Gary Marella On Taking Verzuz On The Road, Owning Q1, The Triller Deal

Pollstar caught up with Marella – the former head of promotions for Universal Music (and former assistant to music industry legend Jimmy Iovine), who is now managing producers and about to launch Beatcub, a start-up to disrupt and benefit producers, songwriter and writers – to get the lowdown on Verzuz’s gangbuster success.

Gary Marella: Tim and Swizz, from the day they did it, they had this sense that this was bigger than just a pandemic piece of content or entertainment. It’s become this amazing piece of content and form of entertainment that people love. We just announced Earth, Wind & Fire and The Isley Brothers.

I saw that. There’s some real battle hatred going on in some of these, like DeAndre Hopkins and Jalen Ramsey aren’t besties; and Gucci and Jeezy have serious beef, do you the hostility is part of the appeal? 
People are intrigued. People are like, “Is something going to go down? Is this going to get ugly here?” Obviously, I’m so glad it hasn’t happened. And we’ve really tried to stress the word celebration more than battle. There was a couple key major artists that really stressed that before they did it

Ashanti and Keyshia Cole had the biggest Q1 stream, did they have history?
They did. And that was tough because Ashanti had COVID, so we had to cancel the first time. Keyshia wasn’t feeling well the second time and we almost had to cancel. We had to do that one in two locations, so the production wasn’t as simple or clean aesthetically as the other ones. They were both easy and great to deal with. We could tell the second we announced that, the feedback was phenomenal. And when we cancelled, people were really upset. People were having viewing parties, like Super Bowl parties. It just goes to show the fans are just so into it and passionate about it.

Have you had any worries with some of the intense hostilities?

I got to tell you the Gucci-Jeezy one, that was one where internally, we were just saying, “Oh, shit. Is this going to get ugly?” You had a couple of things there. You had way too many people in the venue. We were worried about security. So we had the venue surrounded with security and police. We just didn’t know how it was going to go. We didn’t anticipate things getting physically bad, but with some of those songs they were taking shots at each other again. You could see the comments and feel how tense things were getting. I don’t think anyone anticipated the ending with them making peace.

What venue was it? 

Magic City in Atlanta.

Was there a live audience?
No live audience, there was just a lot of people from both Gucci and Jeezy’s team. And we’re very, very safe. No one has gotten COVID from any of our events, which is important. We do PCR rapid tests the day of. We’ve been very strict.

Tests can be expensive.
I’ve done so many. If I told you our COVID test bills we get every week, it’s astronomical because we just have to do it.

It’s amazing to see how you, Timbaland, Swizz Beatz and Monique Blake have grown and evolved the Verzuz brand, what’s the process?
It’s been an interesting journey. We talk 20 times a day, the four of us on chat honestly, sometimes 100 times a day just nonstop. [laughter] Honestly, it’s like, “Hey, I talked to so-and-so. So-and-so’s in. Yes. Let’s put them with this person.” It’s been a smooth transition. This one that we did on Saturday was the first one we did with Triller. So we’re no longer having the Verzuz battles on Apple. And we’re really happy with the production. It’s always a little nerve-wracking when you’re going to a new platform and it went off great, went off without a hitch. The production was great. The commenting was still there. I think people still want to have a simplistic approach, to being able to watch it on a Smart TV.  I had some issues watching it on Apple TV before even though it was pretty simple, but every once in a while I’d have a hard time finding it. On the Triller feed, it was very easy. You go into Triller Live, click on Live, and right there you can share the screen on any Smart TV in your house. It was very easy.

Chris Polk / Courtesy Verzuz –
Gary Marella

What led to jumping to Triller?

One of the reasons Tim and Swizz did this was they wanted to give back to the creators. That was really, really important to them. The Apple deal didn’t allow that. They gave shares to all of the artists from their portion of the deal. It was a cash and stock deal and they carved out a significant pool from their shares to give to all the artists who had done Verzuz with no deliverables, just like, “Hey, thank you for being a part of this. Enjoy the journey with us, and collectively, we will all participate in the success of Triller moving forward.”

Do you guys have a piece of Triller?
Yes. So, Triller essentially acquired Verzuz, and now it’s being ordered as Triller Verzuz. But the ultimate goal is to drive Triller up to being the number one app.

