Welcome to The Manager’s Playbook, my personal newsletter where I share insights from Music Executives and Artists for aspiring and emerging music managers, executives and artists on how to navigate the music industry. This newsletter is brought to you by Mauricio Ruiz.

Nick Groff spent ten years managing an artist that, by every commercial measure, wasn't working.

No spikes. No viral moment.

Just a guy named Levi. You know him as BUNT., making music Nick couldn't stop listening to, in a duo that split up, then got signed to Universal, then got dropped from Universal, all while working three jobs in Germany just to stay close to it.

Ten years. Not ten months.

Ten years of a manager and an artist agreeing, without proof, that something was there.

I sat down with Nick for Part 2 of his episode on The Manager's Playbook, and the thing that stuck with me wasn't the eventual payoff, the billion streams, the 350,000 tickets, the stadium in Mexico City that sold out the day after Incubus.

It was everything that had to be built before any of that was real. Not the song. The world around it.

In my mind, there are three things that explain how BUNT went from a dropped artist delivering food on a bike in the German snow to selling out arenas:

Storytelling, World-Building, and Fan First Implementation.

Nick doesn't talk about them like buzzwords. He talks about them like infrastructure.

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If you want to turn music into a business, you have to frame it. You cannot just make the thing and assume people will know what to do with it.

That does not mean making up a story.

It means giving people a way in.

Nick used Billie Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes” as the example. When he first played the song for people, the reaction was polite. People liked it. Nobody was acting like they had just heard the future.

Then the context started to matter.

She was thirteen. She made it with her brother. She had this quiet confidence. The clothes, the visuals, the energy around her. All of it changed how people heard the same record.

Same song.

Different weight.

That is what framing does.

It gives the work somewhere to live.

He brought up Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour too. That album did not win Album of the Year because it was packed with obvious Top 40 records. It won because the whole thing held together. The sound, the visuals, the feeling, the story.

It had a world around it.

With BUNT., Nick and Levi had to do that work before the audience was really there.

Before “Clouds” became the song people know now, they sat in a room and asked a simple question:

What is BUNT.?

Not what is the rollout. Not what is the content strategy.

What does this actually feel like?

They landed on four words:

Smile. Sweat. Squad. Soccer.

Levi smiles a lot. That is just who he is.

His shows are physical. People move, sweat, jump. They are not just standing around watching lights.

He did not want the crowd pushed away from him while some VIP section got the best view. He wanted to be in it with them. That became squad.

You come with your people, or you leave with new ones.

And soccer gave it another layer. Levi is German. Nick loves Arsenal. It was personal enough to feel like theirs.

The point is not that every artist needs four words.

The point is that BUNT. had a filter.

When they made content, planned shows, designed merch, or thought about the fan experience, they had something to check it against.

Does this feel like us?
Does this bring people closer?
Does this make the room feel more like BUNT?

That is why the Coachella moment worked.

Yes, the clip went viral. Yes, they gained around 50,000 followers from it. But it did not come out of nowhere. Nick’s team had thought about the shot. They knew Levi was going into the crowd. They pushed to have their own people connected into the feed because they knew the house cameras would capture what happened, but their people would know how to make it feel right.

There is a difference.

A random viral moment can help you for a week.

A moment that actually matches the artist can move the whole thing forward.

That is what world-building really is. Not a mood board. It is making sure the audience can feel the same idea every time they meet the artist.

Nick gave another example from BUNT’s upcoming German arena run. Around the barricades, they are putting an illustrated timeline of BUNT’s story, from small rooms to 10,000-cap shows.

It is a small detail, but a smart one.

Fans are not just walking into a venue. They are walking past the history of something they helped build. It gives them a place in the story before the show even starts.

Most people skip that kind of detail.

This is where it gets tactical.

Dance acts typically do $1–$2 in merch per head at a show. Brutal margins once you factor in drop-shipping and returns.

BUNT. was stuck there too, selling shirts with his name and nothing else on them. Nobody was buying.

Then Nick looked at it differently. People do not just buy logos. They buy something they want to wear because it says something about them.

So they took a line fans were already reacting to:

“Time with the family is priceless.”

The merch jumped to around $11 per head.

That is not a small adjustment. That is a different business.

Then the data showed them something else. Their German audience was 74% female, but the merch line was mostly boxy unisex shirts. They were designing for who they thought was in the room, not who was actually in the room.

So they changed it.

Obvious, right?

But a lot of teams do not do the obvious thing. They collect data, talk about data, put data in decks, and then keep making the same decisions.

Nick treats data like something that should change the next move.

That showed up in the global strategy too.

In Argentina, he saw Messi jerseys selling for $30, then $20, then $10 on the same street. That told him quickly that expensive official merch probably was not the move there.

So maybe Argentina is not a merch market yet.

Maybe it is a promo market.

Mexico City was also different. They priced tickets at $20 because they understood what the fan could actually afford. Other artists were charging $60 tickets and $100 VIPs in the same market. Nick and Levi chose not to do that.

They passed on short-term money.

They built the room instead.

The show sold out. After that, every festival in Mexico started calling.

That kind of decision looks simple after it works.

In the moment, it takes restraint. It takes knowing the difference between taking money from a market and building one.

None of this sounds flashy when you break it down.

It sounds basic.

But basic is usually where the work is.

The mistake people make with world-building is thinking it starts once the budget arrives. Once the label believes. Once the numbers are undeniable. Once the team is big enough.

BUNT’s world started before that.

It started while Levi was broke. While he was working three jobs. While he was sleeping on Nick’s couch in LA. While the trip that helped create the music also cost him his job back home.

The brand came before the hit.

The framing came before the audience.

The belief came before anyone could prove it was right.

That is what I took from the conversation.

You do not wait until the numbers justify the world.

You build the world first.

Then, if the song connects and the timing lines up, the numbers finally have somewhere to go.

Watch Episode 77 with Nick Groff LIVE NOW

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Bio

I’m Mauricio Ruiz, the host and creator of The Manager’s Playbook podcast, dedicated to demystifying the world of music management, and Founder/CEO of 8 Til Faint, an Artist Management company with over 5 billion audio streams worldwide. Our past and current clients include Grammy nominated, Juno Award winning multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter Jessie Reyez, Skratch Bastid and more.

I am also the Co-Founder of Mad Ruk Entertainment, a content agency with over 3 billion long form video streams worldwide. Our client list includes The Weeknd, Eminem, and Celine Dion, along with renowned brands like Nike, Pernod Ricard and the NBA.

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