MAX (Music Audience Exchange) is a venture-backed technology company whose mission is to help musicians and brands better engage fans together. How? Through a proprietary platform that gives marketers the insights, tools, and opportunities to Brand New Music.
MAX is rapidly building the technology infrastructure to connect all brands/agencies, artists, and music-related media to scale the brand-artist partnerships of the future. In 2014, MAX began the largest study ever done to map psychographics and purchase intent data to musical identities, resulting in the creation of The MAX Platform™. The MAX Platform is built on a proprietary data model that perfectly matches brands with the exact artists who most authentically resonate with their target audience and who are releasing new music or going on tour (MAX tracks 1.8M artists across 900+ genres). MAX then executes fully integrated marketing programs that deliver the brand’s message through artists' voices and channels across all of the places fans are already going to for music, including streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, video platforms like YouTube, social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and integrating brands into live performances, artist meet-and-greets, and more.
Year after year, MAX continues to grow - helping artists of all sizes achieve major career milestones, including 9 Grammy nominations, top Billboard chartings, lift in merchandise & ticket sales, rotation on MTV and top playlists, and additional airplay on hundreds of radio stations across the country. And brands like Ford, Dr Pepper, Coors Light, TWIX, and Jack Daniel's have also seen substantial results for their investments, including lift in brand sentiment, purchase intent, and even direct increases in sales.
Music Audience Exchange (MAX) was founded in 2014 by Nathan Hanks, previously cofounder and President of ReachLocal – an online marketing tech company where he led a team of over 2,000 people with 24,000 client companies across 15 countries – and George Howard, who served as President of powerhouse indie label Rykodisc, co-founded TuneCore, teaches at Berklee College of Music, and is a music licensing and copyright attorney who contributes to Forbes and The New York Times.