca Holdings LLC., a fully integrated holding company with interests across multiple verticals. The company has built an elite portfolio of acquisitions and partnerships including the acquisition of Scott Borchetta's Big Machine Label Group, Mythos Studios with Marvel Founding Chairman David Maisel, the acquisition of Atlas Publishing, and partnerships with management companies.Braun remains committed to SB Projects’ founding philosophy of giving back by serving on the boards of Pencils of Promise and Fuck Cancer, and he, his clients, and his companies have – together – granted more wishes for Make-A-Wish than any other organization in the history of the foundation.

Yat Siu is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Outblaze a messaging communications company that services over 40 million users today based out of Hong Kong.Yat has previously worked for Atari Germany, served as Director and Head of East Coast Operations for Lexicor, established Hong Kong Cybercity (the first free web page and e-mail providerin Asia, later renamed Freenation), as well as AT&T Solutions System Integration practice.He has been named a Global Leader of Tomorrow and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.It has been reported that Yat Siu sold Outblaze messaging to IBM to become Lotus iNotes.Yat is also responsible FON's operations in China.

Actively making new investments in consumer and culture with Marcy Venture Partners, a VC firm co-founded with JAY-Z and Jay Brown. Managing Director at Walden Venture CapitalInvestments include: Savage X Fenty, Pela, Hungry, Wheels, Hipcamp, Partake Foods, Pandora (founding investor - IPO, exit to Sirius XM) , SoundHound, Aarki, goTenna, HatchBaby, TouchBistro (exit), Robust Wealth (acquired by Principal Financial Group), Terayon (acquired by Motorola). Angel investments: include Netflix (IPO), BandPage (acquired by Google), Maestro, Jukely, LyricFind. Prior to Walden, Larry was a digital media sell-side Equity Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown. Led IPOs of Terayon, CBS MarketWatch, Netflix (initial S-1 IPO filing), Maxis (acquired by Electronic Arts), Edmark (acquired by IBM) and among other equity and debt financings (Broderbund, Sierra On-line, Excite@Home, Spectrum Holobyte, CBS Sportsline). Prior experience includes Robertson Stephens & Company, Education: Larry received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley. See the music he loves at www.pandora.com/people/larry. He was named to the Billboard Power 100 in music and the Twitter 140 to follow.

Ronald Conway has been an active angel investor for over 15 years. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005) whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, Paypal, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail.Ronald was previously with National Semiconductor Corporation in marketing positions from1973-1979, and Altos Computer Systems as a co-founder, President and CEO from 1979-1990. He eventually took Altos public in 1982 and served as CEO of Personal Training Systems (PTS) from 1991-1995. PTS went on to be acquired by SmartForce/SkillSoft.Ronald has served/serves on Boards/Advisory Boards including: Twitter, Digg, Brightmail, Ask Jeeves, Rupture (acquired by EA), Associated Content (acquired by Yahoo!), Facebook, RockYou, ScanScout, Zappos, Trulia, StumbleUpon, Plaxo (acquired by Comcast), Photobucket (acquired by Fox), and Anchor Intelligence (co-founder).Ronald was recently named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top deal-makers in 2008 and is actively involved in numerous philanthropic endeavors. Ronald is Vice Chairman of the UCSF Medical Foundation in SF, Board Member of The Tiger Woods Foundation, and SF Homeless Connect, and on the Benefit Committee of Ronald McDonald House, College Track, and the Blacked Eyed Peas-PeaPod Academy Foundation.Ronald is also featured in Gary Rivlin's book _The Godfather of Silicon Valley: Ronald Conway and the Fall of the Dot-coms, described as 'the man who has placed more bets on Internet start-ups than anyone else in Silicon Valley.

