Robb McDaniels has made a career out of building businesses that solve problems for the rapidly-evolving music industry. His first venture, INgrooves, was launched in 2002. INgrooves leveraged its own enterprise software platform to manage the wholesale digital distribution of music and video files for record labels and artists around the world. INgrooves eventually grew to become a full service distribution and artist services operation and took over management of the North American digital distribution for Universal Music Group, the largest label group in the world. At the time of Robb’s resignation in 2014, INgrooves had grown to manage more than 4 million songs for thousands of artists and labels, launched a highly successful artist services platform and one of the first e-book distribution operations in the digital world.
With INgrooves’s course firmly set, Robb was free to get back to his entrepreneurial roots and think about building another great music company that would solve real world issues. While serving as a Venture Partner for Dubai-based investment company, TechInvest, Robb began to construct an idea to disrupt the world of talent management. In early 2016, Robb launched Faction Entertainment and soon released a beta version of its productivity mobile app called “Faction X” that allowed artists to create their own “Factions” and invite key business partners to join and collaborate.
In October of 2017, Robb made the leap to become the CEO of Beatport, while maintaining the role of Executive Chairman at Faction. Founded in 2004 as the principal source of music for DJs, Beatport is today the worldwide home of electronic music for DJs, producers, and their fans. The Beatport online store offers music in premium digital formats and provides unique music discovery tools created for and by DJs. Beatport also recently launched its proprietary DJ streaming product “Beatport LINK” and its online store for the open-format DJ community, Beatsource.
Over the years Robb has earned a reputation as an industry thought leader on evolving streaming models, ongoing regulatory battles, and emerging technologies. In an industry rife with corporate lifers who have opinions but rarely the courage to express them, Robb has been an outspoken defender of artist rights. In 2013 he was named to Billboard magazine’s “40 under 40 – Power Players on the Rise” for the second consecutive year and was also named to Digital Media Wire’s “25 Executives to Watch in Digital Media” in 2010.
Robb’s leadership and innovative thinking have resulted in feature stories in Billboard, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Business Week, Entrepreneur and many other leading publications, as well as speaking engagements at many of the industry’s top conferences.
Born in London to American parents, Robb attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut as well as the London School of Economics. He is currently based in the Beatport offices in Denver, Colorado.
