American entrepreneur
David "Beno" Benveniste is an American entrepreneur from Beverly Hills, California. He is CEO and founder of Velvet Hammer Music and Management Group, which represents Grammy Award-winning and nominated artists that includes; System of a Down, Korn, Deftones, AFI, Avenged Sevenfold, Alice in Chains, and more. Velvet Hammer also has a publishing branch and record label, to which OneRepublic was signed. Beno is also the co-creator of Sick New World Festival, which launched in partnership with Live Nation on May 13, 2023 to a sold out crowd of 65,000 fans in Las Vegas, Nevada. The festival sold out within hours of the on-sale. The second annual Sick New World took place on April 27, 2024, which boasted another immediate sell out, on the on-sale for the event at Las Vegas Festival Grounds. Sick New World is proving to be the biggest, most impactful and culturally relevant rock show in the country. “I don’t manage conventionally, I manage spiritually, through vision, energy, belief, hope and just straight will.”
Beno has also amassed a prolific collection of street art and pop art, and is a luxury real estate investor.
Early life and education.
Beno attended Beverly Hills High School and graduated from Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.
As alma mater, Beno continues to give back to USC by speaking to students and challenging them to think beyond the current music industry business models. "When it comes to guest speakers at USC Thornton's Music Industry program, Beno is definitely a headliner", offers chairman of the Music Industry Program, Michael K. Garcia.
Career.
In 1996, after seeing System of a Down (SOAD) perform at a rehearsal in North Hollywood, Beno gradually took over managerial duties for the band. Through his use of emerging online marketing techniques, management and free online distribution, he helped propel System of a Down to worldwide success.
In 1997, Beno founded Velvet Hammer Music and Management Group. Velvet Hammer also went on to include a publishing branch and record label, to which OneRepublic was signed. 
In addition to being recognized as one of rock music’s elite managers, Beno is also hyperactive in the luxury real estate industry. In 2013, The Wall Street Journal covered the sale of one of his Beverly Hills properties for $7.425 million. 
StreetWise.
Around the same time that Velvet Hammer was founded, Beno also founded digital marketing agency, StreetWise Concepts &amp; Culture, which utilized social media marketing, interactive marketing and word-of-mouth marketing to connect brands with emerging trends in youth culture. As the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began filing hundreds of subpoenas for file sharing violations, Beno continued to share free music with fans both through physical mail and via the internet. "The first 100,000 albums are always the hardest to sell, and that's the expertise Beno provides", Rick Rubin was quoted as telling "Time" magazine.
Clients included ABC, Activision, Coca-Cola, Cold Stone Creamery, Electronic Arts, Fuel TV, Live Nation, Nielsen Entertainment, Nokia, Paramount Pictures, Subway, Ubisoft, Urban+Decay Cosmetics, Walt Disney Pictures, and Warner Brothers.
Awards.
"Beno"
Velvet Hammer
Streetwise
References.
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