Back to Sin City…
baby, we'll be up five-hundy by midnight!
The RM 64 crew is closing out the summer of ‘09 by heading to that magical place in the desert where dreams, marriages and a month’s salary could all be lost or won in a matter of minutes. The Vegas Music Summit will take place on Sept 23 – 24, 2009. The mini-confab will host 2 nights of showcases at the Beauty Bar and 1 day of panels at the El Cortez Hotel & Casino in beautiful Downtown Las Vegas. Showcasing acts are currently on the A&R tip sheet and have been handpicked by LA talent/event promoters A&R Knights, Hell Ya! and RM 64. We’ll be hosting cocktail mixers in between sets at our lounge in The Griffin two doors down from the Beauty Bar. Event sponsors include Miller Lite, SESAC, ASCAP, Smash Magazine and BMI. Daytime panels and industry badges are FREEEEE!!! (“You’re killing me Larry!”) Panels will feature Major and Indie label A&R execs, Producers, Managers, Attorneys and Music Publishers. So come on down, cause just like the boys in the Hangover, you too could party ’till the early morn and wake up to find a tiger sleeping in your hotel bathroom. Stay tuned to this space for showcase and panel updates. For more info and to be on our comp industry badge list, email us at info@RM64.com
08.20.09Tonight’s Show Picks & Blind Item of the Week
Nathan Maxwell @ Viper Room Tonight
Which Head of A&R is making a jump to another label? Is the move to replace a soon-to-be exiting creative head? Inquiring minds want to know…
Lots of music happening around town tonight (Thurs 8/20); Nathan Maxwell (of Flogging Molly), whose new solo album White Rabbit came out this week on SideOneDummy Records, is at the Viper Room. The folks at New York Underbelly present their series Between (a Rock and a Hard Place) at 3 of Clubs with The Nights, Jack Left Town and more… And canucks Mother Mother are at Spaceland with L.A.’s Ballerina Black.
In the mix: Dr. Dre’s Headphones, Eric German, Vegas Music Summit
08.18.09TEDx Music, EMI’s Future & Wolfmother Pub Derby Update
Authentik Artists' Meeting of Important People
This past Sunday, August 16th, an invite-only TEDx event took place in Los Angeles on the topic of the Music Business. The TEDx is an off-shoot community program from the influential TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference (http://www.ted.com), which is held annually in Long Beach, CA. For those not familiar with the nonprofit group, TED was started in 1984 and is devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” It’s an invitation-only event where the world’s leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration. Veteran entertainment/technology attorney Ken Hertz hosted this past Sunday’s TEDx function at his residence. Insiders who attended shared with us that the gathering was set in an informal setting, and hosted a select group of high-level music and technology executives, thus connecting the world’s old and new media players. The event also included performances by up-and-coming artists. Not surprisingly, the discussions focused mainly on the current changes that are transforming the music business, particularly with regard to the digital future. There’s no doubt that some high-level networking and deal-making was happening on the sidelines. However, one invited guest commented on the lack of entrepreneurs invited. The majority of the attendees were corporate executives…
A fitting inclusion for today’s post (if in name only) is Authentik Artists act Meeting of Important People. The indie-pop trio from Pittsburgh with a sound akin to The Shins, Modest Mouse and The Beach Boys, dropped their new self-titled LP last week. The album quickly reached #15 on the iTunes singer-songwriter charts; check out “Brittaney Lane Don’t Care”. www.myspace.com/meetingofimportantpeople
While industry spectators have been gossiping and keeping a watchful eye on the Terra Firma-owned EMI Music Group for some time now, there’s been some chatter of late about the group having quiet discussions with suitors about selling its profitable publishing division. In addition, with the label division pulling-back on a couple recent artist deals, can we expect Terra Firma to reveal their playing cards soon? Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal’s August 15th article about EMI Music’s struggle to avoid defaulting on its loan from creditor Citigroup touches on the many highly publicized changes EMI has experienced following its acquisition by Terra Firma in 2007, but the timing and tone of the piece is curious. With what said, is the WSJ article a teaser of something more drastic to come? Stay tuned…
The latest on the Wolfmother pub derby is that two companies are pulling away from the pack. The action is ramping up and it looks like Sony/ATV and Universal Music Publishing have narrowed the field by submitting offers well over the 7-figure mark. UMP, who already controls the band’s publishing for Japan, New Zealand and Australia, are said to be making a worldwide play for the Aussie rockers. For their previous Interscope release, the band had an administrative deal with Cherry Lane Music for their worldwide publishing outside of the aforementioned territories that UMP has a stake in. If you understand what’s going on here, please explain it to us. Meanwhile, the Sony/ATV crew has been making an aggressive and impressive play for their pursuit of the band. This one is getting nutty. We’ll keep you posted…
08.13.09Inside MySpace Record’s Artist Development Program; Q&A with Jason Reynolds
MySpace Records has been busy behind the scenes establishing a new unsigned artist development program called the Friends & Family Network. The initiative provides marketing for all participating artists across the MySpace Music platform to promote releases, tours and videos.
