My Music Row Story: Triple Tigers Records’ Annie Ortmeier

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Annie Ortmeier

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.

Annie Ortmeier is a digital-focused music executive who has pioneered every role she has held in the industry. As the newly-appointed Co-President of Triple Tigers Records, she has built new departments and teams from the ground up that meet the ever-changing needs of the music industry across sales, digital marketing, ecommerce and streaming.

She began her career as an intern with CMT and its digital branch, CMT.com, which led to a full-time job managing the online retail brands of CMT, VH1, Comedy Central and LOGO. After that, Ortmeier transitioned to an agency owned by Ticketmaster where she managed online stores for a diverse roster of artists.

She then created her own business, Yowza Ecommerce Solutions. Her company linked up with global superstars like Taylor Swift, which brought Ortmeier the opportunity to join Big Machine Records as their Director of Interactive Marketing in 2011.

From there, Ortmeier joined UMG Nashville in a new role of Director of Digital Marketing where she managed digital platform relationships. At UMG, she evolved alongside the rapidly changing consumer landscape, becoming Sr. Director of Streaming & Digital Marketing, VP and then Sr. VP of Streaming & Digital Marketing. Ortmeier was able to orchestrate and execute revolutionary marketing campaigns for country megastars such as Luke Bryan, Sam Hunt, Chris Stapleton, Lady A, Keith Urban and many more.

Now, as Co-President of Triple Tigers Records, she is helping to build a home for artists that challenges them to grow with a laser-focused hand to guide their releases. Advocating for talent with a limited roster coupled with global infrastructure support, Triple Tigers Records has cultivated an environment of supportive artistic creativity and vision.

MusicRow: Where did you grow up?

I grew up in a super small town in Nebraska called Arlington. Population: 1,100 people. We had no stoplights—only stop signs. Kindergarten through 12th grade went to one school building. We were surrounded by dairy farms.

Photo: Courtesy of Ortmeier

What were your interests growing up?

Music and sports.

I have three older brothers and a younger sister. When you have older siblings, they choose the music, so I was listening to heavy metal and hair bands. I remember riding to school listening to Mötley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses, Bon Jovi and Pantera, among other rock bands.

When I was 10 or 11, I was over at a friend’s house and they were playing Garth Brooks’ No Fences album. I remember listening to the lyrics and thinking, “This makes a lot more sense. This is how we live.” I dove head first into country music after that. I started buying cassettes and CDs and pouring over the lyrics. It was the height of ’90s country.

Photo: Courtesy of Ortmeier

Did you know then you wanted to work in country music?

I didn’t know there was such a thing as working in music other than to be a singer. I remember reading through the liner notes for Patty Loveless’ album When Fallen Angels Fly, and the final track on that album is a song called “Over My Shoulder.” It was way too mature for me—I didn’t really understand what it was about—but I was so enthralled with the song and the storytelling of it. I remember having this realization that underneath the song title were two people’s names, and that meant they wrote it. That opened the door to me asking what else you could do in music and knowing Nashville was the hub of it.

Music became an even more important factor in my life just as I was about to enter high school. My oldest brother was diagnosed with a very rare brain tumor that was cancerous. He was my hero, I didn’t think anything could ever happen to him, but here was this disease that brought him and our family to its knees. It was super aggressive and most of the doctors did not have much experience with it, so all in all from diagnosis to his passing was 10 months. He was only 24 years old. Through that entire painful period, I processed everything with music. I truly witnessed miracles and had so many moving experiences through that tragic time. It completely altered my outlook on life to embrace the moment and take the chance because tomorrow is not promised to anyone.

Photo: Courtesy of Ortmeier

After high school, I went to a small liberal arts college in Lincoln, Nebraska called Nebraska Wesleyan University and majored in public relations with a minor in Spanish. I studied abroad in Spain when I was a junior. Because I have a large family and was always playing sports, that was the first time I had spent that much time alone, which gave me a lot of time to think. I had one year left of college and was thinking about what I wanted to do next. This music thing had been in me and on my mind for so long so I decided I had to get to Nashville.

How did you get yourself here?

I knew I needed “music experience” so I started out by interning at the local Lincoln, Nebraska radio station. We would set up remotes whenever they did them around town, which usually ended up being at Hooters down the street. [Laughs]

The last semester of my senior year, I was in our career center trying to figure out if there was another internship I had overlooked that had to do with music. I was looking through this giant binder and saw a printout of an internship opportunity at CMT.

