UTA’s Cheryl Baglierani on Post Malone Numbers, Dominic Fike Demand

In an industry that has long been dominated by men, Cheryl Baglierani is among the female agents entering a new generation of leaders. Recently appointed as partner at UTA, where her clients include Post Malone, Dominic Fike, Flo Milli and Offset, Paglierani has emerged under the leadership of Cara Lewis, another female music pioneer. Since her debut in 2008, Paglierani spent many years at leading agencies WME and CAA, before landing at Agency Group before being bought by UTA.

Paglierani couldn’t be better off at UTA today, as the agency’s music division sees its 2022 climax with the current Bad Bunny Stadium tour. It’s also worth shouting about: a mail-order Twelve Carat ride that sold 450,000 tickets across 38 dates and grossed $65 million (with 19 shows left to run) – a 10% increase over a pre-pandemic 2019 outing. The tour includes two-night stops in Toronto and Boston, and four New York City-area shows and four nights in Los Angeles (couples at Forum Squares and Crypto.com)—all of which meant Paglierani was repeatedly racking up traveler miles.

I spoke to diverse Behind the scenes at MSG on the state of live music, her career and the potential future of Post as a country star.

One thing about Post Malone is that it transcends genres. It would make sense in a pop bill, a hip-hop lineup or a rock festival. Was this the case seven years ago when you started working with him?

It was always like this. It comes from him having this truly eclectic love of music. One of the videos that went crazy early in his career was singing Bob Dylan’s song. Today, look at the playlist in the arena before the show – Post manually selected songs and country; He’s a punk and the last song she hears is Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman.”

Behind the scenes, while playing beer pong and hanging out before the show, he’s also doing a DJ from his phone. It put me through a lot of new things that I had never heard of before. It’s like an encyclopedia too. Knows the words for each song. Who wrote what who produced? He has an extensive knowledge of everything in music, and that’s what makes his own music more relatable to each other and less of a kind of music, like I said.

Can we ever get a Post Malone Country album?

I can finally see it. I don’t want to speak on his behalf if he ever does, but a lot of people ask me, “When is Post making a country album? Or a folk album?” .

How did his injury in the fall affect this round?

It is problematic. She represented him for seven years and this was the first time he had canceled a show in his entire career. Forget cancellation, it’s never late. He cares and is very reliable and dedicated. The next day, he woke up and was in excruciating pain. He really had to cancel the show because he was in the hospital. We rescheduled our stay in Boston, and he responded. But other than that, he didn’t let that affect the tour – and he could have. I almost encouraged him to take time off just to make sure he was okay.

Not only did he not want to cancel, but he bought everyone in rescheduled Boston a free T-shirt and they eventually distributed it. He paid for it out of his own pocket. Like, who does that? And it wasn’t cheap either because we had to pay for labor too, but he was adamant about it. Post got the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met.

It was a really bad stumble. Did production have to rethink its staging?

It was a real mistake. Comes on upward, so enters the show. Then he plays the guitar, turns around, puts the guitar on the stand, then the stand drops and the production team is there to take it off. Usually, he walks to the front of the stage for the next song. On this very night, he did not, and turned around, forgetting what was going on behind him. Needless to say, the stage is not down anymore. He just takes his hand off the guitar. Modifications have been made.

The publication can easily take advantage of the festival title slots. How do you choose between a big festival look versus appearing on their own tour?

Since the beginning of his career, we’ve never been, like, let’s chase money. It’s always been about, let’s do what’s right and what’s going to help us grow in the marketplace. So when it’s time to take a tour, we’ll take a tour; And when it’s time for festivals, we’ll have festivals. Because I believe that if you do the right things, build right and think long-term, the money will always come.

Since UTA Post delegates are all over the world, how is his international business?

astronomical. There are great artists in America that can’t be caught in Europe – like numbers are changing drastically. Post’s numbers in Europe are as large as they are in the US, something we’ve focused on from the start. When I first met Post, we talked about building globally at the same time.

In post-pandemic times, what are the new challenges for getting back to normal?

