Matthew K. Watts

Matthew Keenan “Matt” Watts (born January 01, 1979, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is one of the founding members of the pop punk band The Starting Line. He continues to tour occasionally with the band, but in recent years has established a successful career in marketing.
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The Starting Line went on hiatus becoming what he described as a "part time band." Watts moved to New York City and used his experience as an artist to manage bands. He began co-running the U.S. part of the music label Communion Music owned by Ben Lovett of Mumford and Sons. In 2011, Watts joined The Starting Line's manager Randy Nichols at Force Media Management where he began co-managing bands such as Hit The Lights and Fake Problems.
In 2014, Matthew left New York and relocated to Orlando, Florida where he was appointed as the Director of Music and Marketing for the Hard Rock Hotel and Casinos, which is a branch of the Hard Rock Cafe chain of restaurants.

In 2017, Matthew joined Amazon as part of their Amazon Tickets US team as Head of Entertainment, Media and Music Relations to directly compete with Ticketmaster. Following the closures of Amazon Tickets UK operation, in 2018 the company shut down it's US branch and Watt's then found a role at Fender Musical Instruments Corporation as Vice President of Artist Marketing.
At Fender, he's helped launch a series of successful marketing programs one of which is 'Fender Next,' an initiative that aims to promote artists who will become the fresh, innovative, new faces of the company. Watts was quoted saying "We work with over 2,000 artists, and supporting and servicing artist needs first has long been the core of our artist marketing efforts."

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