Wasserman Music’s Ben Shprits On Fred again.., John Summit, Dom Dolla, Charlotte de Witte & The Dance Music Underground

Ben Shprits always knew he wanted to work in entertainment, but he wasn’t entirely sure what that would look like. Now a senior vice president at Wasserman Music representing major dance acts including John Summit, Fred again.., Dom Dolla, Skream, Charlotte de Witte, Afrojack, AYYBO and more, his early days in the industry included internships and jobs in legal offices, PR firms and management companies. 

Shprits was first introduced to dance music culture in 2001, when he attended the Inner City Festival in Amsterdam as a college student. 

“There were 40,000 people in this place, and I was a college student who just turned up for my winter break,” he tells Pollstar. “I remember coming back to my college roommate, and telling him what I saw in Amsterdam. There were all these people there, and it was just straight electronic music, and I’ve never seen anything like it before. This wasn’t happening in America yet at that time. And everyone thought I was out of my mind, that I was crazy.”

He started his career working in genres such as rock, jazz, blues and bluegrass before making the switch to electronic music, but listened to the genre all along. 

It was when he was 20-years-old, and throwing a showcase in Times Square to try and get an agent for a client he was managing that Shprits got the opportunity to become an agent himself. He saw Wayne Forte, then at Entourage Talent, walking out after just two songs, and chased him down the street. Forte told Shprits to call him, and offered him a job. 

“He brought me in as an agent on day one, and had me routing tours by day two,” Shprits says.

Eight years after that, he started working in electronic music. 

Now, his roster boasts some of the biggest names in the genre. Fred again.. sold out the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with just five days notice, and his pop-up style of touring has created a worldwide frenzy – since 2021, he’s headlined 52 shows reported to Pollstar’s Boxoffice, with 495,733 tickets sold, grossing a total of $33.5 million. 

John Summit is set to return to New York City in a big way on Sept. 20 and 21, bringing the inaugural Experts Only Festival to Randall’s Island. He headlines major music festivals across the globe and, with 17 headline reports submitted to Pollstar’s Boxoffice dating back to 2021, he’s sold 137,066 tickets, grossing $10.2 million. 

Dom Dolla is hot off the heels of his residency at Hï Ibiza, performed at Lollapalooza, and sold out two Madison Square Gardens all this year. With 26 headline reports submitted to Pollstar’s Boxoffice since 2019, he’s sold 297,032 tickets, grossing $21.9 million.

And those are just a handful of Shprits’ clients. 

You have an interesting roster, where several of your clients have been able to sell out more traditional venues such as Madison Square Garden – a feat that is uncommon within the dance music space. What is your strategy to be able to go about something like that?
Ben Shprits: It’s a journey. It’s trying to reverse engineer what the moves are to unlock some ideas that are bigger than they seem, and real in the moment that they’re being considered. That’s intention, and it’s having vision and seeing things before they’re obvious. A lot of our business is a gut business, too. When I feel something strong enough, I can figure out a path for it, I can take it there and people will get it eventually. It seems like it’s happening more now than ever. You’re seeing acts start in clubs that end up in the biggest stadiums and arenas around the world.

Your clients John Summit and Fred again.. have some of the most massive careers in dance music. Both also have entirely different approaches to how they go about touring. As the agent working on both of these clients, how do you make yourself more versatile to fit what your artist needs?
Every artist has a different set of goals or a different approach to how they want to communicate with their audience. From my end, I feel like it’s my responsibility to work with the managers and artists to find ways to execute the vision. I think it’s really like a team working together and understanding what the best timing is to do things. Understanding what the market demand is and picking the right moments. You want to be zoomed out, looking at things from an eagle eye view and understanding how you’re impacting off of certain moments to unlock bigger moments.

