At its heart, the story of the first decade of Earth Agency is one of a forward-thinking business consistently ahead of the curve. It is now ten years since four female agents – Claire Courtney, Isla Angus, Naomi Palmer, and Rebecca Prochnik – united with Luke Williamson to form the company, which has managed to stay on the cutting edge every step of the way.

“We’re not a small major, but neither are we a big boutique agency,” muses Williamson over lunch with IQ in London. “We have 400 artists, 18 agents, and we do eight-figure sales on behalf of artists, so we’re not at the scale of a UTA or WME or Wasserman, but we have headliners, we have people capable of doing 20,000-cap tours, and a lot of emerging acts. If you ask around the industry, you’ll get different opinions, but I think we’re known as an agency that curates talent.”

Williamson, Palmer, and Prochnik decided to branch off on their own after growing disillusioned in their previous workplace at the now defunct Elastic Artists.

“It was slowly becoming clear that the company that Rebecca and I had been at for ten years wasn’t moving progressively and helping us to address the way in which the live booking landscape was changing,” remembers Palmer.

“We felt like it wasn’t being managed in a way that was good for agents – particularly as agents became more senior,” adds Williamson. “During that whole process, it became evident that we needed to go and start our own thing. It was pretty rapid after that.”

Fleshing out the point, Earth Agency had already been up and running for 18 months when the founders’ worst fears about their former employer were realised, as Elastic Artists fell into administration in late 2015.

“We’re not financially targeted; it’s for agents to find their own financial targets”

“Ultimately, we left two years before it collapsed, so we were proven correct, and events conspired to accelerate the process of starting Earth,” says Williamson. “There was no one moment; there were a series of moments, and it was more of an evolutionary process.”

When Planets Align
The trio became a quintet after enlisting Courtney and Angus from Nomanis to officially launch Earth in May 2014.

“We got a call one day from Rebecca, Luke, and Naomi, who asked if we wanted to form a company with them,” explains Courtney. “We all shared the same values of wanting to remain independent and trying to find a nice balance between not being stuck in the office all hours that god sends but still being able to deliver a really good service for our artists. We went from it just being the five of us, to eight, to 12, to 20-something now, which I still find quite astounding.”

Attaining that work-life balance was central to Earth’s pledge to offer a “fresh agency environment for both artists and agents.”

“The industry talks a lot about mental health issues but doesn’t necessarily address its own role in that,” opines Williamson. “So we’re not financially targeted; it’s for agents to find their own financial targets. If we think an agent is dynamic but isn’t necessarily making a huge amount of money, we’ll try and create a deal that works for them.”

“At the time, larger agencies were not keen on remote working,” says Palmer, who worked as an actors’ agent for eight years before switching to music. “We all had very young children and had a culture of remote working at our previous company, which worked really well, and we wanted to continue that.

“A lot of the companies we met wanted us in the office from 10-6 or 9-5, but that just wasn’t an option. We were doing great business with our model, and we knew we could continue to do great business that way. We’ve had people working from all over the world – and successfully – in the last 10 years.”

“We just steamed in and did what we needed to do”

In certain respects, ignorance was bliss when it came to getting Earth off the ground.

“It wasn’t hugely complicated – because we didn’t know what we were doing,” laughs Williamson, a former musician turned ops specialist. “It’s that Dunning-Kruger [effect] of when you don’t know how complicated something is, you approach it with quite high levels of confidence. We just steamed in and did what we needed to do.

“We were carrying a lot of ongoing bookings. It’s like a moving train: the booking process doesn’t stop, so you’re essentially taking your bookings off one train and moving them onto another while both trains are moving. But I think we were so busy with that that the rest of it just kind of had to happen around us.”

Earthlings
Palmer reels off a list of common characteristics she believes runs through the team.

“They are very independently minded, driven by elevating the culture, self-starters, usually a real specialist in one particular area, and very ambitious,” she says. “And quite quirky!”

The name, incidentally, was Palmer’s choice. “I just wanted something universal but really simple, and I really liked ‘Earth’ because people read into it what they want,” she says. “It’s a place where creatives can thrive.”

“I loved the fact that it was founded by four women”

Setting off with a mission statement of targeting “exciting and interesting” independent artists who “sit outside the mainstream channels,” Earth’s opening address referenced the “somewhat outside-the-box” tastes of its creators. Be that as it may, the agency found itself at the forefront of the grime phenomenon in the latter half of the 2010s.

