ROSTR is deepening its relationship with experiential company Please & Thank You through a new category-exclusive partnership that stretches across data, media, events and commerce — a deal both companies say reflects a broader shift in how music businesses are building relationships and targeting clients.

The agreement makes Please & Thank You ROSTR’s first official VIP Experiences partner and signals the start of what Mark Williamson, Co-Founder & CEO for the ROSTR Group says will be a series of category-exclusive partnerships across its growing ecosystem of industry products, which now includes editorial, social, jobs, services, events and data tools.

The partnership expands on a relationship the two companies quietly began building over the last year through sponsorships tied to ROSTR’s live-industry coverage, including its “Hottest Tours” feature and “The Live World” newsletter.

Under the new deal, Please & Thank You will now work across multiple parts of the ROSTR platform, including editorial integrations, social media, events, data services and future merchandise collaborations.

Williamson said ROSTR’s growing reach across the industry made it possible to think beyond traditional advertising.

“ROSTR now has all these different kind of arrows that we can shoot, whether it’s data, whether it is advertising, whether it is doing events and using our brand,” Williamson said. “Instead of us doing lots of little campaigns on the media side of our business, can we find great partners who are willing to try something different and build a more holistic approach?”

A major piece of the partnership will focus on data. ROSTR plans to provide Please & Thank You with customized data feeds designed to help identify emerging business opportunities across touring, management and artist development.

Williamson compared the approach to more sophisticated sales and market intelligence systems used in other industries, where companies track behavioral signals to identify potential clients before competitors do.

“We have the graph of all the people in the industry — the agents, managers and so on — as well as the activity that’s going on,” he said. “Did an artist just announce a tour? Did they sign with a new agent? Did they release a record? Those are signals.”

The goal, Williamson said, is to modernize an industry that has historically relied heavily on relationships and word-of-mouth networking.

“The industry as a whole has been very word-of-mouth for a very long time,” he said. “Part of our whole goal is: how do we expose data that makes it easier to collaborate in the industry?”

For Eddie Meehan, CEO of Please & Thank You, the partnership also provides direct access to a younger generation of managers, artists and executives entering the business.

“Working with Mark and the ROSTR team allows us to expose ourselves to a younger generation of people,” Meehan said. “It gets us into the hot and up-and-coming things, artists that are popping up. It’s a great barometer for our team to discover.”

Meehan, whose previous experiences business was sold to Eventbrite and later Endeavor, said the market has evolved significantly since the early days of VIP and fan experiences.

“Back 10 to 15 years ago, we had to convince people to do VIP packages and meet-and-greets,” Meehan said. “Now a lot of the up-and-coming artists and managers are already used to that business model.”

The companies also plan to launch a new invitation-only dinner series called Trending People, aimed at bringing together rising executives, managers, agents and creatives identified through ROSTR’s data platform.

The dinners will rotate between Los Angeles, New York, Nashville and London, with the first expected later this summer.

“There’s an increasing move toward getting people together in person,” he said. “That’s a differentiator now.”

Rather than focusing exclusively on established power players, the dinners are expected to spotlight the next wave of executives gaining momentum across the industry.

“What we see in our data a lot on ROSTR is the middle and upper-middle progressing executives that trend a lot on the platform,” Williamson said. “They’re not necessarily the biggest names — they’re the next generation of talent.”

Meehan emphasized that the events are intended as relationship-building opportunities, not revenue generators.

“We’re not here to make money on this,” Meehan said. “We’re here to work together and get to know up-and-coming talent — and by that I mean the artists, the managers and the people we don’t know yet.”

“There’s no presentations,” Williamson added. “You’re not sitting through a timeshare sale. You come and hang out.”