Jacob T. Gaffney (born March 10, 2004) is an American businessman and financier. He is part-owner and the current Chief Executive Officer of Gaffney-Thompson Enterprises, a private equity group based in Cincinnati, Ohio. From 2022 to 2023, the company was presumably under investigation for its former association with racketeer-influenced corruptorganizations.Gaffney was born in Stepnyak, Kazakhstan in March 2004. He attended the Madeira City School District, a public school in Cincinnati, Ohio and graduated in May 2022. In 2018, Gaffney picked up an interest in producing beats on the music-making platform SoundTrap, which was acquired by Spotify. In 2017, Lil Pump signed a deal with Tha Lights Global, a talent management company and record label which is best known for upgrading the careers of Lil Pump, Dominic Fike, Arizona Zervas, and others. His career was based primarily in Cincinnati, Ohio but was influenced by Tha Lights Global, based in Los Angeles, CA. During 2018 and 2019, he connected with several Grammy-nominated producers and others who worked on Billboard-charting singles. In 2019, he purchased a percentage of rights to Lil Tecca’s “RAN$OM” song, which peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Following the commercial and beneficial success in the production of this single, Gaffney continued to produce music and purchased rights to several songs in order to retain royalties of Billboard-charting artists. In December of 2020, Gaffney announced his departure from music production and focused on creating his own record company, and aspired to sign to a major parent organization. He launched 876K Entertainment and distributed music through Sony Music Publishing (U.S.) and Vydia, Inc. (U.S.).In 2021, Gaffney recognized the mass variety of coverage on the topic of Bishop Sycamore, an alleged non-existent high school football team based in Columbus, Ohio. He decided to partner in a venture with former head coach LeRoy Johnson and launched 7130 Entertainment alongside Vydia, Inc., a music distribution company. On August 12, 2022, hip-hop artist Christopher Stewart approved Gaffney's alignment from 7130 Entertainment and transferred executive LeRoy Johnson to Shock The World Entertainment which is based in Los Angeles, CA. Gaffney has worked closely with Stewart, a business relationship dating back to 2019. Christopher, who is the son of Laney Stewart, is a family member related to Christopher Alan "Tricky" Stewart, who is known for production within their RedZone Entertainment company, founded in 1995, and are responsible for over 25 million records sold. They have worked with clients such as The Dream, Rihanna, Celine Dion, Justin Bieber, and Beyoncé.On September 13, 2022, it was announced that Gaffney would enter into the process of incorporating a private-equity firm, known as Gaffney-Thompson Enterprises. Following the filing of incorporation with the State of Ohio, it was alleged that G.T. Enterprises was involved in foreign business operations that spanned from the United States, United Kingdom, and Mexico. In November 2022, subsidiary companies connected to G.T. Enterprises in the state of Texas were investigated for organized crime allegations.

Steven Cox is the Founder and CEO at TakeLessons.

Nas, byname of Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, also called Nasty Nas, (born September 14, 1973, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.), American rapper and songwriter who became a dominant voice in 1990s East Coast hip-hop. Nas built a reputation as an expressive chronicler of inner-city street life.Nasir Jones, the son of a jazz musician, grew up in public housingin Queens, New York. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade and searched for a creative outlet, finally settling on hip-hop. His breakthrough came in 1992, when his song “Half Time” (credited to Nasty Nas) appeared on the sound track to the film Zebrahead. Columbia Records soon signed him to a contract. His debut recording as Nas, Illmatic (1994), drew widespread acclaim for its poetic narration of hard-edged inner-city life.The more pop-oriented approach of It Was Written (1996) helped that album reach an even wider audience than its predecessor but ignited a recurring tension in Nas’s career between the appetite of the pop audience and the demands of hip-hop purists. He maintained his commercial appeal with I Am... (1999), although by that time he had also become embroiled in a public feud with fellow rapper Jay-Z over which of the two was the preeminent voice in East Coast hip-hop. The schism inspired Stillmatic (2001), which many fans considered a return to form. The two rappers publicly settled their differences in 2005, and shortly thereafter Nas signed with Def Jam, of which Jay-Z was president at the time.Nas’s penchant for provocation marked Hip Hop Is Dead (2006) and an untitled follow-up (2008), while Life Is Good (2012) struck an introspective tone. He also notably collaborated with reggae musician Damian Marley (the youngest son of Bob Marley) on the album Distant Relatives (2010).Nas also made occasional film appearances, notably in Belly (1998), a crime drama in which he starred opposite rapper DMX, and Black Nativity (2013), an adaptation of Langston Hughes’s gospel play.

