Q’s With Nelson Albareda, Founder & CEO Of Loud And Live

Loud And Live Founder and CEO Nelson Albareda tells Pollstar he believes there is an opportunity for independent promoters like himself and Move Concerts founder Phil Rodriguez to help Latin music grow at an even faster rate.

Nelson Albareda: So we’ve had the opportunity, not just with our entertainment business, but with our sports business and our marketing business, to pivot into a digital world and virtual experiences. On the music side, the livestreams have given us the opportunity to evolve into a virtual space.

In partnership with Sony Music, we developed a series called En Vivo Live which initially featured two livestreams, with Farruko and Mau y Ricky respectively. With the support of McDonald’s, these livestreams successfully brought these artists and their fans together during the month of October. Additionally, the En Vivo Live platform counted on  Alex Sensation, the renowned Latin DJ, as the host.

In November, we produced a livestream concert with Fito Paez, which was broadcast around the world from the Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires. Today, we are currently working to produce additional livestreams, including with a few global Latin artists. And the whole thing is not just to do the livestream like a concert, we are evolving it and asking the question, “How does the artist speak to the fan in a different way than if you were just watching a concert at home.” Because first of all, we don’t think COVID is going away any time soon, and second, we want to use this opportunity to understand how we engage fans digitally, so when live events coms back, there is still a place and demand for these digital and content opportunities. And I do believe there will be. If you do a global tour with an artist, maybe on the last date of the tour we do a livestream that is like a going-away party, we can stream exclusive content from unique venues that take place on the tour, and we can create digital experiences around that. 

So we’ve worked with the top 50 or 60 brands in the U.S. From Walmart, Dr. Pepper, Keurig, McDonalds, Verizon, State Farm in the Hispanic market going back the last 15 years. We were pioneers, and I’ll give you an example.

I can’t recall the exact date, but I believe it was about 10 years ago, we brought Pitbull together with Dr. Pepper. I remember, back then, going into a board room and them saying they wanted to target Hispanics and, at that point, we said “Pitbull is the guy.” … So we signed Pitbull and the campaign was directed only toward Hispanics. It was huge, and eventually Pitbull blew up and he crossed over and we used Pitbull as the face of college football for Dr. Pepper. Fast forward 10 years, McDonalds came to us in September, and we helped them with the campaign for Travis Scott, the first time since 1992 with Michael Jordan, someone got their own meal, and he was only the second guy to have it. And as we were talking, we said “Hey, there’s a big opportunity here,” and we were able to be the lead agency to spearhead J Balvin’s deal with McDonalds. 

Now this was a general market campaign, it was not targeting Hispanics, and we launched it in October and it did amazingly well. So J Balvin was the third person to have a McDonalds meal around them and McDonalds really embraced J Balvin and his culture. It is using a Latino person to sell McDonalds and engage with non-Hispanic customers, and that was really exciting … to see McDonalds embrace a Latin artist who does not have one song in English.

Now, coming off of the success if the first , we led the development of a second collaboration for the brand targeting Hispanics, a dedicated campaign that will air around the Latin GRAMMY Awards in November.

So 10 years ago we were coming from Hispanic to general market, with Pitbull. And I think this is the first campaign that goes from general market to Hispanic. And I think people are realizing, first of all it is because of sales, and second, people are realizing Hispanic culture and Latin music has gone mainstream. It’s interesting to see Latinos impacting mainstream culture. 

And I don’t think this is just going to be the case with McDonalds, it’s the same thing with music. If you look at urban music right now, the Balvins and Malumas of the world are trending on Spotify’s global top 10. It’s been interesting to see the evolution of brands and how they are embracing the Hispanic customer and seeing how Latin music is influencing mainstream culture. 

Just recently, Maluma dropped a remix of his song “Hawái” with The Weekend. Now, The Weekend is doing a remix with Maluma, whereas in the past, Latin artists would mostly do remixes of general market acts. 

I met Phil through [his sister] Angela. At Loud And Live we are also into developing properties and we put on one of the country’s largest annual Halloween events, the House Of Horror Haunted Carnival in Miami. We’ve worked with The Chainsmokers, Calvin Harris, Steve Aoki, and I hired Angela to do PR for Chainsmokers. So while we were working she said “Hey, you’d get along with my brother, do you know him?” Of course, I knew of her brother, he’s a legend, but I’d never met him.

