My Music Row Story: Big Machine Music’s Mike Molinar

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Mike Molinar

The “My Music Row Story” weekly column features notable members of the Nashville music industry selected by the MusicRow editorial team. These individuals serve in key roles that help advance and promote the success of our industry. This column spotlights the invaluable people that keep the wheels rolling and the music playing.

Mike Molinar is the President and Co-Founder of Big Machine Music (BMM), where he brings over 25 years of experience as a music publisher and advocate for creatives. Molinar has led BMM since inception in 2011—overseeing the continued growth of the diverse roster and dynamic catalog as well as driving the company’s impact well-beyond its Music City roots with the addition of a West Coast division based in Los Angeles.

Molinar, who was named one of Billboard’s Country Power Players each of the last four years, oversees all aspects of BMM which was named 2021 Publisher of the Year by the Association of Independent Music Publishers Nashville. BMM has been ranked as a Billboard Top 10 Hot Country Publishing Corp for six years running and recently notched its 50th Airplay No. 1 song in its history. BMM’s roster includes the 2023 nominee for the inaugural Grammy Songwriter of the Year (non-classical) Laura Veltz, as well as hitmakers Jessie Jo Dillon, Brett Young, Maddie & Tae, Geoff Warburton, Ryan Hurd, Matt Dragstrem, Sara Davis, Eric Paslay, Matt Roy, Anna Vaus and Daniel Ross, among others.

Molinar was named one of the 2021 Nashville cohorts for Harvard Business School’s Young American Leaders Program. He is currently serving his 3rd term on the board of the National Music Publishers’ Association and is a founding member of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) board. In June, he was invited by the House Judicial Subcommittee on IP to testify at their Nashville field hearing reviewing the fifth anniversary of the Music Modernization Act (MMA).

Molinar also serves as a board member for the Academy of Country Music, Music Health Alliance and sits the Country Music Hall Of Fame Education Council. He was named a Rider Scholar while attending Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J. He graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 1998 where he was inducted into the College of Media and Entertainment’s Wall of Fame in 2021. He is a graduate of Leadership Music (2015) and a member of the CMA, ACM, AIMP and Recording Academy.

Prior to BMM, Molinar began his career at the original Starstruck Writer’s Group and Cal IV Entertainment before launching his own startups including Effusion Entertainment. Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, Molinar is a second generation immigrant of Mexican descent. He and his wife, Amanda, are proud parents of two boys, Ryman and Ellis.

MusicRow: Where did you grow up?

I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas.

Reba McEntire, Mike Molinar, Narvel Blackstock

Were you musical as a kid?

I’m the youngest of five kids from a fairly low income family, but there was always music in the house. My dad was from southern California—he could sing and was always a musical force in the house. My mom loved music, but she couldn’t carry a tune whatsoever. My brothers and sisters all played instruments. We’re spaced pretty far apart, so I got the musical influences of all of them.

My sister started taking voice lessons. As you do when there’s a lot of kids, you drop a kid off wherever another one is, so I would go to her voice lessons. I was in first or second grade around that time, and her teacher would always have me run a scale at the end of her voice lesson. As she continued going over the next few years, he would always give me more and more time. He knew that we couldn’t pay for more lessons, so he went to my parents and said that he would teach me for free, and if one day they could ever pay him back, that would be great, but he wanted to go ahead and work with me. By fourth or fifth grade, I’m taking voice lessons and learning how to read music. By middle school, I could read music pretty well. He started helping me get opportunities to audition for operas, operettas and musicals.

What did that lead to?

In those productions, there were some roles that were made for kids, but usually they’re played by women called pants roles. I started to play those roles. I was probably the only kid in middle school with a day planner with where I was supposed to be.

I did that until my voice changed in high school. I ended up going to conservatory in New Jersey. My teacher’s voice studio had a pipeline to a school called Westminster Choir College in Princeton, so I went there. That’s where I met one of my best friends, Martha Earls.

Mike Molinar, Jeff Stevens, Rusty Gaston, Luke Bryan, Rodney Clawson

Did you enjoy college?

Yeah! It was a small school, so it felt a little claustrophobic. It is a performance school so you would prepare to perform at the New York Philharmonic, the Philly Orchestra or the Jersey Symphony. In addition to your school load, you were also learning music to go out and perform. As a freshman, you would do a spring tour representing the school.

That taught me about chasing excellence and the effect that can come when you get it right. Not only just the technical, but when you hit that emotional peak of performance and you see the audiences with you—the vulnerability of performers when they meet the vulnerability of the audience and the emotional flood that can come with that is amazing.

How did you know you wanted to work in the music business?

I always liked songs and songwriters. I had a CD collection that I brought with me to school, and Martha would steal my CDs. I was having conversations about songwriters because I knew a lot of them. One day Martha said, “Why are you here? After we finish freshman year, I’m going to transfer to somewhere in Nashville. You should look into that, too.” I came down to look at Belmont and MTSU, and we both decided to leave full scholarships to pay out-of-state tuition at MTSU and finish our degrees there.

