US independent talent agencies form NITO

By Emmanuel Legrand

A group of 14 independent music talent agencies has formed the National Independent Talent Organisation (NITO), a non-profit trade body to promote "the welfare and prosperity of its members and their represented artists, as well as for the indirect benefit of those associated with them," and make the voices of agents and the people they represent heard in Congress and in Washington.

  NITO has invited US-based artists, crew, and other live touring entities to join as non-dues paying associate members. "We need and want to be assured that our voices are heard in Congress and Washington," said NITO, which now counts 65 members and growing.

  NITO's 14 founding small independent businesses currently represent approximately 2,000 artists and in 2019, collectively, booked more than 40,000 concerts across the US with over 12.5 million tickets sold, generating in excess of half a billion dollars in gross ticket sales annually. The additional financial impact of these performances on surrounding communities is over $1 billion.

Representing small businesses

  NITO founding members, as of June 2020, include Entourage Talent, Ground Control Touring, High Road Touring, Leave Home Booking, Madison House, Mongrel Music, New Frontier Touring, Panache Booking, Partisan Arts, Pinnacle Entertainment, Sound Talent Group, Skyline Artists Agency, TKO, and The Kurland Agency.

  "We are all 'small' businesses, some of the first that were shut down and undoubtedly we will be the very last to reopen and generate usable income," said Wayne Forte, founder of Entourage Talent. "We are speaking out collectively for ourselves and all those that we individually work to generate income for; they are not simply the musical artists we represent and act for, but the thousands and thousands of people — both locally, on a national level, as well as within the individual artists' organizations we represent — who rely on our industry and our work for their living. We have and continue to do this while inadvertently helping to frame and preserve the soundtrack of millions and millions of lives."