“A lot of people think of Earth Agency and think of Skepta because his meteoric rise in our early years – out of a scene that was as explosive as that one was – is not seen often,” reflects Palmer. “Maybe that overshadowed a lot of the other work that was being done, but that’s always the case when something is very explosive like that.”

“When we started, there were only seven or eight of us and four agents in relatively distinct genres. We’re a much broader church than that now,” offers Williamson. “In some cases, Earth is going to offer a platform for developing agents that other agencies just won’t, because they don’t have the required roster value. A significant subset of our agents are people who’ve come through from being assistants in the beginning.”

Lucy Atkinson, who started out at Earth in 2015 as Palmer’s assistant and is now agent for the likes of Erika de Casier and Sega Bodega, is one of many to have taken that route.

Lass-tronauts
“I loved the fact that it was founded by four women, and I harassed them for about six months before getting a job there,” reminisces Atkinson. “Eventually, I got an email; I remember it said, ‘Earth calling’ from Luke. He was like, ‘I think we’ve got a job for you,’ and I was stoked. When I moved to Earth, it was always with the intention that I would be released as a full agent, and I really felt like they gave me a lot of space to grow and to do that.

“When I approach new artists, I always let them know that we are independent to the core, and that’s not changing. We’re one of the largest independents with a good infrastructure. I don’t know how it’s perceived from the outside, maybe that we’re a little bit rebellious? We’re definitely a bit rebellious and off the beaten path. The artists that we work with might not have fitted elsewhere, but we give them somewhere where they can be themselves and thrive.”

“We have headliners, but they’re a reasonably fractional part of our business”

The current Earth roster includes acts such as Sega Bodega, Death in Vegas, Bad Gyal, Buzzcocks, Gilles Peterson, James Holden, The Zombies, WSTRN, MJ Cole, M1llionz, BNXN, Lisa O’Neill, Aluna, Balmorhea, and KRS-ONE. Williamson, however, prefers to focus on the collective.

“We have headliners, but they’re a reasonably fractional part of our business,” he emphasises. “Most of the work we do is with people who are a little bit underneath that tier but are creatives with successful touring portfolios. They might not be playing 20,000 to 30,000-cap venues, but they might consistently be playing 500 to 3,000- caps – and that’s kind of the point. There has to be an agency that is available to that part of the ecosystem. So to focus on individual artist successes would be to miss the point slightly.”

Its ways of thrashing out deals can occasionally be unorthodox, as detailed by a memorable encounter between Earth agents Sam Gill and Ben Haslett and The Great Escape team.

“We’re based in Somerset House, so in the summer, there’s gigs, and in the winter, there’s an ice rink,” says Haslett. “We had a meeting with The Great Escape, so you had Adam Ryan, the head booker, on the ice.

Obviously, no one was great at skating, but we were trying to go around in circles and slow down next to him while he was holding onto the side.”

“While we were pitching artists,” chips in Gill. “Definitely out-of-the-box pitching, that.”

And did the unique approach have the desired result?

“Always,” grins Gill. “One hundred percent success rate.”

“People stay with Earth because we offer something bespoke in terms of both agents and artists, and I see that in action on a daily basis”

The Solar System
Haslett came up through the Earth system after being involved in his local DIY music scene, while Gill returned to independence following a spell with UTA.

“Becoming a dad, moving out of London and the rat race, and getting that work-life balance was something that I may have struggled with earlier in my career,” says Gill. “Earth has given me that creative freedom to take that into my own hands, and I appreciate that more than anything.”

Isla Angus became the first Earth founding partner to fly the nest, exiting for ATC Live in 2016. She has since left the agency world entirely and now works for environmental charity ClientEarth. In general, though, Williamson considers the prospect of key agents and artists moving on to be simply “part of the game.”

“I think that our retention of agents is largely very good,” he counters. “When the more senior agents leave, it tends to be because their roster is coming under pressure from the larger agencies. For me, that’s just part of the game – people move.

“People stay with Earth because we offer something bespoke in terms of both agents and artists, and I see that in action on a daily basis. I see senior agents being able to do things with their lives that they would not be able to do at one of the more corporate agencies, and loving it: taking two months out to finish the draft of their book and going to Portugal to do it; having a baby and not having to compromise their position with their roster; deciding that they want to move to another town or another country, and supporting them to do that.”

Un-Earthed
Nevertheless, Williamson describes the departure of Prochnik, who left for UTA in the autumn of 2021 (she has since switched to Wasserman Music), as “seismic.”