I went above and beyond to apply for this internship to try to stand out in the crowd of people I thought would have more music experience than I did. I put together a binder that included a cover letter, my resume and a bunch of writing samples from our college newspaper. I even made my own letterhead for it.

Photo: Courtesy of Ortmeier

While I waited to hear back, I graduated from college and worked as a beer cart girl on a golf course, waited tables and had a fun summer. That fall, Donna Priesmeyer called me and said, “Hey, I am from CMT. We got your application and would like to offer you the internship in our new CMT.com department.” I moved here in January of 2005 and showed up to the internship on Jan. 10. The CMT.com department had nine members at the time. Everyone was over the age of 30 and I was only 22.

What was that like?

It was so much fun but taxing. The internship was unpaid—as were all internships then—so I would work there as many hours as I could and worked two other paid jobs. I worked at Starbucks in the morning from 5:30 a.m. until 11:00 a.m., then I’d go to my internship from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and then I’d go wait tables from 6:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. That was my schedule at least three days a week—and then I’d often pick up shifts on the weekends. It all paid off though, because then at the end of that internship period, they offered me a full-time job at CMT.com. I started that job on May 5, 2005.

Tell me about that.

I was the Coordinator of E-Commerce for CMT.com. My boss—and most of my department—ran out of New York across MTV and Viacom Properties, so I was the satellite person in Nashville for a while. I also worked on CMT.com’s online stores, creating proprietary merchandise.

They had this franchise show that was called Trick My Truck. We were making Trick My Truck merchandise and selling out of it faster than we could make it, which taught me a lot about merchandising and e-commerce. We were doing that with some of the other CMT franchises and it was working so well that they opened it up to other parts of the Viacom business, so I took on VH1 and the VH1 Classic channel. They brought me on to help launch the Comedy Central online store, which was super cool as well. I spent three years in that role, and by the time I left, we had hired the next six interns after me and became a department of 30. Something fun I got to do was be a Production Assistant on the first-ever online show that happened in Nashville called Studio 330 Sessions. We featured Little Big Town, Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, Eric Church, Old Crow Medicine Show and more at the very early stages of their careers.

Photo: Courtesy of Ortmeier

It was such an interesting time to be there when so much growth was happening in the online digital space. That experience was awesome. It’s still one of the most fun places I’ve ever worked.

What was next?

There were rumors of a shakeup in leadership, so I preemptively started looking for another job. Someone that had left CMT went over to another company called Echo and I followed them there. It was a startup company that was one of the first shops in Nashville that brought everything digital under one hood. They were creating artists’ websites and online stores, and turning fan clubs into online communities. When it was purchased by Ticketmaster, I became the Manager of Merchandise & E-Commerce.

Ticketmaster was interested in purchasing Echo because they saw the potential to build all of these other product offerings onto a ticket purchase. We were directly integrated for doing some of the first-ever ticket and music bundles that happened in 2009. I was working on the e-commerce side of it and helping come up with product lines, creative ideas for new merchandise and then packaging it with music, whether it be a download or a physical piece. That only lasted one year before there was a shakeup again.

Photo: Courtesy of Ortmeier

What happened?

Echo’s management called us together and told us we were being laid off. As they started downsizing, they actually offered me a job in Los Angeles. I wasn’t very confident that the job in L.A. would last much longer, so I asked if they would pay to move me back to Nashville if I got laid off within the first year. They agreed and I moved in August of 2009.

I ended up loving living in L.A. I met really great people and made friends out there that I’m still friends with to this day, but the job was awful. I was laid off again nine months later. After that ended, I was pretty much done with corporate America, so I started my own business as an e-commerce consultant.

What was that like?

Someone said to me early on, “If you always work where the money is made, you’ll always have a job.” That stuck with me. I knew if I was able to show that I can bring in money various ways, it would be difficult to get rid of me. So when I started my own business, I really set out to teach people how to create a business strictly online.

One of my first clients was Jewel, who was and is managed by Virginia Davis [Bunetta]. We had been working with her in the Ticketmaster system, and when Echo went away, they sort of pushed her off the platform. She was getting ready to launch a tour and had VIP packages that she was selling through her website. Virginia called me and asked for help figuring that out on their own, so I helped her manage her online store and got those packages up for sale.

