David Beno Benveniste

David "Beno" Benveniste
David "Beno" Benveniste, 2014
Born	Beverly Hills, California
Alma mater	USC, (BA, Communications)
Occupation	CEO & owner of Velvet Hammer Music and Management Group
Website	velvethammer.net

David "Beno" Benveniste (born November 29, 1970) is an American entrepreneur from Beverly Hills, California. He is CEO of Velvet Hammer Music and Management Group, which represents Grammy Award-winning musicians, including AFI, Alice in Chains, Deftones, System of a Down, The Smashing Pumpkins, Korn, and Code Orange; which also includes a publishing branch and record label, to which OneRepublic is signed. Beno has also amassed a prolific collection of street art and pop art, and is an avid luxury real estate investor.

Beno attended Beverly Hills High School and graduated from Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

In 1996, after seeing System of a Down (SOAD) perform at a rehearsal in Los Angeles, Beno took on managerial duties for the band. Through his use of new online marketing techniques and free online distribution, System of a Down realized worldwide online success.

After working with System of a Down for a year, Beno founded Velvet Hammer Music and Management Group. Velvet Hammer went on to include a publishing branch and record label, to which OneRepublic is signed.

Around the same time that Velvet Hammer was founded, Beno also founded digital marketing agency, StreetWise Concepts & Culture, which utilized Social media marketing, Interactive Marketing and Word-of-mouth marketing to connect brands with emerging trends in youth culture. As the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began filing hundreds of subpoenas for file sharing violations, Beno continued to share free music with fans both through physical mail and via the internet. "The first 100,000 albums are always the hardest to sell, and that's the expertise Beno provides," Rick Rubin was quoted as telling Time Magazine.