The good thing is when you make that kind of commitment, you put yourself on stun. We moved here January of ’96 and immediately hit Country Radio Seminar where we get to meet Garth Brooks, The Mavericks and The Chicks. We were there as MTSU volunteers but we were also super sneaky and we brought clothes to change into so we could go to the parties. Back then, the only thing separating you from being a volunteer was how you looked. So we go dressed, crashed a bunch of parties and met a bunch of people.

Maddie Font, Mike Molinar, Tae Kerr

That’s awesome. How did you start your career?

I didn’t really know what publishing was, but I interned at Zomba Music Publishing that summer of ’96. My first real job was at Starstruck Writer’s Group. They brought me in as an intern and then a week later, I became the tape guy. They let me go through my senior year, commuting back and forth to MTSU and doing the tape catalog. I would come in on Saturdays and make up for the work that I missed [while I was in class].

It was a such a great music publishing company. Mike Sebastian led it. Kos Weaver was the hot plugger. Molly Reynolds had wonderful artist ears and great service instincts to the executives. She taught me how to be a song sniper—she didn’t really care about volume, she cared about making sure that we connected the right thing. Autumn House was brand new. It was a great group of executives to be around and the catalog was rocking as I came in. It was a wonderful place to start and see a really great roster of writers at a mid-size independent company that had a really engaged team with good leadership. I think everything I’ve ever wanted was to model that. So much of what Big Machine Music is is modeled off of that.

How long were you there?

I was there for three years before they sold to Warner Chappell. At that point, Universal Music was being formed out of the combination of MCA Music and PolyGram. Daniel Hill and Billy Lynn had left PolyGram and found funding to start Cal IV Entertainment. They were looking for a young plugger to be on the street and made me an offer. They had bought a trunk catalog of songs from Buddy Killen—most of the songs were not great or weren’t in country music, but it did have “Breathe” in it, so that got the company going.

There were some incredible veterans on the roaster and a couple of young guys like Odie Blackmon. I brought over Dave Berg and then Jim Collins as well, so Odie, Jim and Dave became my core group to work with. I owe those guys so much, they taught me a lot.

That time was a lesson in setting goals and trying to accomplish them. When we brought Jim over, he told me he’d never had a 20-cut year or a George Strait cut. The next full year, we had a 23-cut-year and a George Strait No. 1. Odie also had George Strait’s 50th No. 1 We all shared Strait as a hero and we ended up having his 50th and 52nd No. 1s.

Dave Berg was just so amazingly talented and we were just waiting for it to be his time. As much as we were banging on the doors and everybody in this town believed in him and his talent, he just needed that one hit to get us started. That song for Dave ended up being “Somebody” for Reba McEntire. Interestingly, Scott Borchetta was the promo guy on it. After that, they all came: “Stupid Boy,” “If You’re Going Through Hell,” “Don’t Make Me” and “These Are My People.”

Janet Weir, Alex Heddle, Jessie Jo Dillon, Laura Veltz, Mike Molinar, Maren Morris, Ryan Hurd

What was next for you?

As everybody was peaking, it felt like it was the right time to do something. It was tough for me to think about staying at that spot. It was an independent where you were capped at a certain level of income. Even though there were opportunities offered to go to other places, including some majors, I never felt like I was a major kind of guy. Martha and I started to think about starting something. I took a year to write a business plan, put the concept together and shop it out. We found some funding and we started our own little company.

Ultimately, we got our ass kicked. The bravado of a 30-year-old, cocky song-plugger certainly met a true education of what it takes to function in all of the roles of a publisher. We were painfully understaffed and it was the phase in town where we really pivoted from outside songs into a lot more artist co-writes. To top it all off, the sound changed. A new generation of writers came in and everyone was listening for something different. We had wonderful writers. They were incredibly patient with us. We still had 35 cuts and one top 10 hit.

How did you transition out of that?

The [investor] ended up buying our share of it. With some of that money, we kept ourselves afloat. We did a couple of joint ventures and one of those was with Greg Bates and Big Machine. Allison Jones and Andrew Kautz brought him to us. We signed him together and went away for a year to work on it. We came back and had a top five with “Did It for the Girl.”

[Around the time that song was being released], it was fall of 2011. It was CMA week and I had just gotten married on that Saturday. At the BMI Awards of 2011, Andrew Kautz sat next to me and said, “We’re thinking about opening a publishing company [at Big Machine]. I know you’re fairly independent and you don’t like corporate situations, but would you be interested in doing this?” By that point, I had enough of being on our own. I was like, “Yes! That sounds great.”

Scott and I had some conversations with Andrew and Malcolm Mimms. I was at a point where I was even questioning whether I was going to stay in publishing or not, so to me, it was important that if we were going to do it, that we did it right. It was important to me that it wouldn’t be a pocket company to a record label. I wanted it to be a standalone independent and be able to attract the best talent so that I could also service all of the other labels, too. I asked Scott if he was going to be okay with watching us having hits with other companies. I think it really took it to be in practice for him to start to like it and now he loves it. He’s been a huge supporter. You could not ask for better partners than Scott and Andrew.

