In late 2021, top songwriter, producer and OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder, Downtown’s former chief business officer Andrew Sparkler and veteran artist manager Ron Lafitte had a meeting where they talked through a question that had been on all of their minds: Is there space for a new publishing company? At the time, the three felt there was a gap in the publishing business for songwriters who weren’t just looking for the lowest-fee administration deal possible. In their view, there weren’t many options for songwriters who preferred a hands-on, strategic publisher that could provide bespoke A&R services.
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“Obviously, every publisher likes to think of themselves that way,” says Sparkler. “So we said, we need to meaningfully differentiate ourselves… And make it so if someone is deciding between two places, they can always say, ‘I will get something unique at Runner.’”
By 2023, the trio launched Runner Music, hoping to differentiate themselves from competitors that were seemingly in a race more for market share as opposed to serving songwriters. Sparkler took the helm as CEO, Lafitte took on the catalog side of the business as co-founder and board member, and “Ryan, of course, [as co-chief creative officer] helped attract talent,” says Sparkler, nodding at Tedder’s wide ranging credits on hits like “Halo” by Beyoncé, “greedy” by Tate McRae, “Maps” by Maroon 5 and his own chart toppers with OneRepublic. The founders also quickly recruited another executive to round out the team — the firm’s now-president and co-chief creative officer Amanda Hill, a longtime Sony Music Publishing A&R executive who had earned a sterling reputation in the L.A. publishing industry for picking talent.
Runner then added financial firepower to the firm by making the Blackstone-affiliate Melody Holdings, which also includes companies including SESAC and MNRK, an equity partner in the venture. Now, three years in, Runner’s plan seems to be working: The company landed six credits on the new BTS comeback album ARIRANG (“SWIM,” “Body to Body,” “Merry Go Round,” “Please,” “Aliens” and “NORMAL”), for which Runner set up songwriting camps in association with HYBE and Diplo. Runner signees have also notched several top credits, including Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl-approved “DtMF” (Tyler Spry), Tate McRae’s sultry “Sports Car” (Grant Boutin, Tedder) Jordan Davis’s “Bar None” (Ben Johnson) and “Woman,” a new hit by Kane Brown (Ben Johnson), among other major cuts.
For Sparkler and Hill, however, there’s no rush to build on that momentum and grow the company. “We have great ambitions,” Sparkler says. “But we’ve also seen so many other businesses around us put growth first and figure other things out later. We have been very deliberate in our growth in every sense.”
Runner is still relatively small, composed of eight employees and 19 signees. But it’s also put up big money: To date, it’s deployed $70 million to buy catalogs, including shares of songs like “Levitating” and “Physical” by Dua Lipa, “Dynamite” by BTS, “It Wasn’t Me” and “Boombastic” by Shaggy, “Taki Taki” by DJ Snake and Selena Gomez, “Ghost” and “Anyone” by Justin Bieber, “Gone Gone Gone” by Phillip Phillips, “I Won’t Give Up” by Jason Mraz, “Ho Hey” and “Stubborn Love” by The Lumineers and more.
“The highest compliment we get paid is that people often assume we have 30 or 40 people on staff,” Sparkler says.
Adds Tedder in a statement to Billboard: “I’m so proud of the close-knit team of writers and producers we’ve assembled in the last [nearly three] years; as the name says, we have been nonstop running — [or] sprinting… In this industry where great songs are dying for attention 24/7 and virality cosplays as a business plan, I only trust one thing — doing the work.”
Why did you decide to launch Runner Music three years ago? What gap in the publishing market did you think you could fill?
Sparkler: In late 2021, the conversation between Ryan [Tedder], Ron [Lafitte] and I was really about looking at a lot of publishers and the services they were offering and asking: Is there room in the marketplace for an indie that is creatively forward? It started first as catalog acquisition, and then we started talking to Amanda [Hill] about opening up a frontline business that really nurtured songwriters.
Hill: I was Ryan’s publisher at Sony. We clicked right away. I think we both view the music world similarly and have the same kind of competitive spirit. We had been working together at Sony, and then he approached me about doing this. I was entering year 18 at Sony at that point, so the timing was right for me. What I was picking up from songwriters at that time was that people wanted another option. They wanted the reach of a major but something that felt like a family, something smaller and more attentive. A lot of people were getting tired of being just a number on a piece of paper. So on day one, I knew that’s what I was building — the other option.
Publishing deals have largely been moving toward admin-only, trying to get the percentages down as low as possible. Are you offering admin deals, or are you positioning Runner as only a high-touch publisher option?
Hill: We’re the high-touch publisher option. People want the relationship, they want real work done and they want a true partner. Every single person we work with gets 150% from us. We’re intertwined with their teams and individually engaged on what we’re doing every step of the way, and it’s strategic. I look at it like everyone should have their own plan, and that’s what we’re doing — executing a custom plan for each person and adjusting it quickly because you’re constantly in conversation with them. It’s definitely the most hands-on approach there could be.
When you were sketching this out and figuring out the strategy, what was your vision of the ideal Runner signee?
Hill: I very much didn’t want to be in the business of just collecting people. The fact that some songwriter is available and we could sign them is not a reason to sign them. The real check marks for me are: How hard do you want to work, and are we aligned on how to get there?
How involved is Ryan on the signing front?
Hill: It’s really my decision. But sometimes he’ll meet someone in the studio and get excited. I’d say 75% of the time it’s just me and my team doing our thing. And 25% of the time, it’s things that he’s bringing in — he’s connecting dots, and then I’m jumping in and helping bring them into the Runner world. So he’s super hands-on, but he’s not approving deals.
