Meet Erinn Knight, President of Build Your Own Dreams

In this edition of A2IM’s Featured Executive column, we are highlighting the accomplishments of Atlanta GA’s Erinn Knight, founder of the label/creative marketing agency Build Your Own Dreams.

Guest post from A2IM

Erinn Knight is an artist manager, party promoter, and booking agent based in Atlanta, Ga. She’s passionate about independent artists. In 2020 after pivoting due to the destructive nature of Covid 19, she started a label and creative marketing agency with her business partner Brandon Boone, called Build Your Own Dreams. Erinn’s focus aims to enable creatives to reach their full potential by championing for ownership.

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Black entrepreneurs have been the backbone of the music industry sense the beginning of time. Allowing us to access the resources of counterparts, now opens the door to innumerable possibilities for creators that look, think and dream like us.

What is Build Your Own Dreams? How did it come to be? 

Build Your Own Dreams is a Philanthropic Record Label and Digital Marketing Agency founded in 2020 by myself and Brandon Boone. Our separate dreams brought us together for a common goal of empowering creatives to build their own dreams through ownership. 

We are passionate about equipping creatives with the knowledge and resources to leverage their careers beyond the music industry. We are the independent label of the new age. specializing in label servicing, branding, digital marketing, brand management, and event curation. We exist to push the culture forward.

What are the long term goals of BYOD?

Our long term goals are as followed: 

• Building more owners
• Launching our film division
• Training the next generation of black executives
• Teaching the masses of artists how to effectively run their music business
• Expanding the reach of our brand through merchandising
• Covering the cost of 9 more creatives/ creative entrepreneurs in therapy

Any other exciting company updates?

Some exciting company updates for BYOD would include Kaleb’s album dropping. In addition to an amazing response from his project, his short film was also selected for a film festival, moving him towards dropping his deluxe album, giving him a full album cycle which is super important to us.

In addition to that, we just planned and executed a music festival in ATL in less than 3 months. It was such a success and everyone truly enjoyed themselves! 

Lastly, were dropping a Lofi project and t-shirts to sell as well to directly benefit out BYOD fund and send creatives to therapy! Lofi music directly benefited our President and made her feel less anxious. That’s our goal for everyone else. 

What are some of your career highlights thus far? 1. We spent 6 months refocusing an artist on their digital strategy. We went from 22k monthly listeners to 80K and charted #7 on iTunes for their album debut. (Scotty ATL) 2. We worked on redefining a strong artist brand to accelerate his fan reach. In 2 months he gained 20K monthly listeners and after a 10 day roll out Charted #5 on itunes. (Kaleb Mitchell) 3. We spent 2 months building a campaign and 10 days pushing it.  We charted #2 on itunes behind dmx. #8 overall releases on spotify and #92 top songs overall and top christian songs on billboard. (indie tribe) We also just successfully co- produced a festival for indie artists only in Atlanta and brokered deals with Reebok and Instagram for 1 of our clients!! 

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About A2IM: 

A2IM is a 501(c)(6) not-for-profit trade organization headquartered in New York City that exists to support and strengthen the independent recorded music sector. Membership currently includes a broad coalition of more than 700 Independently-owned American music labels. A2IM represents these independently owned small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) interests in the marketplace, in the media, on Capitol Hill, and as part of the global music community. In doing so, it supports a key segment of America’s creative class that represents America’s diverse musical cultural heritage. Billboard Magazine identified the Independent music label sector as 37.32 percent of the music industry’s U.S. recorded music sales market in 2016 based on copyright ownership, making Independent labels collectively the largest music industry sector.

Learn more about A2IM here, and contact our team at membership@a2im.org to join now