Cactus Jack's David Stromberg

What was the first concert you ever attended?

Up in Smoke tour, 2000, East Rutherford, New Jersey. Dr. Dre, Snoop, Ice Cube, Nate Dogg. Eminem fresh off his first album. Peak Y2K excess, really the first blockbuster rap tour. A flaming skull, a lowrider on stage—for any Jewish kid from L.A., they were superheroes. I walked out smelling like Snoop’s tour bus, convinced I’d just seen the Avengers.

You can go back in time and see any concert. Whom would you see and when?

Prince at The Troubadour, 2011. A few hundred people, 2 a.m., no cameras. I wish more stadium acts would return to rooms that small; strip away the spectacle and force a different level of connection. Most artists spend millions trying to manufacture moments; Prince could create them anywhere, in any room.

What’s the single biggest change in a manager’s responsibilities since you started in the biz?

When I started, artists still leaned on labels for services. Today, most labels are little more than banks—fronting artists their own future earnings on bad terms, taking ownership and adding little to no real value. The myth that labels “build careers” is outdated; that responsibility now falls entirely on managers. We’ve gone from logistics and dealmaking to being full-stack operators—part CMO, part CTO, part psychologist, part geopolitical strategist—running every touchpoint of an artist’s brand while navigating platforms, algorithms and volatile markets in real time. The artists with sophisticated managers are inherently ahead of those still relying on labels for anything beyond basic “distribution,” whatever that even means in 2025.

Name a manager not in your company whom you admire.

Irving Azoff—always three moves ahead, only deals with the bosses and doesn’t care what people think. His clients stay for decades because he delivers. And Dan Weisman, who gave me my first job in college. He taught me loyalty and follow-through, and left the rat race of music on his own terms to thrive in finance. I admire that.

Describe your all-time-favorite photo, memento or tchotchke from your job.

The first merch piece we ever made: a Realtree camo tee with Virgil Abloh/Been Trill. Only 10 existed. We try to channel Virgil's energy and vision into every project since.

You’re made czar of the concert industry. What’s the first thing you’d change?

The first thing I’d fix is ticketing. Dynamic pricing isn’t the real problem—it’s just supply and demand. The real failure is that artists and promoters aren’t running DTC systems sharp enough to get tickets into the hands of real fans before prices spike. If you want to rebuild trust, start there. On the artist side, I’d modernize the business itself: force competitive bidding for vendors so artists aren’t gouged on production, create centralized settlement so artists are paid within days instead of months and build shared tour logistics to cut costs and increase efficiency without watering down the show.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

“In the music business, don’t expect anyone to do their job.”—Dan Weisman

Tell us about a mistake you’ve made in the biz, and what you learned from it.

Expecting people to do their job.