Stephen Budd is a British music industry executive based in London. He is a director of artist and producer management company Stephen Budd Music Ltd, the OneFest Festival, the Africa Express project and is the co-founder of the NH7 Weekender festivals in India. He is a recognised TV commentator on music industry issues, regularly appearing on a variety of British TV news shows. In June 2017 he completed his 3-year term as co-chairman of the MMF (Music Managers Forum). He is a co-executive producer of Amnesty International and Sofar Sounds' ‘Give A Home’ global concert series. His current management roster includes the artists Dry The River and Nubiyan Twist, along with the record producers Rob Ellis, Tore Johansson, Valgeir Sigurdsson, Nick Zinner, Mike Hedges, and Arthur Verocai.
Early career
Budd started out as a teenage roadie in the punk era working for artists such as X-Ray Spex, Generation X, Lydia Lunch, and Wayne County at clubs including Soho's Vortex and Twickenham's Winning Post Pub, where he suffered a back laceration working under the stage at a Motörhead concert in 1975 and was taken to the hospital by Lemmy. (The concert was Motörhead's first headline show and Budd had also roadied for them at their London Roundhouse debut in the previous weeks.) Aged 19 he started the Tortch Records label out of his bedroom in 1979, releasing the debut singles by cult artists The Sound, Second Layer, The Directions and Cardiacs. He went on to manage The Sound, The Directions and The Big Sound Authority, with whom he had his first top 30 success.
Artist and producer management
He was then asked to manage record producer Tony Visconti (David Bowie, T. Rex, Thin Lizzy) and Visconti's Good Earth Studios in London's Soho, leading to the founding of Stephen Budd Management in 1985, with a focus on the promotion and management of record producers, remixers, songwriters and recording engineers who over time included Arthur Baker, Steve Levine, Chris Kimsey, Billy Steinberg, Gary Katz and many others. He went on to manage influential bands Heaven 17 and Gang of Four as well as British pop/folk singer-songwriter Tanita Tikaram and The Magic Numbers. He was a director of Stephen Budd Management until it was absorbed by the MAMA Group and subsequently HMV.
He is a founder and long term board member of the MMF (Music Managers Forum) trade association and was the creator of its Producer Managers Group. He served as the organization's co-chairman from 2013 to 2017.
In 2013 whilst on an Africa Express trip to Mali, Budd and Marc Antoine Moreau discovered Songhoy Blues and subsequently co-managed the band for 3 years, signing them to Transgressive Records in the UK and Atlantic Records in the USA.
Live music
In 2004 he created the Passport: Back To The Bars charity concert project to raise money for Warchild and Shelter. The project has featured Amy Winehouse, The Cure, Duran Duran, Coldplay, Florence and the Machine, and many more artists performing in small venues. The 2015 edition raised over £500,000 for Warchild and won the 'Best Use Of Events' awards at the National Fundraising Awards.
Much of Budd's later career has focused on bringing together musicians from different cultures, with projects in Africa, India, Palestine and elsewhere. In 2006 the Africa Express project was formed with musician Damon Albarn, journalist Ian Birrell, and others. The project aims to bring African music into the mainstream through musical collaborations with Western artists. Artists who have featured in Africa Express to date include; Paul McCartney, Amadou & Mariam, Baba Maal, Franz Ferdinand, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and many more. In 2012 Africa Express featured as a part of the London 2012 festival, a part of the Cultural Olympiad. In 2014 a CD "Africa Express Presents Maison de Jeunes" was released on Transgressive Records featuring musical collaborations recorded in Mali by Damon Albarn, Brian Eno, Ghostpoet, Django Django and others. In 2014 Budd was the Executive Producer for 'Africa Express Presents Terry Riley's In C at the Tate Modern' which resulted in an award-winning interactive film and concert album. In 2019, Budd and his Africa Express colleagues had 80 musicians from around the world performing in a circus tent erected in Damon Albarn's native area of East London, Leytonstone.