Thirty Tigers Celebrates 10th Anniversary

President and co-founder David Macias

Marketing, management and distribution company Thirty Tigers is celebrating its 10th year in business this March. Co-founded by David Macias and Deb Markland, the company started as a small home-based consultancy, and today is a nine-person outfit with national distribution, and a Grammy-award winning release to its credit. Last year, Thirty Tigers’ sales totaled more than $4.3 million, up from $3.3 million in 2009.

Thirty Tigers plans to mark the occasion with events at SXSW and in Nashville.

The company’s growth was spurred by a 2002 partnership with Sony’s independent distribution and marketing arm, RED, which it recently re-upped through 2015. In 2006, Thirty Tigers added a management division, with a current roster that includes Jason Isbell, Elizabeth Cook, Low, Trampled By Turtles and Those Darlins.

Over the last decade, Thirty Tigers clients have included The Avett Brothers, James McMurtry, Drive-By Truckers, Todd Snider, Caitlin Rose, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Billy Joe Shaver, North Mississippi All Stars, and Kathy Mattea. They also released the 2005 Grammy-winning collection Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster, which was co-produced by Macias.

In exchange for about 10% of wholesale retail sales, Thirty Tigers provides project management, publicity services, radio promotion, new media marketing, financial modeling and distribution.

“I’m very proud of our business model,” says Macias. “We’re a great value proposition for our artists. My favorite quote about us was from an interview with Beth Nielsen Chapman about self-releasing artists, and she said that being with us was just like being with a label, only you got a check. I love that.”