Moe Shalizi: ‘How do we turn this into the next Disney?’ In 2019, Marshmello broke records with a Las Vegas residency deal reportedly worth $60m. He also single-handedly dragged the music business into a new multimedia era with his live set in video game Fortnite – in which he played to 10.7m individual players concurrently. The masked DJ is, beyond doubt, one of the biggest stars in the world, especially amongst Gen Z – many of whom consider him something of a ringmaster for non-judgmental communal enjoyment. Marshmello’s manager, Moe Shalizi, meanwhile, is recognized as one of the smartest, most successful young executives in the global music business, having gone fully independent in 2018 following four years working with Red Light. The story of Shalizi and Marshmello’s rise owes much to a very serendipitous ride in a golf cart, and the ears of Diplo. In 2013, Shalizi was just-aboutgetting-by as a co-manager of artists, working in tandem with DJ Borgore. The latest addition to this roster was Jauz, a San Fran-based EDM producer, who’d created the track Feel The Volume and released it as a free download. Shalizi, excited by the tune, passed it to his friend Chase Fiedler at live agency Insomniac, who just so happened to give it an airing, in a golf cart, at Burning Man festival. Diplo heard the track, approached Fielder, and expressed his interest in signing it on the spot. Jauz’s Feel The Volume was subsequently released on Diplo’s Mad Decent label in 2014, giving Shalizi his first success in artist management – and the impetus he needed to sign a game-changing JV deal
with Red Light. Shalizi was born in Palm Springs and grew up in Irvine, Orange County. In his freshman year of high school, his mom and dad moved the family elsewhere in California, this time to Corona, near Riverside. Today, sat on a sofa in his pristine Encino home, Shalizi talks with pride about the family values instilled in him by his “lower class” household during his formative years – and the motivational effect his father’s death had on him when he was just 17 years old. 28-year-old Shalizi has long showed a hunger for entrepreneurialism. In his teens, he would purchase second-hand
Since then, Marshmello has become not only a cultural phenomenon – with over 1.2bn views of his official channel on YouTube – but also a bastion for artistic independence. Most of the DJ’s music is entirely self-funded and released by The Shalizi Group, with the exception of oneoff pop singles featuring on-therise stars; Shalizi and Marshmello license these tracks to these acts’ respective record companies, guaranteeing heavyweight promotion around the world. Marshmello’s mainstream hits with the likes of Anne-Marie (Friends, Warner Bros), Bastille (Happier, Capitol), Selena Gomez (Wolves, Interscope) and Khalid (Silence, RCA) have followed this
“IN HIGH SCHOOL, I WAS THE FAT, FUNNY KID. I MADE SURE THERE WAS NEVER AN AWKWARD MOMENT. THAT’S WHAT WE’VE DONE GLOBALLY WITH MARSHMELLO.” cars online, then pimp them with tinted windows and lowriders before selling them on at a profit. He studied finance in college at UC Riverside – a parting promise to his dad. While there, he began running weekly EDM nights in Corona, where over 200 kids would regularly show up, having been directly marketed to on Facebook. Shalizi subsequently met Borgore, before finding success with Jauz and joining Red Light. As he signed on the dotted line with Coran Capshaw’s company, Marshmello had already been born – the fictional brainchild of Shalizi and the secretive man behind the mask.
model, never compromising the DJ’s core, fully independent, business. (Or, indeed, his ancillary businesses: Marshmello has now expanded into cookery shows on YouTube; his Cooking With Marshmello series regularly pulls in multiple millions of views.) The major turning point in Marshmello’s career epitomizes his independence, as well as Shalizi’s eye for trailblazing marketing attuned to the Millennial mindset. In 2016, as attendees of Coachella drove away from the ultimate festival de poseurs, they were confronted with a giant billboard carrying a picture of Marshmello’s face, under the 51