So she made the connection and now the biggest thing Phil and I are trying to change on the Latin side is ethics, bringing professionalism, quality content and experiences. And, because at Loud And Live our genesis is from marketing, we are asking “How do we transform these artists, by bringing them top notch marketing?” 

The Fito Paez livestream was done on a platform called LivePassPlay, which is the ticketing platform for Move Concerts in Brazil in Argentina. We’ve evolved it from just a ticketing platform to a livestream platform.

Now, if you look at what Phil has done over 35 years, working with the Ed Sheerans, Bruno Mars of the world, Sting and Metallica, Michael Bublé. He has brought his resume in that world and combined it with our footprint in the Latin market. 

At Loud and Live, we’ve grown very quickly to what we estimate is about 20-25 percent of the Latin music market in the U.S. So we have teamed up with Phil to create a footprint that allows us to compete, from Canada to Argentina, against the Live Nations of the world.

I think we’re going to be in a very unique position whenever COVID subsides, because I think the independents are going to play a key role, specifically those independents like us who are able to move quickly. 

We are operating, we have a staff, we do brand partnerships, livestreams, we just formed content division and have signed a deal to produce two HBO specials. One of those I can’t disclose the specifics of, but it is a music special, and the other is another music special with Juan Luis Guerra. 

With the footprint between Move and Loud And Live, with Phil having offices in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and we have an office in Puerto Rico and U.S. footprint and opened an office in Toronto – the idea is that we can compete against Live Nation throughout the Americas. And yes, our next market is Europe. The first European market for us is Spain, and our sports division just opened offices in Spain and Mexico.  

The thing is, touring on the Latin side is very, very different from a general market act. And that’s where, I think, we really can be competitive. We don’t just do Latin business at Loud And Live, but we see there is an opportunity to be competitive at a global level in Latin music. Why is there only AEG and Live Nation on a global level? There is room for a third player, a fourth player.

With Move we are obviously already working with artists that are not Latin. And eventually, I think we could even promote general market acts in the U.S. Why not? 

That is true. I love music, I’m not musically trained, I just have an ear. I don’t do a lot of projects, I pick and choose what I do. 

I started in the label business and one of the first artists I worked with was Celia Cruz, and through that I worked with a gentleman named Israel “Cachao” Lopez, he and his brother Orestes were the guys that create the mambo in the ’20s and ’30s. …

So I produced for Cachao, a live record celebrating his 80th anniversary in the music business. It was a big band, Cuban jazz,  we did “canzones,” classic songs, and a jam session. I produced that and won a Grammy for that for Best Tropical Album, and I won a Latin Grammy. 

I was also nominated for a live album I did with Willy Chirino, we did a special for PBS. And I am currently working on a project, also for Cachao, called “The Last Sessions.” 

A week before he died Cachao had been in the studio and he created seven original tracks, but they’ve never been recorded or released. So I’m putting together an all-star cast … and getting them together to pay tribute to this guy who is the creator of the mambo. That project is scheduled to be released in May. 

So I sit on the president’s advisory council for The Latin Recording Academy and I have a relationship with the Academy going back to 2002. Back then the Latin Grammys were airing on CBS, so we created these festivals, they were called Latin Grammy Street Parties …. We would go into high density Hispanic neighborhoods and we would throw a high-quality festival on the streets and attract 30,000-40,000 people.  

So over a decade we produced probably about 60-70 of these festivals. Then, as trends started to change, we helped create a property called the Latin GRAMMY Acoustic Sessions, a property that continues to take place to this day. 

I’ve seen the evolution of the Latin Recording Academy and the Latin Grammys since its inception and I do think they have been instrumental in raising the bar for Latin music. 

I am proud – and this has nothing to do with our deal with him, as voting was conducted before that came up – that J Balvin has a record amount of nominations this year, with 13. I think it’s great that urban music and reggaeton do have a place in the Latin Grammys, I’m glad the Academy and the members this year recognized that.