5 days ago
Live Nation Urban Just Launched The Largest Black Creator Network In The Industry
Festival-goers gather at Broccoli City 2024 in Washington, D.C., celebrating Black culture, music, ... More and community.
Exclusive: This new platform helps brands move authentically through Black culture while uplifting the creators who shape it daily.
Everyone wants to be a content creator. And there's no shortage of Black creators in the digital space. But is the field guaranteed to be lucrative? Not quite. One major barrier is the lack of access to high-impact, brand-backed campaigns. Live Nation Urban is stepping in with a strategic solution.
Exclusively reported here on Forbes, the live-event production powerhouse has officially launched the Live Nation Urban Creator Network—a bold new partnership with Breakr, the creator marketing platform fueling some of the biggest campaigns in music and media.
'Creators have long been an integral part of how we market our tours and festivals' said Live Nation Urban President Shawn Gee in a press statement. 'But the demand from our brand partners pushed us to think bigger—to move beyond treating creator marketing as an internal tool and instead build a business model around it. As brands increasingly looked to us to help them connect authentically with Black audiences, even outside the context of our events, it became clear there was an opportunity to create something larger."
At its core, the Live Nation Urban Creator Network isn't about popularity. It's about potency. The platform isn't looking for creators who simply rack up vanity metrics. It's looking for cultural movers. As Malcolm Gray, the VP, Marketing and Partnerships at Live Nation Urban explained in our exclusive interview, 'We're kind of building these platforms and especially in the past few years, the macro creators are cool for awareness, but the micro to mid creators drive culture.' That means creators with smaller, deeply engaged followings often hold more value than those with millions of passive followers.
Rather than rely on a one-size-fits-all vetting process, Live Nation Urban leans into nuance. Every creator brings something different to the table, whether it's high-volume reach or niche influence. According to Malcolm, 'It's not somebody that has maybe even 50,000 followers—it might be somebody with 5,000 followers, but those 5,000 followers are very influential or they're also really tapped into everything that that person does.' This rather bespoke approach gives the platform its edge. It touches on the actuality of who is actually listening to the voices of content creators.
Fans gather at Roots Picnic 2025 in Philadelphia, celebrating music, culture, and community at one ... More of Live Nation Urban's flagship festivals.
Richard Gay, COO at Live Nation Urban, further touched on the power of customization. 'Sometimes it's who's the one that can move a 24-year-old female and who's the one that can move a 60-year-old female that loves gospel and is going to our gospel festival for Franklin down in Dallas, right?' In other words, the Creator Network isn't just an engine for buzz, but rather a strategy-driven vehicle designed to meet audiences where they are, both geographically and culturally.
What makes this platform visionary isn't just its embrace of creators, it's its embrace of strategy. 'Everything is custom for us,' Richard said. 'We understand that there's no one solution.' That level of intentionality positions the Creator Network not just as another influencer roster, but as a cultural infrastructure. Moreover, a living, breathing system that connects creators to campaigns with real impact, not just algorithms.
When it comes to creator partnerships, compensation isn't just a detail, it's a dealbreaker. And in a field where Net 30 and Net 60 delays are still the industry standard, that waiting game can kill momentum, and at times tug at the livelihood of future relations. Live Nation Urban understood that pain point intimately. Their team had been managing creator collaborations manually, through Excel spreadsheets, endless email threads, and a patchwork of document requests. 'If you want to move at the speed of marketing, you can't do that with a process like that,' Malcolm explained.
Enter Breakr, a tech-forward solution founded by two young Black brothers, Anthony and Ameer Brown, that did more than streamline logistics. The platform's creator search tool made onboarding creators seamless, trimming days of research into just hours. But it was their revolutionary tool BreakrPay™ that truly shifted the paradigm. Through BreakrPay™, creators are stationed to receive their compensation within 48 hours. As Malcolm put it, 'we use a platform to curate, negotiate, confirm offers, make sure that the talent and the creators execute, see analytics, and then we can pay them within 48 hours of them making the post, which is not normal. That's a game changer for us.'
In an industry where freelancers often chase down payments like bill collectors, this frictionless payment system is more than convenient. It's equitable. BreakrPay fronts the creator's payment while consolidating the invoicing process on the back end, freeing both the talent and the brand from bureaucratic lag. 'That took so much stress and process out of it,' Malcolm shared. 'Hey, cool—you make the post, and within 48 hours, you get paid. We're on to the next one.'
Lil Wayne joins Juvenile, B.G., and Turk for a Hot Boys reunion at 2023 Lil Weezyana ... More Festival—bringing the iconic Cash Money crew back together on home turf.
But the brilliance of this partnership didn't end with efficiency. It aligned squarely with what Richard deems as Live Nation Urban's investment thesis. 'We always need to be the leaders in Black live events, and with the Black audience,' Richard explained. That leadership considers the creation of the infrastructure, and investing in the people building it. 'When Tony and Ameer came in, here's these two young African-American males that had this great thing, this unbelievable product… they're amazing and talented, they're going to drive lots of growth for our business and our industry, and we're going to help drive lots of growth in theirs.'