Soon after, Virginia connected me to Big Machine who was working with a new web developer/store company managed by Jeff Yapp. He was the head of my division when I was at CMT, so I called him and we set up a meeting at his office in Santa Monica. Then I started contracting with him and helping them with Jewel.

Photo: Courtesy of Ortmeier

The next thing that they wanted us to work on was Taylor Swift‘s Speak Now album. I was specifically focused on her online retail. She had a rhinestone encrusted guitar and I remember asking her team, “Why don’t you put one for sale on your website?” They weren’t sure it would sell, but I said, “Throw it up there for $10,000 and see what happens.” It sold immediately. It was fun to see her online business grow and touch it a little bit.

How did you get back to Nashville?

I moved back in 2010—which Ticketmaster paid for. [Laughs] I continued to run my own business here for a little bit. I was making it work, but the grind of running your own business and constantly looking for new business takes its toll on you. I’m glad I went through it at that point in my career because it taught me some very valuable lessons.

A friend of mine who was at Big Machine at the time, Ashley Heron, told me, “I think we need what you do on the e-commerce side at Big Machine.” The company hired me as Director of Interactive. It was digital needs for the roster, which was everything from websites to online stores, advertising, socials and more. I started with them in 2011.

What was next?

I started having a conversation with Dawn Gates at UMG about a potential new job. They weren’t exactly sure what the role would be, but they wanted to focus on building relationships in the digital world. I started with them on May 6, 2013.

There, my focus was on building partnerships in the digital world—primarily partnerships that were revenue-generating. It started with partners like Vevo, Touch Tunes and other digital accounts that had revenue tied to them. Spotify started to have a much more significant role in the industry, so I took that on, which opened up this avenue of specifically focusing on streaming.

In my time at UMG, I had four different job titles. By the time I left, I was Sr. VP of Streaming Marketing. I went from being a part of the digital team to breaking out and being a team of one and then, by the time I left, we were our own department of six people. When I started overseeing the Spotify relationship in 2013, streaming was 10 to 15 percent of the business—when I left 10 years later, it was 85 percent of the business.

Photo: Courtesy of Ortmeier

That has been a theme in my career: trying something new, building it to a point where it becomes important and then moving on to tackle the next challenge.

Late last year, you joined Triple Tigers as Co-President. Tell me about that.

George Couri called to offer me this opportunity and I couldn’t believe it. It felt like the perfect fit. It’s really amazing to see what Triple Tigers has accomplished so far since starting from scratch, and I had my eye on them as a label since their inception. They were primarily built as a radio promotion staff, and they’ve been really successful in that realm—11 No. 1 records out of 16 shipped anyone? The streaming, revenue success and other things that have followed have been a benefit of all of the success at radio, but I think there’s still some work to be done with both Scotty [McCreery] and Russell [Dickerson] and establishing them as a brand.

I’ve been at Triple Tigers for eight months now. We’ve kept our intentionally small roster of three artists, but we’re looking at expanding that—and hopefully growing the team as well. It’s really exciting. For me, I’m excited to be working with Scotty, Russell and Jordan Fletcher on their goals and where they want to take their careers from here. I’m super excited by the staff at Triple Tigers as well. They are absolutely amazing and so passionate. They work so hard.

Who have been some of your mentors?

Dawn Gates at UMG was really integral in teaching me about the label system. Cindy Mabe was and is still a mentor for me. She has always been a champion of mine. Leaving her and my team at UMG was the hardest thing, but she was really great about it. I’ve known Cameo Carlson for 12 to 13 years. She was one of the first females in the business to go through the digital landscape from the beginning, so she’s always a great person to go to for advice.

I also feel like there’s this group of us that have come up through the business together and are peers, but we mentor each other in a lot of ways. I’ve got a bunch of women that I stay connected to and talk through things with.

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

I have never been afraid of trying something new. The only constant I’ve ever known is change. You always have to be willing to embrace change and figure it out. That has served me really well as I’ve flowed through the industry. Treat everybody with kindness and be really respectful to everyone, because you never know when your intern is going to be the next person that hires you. I’ve seen it happen. It’s the classic golden rule. That’s one thing that sets Nashville apart.

LB Cantrell
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