“I’ve been friends with her for a very long time,” he says. “It wasn’t entirely unexpected, and I guess the logic of it was understandable. It’s a shame it happened, but it happened. And like I say, Earth is about allowing people to define their own work-life balances. And if it wasn’t working for her within Earth, then it was right that she went.

“For the company, of course, it meant a regrouping. But this all happened in the context of the end of Covid. There were people leaving, but there were also people arriving at the same time, so two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes it is just about grinding it out.”

“We’re very open and very actively wanting to play a part in changing the future look of the executive level in the music industry”

While Williamson attests that Covid was a “nightmare” for the entire live music industry, Palmer can at least take one significant positive from the dark period.

“I think what sums up what Earth is all about is the fact that we came through that pandemic and didn’t have to lay anybody off,” she contends. “We survived and thrived after major changes to the structure of the company in terms of agents and personnel. Even through all of those challenges, we kept at the forefront of our raison d’être to keep pushing our artists and young professionals forward.”

Diversity is another central tenet, with Palmer stressing Earth has always strived to employ a “very diverse workforce.” Furthermore, it invests in company-wide schemes to encourage diverse potential candidates to join the team.

“We’re keen to give people from all different backgrounds a chance to progress and grow,” says Palmer. “We have our own activation, where we hold a brunch and put together an equal number of professionals from each part of the live music ecosystem and an even number of Black participants. Out of that, a mentor-mentee relationship may come, but everyone who takes part is then available to those participants, ad infinitum, for questions, advice, recommendations, and connections.

“We’re very open and very actively wanting to play a part in changing the future look of the executive level in the music industry.”

“Within our company, we always wanted to make sure it had balance,” agrees Courtney. “And not only around gender, but different cultures and backgrounds as well.”

“There’s still a bit of a boys’ club mentality out there, which we’re still cracking away at trying to break”

Having completed its first decade, Courtney is proud of Earth’s impact on the business, even if its work is far from done.

“A lot has changed, but there’s still quite a long way to go,” she says. “Obviously, there are more successful female agents now than there have ever been and that is great to see, but it’s still nowhere near the level that it is on the male scale. There’s still a bit of a boys’ club mentality out there, which we’re still cracking away at trying to break.”

The Blue Planet
And there are other areas where the industry has much to learn on the human side, with Palmer bringing up a recent example.

“I felt quite sad when one of our agents had a baby and two of her female artists left her because she wasn’t doing her job as well as they would have liked, when actually she was still on her email with a one-month-old baby,” she sighs. “Rebecca and I took no maternity leave whatsoever – I was back on that email and so was she, because she could not take the foot off the gas – and I feel like the industry is so aggressive now, they’ll use anything to go after your roster.

“We’ve been through it all: personal tragedy and grief, and you have to keep going. I found it kind of entertaining to go on those online panels during the pandemic. I remember one very well-known agent saying he now had a newfound respect for single, working parents because he was trying to work at home with his kids around, and it was an absolute nightmare.

“I don’t feel like any concessions are ever made for personal circumstances, but that’s probably true of all business, and certainly that ‘we’re all in this together,’ finished the second that venue diaries and festival bookings were back open [after the pandemic].”

“We don’t really think of people as working for us; they work with us”

Williamson considers Earth’s relationship with other agencies to be “largely friendly,” but laments that people tend to work in isolation within the sector.

“That’s a strange quirk of our industry,” he observes. “There’s a subtle, unspoken competition that seems to make people not want to talk to each other very much.”

Overall, Williamson considers there to be “real positives” and “relatively perennial negatives” to working as an independent.

“It’s just about finding the balance between those things,” he asserts. “We work for ourselves – that’s a really important thing to point out – and we allow the people who we work with also to work for themselves. We don’t really think of people as working for us; they work with us.

“For me, independence is also about respecting the ecosystem that you work in and trying to take a slightly longer-term view of the talent that is maturing within that, rather than trying to leverage it up to the maximum earning potential that you can, and then what happens next year? Who cares?”

If anything, Williamson believes it is slightly easier to operate as an independent now than when Earth first started out.

“There are more independents around, so I think it’s more acceptable,” he reckons. “The way that we operate probably seems less unusual than it did at the beginning.”

“Many artists and creatives just want to make a living out of doing things the way they want to do it, and we provide a home where that’s okay”

He continues: “We were traditionally a bit sceptical about making statements and took the view that an agency was a background entity. People were interested in artists, and who cares who dresses the shop window? But the next period is about taking our place a little bit more.