That ethos is precisely what undergirds the Black Lilly Fund, Live Nation Urban's vehicle for investing in Black-led innovation across live events, tech, and cultural strategy. Whether it's through platforms like Breakr or community activations like Black on the Block, the fund reflects a broader commitment: to build, fund, and champion the next generation of Black entrepreneurs. Especially those disrupting the status quo.
One concern I brought to the table was this: how does Live Nation Urban ensure the Creator Network isn't just a seasonal play tied to Black cultural moments, but a sustained, year-round ecosystem for creators? Far too often, Black creatives are spotlighted for campaigns only when it's trendy, not when it's strategic. Think Black History Month. Juneteenth. The birth of hip-hop. But as Malcolm clarified, this network was never about checking a DEI box—it's about building long-term economic and cultural value. 'We have all these people we work with that are great creators,' he said, 'But now we can pitch them to brands as part of experiences… campaigns that aren't specifically tied to one of our festivals.'
Richard took it a step further, distilling the mission in no uncertain terms: 'This has nothing to do with whether DEI is in favor or not, right, it has nothing to do with that.' What they're building isn't conditional on the corporate diversity trend cycle. It's a market-tested mechanism to drive real results. Whether that means selling tickets, pushing a product, or activating a voter base, the network is equipped to 'move audiences to action,' and that's something brands need every day of the year, not just when Black culture becomes marketable.
Megan Thee Stallion commands the stage at 2024 Broccoli City Festival, bringing high energy and ... More Houston heat to Washington, D.C.
That year-round relevance is precisely why the Creator Network is structurally distinct from Live Nation Urban's events. With access to a scalable creator roster that can be segmented by audience, category, or campaign goal, the team can deliver measurable impressions on demand. 'That is a need where the creator network is… really, really valuable and powerful, far beyond us,' said Richard. And perhaps most powerfully, 'that's why we're opening up our Black box.'
I had to ask the obvious, yet critical question: with so many platforms and collectives claiming to center Black creators, what truly sets this one apart? Because let's be clear, there's no shortage of agencies or influencer marketing tools that 'target Black audiences.' But too often, those efforts feel extractive or surface-level. What Live Nation Urban is doing through this network feels deeper and is rather, more strategic, more lived-in, and more earned.
According to Richard, it comes down to infrastructure. 'We have access to 30 million plus records on folks… That's something people don't have,' he shared. That data doesn't just sit in a spreadsheet. It's sliced, indexed, and overlaid with the lived experience of 15+ years producing live events for Black audiences. This is statistics. Skewed Black. 'We can curate and match and scale that… this is the mosaic of Black culture,' he added.
Malcolm finds value in Live Nation Urban rich network lexicon. Other platforms may offer software, but in addition, Live Nation Urban offers relationships. 'We do this,' he said plainly. 'We do events, we do tours, we do festivals… we live off selling tickets.' That means creators in the network are stepping into a constant flow of opportunity, not just hopeful invitations. 'We just have access,' Malcolm explained. 'So even if you only work on Live Nation Urban stuff, that's still probably four, five, six events a year you can put on your resume.'
Let's be clear, this isn't some newly launched beta program. Live Nation Urban has been doing the work, consistently and deliberately, for more than four years. Long before it was fashionable to 'invest in Black creators,' they were building an ecosystem that positioned Black creatives not just as participants, but as central players in exposure. From The Roots Picnic to Mary J. Blige's Strength of a Woman Festival, from Broccoli City to the Emmy-nominated 'Sly Lives!' documentary directed by Questlove, the Creator Network has already activated some of the most defining cultural events in Black America.
WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 08: Zoe Spencer attends BET Awards 2025 Media House at Quixote ... More Studios West Hollywood on June 08, 2025 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Robinfor BET)
And the creators tapped for these campaigns aren't just your standard viral influencers. They're community connectors who bring their own loyal audiences along for the ride. We're talking about creators like Zoe Spencer (3.9M+ followers), Big Homie Blocks (2.27M+), Fats Da Barber (696K+), Reggie Couz (4.6M+), and FunnyMan Gaitlin (6.3M+).
This isn't about moment marketing. Such as of 2025 is effortless. And modern marketing in entertainment extends beyond effortless creator behavior. It's about movement marketing. That phrase, used by the Live Nation Urban team, doesn't just sound good, it's the truth of what they've built. The Creator Network is more than an influencer roster. It's a platform with data-backed muscle, culturally grounded strategy, and a blueprint for what equitable creator ecosystems should look like.
Live Nation Urban is fixated on long-term impact. Their team's approach, "movement marketing," reflects the substance of what they've developed. The Creator Network is a platform that uses data, smart strategy, and a plan for fair creator partnerships. There are currently 75,000 creators listed supported by 55 million data points, and successful collaborations with brands like BET, STARZ, and Hulu.
Live Nation Urban Creator Network
For Black creators, this network offers more than just opportunity, providing a direct path to success. Whether you have 5,000 or 5 million followers, the LNU Creator Network values quality and result driven Black content creators.
Applications for the Live Nation Urban Creator Network are now live. Prospective Black creators can apply to the 2025 Creator Class here.