What’s the split between how much Runner invests in catalog versus frontline?
Sparkler: I don’t know the specific dollar split. I think Melody has been a phenomenal partner — they appreciate the discipline we’ve shown with respect to capital deployment and frontline signings. We’re in a fortunate place where if we go to them with a good case, they say yes. We were a successful business even in the early days, so it makes it easier to get a yes when we’re delivering good returns. I would say Melody is just as invested in the frontline side as they are the catalog side. On the catalog side, we do have a debt facility with Bank of America.
For catalogs, what kind of price range are you looking for, and what kind of rights interest you?
Sparkler: We look at everything. All of our deals have been sub-$15 million so far, and most have been sub-$5 million. But we’ve done a lot; certainly well over 20 deals. Our strategy is that we have a disciplined way to analyze on the financial and legal side to complete those deals efficiently, and it’s allowed us to build a good-sized catalog relatively quickly.
I try to build a diverse catalog across genres. We have some amazing Christian catalogs, a lot of pop catalogs, some producer catalogs with really A-plus music. The thing I’m always trying to do is avoid being overly concentrated in one particular area. We also have a preference against purely passive rights. If it’s a marquee catalog — if it’s a song my parents know — then sure, that’s something we’d consider even if it’s purely passive income. But for the most part, we like copyright control to come back to us at some point, although it doesn’t have to be in a year or two — we’re open to three, five, seven years out.
Downtown has been your publishing administrator from the start. Now, Downtown has been acquired by Universal. How is that affecting Runner, if at all?
Sparkler: I think of publishing administration in two buckets: Do they have the technology to execute on the task, and when something goes wrong, do we have people we can call who are going to fix the problem? When Amanda and I were taking meetings about who should administer the frontline piece — the catalog piece is administered by MSI, a sister company within the Melody family — it kept coming back to Downtown because we had confidence that we’d have half a dozen people we could call to address any issue. That has not changed. Our terms with them are great, and they’ve been amazing partners. Obviously, neither they nor we can predict the future, but the key is we know who to call when we need something done, and they have been excellent on that score.
Do you think Runner would ever do admin in-house?
Sparkler: Never say never — we’re ambitious. But as a blessing or a curse, I come from an admin background. We have a lot of collective knowledge of how difficult it is to start an administration business. It’s not something we’d take lightly in terms of cost, time or attention. The same service and attention that Amanda and her team give to our writers — that’s the bar we’d want to hold ourselves to. If we can’t do it at that bar, we’re not going to do it. That said, it’s not lost on us that with every deal we do and every record that comes out with a Runner writer on it, that’s more net publishing share we’re essentially giving away to administration. So at a certain scale, it’s something we’d have to more seriously consider.
BTS is back, and Runner songwriters had a hand in nearly half of the songs on their new album ARIRANG. How did your six credits on the album come about?
Hill: This was always something we had our eye on — we really wanted to be part of the comeback. It actually started with some of our writers making ideas that Ryan was sharing with HYBE. Ryan and [HYBE chairman] Bang Si-hyuk have developed a really close relationship over the last couple of years — they’re doing a boy band together. So it started with “Please” and “NORMAL.” Those came from around that time. Then, I was chatting with one of Diplo’s team members, and we thought, ‘We should do a [songwriting] camp with our teams [for BTS].’ That’s really where most of the rest of it came from — that’s where “SWIM” was written and others.
You say you want Runner to be differentiated from the competition and offer high-touch services. What is an example of something you feel Runner does differently than other publishers?
Sparkler: What Amanda has built around the songwriter community within Runner is something I have never seen before and never heard about before. The writers hang out with each other. The writers themselves are bringing each other into sessions. Amanda has hosted incredible dinners and social events that the writers don’t have to attend — they choose to come. The culture she’s building is really special.
Hill: You’ll start seeing this in albums that come out in the future. You’ll see Alexander 23 at the helm of a record, and then you’ll notice other Runner writers on it; that’s their choice. They’re calling other people, too — everyone can write with whoever they want — but what says it the most is that they’re choosing to collaborate with each other. It stems from Ryan and his open-door policy to bring people in. But you’re going to start seeing projects led not just by Ryan, but by other Runner signees, too, with a lot of Runner synergy on them. I think that’s our next story.
You’re in year three of Runner. Where do you see the company in year 10?
Sparkler: We want to be a large, independent music company across all verticals. We have large ambitions, and we try to be measured about it — always asking, what are we trying to accomplish this year, and how does that get us toward the goals further out? Ryan and I talked about this a lot when we were starting Runner. Obviously, there are plenty of examples of writers and artists who start companies as a side project. That was never Ryan’s intent. He is as involved in this business as anyone — we talk to him all day, every day. He agrees that success for Runner, in a lot of ways, looks like this: In 10 years, someone says “Runner Music” and thinks, “Oh, that music company — wait, did Ryan Tedder start that?” Where the company itself eclipses any individual — me, Amanda, Ryan, anyone — and it becomes about the creations we’ve helped foster into the world. We think about it in terms of really building a forever company.
Hill: The answer is what we’re doing now, times 10. Yes, we want to scale. We want to be a large company. I want a whole squad of amazing A&R people and other great team members. But it’s all still going to be rooted in this idea of starting with songwriters, having real relationships with people, real strategy around each of them, and not just signing people because they’re available — really focusing on signing the right people.
