Soft Shock’s Michelle Jubelirer Talks ‘What the Industry Needs Next’: ‘More Compassion, More Focus on Talent’

“The industry needs more compassion, more focus on talent and less ego-benevolent bastards.”

So responded Michelle Jubelirer, founder of the management and media collective Soft Shock, in answering the first question posed during the “What the Industry Needs Next” session at founder Dan Runcie’s third annual Trapital Summit 2026 in Los Angeles on Tuesday (Sept. 15).

Jubelirer was sitting down in conversation with Tatiana Cirisano, vp of music strategy for MIDiA Research. The pair addressed a wide range of talking points encompassing Jubelirer’s career trajectory “from artist lawyer,” noted Cirisano, “to label executive, to climbing the ranks to become the first female CEO of Capitol Music Group and now building a management and media collective.”

Backed by a strategic investment from Sherrese Clarke’s HarbourView Equity Partners, Soft Shock is helmed by Jubelirer and partner/fellow ex-Capitol Music Group top executive Arjun Pulijal. Officially launching last year with management at its core, Soft Shock isn’t only working with artists/musicians. Jubelirer shared that under her and Pulijal’s “talent is talent” philosophy, its clientele includes a comedian (Vidura Bandara Rajapaksa, who had a show that same evening), two people in the culinary space and athletes.

In other Soft Shock news, Jubelirer noted the company also has a marketing arm. “It’s pretty small now but it’s about to be quite a bit bigger [with] a company that represents a number of exciting artists and music festivals.” She also revealed that “we’re starting a company with a pretty lauded film and TV executive. We’ll be announcing that in a few weeks.”

A broad range of other topics was addressed during the illuminating 25-minute conversation, with Jubelirer’s frank yet insightful comments drawing frequent bursts of attendee applause. Here are some additional sound bites:

What do you think people outside of the major label system maybe misunderstand about what it actually takes to run one?

When I started at Capitol, I’d come from being a lawyer. I represented a lot of artists who were very left of center, and they all really distrusted and hated their labels. I had this vision that if someone was a real artist advocate and went on to run a label, would an artist thereby feel the safest possible and make their best music? But I also had low expectations of the teams at major labels. But the reality is, I was blown away by the people there. They are incredibly passionate, hard workers. A major label sounds like an awful behemoth. But really, it’s a collection of passionate people. And if you lead them correctly and inspire them, they will really overdeliver for artists. I was incredibly impressed.

Do you feel like the industry has enough of an appetite for risk these days?

If we’re talking about major record labels, it’s generally risk averse. They have to be by the very nature of them. But there are definitely pockets of people in the industry still at major labels who bet on talent and really don’t lead by data but through their hearts and minds. That was something that I felt very strongly about when I was at Capitol, and I still feel strongly about. I’m the kind of person that if I walk into a room with an artist and I get goosebumps, then I know in my heart that is somebody who’s going to go on to be something incredibly special. I’m not right 100% of the time. But I’ve been lucky enough in my career to work early on with Tyler, the Creator, Doechii and other artists. There’s no data there at the time; it’s incredibly important to not focus on the data because that’s a very easy default.

Do you think artist development is in a good place overall?

I’m not saying anything revelatory here, but it’s an incredibly challenged space. Artists are competing against everybody for eyeballs, not just other musicians. They’re competing against athletes. They’re competing against influencers. They’re competing against culinary talent. Comedians. Name it. So it’s really hard to develop a musician beyond just a song. It’s a long brand-building process; probably five years at least. And late-stage capitalism isn’t helping at all.

While at Capitol, did you feel the expectations of running a label changing as the expectations by investors were changing?

The reality is that when you’re a public company, you have one job: shareholder value. And it should be your job because that’s the way it works. I got in this industry because I care about artists; I want to develop artists and help them achieve their dreams. It just wasn’t gratifying for me to talk about shareholder value or average revenue per user. I get those things are incredibly important; incredibly important. And although I had incredible success at Capitol, at some points for me it felt a little joyless because those aren’t the conversations that I prefer having.

Do you have any thoughts on how the growing impact of institutional finance on music will shake out in the coming years?

I’m not the authority on this, but I think there’s no way that it can push them [major labels] in any other direction than further consolidation and cutbacks on the number of people working there. It’s the way late-stage capitalism works. That’s not an indictment on any of these companies. It’s just the reality of the world that we’re living in, and the music industry is going to be no different.

In accepting [executive of the year] at Billboard Women in Music in 2024, you said there weren’t enough women in positions in power; it wasn’t changing fast enough. Two years later, how do you sort of survey the progress now?

We’re f—-d. it’s gotten way worse. I’m kind of flummoxed, but I’m not surprised anymore. And I wouldn’t just say women. But anyone who’s not a straight white man is kind of f—–d in the music industry. It’s incredibly depressing. I wish that I could say with 100% certainty that it would change within my lifetime. I’m not so confident now, but I will do all I can to change it. But I’m feeling pretty dejected… When women are put in positions of power, they’re expected to still lead like men, or lead within the power structure that exists. The reality is I don’t lead like a man. We all have to be very aware that if you are putting people in that are not about what has historically been the institutional leadership, the vision of what it is to lead thereby also has to change.