Do you know the numbers?
I don’t have Triller’s numbers yet, but I do know that it was over 1.1 million on the Instagram side.

So there’s been sports, comedy,  old school legends, how are these opportunities coming to you, how are you manifesting them and how is the decision-making process enacted?

Tim, Swizz, Monique, and I are always throwing out ideas. Tim and Swizz drop a lot of hints on their Instagram Live feed when they do post-battle recaps and we get a lot of feedback there from people and a lot of suggestions. Artists are also starting to come to us. 

The concept could be applied to almost anything, couldn’t it? Politics, race car drivers or whatever.

I think what Tim and Swizz have absolutely nailed here is just and incredible cultural following.

Aren’t you working with Toni Wallace at UTA? 

Yeah, that’s my girl. I love Toni.

She’s one of Pollstar’s Women of Live honorees.

She should be. She is amazing. From day one, when we started speaking with brands– we all know brands, Swizz has brought a lot to the table. And he’s like, “Hey, I spoke with Top Ciroc, who  wants to be in.” Even then, Toni was like, “Cool. Let me roll up my sleeves and help get this done with Diaggio and Ciroq.” Toni brought Pepsi and Doritos to the table. We have another brand that we’re announcing a partnership with. Toni’s been absolutely phenomenal, which has been a huge help. 

And Alisann Blood is her co-head of  music branding with her.

Alisann put together the IBM Timbaland campaign which aired 15 minutes before the Super Bowl started, huge look. Allison’s just phenomenal.

(Photo: CIROC/Courtesy Verzuz) BAD BLOOD: Jeezy (left) and Gucci Mane, who have had serious beef with each for some 15 years, during their Verzuz battle on Nov. 19, 2020 at Atlanta’s Magic City. Atlanta.

Didn’t Verzuz come out of a performance at Summer Jam?

It did. I remember watching Just Blaze with Swizz at Swizz’s house years ago and there was comments during the IG feed about Tim. Then Swizz went out to the McGregor fight that was announced in Brooklyn and challenged Tim. And Tim said, “Yes, let’s do it on social media,” and then we booked the Hot 97 Summer Jam. It’s interesting because I’ve worked with Swizz before. I was head of promotion at Universal for years, and Swizz was signed there. And I’d worked with him and Mo in the past.

What was it like live?
The energy felt great there. And you couldn’t sense it at the Hot 97 Summer Jam. Everybody’s laughing, I think Swizz had his roller skates on, and we were drinking wine during the rehearsal, and the vibe was good. And after Summer Jam, the comments were just saying, “this was amazing.” It was 30 minutes of hit after hit after hit. We had tried to immediately go to Live Nation after that and book it as a tour, and the numbers just didn’t make sense. When you get into a traveling tour and budgets and production and all that, at the end of the day, what talent walks away with just wasn’t going to be enough for us to go out and approach A-level artists to be a part of it, so we kind of put it on ice.

What a difference the pandemic makes.
My God, I know.

Are there talks now with Live Nation or any other promoters to put something together for the road?
A lot of people have been reaching out. We are talking with several people about how to roll out the live component, festival or different parts. We haven’t partnered with anyone and we’re trying to figure that out. Triller now owning the Verzuz name and brand and being a partner, we’ve collectively been putting our heads together with Triller to figure out how to roll that out. I think it’d be cool to see the live component while having the Instagram-Triller live feed as well. We could even go back to repeating some of the first 26 we’ve done, and have those live. I think people would like to see that.

Sartorial Splendor: Earth Wind & Fire Vs. Isley Brothers will Verzuz battle on Sat. April 4 with Steve Harvey hosting

There’s so many live possibilities, you could have a whole battle series and a champion or just get two big ones and put them on a stage at Coachella, Rolling Loud,  Bonnaroo or some other festival.

Maybe do a block at a festival and have a stage for four to five hours and have battles. People have been asking for a Latin battle. 

You mentioned UTA with branding, are you working with them on a tour?   

