During the pandemic, Josh Deutsch let the lease for his 4-year-old music supervision and strategy shop, Premier Music Group, run out. When he was ready to start working somewhere other than home again earlier this year, he found space at The National Arts Club, a 137-year-old Gothic Revival landmark building in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park, a short walk from his apartment. The club has over 600 paintings and sculptures in its permanent collection, so the place is like a lived-in museum. Randall Poster — the music supervisor known for his work with Wes Anderson and Martin Scorsese, and a friend of Deutsch’s since grade school — took an office down the hall after Premier acquired his firm, Search Party. Poster says it’s like working inside an Anderson movie.
Deutsch is best known for Downtown Music, the label he co-founded 15 years ago, that signed an array of artists who helped define the freewheeling indie aesthetics of the 2000s: Gnarls Barkley, Santigold, Major Lazer, Eagles of Death Metal and Cold War Kids. The label brought about Downtown Music Publishing and harnessed its startup mentality to a series of digitally focused side businesses.
