John Legend's Longtime Manager Talks 'Toxic' Music Industry, Recalls Being in a 'Terrifying Situation' at Diddy Party

Mar. 15, 2025

John Legend (left) and Ty Stiklorius.Photo:Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty

Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty

John Legend’s longtime manager is opening up about her own experiences in the “toxic” music industry.

In aNew York Timespiece titled “The Music Industry Is Toxic. After P. Diddy, We Can Clean It Up,” published on Thursday, Oct. 31, Ty Stiklorius — founder of the management company,Friends at Work, which works with many artists including Legend, 45 — said she’s hopeful for new beginnings in the industry following themultiple accusations of sexual misconductagainstSean “Diddy” Combs.

“To this day, I can’t remember how I managed to talk my way out of that terrifying situation. Perhaps my nervous babbling — ‘My brother’s on this boat, and he’s probably looking for me!’ — convinced him to unlock the bedroom door and let me go,” Stiklorius, 49, wrote, adding that she assumed at the time that her “experience was an anomaly” and that it was “just one guy behaving badly at a drunken party.”

Now, she said, she knows her experience wasn’t unusual in the music industry.

Ty Stiklorius.Taylor Hill/Getty

Taylor Hill/Getty

“After 20 years as a music industry executive… [I now know] what happened that night was no aberration — it was an indicator of a pervasive culture in the music industry that actively fostered sexual misconduct and exploited the lives and bodies of those hoping to make it in the business,” she wrote.

Stiklorius added that her “early experiences with predators, and those that enabled them, nearly led me to give up on the music business,” but her friend Legend helped change that.

“A few years after the boat incident, while pursuing my M.B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, I attended a dinner where a senior music executive slipped his key card to me under the table, an unsubtle invitation to his hotel room. I declined,” she continued.

She went on to add, “I only persisted in the industry because, in 2005, an old college friend who was starting to find success as an artist reached out to me.”

That friend was Legend, who she noted she has now managed for 20 years.

“It turns out that many artists, including John, want to be a part of a different model of business and culture,” she wrote.

John Legend (left) and Ty Stiklorius.Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

In addition to Legend, Stiklorius' company Friends at Work represents artists includingCharlie Puthand The National. She and Legend have also launched businesses JL Ventures and the production companyGet Lifted Film Co.together through the years.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs.Steve Granitz/WireImage

Steve Granitz/WireImage

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She’s hopeful the industry can now “turn the page on a culture of exploitation and abuse.”

Insisting the “days of gatekeepers” in the business “are numbered,” Stiklorius concluded, “We owe it to the countless survivors of sexual assault and misconduct who suffered silently to unearth the truth, encourage people to share their stories and hold perpetrators accountable. We owe it to the next generation of creators to remake the business into something worthy of the art they create.”

source: people.com