No. Toni and I have talked about it. They have some key artists. A couple that have already been a part of Verzus but we haven’t gotten into the touring part yet. I can just now start to see that some venues are opening up and I think that will happen organically when things open up. I think everyone is also aware that the second the floodgates open, a lot of these artists are going to want to go out and headline their own tours. At the same time, like you just said, it would be kind of cool to see as part of a couple of festivals. So, we’ll figure it out. 

What about upcoming ones? 

We have the Earth, Wind and Fire one, which I’m really looking forward to in Los Angeles. That’s going to be at a bigger venue. We haven’t figured out the venue yet. But I do want to be a part of them and Tim and Swizz do. Swizz went to a couple. Tim went to the Rick Ross one in Atlanta. 

I would think Verzuz is just well-suited for the live experience where you can hear the audience  oohing and aaahing live as people diss each other.

Yeah, I can’t wait til we can do that. I think that’s going to be great. Once things open up, I think it’d be great to start having fans in the crowd.

I want to know a little bit about your background. You mentioned you were head of promotions at Universal?

Yeah, I started at Interscope as an intern in ’92 in Interscope Publishing, and then I was bumped up. I was Jimmy Iovine’s assistant, ’92 and I think ’93.

Oh my God, what was it like being Jimmy Iovine’s assistant?!

It was literally like boot camp 101. I mean, I watched first hand, ‘Pac and Dre and the Death Row stories and everything, right there with my own eyes and it was crazy. And then I went over Priority Records as the West Coast National Director and went on tour with West Side Connection and Master P and a lot of major acts there. And then, yeah, Monte Lippman brought me to Monte and Keidar, who was chairman of Motown, brought me over in ’99 and I was VP of Promotion and I was in that system for 10 years.  I was Senior Vice President of promotion for Sylvia Rhone on the Universal Motown side for four or five and then left. I ran Akon’s label, went over to Roc Nation after that. Then I started Mono Music, my company.  We manage about 15 producers, including Timbaland and Larrance Dopson and a lot of A-level producers and writers.  And so now focusing on that, Verzuz is obviously taking a lot of time. And then Beatclub is just is me and Tim’s major focus as well.

– Beatclub Homepage

What’s the lowdown on Beatclub?
Beatclub is an artist, producer, songwriter platform where for the first time the world will be able to hear, buy and license beats, loops, samples, a cappellas from the biggest producers and songwriters in the world – Timbaland, Mike Will Made It direct. Go on, hear an unreleased Timbaland beat and buy it. I mean that’s the simplest way to put it and it’s just changing the business. And for the first time, you can go on there and buy it and producers can get 100% – the VIP producers get 100% of their income. They still get publishing. They still get royalties.

When do you launch?
We’re rolling out the beta in late May and that’ll be onboarding and a lot of the VIPs will start to upload tracks, loops, samples, etc. Then we’ll roll out the subscription model, which is for the general producer community, hundreds of thousands of bedroom producers, as people like to call them, will start being on there and then we’ll probably go live in June.

What are you thinking for the year ahead?
Comedy is huge. Another major sports partnership soon. Triller Fight Club is announced, we’re really tied in with them. They have April 17th, Justin Bieber, a lot of major artists performing as a part of Triller Fight Club. So you’re going to see more of that from the Verzuz side intertwined with Triller. And something big coming soon from Timbaland in the NFT space, which I’m working on and which I’m really excited about, and Beatclub we’re rolling out in a couple of months.

You’re doing some really interesting stuff. 

Zach Katz (former BMG U.S. President, current CEO of Raised in Space) told me something last February right before the pandemic as I was just really jumping into this space. I had just closed our A round of funding for Beatclub and he said— I’ll never forget it—He’s like, “You’re about to learn more in the next 12 months, like I have this last 12 months than either of us have learned the last 20 years in the business.” He could not have been more spot on. It’s been an absolute learning curve for me, talking about NFTs and subscription model platforms and all this stuff. I wasn’t even thinking that, I guess that was two years ago, but I just had no real understanding of what everything was. It’s exciting for Tim and I because we’re learning a lot as we go along. And we feel like we’re changing the business a little bit and making our dent. It’s exciting.

Is this the most fun you’ve had in your career?
Without question, every single day. I’m 49, Tim is 49, and we’re so blessed because we’re having so much fun. It’s been an absolute thrill.  It’s been the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.