Cooper Turley Crypto Strategy at Audius

Recently named as one of Billboard’s 2021 Change Agents, as well as one of the World's Greatest Managers by Music Business Worldwide, Mark Gillespie is a world-class British CEO, manager, and producer whose vision and drive have led him to build Three Six Zero into the global entertainment powerhouse that it is today. Widely recognized as oneof the industry's preeminent executives, Gillespie has been instrumental in guiding the careers of Frank Ocean and Calvin Harris, most recently closing a deal in excess of $100MM for his publishing catalogue. With offices in Los Angeles, Miami, and London, Gillespie provides the leadership necessary to ensure that Three Six Zero and its clients remain at the forefront of the music, film, television, and digital content landscapeFueled by a lifelong passion for music, Gillespie launched his career in his hometown of Birmingham, UK, where he proved to be an invaluable asset for superclub Godskitchen. Since then, he has established himself as a visionary in the entertainment industry, having worked in partnerships with Sony Music Entertainment, Jay-Z and Roc Nation, and most recently Westbrook Entertainment, whose talent roster includes Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, and the entire Smith Family.A relentless pioneer and entrepreneur, Gillespie has joined forces with Pete Tong MBE to run Three Six Zero Recordings, his own in-house record label, while continuing to expand an already successful presence in film and television. Along with several other projects in the pipeline, the company's first feature film – prestige drama, VOX LUX – starring Natalie Portman and Jude Law, including an original soundtrack by Sia, was released in 2018.With a passion for innovation at the intersection of media, technology, and apparel, Gillespie has invested in companies such as Outdoor Voices, Stance, Ember Technologies, Stem Disintermedia, and Saavn. Committed to giving back and continuously fostering artistic talent, Gillespie has also remained a longtime philanthropist and advocate, sitting on both the Music Committee of Children in Conflict and the core screening panel of the Recording Academy. In his downtime, Gillespie enjoys following Manchester United and is an avid collector of modern art.

David's background is a blend between entrepreneurship, building technology firms, and a passion for music and gear. David Kalt is the founder and CEO of Reverb.com, an online marketplace for used, vintage and handmade guitars and gear. Kalt is also the owner of the Chicago Music Exchange, one of the world's largest vintage guitardealers.Prior to launching Reverb.com, Kalt was the cofounder and CEO of online broker optionsXpress (#10 on the 2005 Inc 500 list), which went public in 2005 and was sold to Schwab in 2008 for $1 billion.Kalt was also the founder of ClientBASE, the first CRM solution for travel agents and tour group operators, which is now offered by the Sabre Travel Network.

Geoff Ralston is the President, CEO, and Partner of Y Combinator. He previously worked at Imagine K12 as a Founder. Geoff Ralston attended INSEAD.

Tom Ryan is CEO and Co-Founder of Pluto TV and President, CEO, and Streaming at Paramount, the leading free streaming television service in America that is also available in 22 countries across Europe and Latin America. Pluto TV carries and programs more than 250 live channels and thousands of on-demand movies and TV shows in partnership withhundreds of major TV networks, movie studios, publishers, and digital media companies. Each month over 36 million viewers tune in to watch premium news, TV shows, movies, sports, live events, cartoons, and trending digital series on mobile, web, and living room devices. Pluto TV is a top free app on Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Android mobile, and also powers built-in streaming television services on Vizio LG, and Samsung smart TVs. Earlier in his career, Tom served as CEO of Threadless (a popular crowdsourced design and e-commerce company), SVP of Digital Strategy at EMI Music as well as co-founder of Cductive (an early digital music retailer company that he merged with eMusic). He holds an AB from Dartmouth College and an MBA from INSEAD in France.

Bill Tai is the Chairman of the Board, Co-Founder, and Founding Investor of Treasure Data. He previously worked at Maxthon International Limited as a Chairman of the Board. Bill Tai attended Harvard Business School.

Scott is an American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is best known as a co-founder of IronPort and an early advisor and board member at PayPal.Scott Banister started his career as a pioneer in the email business. He was Founder and VP of Technology at ListBot, the largest ASP for business email list hosting. ListBot was acquired byMicrosoft. After ListBot, Scott spent his time working with other start-ups as a board member and investor. These start-ups include eVoice, creator of the first email-enabled home voicemail service, which was acquired by AOL in 2001. He served as VP of Ideas at idealab!, where he contributed numerous innovations, including the unique bid-for-placement search engine model that powers Overture. In December 2000, with Scott Weiss, Banister co-founded IronPort, an email appliance provider that was acquired in 2007 by Cisco for US$830 million.Scott Banister is co-founder and Chairman of Other private equity investments include Zappos.com, LiveOps, Facebook, Hi5.com, Tagged.com, iLike, and Causes.com.Banister attended University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from which he dropped out in 1996 to move to Silicon Valley. He currently lives in Half Moon Bay, California with his wife Cyan.

Alex Zubillaga is the founder of 14W, a New York-based, venture capital firm focused on consumer Mobile, Web, E-commerce, CPG, and Media.Previously, Alex was Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy and Business Development at Warner Music Group (WMG). Prior to WMG, Alex founded Net Uno, a leading Venezuelan cable television and broadbandoperator where he served as CEO and Chairman.

