For Zack Zarrillo, starting Many Hats Distribution alongside longtime label veteran Fred Feldman in 2020 was all about creating a dream scenario as a veteran artist manager in the music business for the past 13 years. “We started Many Hats with what I would want as a manager: to know that I’m doing my job well for my clients and also making them the most amount of money possible, while still getting great service,” says Zarrillo, who got his start running a punk blog called Property of Zack while in college and has managed bands like Knuckle Puck ever since. “Many Hats started as a way to leverage my management company’s artist catalog for their own benefit to get them the best rates and to not give up a crazy rate to a distributor.”
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Feldman, who cut his teeth at classic hip-hop label Profile Records in the 1980s and 1990s before embarking on a 25-year run as the head of Triple Crown Records, which he then sold to Round Hill in 2021, had extensive experience working in the indie label world as well as a six-year run at Warner Music Group’s independent label group, and knew himself that the rates that artists and managers were getting from labels and distributors were not always commensurate with the level of service they were getting in order to thrive in the industry. “I’ve heard every pitch, I’ve sat in every meeting, been promised the world, and gotten very little back for it for a higher fee,” Feldman says. “At the end of the day, you could be promised everything, but you’re responsible for your career. So we try to be transparent. That’s part of what a partner should do.”
