Three years ago, a talent manager in Los Angeles did something his peers thought was either visionary or insane. He stopped pursuing traditional artists — the singers chasing labels, the actors auditioning for pilots — and built an entire management company around creators whose primary performance space was TikTok Live.
His colleagues were polite about it. "Everyone thought I'd lost my mind," he says, sitting in an office that has since expanded from a single room to a full floor. "They'd say, 'Those aren't real artists. That's not real entertainment.' And I'd say, 'Tell that to the creator who just made $40,000 in a month from her living room.'"
The bet was based on a simple observation: the audiences on TikTok Live were exhibiting behavior that the traditional entertainment industry would kill for. They showed up every night. They spent money directly on the performers. They formed communities around individual creators that had the loyalty and intensity of fan bases that take traditional artists years to build.
What they didn't have was infrastructure. Most livestream creators were managing themselves — handling their own scheduling, their own brand deals, their own finances, their own mental health in a format that demands constant emotional availability. The burnout rate was enormous. Talented creators were flaming out not because they lacked audiences but because they lacked support.
That was the gap. "I realized I could do for livestream creators what traditional managers do for traditional artists — handle the business so they can focus on the performance. Except the business model was completely different, so I had to build the playbook from scratch."
The playbook he developed treats livestream creators as multi-platform entertainment properties. The livestream is the core product — the nightly performance that builds and maintains the audience. But the revenue and career development extend outward from there: brand partnerships, live events, merchandise, music releases, and increasingly, crossover opportunities into traditional entertainment that leverage the creator's existing audience.
The results have been striking. Several of his clients have transitioned from purely digital performers to headlining live events that sell out mid-size venues. One has a development deal for a television project. Two have released music that charted, driven entirely by their livestream audiences rather than radio or playlist placement.
"The industry is finally paying attention," he says. "Labels are calling me. Agencies are calling me. The same people who said livestream wasn't real entertainment are now asking me how to get into the space."
The irony isn't lost on him. But he's not interested in vindication. He's interested in the next phase: building a management infrastructure that can support livestream talent at scale, with the same kind of career development, mental health support, and long-term strategic planning that traditional entertainment management has refined over decades.
"These creators are doing something unprecedented," he says. "They're performing live, unscripted, for hours at a time, building real relationships with real audiences. That's harder than most things in entertainment. They deserve management that takes it seriously."
