Dan Rowe
Firebird Music
Founder & COO
Dan Rowe is a music industry executive, entrepreneur, and musician. He is currently the COO and a Founding Executive of Firebird Music, and the Chairman & Founder of One Riot Music.
Dan launched Firebird in 2021 alongside the two Founders and served as both CFO and COO until early 2025. Dan was personally responsible for launching Firebird Label Services, Firebird’s boutique white-glove distribution arm, and the related label JV strategy. He has been involved in all aspects of Firebird’s platform, leading the launch or investment in many businesses, but specifically in Leo33 (country label), Alter Music (Rob Stevenson’s label), and Taperoom (Ashley Gorley’s publishing company). Dan currently runs Firebird’s New York office and oversees all of Firebird’s initiatives in IP, recorded music, and publishing.
Dan founded One Riot in 2018 with Reservoir Media as a publishing joint venture, and later launched One Riot Records in partnership with Virgin Music / UMG. One Riot, based in Nashville, is currently one of the most well-respected creative shops in the Roots / Alt-Country / Folk space.
Dan was previously the Founder & CEO of Sword Rowe, a music industry merchant bank that provided strategic advisory and M&A services. Dan has been an advisor to dozens of music companies including SOCAN, Audible Magic, Songspace and MixCloud. In 2013, Dan was a founding partner of Atlas Music Publishing (acquired in 2019 by Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings) where he served on the board and advised on finance and investment strategy.
Prior to Sword Rowe, Dan founded a podcasting technology company (Sonibyte), and worked as an audio engineer, in music management, and at TVT Records / TVT Music Publishing. In a parallel creative career, Dan has been an active musician and record producer, often collaborating with his wife, singer/songwriter Charlotte Kendrick. Dan writes, performs and produces, and he maintains a small A&R roster of writers and artists at One Riot.
Dan received his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and also studied French and international business at HEC in Paris, France. He holds two Bachelors degrees from Ithaca College, a B.M. in Music Composition and a B.A. in Math-Economics, where he completed six years of coursework in four years. He currently resides in Hopewell, NJ with his wife Charlotte and their three children.