You have a diverse roster in terms of genre, as well. What are you looking for with your clients?
The point of difference, first and foremost, is originality and confidence, like an understanding of self. Obviously, feeling the music and getting that feeling when you hear something special. It starts with the music. I was a fan of Fred’s well before I signed him, and with John Summit – the first time I heard his demos and I saw what they were working on, it was very clear it was a unique, special talent. It starts with the talent, of course. And then it’s: How are they communicating to their audience? What kind of engagement are they having? How different does it feel from other things?

Because if it feels like everything else, it’s hard to stand out. I signed a young artist who’s on the rise right now called AYYBO. When I hear his approach to house music, I can tell immediately he’s trying to find his own path. He’s trying to create his own identity. I’d qualify him as sort of an indie house act, because he can go anywhere sound-wise and as soon as you hear the first beat, you know it’s him. 

You also have Skream, and while he does a lot more house now, he did due a massive dubstep run last year. How did that come about?
It’s just part of Skream’s DNA. He’s a multi-genre maven. He’s a true DJ’s DJ. He knows how to read a room and play what he feels is going to rock the house that night. You can always expect there to be a bit of dubstep activity with Skream, but for the most part, he’s out there doing his regular house, techno and disco. But in terms of straight-up dubstep, that’s something we try to save for special occasions. 

He’s also a rare breed of artist who was able to make this sort of genre transition without having to entirely rebrand and change his name.
That’s very true. I think that speaks to the artistry and talent. It’s a very unique thing to cross genres in such a fluid way without having a different moniker to do so.

Charlotte de Witte, another one of your clients, has been making waves in techno. There’s also been a trend within that genre with female artists taking the lead.
Charlotte is just generational. She’s been at the forefront of moving the genre forward and bringing a very underground sound that was usually on a small stage in the corner somewhere to the biggest stages in the world. She was the first techno artist to play Ultra Music Festival Miami on the main stage, closing Tomorrowland 2022 on the main stage, coming back this year and being the first artist to ever open and close Tomorrowland – it’s just a real honor to work with her and carry forward what she’s doing for the genre.

In general, dance music is looked at as this sort of underground genre, but it makes so much money. It’s very mainstream, but manages to keep its underground feel. How are you balancing that approach with your clients?
It’s important for anything that grows at scale to remember where it came from. And the truth is, this music existed in the clubs for years and years in America before it reached the level of arenas and stadiums. Without the clubs and without people living within the community of dance music on the weekends, being out with one another, hearing new music, being exposed to that genre in that way, we’d never have the commercial success that the genre has. I think there’s a certain responsibility to not lose sight of what the energy is and the real cultural beacon within the communities on a local level. For artists, as they continue to get bigger and play bigger venues, it’s almost equally important to stay close to the genre and where it came from in the club. Fred again.. is an artist who occasionally turns up at nightclubs and does these events. It’s where you can really feel the audience. It’s where you can get that feedback loop that is meaningful, especially as these producers are creating records. Having that feedback loop with a real, live audience there experiencing the music is just as important as selling out the arena. 

The way dance music approaches routing is extremely different from other genres. It’s incredibly events-focused. Fred again.. is a perfect example of that. And John Summit, when he’s coming to New York City this time around, it’s not to play MSG like he did last year, but to throw his own music festival. A lot of artists do these big one-offs, rather than a bus tour. What benefit do you see in doing things that way?
I think it allows artists to really lean into where they’re going and message in a very clear way what their intentions are. Say an artist puts up a tour and it’s got 20 dates on it, you’re obviously spreading that messaging across the country, and it’s very hard to give the attention to each city that truly deserves to maximize the impact. Whereas, when an artist is able to say, “Hey, New York, remember all these memories and all these things we’ve done together?” It really begins to feel a lot more palatable when you can be more specific and direct to lived experiences. It’s interesting because a lot of DJs have this history of announcing one-offs. There’s an intention to want to grow into an artist who announces larger tours. But, the learnings from it are that it’s not necessarily that one way is better than the other, but one allows you to communicate differently than the other. 

