Music Business Toolbox author and Freeform co-founder, Bryan Calhoun has more than twenty-five years of experience at the nexus of technology, business and music. Currently the head of Blueprint Group (BPG)/Maverick’s Digital Strategy & Business Development, Bryan helps foster the inescapable online identity and business of GRAMMY® Award-winning and multiplatinum superstars such as Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, T.I., G-Eazy, the Roots, Jill Scott and previous clients such as Kanye West, Ludacris and Drake.

After stints at Relativity Records and Warlock Records in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Bryan started Label Management Systems in 2003, a consulting firm that offered web-based financial and project modeling software designed to develop detailed financial analysis for independent labels. As the company organically expanded, it welcomed Kanye West and G.O.O.D. Music as a marquee client. In 2008, Bryan was named Vice President, New Media and External Affairs for SoundExchange, overseeing music industry relations that helped attract tens of thousands of artists and indie labels to the nonprofit that collects and distributes digital performance royalties. In 2013, Bryan moved fully into digital music strategy for Blueprint Music Group, driving early digital sales, streaming and marketing campaigns for the management company’s clients with digital service providers, social networks and other platforms. He and partner Tim Quirk founded and launched Freeform, a platform that allows artists to release their albums as apps. Those apps leverage distribution and monetization strategies made popular by free-to-play mobile games.

In 2007, Calhoun first self-published his book with corresponding tools, Music Business Toolbox, which became essential reading for aspiring musicians and indie labels. The updated version, published in 2017, identifies the enormous changes in the digital music landscape, and provides musicians with essential, timely information about the digital music economy, from recording, to digital marketing, to royalties.