Matt Gralen
Grace Phillips
Electronic music digital download platform Beatport is announcing a flurry of leadership changes today (April 20), with the company’s longtime CEO Robb McDaniels transitioning to executive chairman of the board of directors, the company’s current president and chief financial officer Matt Gralen rising to CEO and the company’s chief revenue officer Helen Sartory becoming president and COO. These changes will take effect on July 1.
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“After nine years at Beatport and driving a lot of change, going through a lot of turmoil and challenges, I’m ready to take a step back and catch my breath,” McDaniels tells Billboard. “As executive chairman, I’ll still be involved in company strategy and helping Matt, Helen and the other executives wherever I can as a sounding board and as a member of the board of directors.”
Gralen and Sartory both joined Beatport in 2022, with Gralen working to steer the company’s strategy and operations and Sartory overseeing the company’s product portfolio. Their time with the company has also seen Beatport scaling its streaming offering for DJs and adding products and services for artists and labels, along with its live events sector. “They’ve been incredible contributors to the company and the vision,” says McDaniels.
McDaniels himself joined Beatport in 2017, taking the role after founding Ingrooves Music Group, which was acquired by Universal Music Group in 2019. When he joined Beatport, the company was embroiled with the SFX bankruptcy fallout, “so the very hard task was just figuring out how to stabilize the business and the technology and make sure we were able to continue serving our customers and our label partners,” says McDaniels. “A lot of time was spent on that, along with investing in and upgrading the underlying infrastructure. In those first few years, we also made several acquisitions that are a big part of the company today.”
By 2022, the company reported that it had 25,519,770 song downloads that year, a number making up nearly 12% of all tracks downloaded globally in 2022, based on Luminate data.
“Beatport is now 22 years old,” says McDaniels. Somehow this tiny, independent company has been able to survive and thrive not only against the largest music companies, but the largest companies in the world. It’s a place where downloads have shown growth every year over the last eight years and where we pay a per-stream royalty that’s 20 or 30 times the industry average.”
McDaniels forecasts that under Gralen and Sartory’s leadership, Beatport will continue leaning into the live events sector, with the company hosting 50 live shows in 2025 alone.
“Obviously, Beatport has been a digital company and the brand is extraordinarily well-known and the audience is massive,” says McDaniels. “We’ve slowly but surely started seeing how that translates into IRL events. Because we’re a relatively small company, and the majority of our income comes from digital sales, we’ve been very careful about how much we extend ourselves into the physical realm. But starting in the pandemic with the online events we were doing, we’ve gotten more comfortable — from small pop-ups to larger stage takeovers and festivals. It’s all gone amazingly well, and the brand translates really well, so we’re going to continue leaning into that.”
Grace Phillips
These leadership changes are happening several years after Beatport retained an investment bank to explore strategic options for the company, including a potential sale. Amid the SFX bankruptcy, when SFX became LiveStyle Inc., Beatport existed under the LiveStyle umbrella. While many of the other LiveStyle properties were subsequently sold off, Beatport remains under this sole investor, “who’s been incredible to work with and very patient and supportive of everything we’ve done to turn around Beatport,” says McDaniels.
“Obviously with the growth plans for the company, we wanted to find a growth investor,” he continues. While the company was in talks about a possible sale last year, “for a number of reasons it didn’t end in a transaction that we wanted to do,” says McDaniels. “Given that our investor is very patient, we decided to not pursue any transaction and just focus on the core business of serving the DJ community.”
He forecasts that because of Beatport’s established profitability and continued growth, the company will “wait for the right strategic or financial partner, which we think can happen in the next couple of years. Until then, we’re heads-down focused on the business.”
With McDaniels’ transition out of the CEO role, he anticipates having more time to consult in the music space, saying he wants to “make myself available as a resource for people in our community, especially the dance electronic community, but also startups and so forth, just to help give any support, guidance and mentorship I can provide.”
“The company’s going to have its best year ever financially,” he continues, “and the company is on the up-and-up, so in many respects I just feel that my job is here is done.”