“I think that we offer a reasonably unique position within the ecosystem and have some things to say. Sometimes there’s a real lack of leadership in the music industry, so we’d like to come out from under our rock a little bit.”

Gravitational Pull
Palmer’s priorities revolve around “attracting more people with likeminded views and continuing to grow and retain headline artists down to grassroots artists.

“We also have an appreciation that it’s not every artist’s goal to be the massive touring headliner,” she adds. “Many artists and creatives just want to make a living out of doing things the way they want to do it, and we provide a home where that’s okay.”

With the final word, Courtney views Earth Agency still being around for its 10th anniversary as cause for celebration in itself.

“I don’t think people ever expected us to still be here,” she adds. “I know there was some negativity that we heard when we started, but we ignored all of that and had the drive, ambition, and goal to be a great place for people to work, without applying pressure to deliver. I never had any doubt in the fact we would still be here in 10 years’ time.”

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The founders of Earth Agency have reflected on the challenges of independence in 2024 in an interview with IQ.

Four female agents – Claire Courtney, Isla Angus, Naomi Palmer and Rebecca Prochnik – formed the London-based company with head of operations Luke Williamson in 2014.

A decade on, the company is still going strong and is profiled as part of IQ Magazine’s first indie special.

“I don’t think people ever expected us to still be here,” says Courtney. “There was some negativity that we heard when we started, but we ignored all of that and had the drive, ambition and goal to be a great place for people to work, without applying pressure to deliver.”

Williamson sums up Earth’s MO as “an agency that curates talent”.

“We work for ourselves – that’s a really important thing to point out – and we allow the people who we work with also to work for themselves,” he says. “We don’t really think of people as working for us; they work with us.

“For me, independence is also about respecting the ecosystem that you work in and trying to take a slightly longer-term view of the talent that is maturing within that, rather than trying to leverage it up to the maximum earning potential that you can.”

“The way that we operate probably seems less unusual than it did at the beginning”

Williamson sees “real positives” and “relatively perennial negatives” to independent life, and contends it is slightly easier to operate as an independent now than when Earth started out a decade ago.

“There are more independents around, so I think it’s more acceptable,” he says. “The way that we operate probably seems less unusual than it did at the beginning.”

Palmer suggests a common theme runs through the 18-strong agent team.

“They are very independently minded, driven by elevating the culture, self-starters, usually a real specialist in one particular area, and very ambitious,” she says. “And quite quirky!”

Earth invests in company-wide schemes to encourage diverse potential candidates to join the firm.

“Within our company, we always wanted to make sure it had balance,” notes Courtney. “And not only around gender, but different cultures and backgrounds as well.

“A lot has changed, but there’s still quite a long way to go. Obviously, there are more successful female agents now than there have ever been and that is great to see, but it’s still nowhere near the level that it is on the male scale. There’s still a bit of a boys’ club mentality out there, which we’re still cracking away at trying to break.”

“People stay with Earth because we offer something bespoke in terms of both agents and artists”

Of the founding partners, Prochnik is now with Wasserman Music, while Angus works for environmental charity ClientEarth. Although Williamson considers key agents and clients moving on as simply “part of the game”, he points out the company’s retention rate is “largely very good”.

“People stay with Earth because we offer something bespoke in terms of both agents and artists, and I see that in action on a daily basis,” he stresses.

In its early years, the agency found itself at the forefront of the grime phenomenon when it represented the likes of Skepta. Earth’s current roster includes acts such as Sega Bodega, Death in Vegas, Bad Gyal, Buzzcocks, Gilles Peterson, James Holden, The Zombies, WSTRN, MJ Cole, M1llionz, BNXN, Lisa O’Neill, Aluna, Balmorhea and KRS-ONE, but Williamson is keen to stress its strength is in the collective.

“We have headliners, but they’re a reasonably fractional part of our business,” he says. “Most of the work we do is with people who are a little bit underneath that tier but are creatives with successful touring portfolios. They might not be playing 20,000 to 30,000-cap venues, but they might consistently be playing 500 to 3,000- caps – and that’s kind of the point. There has to be an agency that is available to that part of the ecosystem. So to focus on individual artist successes would be to miss the point slightly.”

Indeed, Palmer points out that it is not every artist’s goal to be a “massive touring headliner”.

“Many artists and creatives just want to make a living out of doing things the way they want to do it, and we provide a home where that’s okay,” she concludes.

The full 10th anniversary interview with Earth Agency appears in issue 131 of IQ, out now. The feature will also be published online next week.

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