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Thomas Krottinger
VP of creative, Sony Music Publishing
Krottinger’s massive success with Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album, Sour, was a few years in the making. He heard one of Rodrigo’s demos, “All I Want,” in 2019; met her a year later; and vividly remembers “calling my boss, gushing about how I had to work with her.” He and senior vp/head of West Coast A&R Jennifer Knoepfle also found success in 2021 with pop artist-songwriter Salem Ilese, who broke through with her own “Mad at Disney” and contributed to Bella Poarch’s “Build a B-tch.” Krottinger, 32, hopes the future of the business brings more respect to “young female music fans,” noting, “They are a driving force in our culture and should be taken seriously.”
Before I Turn 40, I Want To…: “Be like Melissa McCarthy at the end of Bridesmaids and have so many golden retrievers people think I have a problem.”
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Zack Morgenroth
Partner, Lighthouse Management & Media
Though he is now the co-manager of superstar multihyphenates Olivia Rodrigo and Selena Gomez, Morgenroth, 35, says with a laugh that he “didn’t even know this was a job” growing up.
That changed his sophomore year at the University of Southern California when he landed an internship at a management company and realized “there’s a world out there that me in high school could have never thought about.”
His next internship, at Brillstein Entertainment Partners, proved even more fruitful. It was there he met Aleen Keshishian, founder of Lighthouse Management & Media, where Morgenroth joined as a partner at the company’s inception in 2016. Having known Keshishian for nearly 15 years, he says, “gives us such a shorthand when we’re working together on clients,” says Morgenroth. “It’s like yin and yang — and you get the brain power of two people.”
Keshishian says Morgenroth has evolved “into one of the most talented and visionary artist reps I’ve ever seen,” adding, “his mastery of all of the verticals necessary to create business for our clients is truly rare.”
Lighthouse’s A-list roster of talent is spread across music, TV, film, beauty and other sectors — and a major selling point for a young ascendant artist like Rodrigo, who signed with Lighthouse in February and is eager to do it all. Morgenroth describes the process of getting to know a new client as “incredibly delicate,” adding that the start of any successful management relationship comes down to asking plenty of questions: “It’s big-picture things to things as small as what they are allergic to.”
Rodrigo, of course, got her start on the Disney+ show High School Musical: The Musical: The Series; broke a slew of chart records with her 2021 debut single, “drivers license”; and became a superstar with first album Sour, scoring seven Grammy nominations. In March, she was named Billboard’s Woman of the Year, then in April scooped up three of those Grammys and announced a partnership with Glossier as the first celebrity ambassador of the direct-to-consumer makeup brand.
Morgenroth says it’s important to have “the ability to do all these different things and have expertise in different [areas] and have a track record in working with artists in different [lanes].” It’s exciting to him as well. He says management feels “much more entrepreneurial than ever,” adding that it is “incredibly rewarding to be able to connect the dots with clients and be able to do multiple things.” Recent cross-field victories include collaborating with John Janick and Justin Lubliner at Interscope and The Darkroom, respectively, to executive produce the 2021 Apple TV+ documentary Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry (along with Eilish’s co-managers, Danny Rukasin and Brandon Goodman); and later that year, watching Gomez earn her first Grammy nomination for her first Latin album, Revelación.
He says a key part of the Lighthouse pitch is to always think long term — as far ahead as “what are the goals for, hopefully, 20 to 30 years from now?”
“Especially when you have a young client, you want to be thinking about a career,” he continues. “You want to pace yourself and only do things that feel organic to the client and what they want to accomplish.”
Before I Turn 40, I Want To…: “Have a day off.”
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