Departure Executive Director Pat Murphy Leaves to Start New Management Company and Record Label

Departure's former executive director and head of programming is starting his own venture.

Pat Murphy has left his role at the conference and festival to launch Post Script — a new artist-focused entertainment company combining artist management, recorded music, media and intellectual property.

Murphy's departure comes just weeks after former executive producer Kevin Barton also left to pursue new ventures.

LOFT's co-founder Randy Lennox has also left his post as CEO of LOFT Entertainment, the co-owner of Departure alongside Oak View Group, Billboard Canada has learned. Jackie Dean has been named president and CEO of LOFT. Lennox remains in a "strategic advisory role" as the executive chair of the company's board of directors.

Jason Carlos, formerly Departure's senior director of brand, marketing & communications, succeeds Murphy as the conference's executive director.

A spokesperson from Departure says "the recent team changes created a good opportunity to finalize the reorganization plans that had been under discussion for some time."

That major reorganization comes after just two editions of Departure, which was rebranded from Canadian Music Week (CMW) following its purchase by Oak View Group and LOFT Entertainment in 2024.

Murphy was there from day one, and tells Billboard Canada that helping build a new identity for Departure from the legacy brand of CMW helped prepare him to venture out on his own with Post Script.

"Working closely with artists, with managers, with booking agents, with brands, with media companies — it was very expansive," he says. "I'm ready to take that network that I've built at Departure and over the two decades I've worked in the music industry and now funnel that into my own endeavours...Post Script is about building the kind of company I believe artists need today. We want to build around what each artist actually needs rather than applying the same model to everyone.”

Post Script is an umbrella housing the management company PS Mgmt and record label, PS Records. On the label side, it launches with a distribution partnership with Canada's biggest major label, Universal Music Canada.

On the management side, the company launches with two clients Murphy has a longstanding relationship with: Choir! Choir! Choir! and Sully Burrows.

The 19-year-old Burrows is the youngest nominee at the upcoming 2026 CCMA Awards, where he is nominated for breakthrough artist of the year. The Ontario country artist's single "Put It On Me” has amassed more than 15 million career streams and is currently charting on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100.

Choir! Choir! Choir! has transcended its role as an everybody-welcome Toronto choir to become a mini-phenomenon, amassing more than 500 million views and collaborating with artists including David Byrne, Patti Smith and Sarah McLachlan. On Sept. 7, they will celebrate the life of Dolly Parton at the Opera House in Toronto.

Burrows and Choir! are very different acts in different genres, and Murphy says that's the point.

"The idea is to be able to build bespoke business plans and strategies for different artists that have different needs, because that is the reality of the ecosystem that we're in right now," he says. "It's not one-size-fits-all. The ecosystem is changing in real time and the mechanisms to break an artist are also changing. Having something that is lean and custom built for an individual artist, in my experience, gives them a better chance of longevity versus trying to scale very fast and wide."

Murphy started in the live business as a teenager in St. Catharines, Ontario, booking bands like City and Colour, Alexisonfire, The Unicorns and Bedouin Soundclash in a company called Postscript Productions. He says the new venture is a tribute to those early days, while infusing the DIY do-everything spirit of his ensuing career.

While he's starting in the label and management space, he plans to evolve Post Script to meet the demands on opportunity of artists, letting their trajectory and needs guide him. That could include media, IP, brand partnerships, artist-driven businesses and more.

"Success for Post Script won't be about having 50 artists," he says. "I would rather work with a focused roster and build meaningfully together."

He teases that there will be more announcements to follow, including one that he will announce around the CCMA Awards.

As for Departure, Murphy is optimistic about its future. But he's energized to be working on his own ventures again.

"This is probably the most excited I have been since I started promoting concerts when I was 16 years old," he says.