Project

UMANO

Independent record label and events company. Tagline: "Music that makes us feel human." State Change EP (U001) launched May 8, 2026 — with a 600-cap release party in Brooklyn, vinyl run, documentary, and data-driven Meta Ads campaign.

Role Founder & Operator
Co-founder Sebastian Restrepo
Status Active — State Change EP live
Cities New York · Boston · Madrid · Marbella · Cartagena · San Diego

What UMANO is

UMANO is an independent music label and event series built on a single thesis: music that connects people to something real. Co-founded with Sebastian Restrepo in January 2025, UMANO operates across two tracks — a label releasing music and an events brand hosting live shows in multiple cities across the US and Europe.

The team: Sean (founder, operations, strategy), Sebastian (co-founder), Jesse, Nate, Cole, Henry (director), and Marley. Operations span 6 cities: New York, Boston, Madrid, Marbella, Cartagena, and San Diego.

The hard brand rule: AI assists operations. It doesn't touch the music. Authentic human voice is the competitive moat — UMANO uses AI for campaign management, operations tracking, and marketing research, never for songwriting or production decisions.

State Change EP launch (U001)

The first UMANO catalog release. Catalog number U001. Released May 8, 2026. The launch was designed as a multi-channel campaign with each component reinforcing the others — not a one-day release event but a sustained release window.

Live event

Release party in Brooklyn at a 600-capacity venue. 406+ RSVPs before doors opened. Managed venue relationships, artist logistics, and event operations across the team.

Documentary

Label-announcement documentary directed by Henry McBride — the narrative layer of the campaign, establishing UMANO's identity and the story behind the release.

Physical release

Vinyl run with giveaway program. Physical product as cultural artifact, not just collector's item — tied to the release party experience.

Meta Ads campaign

$300 lifetime budget. Campaign structure designed using AI-assisted audience targeting research — identifying the flywheel audiences most likely to convert to streams, follows, and event attendance. Phase 2 retargeting campaign launched T+8 through T+28.

Digital distribution

DistroKid distribution. SubmitHub Smart Link for pre-release awareness campaign. Partiful for event management. Spotify release velocity window — 7 days of concentrated streaming push to hit algorithmic recommendation thresholds.

AI-for-operations model

UMANO's AI strategy is deliberate and bounded. The line is drawn between operations (AI-assisted) and creative output (human-only). This isn't a budget constraint — it's a brand conviction. The music is the product; AI-generated music would undermine the reason UMANO exists.

Campaign management Meta Ads campaign structure, audience targeting research, performance signal extraction, and rotation recommendations. AI-assisted analysis feeding human creative and budget decisions.
Operations tracking Wiki-integrated ticket system within the Master OS. UMANO tasks tracked, prioritized, and dispatched through the same orchestration infrastructure as the other domains.
Marketing research Audience flywheel doctrine synthesis, creative playbook development, competitor analysis — research-grade AI assistance for strategy decisions.

Portfolio framing

UMANO demonstrates something most AI engineers don't have: end-to-end GTM execution. From venue selection through Meta Ads to post-event audience harvest, this is a complete go-to-market campaign run by the same person who designed the AI infrastructure running it.

The multi-city vendor operations — managing artist logistics, venue relationships, and event production across US and Europe — signals operational range well beyond software engineering. Running a label while simultaneously managing six other business domains is only possible because the orchestration infrastructure (Master OS) handles the coordination overhead.