The market oversaturation has been a challenge for everyone because you can’t tell when something will and won’t work. Even with Post, since the release of the “Stoney” album, he’s never played a show that hasn’t sold out. So going on this tour to get out of the pandemic, the question was never: Are we worried that people won’t want to come? We knew people would want to come, but would market conditions allow them to be able to come? Gas is much more expensive, tickets, parking, everything associated with going to the show is expensive. So balancing these challenges is hard and I don’t think anyone has the right answer.

What do you see now in terms of growth areas for live music?

I definitely think production is growing. There is a healthy competition between artists in terms of who can outperform who. It never slows down, right. The older you are, the more you want your production to be.

Latin is going through a big moment. I was at Bad Bunny shows at SoFi Stadium and it was amazing to see that growth. It’s a UTA client – represented by my colleague Jbeau Lewis – and it’s not only been a big win for us as a music department, but for the genre as well. It will really open a lot of doors.

She was trained by Kara Lewis who has deep roots in a hip-hop agency. What did you learn from this experience?

Sitting at Kara Lewis’ desk–going from CPLAst No. 3 to No. 1 about two weeks later–was going from no combination of anything to literally the middle of everything. She represented everyone at that point and that was really inspiring to me because she was a pioneer in this field. At that point, it was a more male-dominated industry. Today, we’re seeing more and more women, not just in agent positions, but in the business as a whole, which is pretty cool. So to learn from her…of course it was hard, but it was never boring and it was always exciting. I learned everything I know about perseverance. about not responding with a refusal; about how to deliver; How to work with artists. I learned it all from her and that’s what made me want to go and build my own list.

The ability to offer the artist a full range of services remains in high demand. With a client like Dominic Fike, who had a breakout role on “Euphoria,” he could use the experience as a springboard to his acting career. What does that mean for you as his music agent?

First, it is one of my favourites. I always look for multiple hyphens, which is quite literally. When I started Euphoria, I would tell him I was terrified that he would leave me and become an actor. But music is still his 100% primary passion. He’s gotten many offers to do different acting jobs, and we weigh them both, but music is really important to him. We just announced his tour and blew it all up in a day pre-sale. No album released in 2 years! So it’s exciting to see that the work is still intact, that things are still disrupting and there is still demand for new artists. We will continue to build both hand in hand.

How did the role of “Ecstasy” get to Fike?

A colleague in our music group, Peter DeSantis, walked into my office one day and told me he had just been sent the opportunity to pick a new role on “Euphoria” he thought Dom would be perfect for him. At the time, Dom was just starting his first tour and was only focusing on his music career. Pete and I were convinced this role was perfect for him and spoke with Dom about the opportunity. Somehow, we convinced him to self-record, even though he hadn’t acted before! One tape turned into another and led to the show’s creator, Sam Levinson, wanting to meet Dom, which eventually led to Dom getting the role. It was a great moment for all of us, highlighting the need to think about opportunities outside the box and really take advantage of the 360-degree resources that we have as an agency. The role ended up changing the rules of the game in Dom’s career and opened many doors for him. It also led the brand’s team to help secure partnerships with Calvin Klein and Saint Laurent. We are very excited to continue building his business and brand across the board.

What about a client like offset? Does his exit from Migos require a retooling of your approach?

There’s really nothing I can retool. It’s the same type of build with any artist. He has an upcoming album and we’re working on a strategy for how to proceed with ticket sales. At the same time, we’re looking forward to utilizing every aspect of the agency – whether it’s about the brand deal or his involvement in the TV show “Hype.” Actually helps us that it came from Migos. I think he would be someone with an outstanding career. It’s definitely Beyoncé from Migos.

You are now a UTA partner, does that change anything in your daily responsibilities?

Not in the sense of the work I do, but it definitely changes things in terms of how much I focus on leadership and mentorship. I want to be able to provide assistance to my clients and also be a role model for me to other women in the company. People like Tracy Jacobs or Blair Cohan have taken me under their wings and are always there to give advice. As partners, of course we want to bring in good agents, but we also want to build from within, and you need your partners to be examples and willing to teach the young people we have in the building how to be agents.

Finally, while I was telling you the story of going to WME for my interview with Kara, I mentioned that I don’t live in New York. For clarity, while I was a receptionist at Robbin’s Entertainment I commuted to New York every day from New Haven Connecticut! It was dirty but got my feet in the door so in the end it was worth every second of the tedious travel back and forth.



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