The other part with these shows we put on, it’s not four guys in a band with some gear and a curtain behind them. We’re talking about large-scale productions that take days to build that are truly huge investments for the promoter and artist when they’re putting them on. You want to deliver that show with precision. It’s not really the kind of thing you can put up and take down the next day if you’re trying to make maximum impact. 

You’ve had a lot of big moments lately with your clients. Fred again.. made big waves in June for his New York City pop-up. Can you speak on that and his timing for announces ahead of shows.
With Fred again.. you’re talking about a master storyteller who really understands his community and how to create moments that really stay with people. Obviously, the release of “Victory Lap” was so anticipated and there’d been a fair amount of teasing about something happening in New York. The clues that came along ahead of the show were absolutely mad. For everybody who got to experience it, it’s a night they won’t forget anytime soon. Obviously, for those who didn’t get in – which is a lot more than those who did – I guarantee you, we’re working on plans to make all those people happy sometime soon.

And John Summit announced the Experts Only Festival in New York City. The site hasn’t been used since Electric Zoo, and is really filling a hole in the market for a major dance music event. How did this come about?
I’m from New York originally, so the city means a lot to me, personally. I went to many an Electric Zoo in my life, and those were some of the best weekends I can remember of my younger years. The fact that New York didn’t have its own festival, and certain things happening in New York in the moment, with a lot of cancellations of shows. Sometimes, things in life happen exactly as they should, but not necessarily as you initially planned them to. It was the perfect match with this fiercely independent artist and this amazing, fiercely independent promoter in Medium Rare coming together. The pool of experience there is deep. And Adam Richmond over there had been the general manager of Electric Zoo for years, so he has this amazing relationship at the island, and was already producing something else a weekend prior. The stars aligned, and you don’t always get an opportunity to thread that needle. 

Something about this business is how you calculate a new plan, and then other things are about how you move when an opportunity knocks. John is very good at moving when the right opportunity comes. 

How did you and the team settle on Randall’s Island for this event?
We looked at just about every single venue there is to look at in New York. You can bet that in the process of landing there. But green space, particularly in New York, is a challenging thing. There just aren’t very many, and many of them are cost-prohibitive. Many of them, the insurance is so expensive and you need multiple weekends to make it work, but the venues aren’t available but one weekend for the whole year. I’m really so happy that we landed on Randall’s, because there really aren’t any venues at that scale that are true green spaces and have a history of working.

Dom Dolla also went viral on social media recently when he nearly missed his set at Lollapalooza due to travel delays following his performance in Ibiza. However, you all found a way to make it work.
We make magic happen, don’t we? This job isn’t about what you do – it’s all made in the crisis moments. It’s crisis management. It’s where I always say I’m a firefighter.

He got ahold of a private jet!
It’s crazy. This business is crazy. You need to be crazy to be in this business, I think.

It’s interesting that dance music is doing such big numbers like this, but at times, it still feels like it’s quite underrated.
There’s an amazing story to tell, and what we touched on is just the tip of what’s really there. The reality is, these acts that are playing these venues aren’t on commercial radio stations. All of the people who play these venues are generally middle-of-the-road, available to consume if you turn on the radio. It’s very interesting to see kids seeking something out and it getting this big, and it’s not just being fed to them readily in a commercial way. It’s important to keep the integrity of where the whole electronic genre comes from.

I’m very excited to see the U.S. electronic music palette mature in such a way. We’ve come a very long way from 2012, when it was very bubble gum, EDM, commercial-type music. Now it’s more challenging, left-of-center music. Artists’ artists, like Four Tet, who’s been an underground fixture for years, can play major venues like Madison Square Garden. I think that says it all. The next five to 10 years are going to be really interesting for the genre. Artists with integrity and a point of difference, with unique aspects, are going to win.

It’s not commercial, it’s community. It’s really based on that, and it’s word-of-mouth and people being proud to tell their friends that they found something really great, and then that person buys in and spreads it around to another two people.