Ludvig has a background as a co-founder of the company The Astonishing Tribe, TAT, and is an active angel investor. He is passionate about helping strong teams that want to combine design and technology to create innovative companies that really make a difference.TAT became during the beginning of the 2000s, the world leader in user interfacesfor mobile phones and delivered design and software for brands like Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Google. In late 2010, TAT was sold to Canadian Research in Motion, RIM, which makes BlackBerry handsets.

Dennis Phelps is the General Partner of IVP.

Jason Calacanis is the Founder and CEO of Inside.com and Launch. He previously worked at Weblogs as a Co-Founder and CEO. Jason Calacanis attended Fordham University.

Eric Ries is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Long-Term Stock Exchange. He previously worked at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers as a Venture Advisor. Eric Ries attended Yale University.

Paolo Barberis is the Founder at Nana Bianca.

The Weeknd, also known as Abel Makkonen Tesfaye is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and producer. The singer started in 2010 and released 4 albums and 43 singles.

Matthew Papakipos

Christer K. Andersson is an investor in early stage angel and venture rounds. Christer's main focus is in software tech start-ups that have a certain level of disruption in their idea. The current portfolio includes start-ups based in USA, Sweden, India , Israel, and Germany and cover technologies in Crypto / BlockChain, ArtificialIntelligence, BioTech, Enterprise SaaS, MusicTech, Mobility, and Futureofwork.

Sebastian Knutsson is one of our founders and has served on our Board of Directors since October 2003, as our chief creative officer since June 2004 and as our executive product developer from February 2003 to June 2004. Sebastian has more than 18 years of experience in the Internet industry. As chief creative officer, he leads the productstrategy, games development and service offerings for King. Sebastian has designed more than 100 games for King.

Hany Nada is the Co-Founder and Partner of ACME Capital. He attended the University of Minnesota.

Jason Flom

Per Brilioth - CEO @ VNV Global

Kevin Mayer is the Co-CEO & Founder of Candle Media. He attended Harvard Business School.

Peter is clearly way more than a global music legend. He divides his time and energy between his music, humanitarian projects, business investments and his family.He became an investor and advisor to The Filter in 2006 and brings with him a clear vision of a need for smart filters to help us make sense of a world with too many choices. Workingwith Peter is inspiring – his passion and creativity help drive and motivate the team.

Jörg was appointed to the Board when Access Industries acquired the Company in 2007. Jörg is responsible for the media/online and telecom businesses at Access Industries, which he joined in May 2007. He was previously a Managing Director of Providence Equity Partners. Jörg has been active in the media and communications space since 1992. Hehas, as an investor, been involved with several businesses dealing with sports rights (RGE Group, Digiturk), internet services (Bibit NV, Adyen, Speedera Networks) and content delivery (Casema NV, Comhem AB). Jörg’s current board positions include Tory Burch LLC, Rebate Networks GmbH, AINMT Holdings AB, RGE Group Limited, Icon UK Distribution Holdings Limited and Mendeley Research Networks. Prior board positions include Digiturk, Casema NV, Comhem AB, Bibit BV, VersaTel Telecom NV and Speedera Networks Inc.

Roger Ehrenberg is the founder and Managing Partner of IA Ventures, a firm that invests in companies creating competitive advantage through data.

Guy Oseary has spent his career at the intersection of entertainment and technology.He began in his teens at what was to become Maverick Records, and eventually became chairman and partner. He guided the label to sales of over 100 million units globally.Since 2004, Oseary has been a principal at the top entertainment management company,Untitled Entertainment, which clients include Emma Watson, Penelope Cruz, and Lucy Liu and many others.In 2014 Oseary led a partnership that created the largest music management company in the world - MAVERICK. While Oseary personally manages Madonna and U2, the company’s combined 50+ clients include Paul McCartney, Shania Twain, Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj and The Weeknd, and reach over 1 billion people each month.Alongside his Sound Ventures partner Ashton Kutcher, Oseary has made over 200 investments in companies like Airbnb, Spotify, Uber, Houzz, Robinhood & Neighborly.

Craig Kallman - Board of Directors @ RIAA, Recording Industry Association of America

Andrew Gault is tech startup founder with 20 years in technology; investor since 2012Ex-CTO with 14 patents issued & 28 filed. Started life at the European Space Agency, then co-founded GAIKAI in 2008 raising $45m from Benchmark, NEA and Intel; exiting to Sony for $380m. A Scotsman living on the West Coast since 2008, Andrew has an extensiveSilicon Valley network.Specialisms include: AR/VR, robotics, video tech/computer imaging and gaming.

