TBA will spend its infancy wading through uncharted waters. Fitting for a Covid-born company, TBA hasn’t leased any office space, and with employees working well remotely, McTaggert and Betts say they may not lease an office even after the pandemic ends, saying they may the money for its artists instead.
McTaggert acknowledges that brand deals, livestreams, and other typically ancillary revenue streams for agencies likely won’t be enough to support the new company. But TBA has investment funding that will sustain them through the pandemic, he says, although he declined to comment on how much TBA has in funding or who its investors are.Rolling Stone
, speaking under the condition of anonymity because other organizations have not been announced yet. The former employees say that another agency is in the works — albeit not as far along as TBA — helmed by a different Paradigm alumnus. Betts says that though the future is unpredictable, TBA is “something that we’d been talking about working on” since the pandemic started and the group of former colleagues watched the live industry crumble around them.
“Right now, we see an opportunity to be a constant and positive force for the artists and teams we work with,” Betts says. “The future is uncertain as to when live touring is coming back, but there’s other stuff we can do to work with our artists, and we want to be there for them in the interim. We don’t want to just sit back and say ‘we’ll help you out when things come back to normal.'”
Hopeless acts