Nashville Artist Management Firm Launches New Women-Led Americana Label, Olivia Records

Nashville-based, women-led company Olivia Management is starting its very own record label, Olivia Records, an independent Americana-Folk label headquartered in East Nashville and focused on putting artists first.

The label will provide distribution, marketing, and other label services to uniquely memorable artists in the genre, starting with the release of CJ Temple's brooding debut Smoke, followed by Madeleine Kelson's grounded acoustic solo debut While I Was Away in April, and a compelling sophomore full-length from eclectic artist Lauren Balthrop later this year.

Olivia Management founder and CEO, Erin Olivia Anderson has shepherded the careers of a wide range of celebrated Americana artists over the past decade, including Jill Andrews, Smooth Hound Smith, Amanda Shires, The Secret Sisters, Matthew Perryman Jones, and Hush Kids. In the beginning, Anderson signed artists she already knew; gradually, she expanded the roster to support a broader range of artists through consulting.

"I realized I'd focused my network in Americana and Folk music-that's what I love, and that was what worked-so then I started very intentionally honing my client roster in that realm," she explains. Soon, Olivia Management artists were celebrating a GRAMMY nomination for Folk Album of the Year as well as a nomination for Emerging Artist of the Year at the Americana Music Awards.

Despite the pandemic's setbacks to the music industry in 2020, Olivia Management helped artists survive and even thrive in the wake of multiple tour cancellations: imbued with an entrepreneurial spirit, the team created Patreon pages, planned and managed live streams, and worked with their artists to reconsider what "live music" might look like.

"I love working with independent artists because we can get creative," says Anderson. "It's a much more entrepreneurial process, where you have both flexibility and creative freedom." In 2021, Olivia Management added Alex Blue and Street Corner Symphony to the full-time client roster, hired Grace Carey Hill as full-time tour and marketing assistant, and promoted Mackenzie Fey to full-time tour and marketing coordinator.

Informed by extensive experience on both sides of the record industry and fueled by a genuine passion for the artistry of her clients, Anderson's next endeavor looks bright. "I wanted another way to invest in music I believe in," she says. "I'm not an artist, but I think my goal is the same as a lot of my artists: What else can I do? How else can I contribute to the music? Olivia Records is my answer to that question."

In the early 2000s, Anderson graduated from Belmont University with a double-major in music business and entrepreneurship and no idea what to do next. Now she's at the helm of one of Music City's most well-loved artist management companies. Over the past decade, she has steered Olivia Management through several storms, including the COVID-19 pandemic and its harsh impact on live music, and racked up an impressive assortment of accolades in Nashville's hyper-competitive entertainment industry along the way. As an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Belmont for the past nine years, Anderson also mentors future entrepreneurs, using her experience to guide students in defining and developing their own career plans.

Anderson's early career path left her well-prepared for her current roles as artist manager, CEO, mentor, and burgeoning record exec. After college, she worked as executive assistant to the General Manager and CFO of Universal Music Group, managing new media budgets and organizing data for high-level record contracts, then enrolled in Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management to earn her MBA.

Post-graduation, she took a position with Amazon Music in Seattle, where she produced online music sessions for top-billing artists (Gavin DeGraw, Boyz II Men, Luke Bryan, The Civil Wars, the Lumineers) and project-managed Amazon's "artist central" site-a back-end dashboard where artists, labels, and managers control the artist's online presence.

In 2012 Anderson decided to return to Nashville and start her own management company. "It's always been about helping great artists continue making great art. That's my "why," and it won't change," says Anderson. "Olivia Records is an extension of that same mission."