Alex Heddles, Michelle Attardi, Scott Borchetta, Luke Combs, Mike Molinar, Chris Kappy

Tell me about the first few years of Big Machine Music.

Martha had come in to help start it, but I knew she had aspirations of being a manager. A couple months in, we had a conversation [about her going to chase that], so I started looking for someone to help me. I had known Alex Heddle for a little while. He had brought me a business plan at one point and wanted me to look at it. I was so impressed that he had that type of entrepreneurial spirit. I knew he was a hustler—I knew he hit the streets pretty hard—but it showed me that he was a hard worker, had big aspirations and really wanted it. He was the first and only person that I turned to for that spot. He turned me down three times before he took it. On the third call, I told him, “You’re going to come here and you’re going to make your name here. We’re going to do it.” He trusted me and, man, he is absolutely the best creative that I’ve ever had the privilege to work with.

[As far as a writers go], we got a running start. Luckily, what was in the cupboards when we got there was Justin Moore and Dustin Lynch, and we had been working on Greg Bates. In that first year, Justin popped a hit with “Til My Last Day,” Dustin had “Cowboys and Angels” and Greg had “Did It For The Girl.”

You guys have since grown a roster exponentially and had a lot of hits. How do you feel when you look at what you guys have accomplished?

It’s been exactly what we wanted to do. We work with that tip of the spear talent at the top level. You just naturally wake up wanting to go fight for them every day. That keeps you passionate when you are now 27 years into your publishing career.

Mike Molinar, Scott Borchetta, Lucian Grainge, Andrew Kautz

Who have been some of your mentors along the way?

My original voice teacher Prentice Loftin. Mike Sebastian at Starstruck was incredible. Tim Wipperman for sure at Warner Chappell. We owe Pat Higdon so much. Pat was good to Martha, Rusty [Gaston] and I when we were all vetting our ideas for starting our companies. Obviously, Andrew Kautz and Scott. Scott will leave the most indelible mark on me and the industry. Malcolm Mimms put me through bootcamp and I am such a better person for it—I feel like I graduated from the Malcolm Mimms School of Music Business Law.

What is the biggest challenge in your role?

It’s the income pipeline. That’s why I am on the NMPA Board now and The MLC Board. During the first CRB Phonorecords I [trial], I remember telling a friend at the time that this will determine whether I have a feasible career or not. It went the right way and we’ve continued to see some progress along the way.

When you look back over all of it, what are the songs that stand out?

That’s super tough. “Stupid Boy” was a big moment. I remember going to the Fox Theater in Atlanta for a sneak peak live performance of it that Keith Urban did. I cry all the time now, but I didn’t back then. I was so emotional that night. I was so happy and proud for Dave.

I think my persistence paid off on “She’ll Leave You with a Smile.” I’m always proud of how many times I pitched that song to everybody in Strait’s camp. He cut a song with the same title on the prior album, so I had a big hump to get over. Tony Brown was patient with me for pitching it as many times as I did.

Taylor Courtney, Grayson Stephens, Lizzy Rector, Alex Heddle, Mike Molinar, Michelle Attardi, Tim Hunze, Randy Patton

“Girl In A Country Song” has a really special place in my heart. The girls turned it into me on St. Patrick’s Day. I cannot rewrite history, so I’ll tell you that I wasn’t immediately running towards it. I wasn’t quite sure if we should go for it. That Saturday, I was walking my dog and I had it in my headphones. I started feeling that chill I get when I feel like it’s worth it. We had a program planned for the company on Monday or Tuesday of the following week, and we knew Scott would be there. We had baseball signs [on if they should play it or not]. Scott came in and he was engaged in the first round of songs, so we gave the sign to go for it and they played it. They did it and it was atomic—it blew the entire room away. Scott ran over to me in the room and later that night, called me and said “We’re going for it. Buckle up.”

Another is “What If I Never Get Over You.” I was driving on the highway when they sent me the work tape from the room. I pulled over, listened to it again, called them back and said, “This is a big hit.” I got it to Allison. Allison got it to Lady A, but it kind of sat there for a few months and we weren’t sure if it was going to catch on. At our end-of-year retreat, I had Laura [Veltz] play it at a writer’s round night. She played it and, again, I see Jimmy [Harnen] and Scott coming over to me, saying, “This is our song, right?” [Laughs]

I have to include “Yours If You Want It.” It meant so much to so many of us because we had lost our good friend and the co-writer, Andrew Dorff.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

The best advice I have wasn’t given to me as advice. It was summed up so beautifully by the soundtrack that is Encanto, but my writers and my team hear me say this a lot: you are more than just your gifts. The gift is you. The miracle is you—not your gifts, just you. We all feel like we have to be prove our value. We measure our worth by the songs that are on the charts, by market share or whatever else. It’s about remembering that this is a business that we are blessed to do and a passion that we are blessed to pursue, but it is not our value. That has soothed me and helped me be a better human over the past couple years.

LB Cantrell
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