Mark Montgomery

Mark Anthony Montgomery (born June 16, 1967) is an American entrepreneur best known for his early use of B2C (business to consumer) marketing and e-commerce channels in the entertainment industry. He is also an active advocate, public speaker, and philanthropist in the Nashville business community; and has been an outspoken critic of the recording industry’s attempts to use legislation and litigation post-Napster to protect its traditional distribution and revenue models.

Background
Mark Montgomery was born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the oldest of two children born to Mary Jo Montgomery, a multi-talented visual artist and Richard Montgomery, a longtime entrepreneur. He graduated from Premontre High School in 1985 and went on to attend to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, graduating in 1990.

Montgomery’s love of music started early. He received his first guitar as a Christmas gift when he was four years old, and dabbled with playing piano and guitar throughout his adolescence and teenaged years. He did not start seriously playing guitar until college, when he formed his first band, “Swallow This”. Montgomery was lead singer and lead guitar player in the heavy metal band, which achieved some local acclaim among the college set.

After college, Montgomery worked for a tour management company called Nali Productions gaining experience in tour and artist management as well as merchandise sales. He worked and traveled for Nali for a year, then returned to Stevens’s Point and built a recording studio in his basement. He took a day job managing a local coffeehouse known as “The Supreme Bean”. Around this time Montgomery formed a classic rock band called “Fannie and the Farmers”. FATF consisted of Montgomery on lead guitar and vocals; Joe Ebel on guitar, vocals and fiddle; Bill Fanning, who went on to play trumpet with artists such as Bela Fleck, Teresa Fanning on bass and vocals; and Chris Milfred (a former “Swallow This” member) on drums and percussion. The band garnered a local following and Montgomery gained additional musical experience, both as an artist and, increasingly, as a behind-the-scenes man. It also solidified his desire to find a way to make music a part of his life.

Early career
In the spring of 1991, Montgomery and fellow band member Chris Milfred decided to move to Nashville, “Music City”, to play music. With $800.00 in his pocket and all of his worldly possessions in a pick-up truck, Montgomery headed south to pursue his dreams. He soon realized that he likely did not at the time have sufficient skill to become successful as a musician in Nashville, but still knew that he wanted to work in the music industry in some form or fashion.

Montgomery’s first job in Nashville was sweeping the floors at a vinyl and cassette pressing plant called Sound Impressions. Within a few months, he began working in sales, and ultimately became a mastering engineer for the company. By the end of his first year in Nashville, Montgomery had launched his own manufacturing business, Empire Manufacturing, out of a room in his apartment.

After growing Empire Manufacturing for about a year, Montgomery partnered with his buddy Chris Milfred in a business known as Chelsea Studios. In early 1994, Montgomery launched a website for Chelsea Studios, paying the cost out of his own pocket because his partners were not convinced that trying to sell product and services over the internet would be cost-effective. Within six months, Chelsea was selling product and booking sessions on-line. Montgomery continued to delve into every facet of the business. A skilled photographer, Montgomery began handling every phase of the record production process, from doing cover shots for album covers and designing record and CD packaging to recording and engineering the albums themselves.

In 1996, on behalf of the now rechristened ChelseaMusic, Montgomery launched one of the nation’s first e-commerce platforms. He saw the power of the Internet and knew that the possibilities were limitless. Montgomery became focused on changing the way that music was distributed to fans, and the ways that fans connected with artists.

Echomusic
In 1999, Montgomery and Neil Einstman, one of his partners in ChelseaMusic, cut a deal to leave with their clients and start their own artist services and distribution business.. They called it echomusic, LLC (later simply known as “echo”). The ultimate goal of the company was to create a constantly evolving medium through which artist and fans could interact directly and exchange music and information…an unfamiliar practice at the time. They set up shop on Nashville’s historic Music Row and went about building their business, one client at a time.

As the buzz about echo grew, so did echo’s roster of clients. Montgomery and Einstman brought with them respected artists such as Guy Clark, Bela Fleck, and Sam Bush, and quickly signed on higher profile artists such as Alison Krauss, Dierks Bentley, Rascal Flatts, and Keith Urban, among others.

While at echo, Montgomery and one of echo’s subsequent partners, Doli Stepniewski, co-created a patented platform known as echotools, a direct to consumer delivery and data management system which ultimately grew to serve millions of users and distribute 150 million pages of content and 35 terabytes of data in a rolling 30 day period. along with the data, multi-millions of dollars in revenue flowed through platform. echotools, and iterations thereof, is still in use today.

As echo’s industry foothold strengthened, it continued to attract top tier artists and nationally recognized corporate clients. Beyond those previously mentioned, its roster included artists such as Sugarland, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Pearl Jam, Bon Jovi, The Avett Brothers, Alicia Keys, Julie Lee, Brad Paisley, Brooks & Dunn, Ice Cube, Gnarls Barkley, P. Diddy, Bernie Leadon, Jason Aldean, Cage the Elephant and Dolly Parton; as well as corporate clients such as Best Buy, BlackBerry, Clorox, Chevrolet, and General Motors.

Eventually, echo attracted the attention of IAC/Ticketmaster, which purchased a majority interest in echo for mid-eight figures in 2007. Echo garnered numerous awards and had grown to nearly 100 employees and more than 400 clients. During his tenure at echo, Montgomery was a board member and president of the Americana Music Association, and a recipient of the Nashville Business Journal’s Entrepreneur of the Year award (2007).

Life post-echo
Montgomery left echo in early 2009 and has since embarked on a variety of entrepreneurial ventures. In addition to serving as the Entrepreneur In Residence (EIR) for a well-respected venture firm, he is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist at music business and industry functions from well-known university business schools to Grammy organizations throughout the United States. He also sets social media strategy for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Additionally, Montgomery sits on the boards of numerous music industry, professional and private organizations including the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, the Academy of Country Music, Nashville's Leadership Music, Dobie Media, the Nashville Folk and Roots, and served on the Board of the former privately held business known as StudioNow until it was sold in January 2010 to AOL for $36.5 million. He also serves on the advisory boards of several companies including Topspin Media, Cell Journalist, and the W.O. Smith School. He is a voting member of NARAS, serves on Nashville mayor Karl Dean’s Commission on Music, and is a member of the Country Music Association.

In 2010, Montgomery was engaged to host the first annual TEDx conference held in Nashville, Tennessee, an extension of the original Ted Conference started in 1984 to bring together people from the worlds of Technology, Entertainment and Design. Also in 2010 and 2011, Montgomery was named by the Nashville Post to be one of Nashville's top individuals "In Charge" in the field of Technology.