All roads lead
to the top.

Headlights began as an idea in Chicago in 2010. Running a boutique record label, we quickly recognized that artists needed a new way to bring their music to market. As fans, we wanted something just as simple: to see the best rising artists in every city and have a real say in who rose to the top. Nothing out there delivered that experience, so we built it ourselves.

Formally launched in 2019 as a small competition in Chicago, the platform has grown organically, city by city, season by season. Over the past 6 years we have iterated and relaunched the platform 4 different times, each version solving a hard problem the last one exposed, from voting cadence to incentive structure to vote security, and each relaunch made the league bigger than before.

That work is now Headlights: a new experience for the music industry that unites the best of social, gaming, media, and sports. It gives emerging artists a single pathway to find, build, and monetize their superfans and creates a new way for fans to engage, discover, and influence the industry.

Change is nothing new in music. Every generation of artists rose on the platform of its era. Radio gave way to MTV, then SoundCloud, then streaming. Now AI has made content cheap and infinite, and the old label system is fading. When anyone can make a song, what matters is who the fans choose. It’s time for an economic model that serves artists and fans alike.