From Bankruptcy to a Million Customers: McDaniels Exits the Beatport CEO Chair

Beatport has confirmed a leadership transition that will take effect on 1 July 2026, with Robb McDaniels stepping up to Executive Chairman after nine years as chief executive. Matt Gralen, currently President and Chief Financial Officer, will assume the CEO role, while Helen Sartory, the company’s Chief Revenue Officer, moves into the combined position of President and Chief Operating Officer.

The move closes a nine-year chapter under McDaniels, who took the reins in 2017 and inherited a business in serious trouble. Beatport had been acquired by Robert Sillerman’s SFX Entertainment in 2013, only for the parent company to collapse into bankruptcy protection three years later. McDaniels, who had previously founded and led Ingrooves Music Group through to its eventual sale to Universal in 2019, was brought in to stabilise the operation and rebuild its relationships with the DJ, label and artist communities that SFX had alienated.

Under his stewardship, revenue has more than quadrupled, the product suite has expanded to around a dozen services spanning downloads, streaming, distribution, charts, education and plugins, and annual unique customers have passed the one million mark. Beatport Link, the streaming tier built specifically for working DJs, launched in 2020 and changed how selectors of every level access and prepare music. Acquisitions have followed, including distribution platform Ampsuite, demo submission service LabelRadar, Ibiza’s International Music Summit, and Plugin Boutique, the software marketplace that has become a fixture for anyone operating a home studio. The company also ran more than 50 Beatport Live events during 2025 and continues to fund artist development initiatives including Beatport Next and Community Funds.

Gralen and Sartory both joined in 2022 and are not new faces to readers who follow the commercial end of the industry. Gralen has overseen strategy and operations, while Sartory has led the product portfolio through the period in which Beatport repositioned itself from a download store with streaming attached to a broader services business that sells to DJs, artists and labels in roughly equal measure.

McDaniels, in a statement accompanying the announcement, said that working with the team, artists and business partners had been the most rewarding experience of his career, and confirmed that he will remain involved in partnerships and planning from the board. Gralen described the platform as a pillar of dance music culture whose focused service to DJs, artists and labels cannot be replicated, and credited McDaniels as a leader and mentor. Sartory echoed the continuity message and pointed to further product and community work ahead.

The practical implications for the industry are worth flagging. Beatport remains the dominant commercial infrastructure for electronic music outside the major streaming platforms, and any shift at the top affects pricing, royalty terms, curation, and the relative weight given to the DJ tier versus the producer and label ecosystem. The McDaniels era was defined by rebuilding trust and widening the product tent. Whether Gralen and Sartory push further into distribution, AI tooling, live events, or education will determine where the next phase of commercial tension sits between Beatport and its competitors, from SoundCloud and Bandcamp through to the Spotify and Apple Music ecosystems.

Beatport remains a portfolio company of Axar Capital Management, the New York based value investment firm that focuses on opportunistic credit and special situations in the US middle market.

by Decoded Magazine

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