He Founded Music Brokers in 1977, the Only Independent Multinational Latin American Record Company. A Track Record of Success, Always Ahead of Trends in the Music Industry.
He began working as a DJ at the Bierhaus disco. In addition to playing at major parties, he started working at radio station Z95 thanks to a listener contest he won. Federico Scialabba had been studying in London and brought back loads of records. When the producers of the station found out, they offered him a spot as a disc jockey. He quickly won over the younger audience with his age and energy, and soon got his first show called Música Maestro.
The Big Break: Rock & Pop Radio and Trípoli Discos
One day, Quique Prosen, director of Rock & Pop radio, crossed paths with him and offered Federico a spot on the station’s nightly programming. This opened the door for him to work simultaneously at the indie label Trípoli. Radio host Bebe Sanzo had recommended him for the job. Trípoli at the time focused on Argentine punk music, and Federico soon took charge of its international licenses, promotion, and some recording coordination.
He proposed more disruptive ideas to the label, such as releasing the full collection of prank calls by Dr. Tangalanga. The owners agreed, and it was a huge success—so much so that he became a partner in the venture with none other than Walter Kolm and Sergio “Chuchu” Fasanelli.
A New Challenge: MCA and Universal Music Group
After Trípoli dissolved, Federico joined another label—this time, a multinational one: MCA Records. He became Marketing Director and then Strategic Products Director at just 22 years old. Six months later, MCA merged with Universal Music Group. “Looking back at my career, I’d say it’s a long series of attempts to challenge established norms. When I worked at multinationals, for instance, the finance departments were adamant that you couldn’t release low-priced products. The minimum yield per unit had to be guaranteed, and in those companies, it wasn’t measured in percentage but in absolute value. If you sold at 5 or 7 pesos/dollars at the time, it didn’t hit the required margin. But I saw an opportunity,” says Federico.
How Music Brokers Was Born: Federico Scialabba and Julián Cohen – A Life of Success
He had the idea to create a permanent low-price product line to stock what Musimundo had at the time—transparent acrylic bins where discontinued CDs were dumped for people to dig through and take home what they liked. The concept worked so well that he launched a company with his still-current partner Julián Cohen. They called it Music Brokers.
Riding High with Music Brokers
With Music Brokers, they began releasing all kinds of compilation albums that sold extremely well during a challenging time in Argentina. “We either do something different, or we watch the market disappear—and us with it,” Federico Scialabba recalls from that time.
In 2004, on the recommendation of a music journalist, the Bossa N’Stones series was born. The first Bossa N’Stones sold millions of albums in Argentina and worldwide, boosted by a complex international distribution network built on the back of this success—plus everything it sold on iTunes and continues to generate today via Spotify streams.
Many attempted to replicate the idea after Bossa’s release.
New Tracks for Music Brokers
When the digital era arrived, it was a real cataclysm for the music market. In 2022, Music Brokers celebrated its 25th anniversary. The company began diversifying its business model, leveraging its regional offices in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and the United States. They hired Ray Leone, then Sales Director at Putumayo, to enter the U.S. market. They also rapidly migrated to digital, without abandoning physical products—which they still actively develop. “We’re a company of ideas, with targeted products to nurture a virtuous ecosystem—one that constantly grows and feeds itself. We create soundtracks for specific moments, embedding ourselves in people’s emotions, in places, in what people recognize and need. That’s our formula. Today, people demand content at lightning speed. To be clear, they don’t just consume it—they devour it. And we’ve become expert generators,” says Federico Scialabba.
Over the years, they’ve worked with some of the world’s most iconic artists and bands: Kim Wilde, Gregory Isaacs, Tony Dize, Kim Carnes, Diego Torres, The Wailers, ABC, Niña Pastori, Los Pericos, NTVG, Belinda Carlisle, Sharon Corr (of The Corrs), Ali Campbell (of UB40), Arcade Fire, and Vampire Weekend, to name just a few. “It’s hard to predict what’s next, but the outlook is positive. The business is going to get faster. And songs will completely become financial assets, as traceability becomes easier than ever. We’ll be able to track performance, history, revenues—everything online, transparent and in real-time. So it wouldn’t surprise me if we end up with a stock market for songs, or a portfolio of songs trading daily on the exchange,” Federico Scialabba says about the future of the music industry.