Andrew J Scott, Founding Partner – based in London & San Francisco. 20 years in technology, founder of 6 startups; investor since 2014.As founder launched the world’s first location based social network (Playtxt 2001; patented), online digital news archive (BritishPathe.com, 2002), trust graph/recommendation engine using machine learning(Rummble, 2007; patented). In-between did strategy consulting for VCs and Corporates including Astra Zeneca, AT&T and Alcatel Lucent.Andrew is also co-founder of ICE, a non-profit global network of tech founders and investors, established in 2009.Specialisms include: D2C, social & market networks, B2B SaaS and quantum computing.

Auren Hoffman is the CEO and Chief Historian of SafeGraph and he was the CEO of Rapleaf. Auren holds a B.S.E. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the UC Berkeley. He writes a blog called Summation.

Gary Vaynerchuk is the Chairman of VaynerX. He previously worked at Resy as a Co-Founder. Gary Vaynerchuk attended Mount Ida College.

Baron Davis is the Founder at Baron Davis Enterprise.

Troy Carter is the Founder and CEO of Venice Music. He previously worked at Atom Factory as a Founder and CEO. Troy Carter attended Fairfield University.

I played piano and loved rock music and electronic as well, but hip hop was my foundation. So I stared making songs, never intending them to come out, just making them because I enjoyed what I was doing.

Danny Saucedo

As part of the leadership team at Sequoia Capital India, Rajan is focusing on developing its early-stage program Surge, into the world's top scale-up program for startups by acting as an investment advisor and mentor to the programme's founders. Surge aims to engineer rapid early progress for startups, by enabling disproportionateaccess to capital, talent, network and decades of company-building knowledge. Rajan's deep understanding of technology, operating expertise and a track record of growing tech businesses across the region will help Surge's founders scale and build the businesses of tomorrow.Prior to Sequoia, as Head of Google India and Southeast Asia, Rajan played a key role in expanding the regions internet ecosystem while accelerating Google's innovation and growth units. He is also a prolific angel investor who has backed a large number of successful startups at very early stages. Rajan also led Microsoft and Dell in India and was earlier a Partner at McKinsey & Company in Chicago.

I've been fortunate to have spent the last 20 years helping make the careers of talented artists come alive. I was passionate about the bands I worked with, and I truly wanted to help them have the career they wanted and help them become huge. When I founded Aware Records in 1993 and later A-Squared Management in 1999, my goal was to discoverand elevate unsigned artists around the world. Years later, the list of artists I've signed and/or managed now includes household names like John Mayer, Train, Five for Fighting, The Fray, Brandi Carlile, Mat Kearney and many others. I wanted to reach more people in the next phase of my life so I decided to go back to school (at 45 years old) to earn a Master’s in the field of Positive Psychology under Dr. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania. Positive Psychology is about studying and learning how to be satisfied with the past, hopeful and optimistic about the future, and having flow and happiness in the present (Csikszentmihalyi & Seligman 2000).

Paige Craig Is The Partner at Outlander.He attend to the United States Military Academy at West PointUnited States Military Academy at West Point 1992.

Alexis Ohanian is the President and Founder of 776 Foundation. He previously worked at reddit as an Executive Chair and Board Member. Alexis Ohanian attended the University of Virginia.

Agnetha Faltskog is a Swedish singer, songwriter, musician, and actress. She is a member of the pop group ABBA.

Atlas Benjelloun has been working as a Group Chairman, Atlas Finance at Atlas Holding for 13 years. Atlas Holding is part of the Holding Companies & Conglomerates industry, and located in San Francisco, United States.Atlas Benjelloun invest and support curious, mission-minded people who are committed to solving the Internet’s toughestchallenges.

David Spector is an entrepreneur. He founded and runs ThirdLove with his wife, Heidi Zak.They received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2019 for Northern California. ThirdLove has grown to become the third largest online intimate apparel brand in the US behind VS and Aerie (as ranked by NPD). Before starting the company, David was a partner atSequoia Capital focusing on e-commerce, analytics, and consumer internet investments. A graduate of Tulane University where he earned his BA and his MBA from MIT Sloan.

Charles Goldstuck is the Founder and Co-Chairman of Hitco Entertainment. He previously worked at Bertelsman Music Group as a President and COO. Charles Goldstuck attended the University of the Witwatersrand.

Holger Hübner