Meredith-raised music industry manager on Forbes 30 Under 30 2024 list

As a teenager from Meredith, Alec Karageorges had a dream. He wanted to make a career out of his love for music. He started drumming at 9 years old, but his main love was rap music. Fast forward a few dozen years, and as the music partnerships manager of TikTok, Karageorges made the Forbes 30 Under 30 2024 list for music in North America. And while rap isn’t his current claim to fame, he has made a name for himself in the music industry.

At TikTok, Karageorges is responsible for pulling data from across the music industry for his team so they can make informed decisions for editorial placement, like billboards and playlists, while also giving advice to musicians and record labels on how to use the mobile, short-form video app to their advantage, and to be a good business partner.

Karageorges earned his spot on the Forbes list by spearheading the creation of sped up and slowed down playlists across various streaming platforms. TikTok has the option to speed up or slow down music under videos, and many musician’s songs were meeting this fate on the app. The altered versions of the songs were outperforming their original versions by listeners on TikTok, and then users were adding these variations to streaming platforms like Spotify, and making money without the artist’s permission.

“These people were making 10 million streams at a time on music they didn't even own,” Karageorges said. “So I set up a whole process with my music production folks at TikTok, so that record labels deliver us the same audio — we'd give them the rights to it because they own the rights anyway — and I was telling them that's the process they should do for TikTok, so they can get on our sped up or slowed down playlists.”

After artists and record labels recognized the revenue potential, many hopped on board. The resulting playlists became very popular, and on Spotify, the playlist accrued over 1 billion streams in its first year.

Another of Karageorge’s successes at TikTok is the #rompiendo initiative, which aims to highlight Latinx musicians. Brazilian musician Anitta was the first to be featured after her track “Envolver” went viral on the app for its song and dance.

Both projects made Karageorges happy he could help make an impact on these musicians' careers.

“My whole goal is to help artists make money,” he said. “I just want to give artists more opportunity to just focus on creating music and succeeding instead of all the other stuff.”

The way Karageorges helps other artists is the way he wished someone would have helped him as an aspiring rapper. He was fairly successful, gaining about 5,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, and in college performed in freestyle rap battles in underground venues.

He was inspired to start rapping after his friends made skiing videos with  underground rap music underneath. Karageorges began contributing to these videos by making his own beats, and after that his passion took over. He began rapping to his beats and recording tracks. Support for his music came from an unconventional person. After talking with Inter-Lakes High School band director Steve Bush about his passion for rap, instead of brushing it off, Bush encouraged Karageorges to follow his passion.

“Instead of him being classic, like, ‘Oh, that's garbage music, you should focus on classical,’ he literally gave me 500 CDs to sample and then let me do an independent study in his music room,” Karageorges said. “He was definitely a really nice catalyst for someone supporting me and telling me, 'This is possible, you should do it,' and really embraced me chasing that dream.”

Karageorges didn't yet realize that following this dream would be more than just making music. Most of his time as a rapper was spent on the business side, promoting his music on social media and through other means, and he started making music just to stay fresh with his fans, not for the passion of creating. It turned his love for rapping into monotonous, uninspired work. He now makes music in his own time as a hobby.

“'Do something you love, and you never work a day in your life.' That is definitely a lie,” he said. “I would say that making music is what I love and for a long time, I was focused on really wanting to be a rapper, but it became that chore every single day. I have to post to Facebook, I have to tweet, I have to hit up my engineer, I have to record this song, and it was just so much work. And it was no longer something I did because I enjoyed it, it was something I felt like I had to produce to keep my momentum going.”

With the fear that he was ruining his love for the craft, Karageorges stopped making music full time to pursue studying business at Northeastern University in Boston and minoring in music industry. This way he could still be in the industry with the hopes he can help other musicians avoid the same fate.

Northeastern offers an experiential learning program that allowed Karageorges to work during his time in school with people and companies in the industry. His experiences led him to work with Brad Davidson, the music manager for actor Dave Duchovny, and as an assistant at Universal Music Group. Both were redeeming experiences that contributed to his success later in his career. He gave a special shoutout to Davidson — who has had a long, expansive career in the music industry — for having faith in him early on.

“He was the first person to give me a real opportunity as a previous record executive,” Karageorges said.

But while he was working as an assistant at UMG, he made a connection with the former head of music at Instagram, which is owned by Meta, Perry Bashkoff. Bashkoff later offered Karageorges a position as a music partnership specialist after meeting him and talking while Bashkoff was waiting for a meeting with Karageorges' supervisor. Karageorges accepted it without hesitation, but it wasn’t an easy gig to take.

“When he hired me, the guy was basically like, ‘I don't know what you need to do. But we have a ton of work, and no one knows how to do any of it,’” he said. “Was it stressful? Definitely. But my dad is a Greek immigrant [and] from a young age, he had me stacking wood all day for like 20 bucks, and really taught me the value of a dollar and discipline. And so, once I got that [Instagram] job, I saw it as a challenge, but I was finally making enough to survive.”

Eventually, Karageorges left his position at Instagram in 2021 when he came home to Meredith during the COVID pandemic. While back in his hometown, he was surrounded by his old friends, and an environment that made him reevaluate his goals. He considered starting a boat detailing business right in the Lakes Region. But his music industry talents were still in demand, and eventually TikTok reached out to him, offering him a position as a music partnerships manager, essentially the same job he had at Instagram, but with a paycheck he couldn’t refuse.

Karageorges’ brief hiatus in Meredith allowed him to make new goals and redefine his role in the music industry. He wanted to become a leader, and one willing to bring the ladder down for people aspiring to do the same things he did when he was younger.

“I'd love to start seeing how I can impact the community more, whether it's some mentorship programs or things like that,” he said. “While I do this to help musicians, I'd also love to find a way to help people who want to do something like this, but have no idea where to get their foot in the door.”

He offered advice for people to not give up on their passions, despite what others may think. He said he faced a lot of doubt for wanting to do anything in the music industry.

“I had a lot of people telling me I was ... dumb, or there's no chance it could work,” he said. “I had this huge fire underneath me for the past 10-plus years to really make something happen.

"A lot of people who are supposedly giving you advice, I think they forgot what it feels like to feel that a long time ago. The most important thing you can do is listen to your gut and then work hard when everyone tells you it's impossible, because everything is possible.”