Executive Profile: 237 Global’s Mark Weiss On The Artist VIP Blueprint, Guided Meditation With Alanis Morrissette And More

From music streaming services like Spotify to ticketing platforms like Ticketmaster or AXS, the artist-to-fan e-commerce journey is often streamlined and effective, yet the experience usually begins with the platform rather than the content, or artist behind that content.

Mark Weiss, founder of 237 Global, is doing his part to empower artists to guide that journey — and collect data and revenue on the front-end — with a white-label, mobile-first, custom-built platform for artists that powers presales, push notifications, message boards and handles presales and more.

“The people who are really looking after the artists and knowing the products we’re making are specific to their artist brand have been supportive of it,” says Weiss, who says his company this year saw 92 percent growth year over year and has welcomed more than 100 new clients across all genres. “We’ve also been lucky that we’ve had a lot of great managers and even artists say, here’s things I need it to do. For New Kids On The Block, Donnie Wahlberg said he’d love to have a version of Instagram Live that’s way more customizable and way more private.” He says many ideas came that way, leading to new tools and features, and Weiss credits managers including Andrew Gertler with Shawn Mendes, or Scooter Braun with Justin Bieber, for a lot of the blueprint. “So we went and built it,” Weiss said.

Other artists working with 237 Global include established bands like Weezer, Lord Huron and Green Day, country sensations like Lainey Wilson and Red Clay Strays, and rising stars like Jessie Murph and Myles Smith.

With a background in hands-on fan clubs and VIP offerings, Weiss has seen paid meet and greets give way to more holistic experiences like pre-show guided meditation with Alanis Morissette. As such, Weiss has a lot to say about artist development, the fan experience and why every band should have its own app.

Pollstar: You got your start in fan clubs, and your custom-built artist mobile apps seem to operate almost like standalone fan clubs, driving fans to concert tickets, VIP events and music.
Mark Weiss: It’s been really exciting to build out these different platforms, and really, they all tend to have the same piece. It’s white labeled to the artist, it’s their own app. You have signups, push notification. I am astonished that more people are not using push notifications. They’re over-texting people, in my opinion. They’re over emailing people. Laney Wilson just sent out a push notification and I can just click on it and go right to her on the app.

Arcade Fire used it to launch the last album, it’s very popular in country music with Lainey Wilson, Red Clay Strays, Koe Wetzel. New Kids on the Block is one of the most popular apps we have. Tedeschi Trucks Band is one of the most functional, and it’s really cool to see how they’re using it. We built a very robust tour section that has a lot of real intellect in terms of helping people understand where people are lurking and where they’re buying tickets. The whole “code” system in our mind is completely broken. We try to listen to some of the complaints of our customers, and one of the biggest ones around ticket pre-sales is, where’s my code? Over and over and over again. So, why not just put the code right here on the app, click on the code, go right to buy the ticket. Let’s make it super easy.

We’ve created our own message board so that they don’t have to go to Discord. An integration of Shopify has been phenomenal. We have a Go Live section in the app where you get to really look at, you know, this kind of experience. So we’re selling subscriptions. We’ve got, you know, a wallet integration. We’ve built out loyalty points. We use augmented reality to kind of bring images to life. And we have an audio player that Arcade Fire used to launch their full-on album. So it’s been really fun. All this functionality exists. I think we’ve streamlined the ticket presale to a really efficient way. We’re giving real data about where people are claiming codes, where they’re buying tickets. So it’s been a real fun piece. And so it takes that original fan club model, but it really brings it more into the tech world.

Your early days in the business were more rooted in the analog world of artist fan clubs and meet and greets, inspired by Pearl Jam’s Ten Club and Dave Matthews Band’s Warehouse, leading to Artist Arena, which you co-founded and ran as CEO.
I was obsessed with these in 2004, and I looked at the alt-rock market that was being driven by the only social network at the time, MySpace, and said somebody should be organizing fan clubs and direct-to-fan ticketing around a lot of the alt-rock bands. We got very lucky that some of those bands ended up being Fall Out Boy, Paramore, All Time Low, Three Doors Down, Breaking Benjamin. It was really cool to see that these alternative rock bands had just as much love for their fans as some of the jam bands did, and the fandom was significant, and as a matter of fact , in some cases, maybe more rabid.

We started seeing the model evolve and in 2005, sold our first paid meet and greet around Three Doors Down. We didn’t even know if we could do that. It was like a weird thing but it was cool and fun, and the band was great. They said anybody who’s willing to spend 300 bucks on a ticket should come and meet us. That was how it started: “How do I shake the hand of a fan who’s willing to spend that kind of money?” So it happened in some of the most organic and pure way, and then it exploded.

But not every artist wants to do a meet and greet.
I think we learned through Justin Bieber in 2016 when he canceled a lot of meet and greets that VIP and meet and greets don’t have to be the same. So many people kept their (VIP) package because they still wanted the merch and first access to tickets and they wanted hospitality and stage seating and they wanted a soundcheck tour and things like that. In order to scale VIP, you can’t just rely on artist interaction. What we are seeing now, and we’re hearing this from Ticketmaster a lot, if an artist’s doing stuff, there should be a premium on it. Their time should be valuable, and I think it’s hard for artists sometimes to gauge what they’re worth. You can’t really flex price an artist per se, the way you might flex price a plane ticket. I think we underprice the meet-and-greets a lot, so I’d rather do less of them and charge more.

Alanis Morissette said I want to meet fans but I want to do a guided meditation pre-show and I want to make it special. I do hear from more and more artists that if I am going to do fan interaction, can we do something fun and cool and interesting so it’s not mundane or awkward? I was shocked that Alanis wanted to do it and we were thrilled, and she’s done such a great job. It’s been such a cool thing to see.

Most tech companies or music platforms don’t also partake in the physical realm, where you organize real-life, in-person VIP events that can range from meet and greets to guided meditations with the actual concert headliner.
We do. We’re one of the only companies that’s got the full-on tech side and then we also have an internal agency that can create these turnkey VIP experiences. We’re really a one-stop shop for these artist management teams who really need to tie in this digital world to real life.

What’s next for you and 237 Global, as we see others making headway into the presale and fanclub spaces as a way of working directly with artists and their teams?
We’re trying not to grow the roster as much as we’re trying to grow is the amount of revenue per artist and the scale of the artist that we’re working with is starting to get bigger and bigger. We get on a call with management now once every other week and we kind of talk through what can we do and how do we build these things and what’s coming up? What should we get in front of? It’s been much more empowering than just slinging meet-and-greets, you know?

We are looking at other verticals, and we want to really start to dominate comedy and podcasts and overall influencers and figure that out. We love that we’ve gotten into country (music), but we’re looking at other genres as well. We want the high-end experience to get more and more intriguing. We want it to be less taxing on the artist. We want to continue to build out tech, we want to see every artist or celebrity have their own app. We would love that. And we want to really build AI in and figure out how that will start to impact and really benefit the fan experience.