Rimas Entertainment is celebrating 10 years in business and its executives — including Noah Assad (CEO), Junior Carabaño (vp) and Raymond Acosta (general manager, Habibi) — reflected on their successes in the past decade.
During a panel that took place on Tuesday (Oct. 15) and was moderated by Billboard‘s Leila Cobo, Assad, Carabaño and Acosta gave the first public interview as a team and talked about the evolution of the company, which launched as a label with Jowell & Randy as their first signed artist, and later became a powerhouse company home to global star Bad Bunny, with new divisions including Habibi (management company home to Karol G and Grupo Frontera) and Rimas Sports.
“I do what I like to do,” a soft-spoken Assad said. “I named the company Rimas obviously because of rhythms, but it has another meaning. My brother’s name is Samir and he loves music. Rimas is Samir spelled backwards.”
Carabaño went on to explain that the company first focused mainly on monetizing music videos on YouTube. “We started to monetize digitally, with YouTube videos, we would monitor and call each other all day. One day we made $100 dollars and another day $1,500, that’s when we said we can make a living from this.”
And the rest is history, with marquee clients Bad Bunny and Karol G going on to become two of the biggest music stars over the past four years.
Below are the best quotes from the Ten Years of Rimas Entertainment panel.
The Role of Facilitators
Noah Assad: “We started as, and still are, facilitators to our clients in all the businesses we do, but we started kind of like a back office, and we were facilitators for complaints from artists who needed help resolving these issues. We do the same thing now but on a larger scale. And back then our only income was doing shows, or from videos on YouTube, it was a new era of people making money. We were learning to go from physical to digital, we were there early on.”
Working With Bad Bunny
Assad: “Benito [Bad Bunny’s real name] was a blessing and opened a lot of doors for us to show the world what we can offer. He helped paved the way and helped us build what we have today.”
Right People, Right Time
Junior Carabaño: “More than sitting down and planning what we wanted to do, we were the right people at the right time. We saw an opportunity where we also got to share our passion with the industry. Today, we see it as 10 years ago, but it doesn’t seem like it for us because every day, we do what we want. We found there was a way to make a living working in what we love.”
The Importance of Accepting to Keep Learning
Raymond Acosta: “Fifteen years ago, I worked as a security guard at the Choliseo. Our individual journeys are important. There will come a time when you will start to criticize the work of others, even when you have not gone through what they have. But once you are willing to learn about every aspect of the business, you can understand a team member, help them and say, ‘Don’t worry because I went through that as well.’ It’s about empowering ourselves.”
Assad: “I’m 34 now but I really started when I was 15 years old. I can say today that I can do any job in the industry. Really, I can. I can help set up lights, DJ, record vocals, I have worked in every area, and that’s important for anyone who wants to work in the industry. Wanting to learn is important and accepting to learn.”
Working With Karol G
Acosta: “We’re proud of what Karol has achieved. She is a woman who works every day, she does not rest, she wants to keep growing in what she does, she opens her heart. She challenged us when she told us she wanted to do a stadium tour. All you can do for an artist like that is clear the way for them to run.”
What They Look for in an Artist
Assad: “In terms of management, Raymond tells me, ‘Here is this opportunity.’ And I respond with, ‘What do you think?’ And if he says I love them, then so do I. Sometimes I don’t see the vision, but someone else on the team will. If that person believes in an artist, we know there’s a reason. We trust that team member who identifies an artist and says, ‘I can do this for this person.”
The 2024 Billboard Latin Music Week coincides with the 2024 Billboard Latin Music Awards set to air at 9 p.m. ET on Sunday, Oct. 20, on Telemundo. It will simultaneously be available on Universo, Peacock and the Telemundo app, and in Latin America and the Caribbean through Telemundo Internacional.