The label has also begun a new series of live shows in Los Angeles called Online [Offline], which features artists from the Friends and Family Network.
We recently sat down with MySpace Records’ Jason Reynolds to get the details.
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MSR's Jason Reynolds in signature shades
RM64: To start off can you tell us a little about your background?
JR: I’m originally from Australia where I used to run a record label putting out a bunch of indie rock records. Later I was worked for Shock Records in Australia, which also distributed Sub Pop, so I got to know a bunch of people there. When I lost my job at Shock, I got a call the day after from Jonathan at Sub Pop and he said, ‘What are you going to do now?’ And I said I don’t know, and he said ‘Come work for me in America.’ So I moved to Seattle in the 90’s, started the publishing company for Sub Pop, and then sort of migrated into working in A&R and doing product management. I signed a bunch of artists like Damien Jurado, Saint Etienne and The Jesus and Mary Chain.
In the late 90’s after leaving Sub Pop I did a stack of stuff like writing for the NME, music supervision as well as some musicology jobs, and then ended up in management.
I never really intended to become an artist manager, but I was always helping out the artists I knew; anytime there was a problem they kept calling me in to fix it. The first real client that I had was this kid Patrick Park. He was just a singer songwriter that I found at Genghis Cohen but he totally blew me away. He was like a modern day soul singer. So I ended up managing him and developing it from the ground up and subsequently sort of became the artist development-management guy.
Some of the other artists I worked with were The Belles from Lawrence, KS, Forward Russia! from the UK (on Mute), Every Move A Picture from San Francisco who got signed to V2, and then one of the biggest artists I managed was Isobel Campbell – who was previously in Belle and Sebastian. The first project that we did together was the record that she made with Mark Lanegan, Ballad of the Broken Seas. Crazily enough it took her from selling 10,000 records, which is what her previous record had done, to having a UK Top 40 album, getting nominated for a Mercury Music Prize and selling 150,000 copies of that record.
A little after that I dropped out of the music business for a couple years to become Mr. Mom.
RM64: So how did you end up at MySpace Records?
JR: I had been helping out the GM of MySpace Records J. Scavo. Every time he had a question, often times it related to international issues, I answered it. So he called me out of the blue one day and asked, ‘What are you plans?’ and I said ‘I don’t know’ and he said, ‘I’ve got a job for you.’ A large part of my position was to do international stuff for MySpace Records, but the main reason I got brought in was to run the artist development program that we have which is called the Friends and Family Network.
And that’s what I do on a daily basis. We have 130 artists signed-up, and what I do is I build marketing campaigns for unsigned artists on MySpace. The logic behind it being that we could have the next Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys or whatever in the program and we help build them from their 300 friends to 30,000 friends or their 250 plays a day to 70,000 plays a day. And it’s great. Now I do artist development and somebody pays me a salary for it.
RM64: So could you give us a little overview how of the MySpace Friends and Family program works?
JR: So the way that it works is that we dig around on MySpace Music to find unsigned bands that appeal to us, from the charts as well as traditional A&R and various ways you find out about bands through a friend, musician or whatever it is, and we sign them up to the program. The concept is we give them a set of marketing tools, so when they’re releasing an EP or have a tour or a video, I help them market their band on Myspace. So say an artist has a record coming out in the next couple months, I’ll build a marketing campaign with them. From there we have various tools to help them really hyper-target their marketing and get in front of users who we, collectively, think might like their music.
We also aid in getting editorial coverage. So if they have a video we will give them a music video feature. If they have an EP or album coming out, we’ll approach the editorial team at MySpace Music to try and find the right “look” for them, or if they have a video we will help with coverage on the music video page, which are amazing opportunities for unsigned artists. And then we have this one particular music ad that runs on the main music page where we promote tours and things like that as well. So really what we do is give them a tool kit to say ‘here you go, this is what you get allocated in a year –go crazy’. And it’s good. We have this particular artist from Long Beach that when I started my job they had 3,000 to maybe 5,000 plays a day. I would run marketing and see it go to maybe 10,000 plays a day. And now nine months later I run marketing, and they get 70,000 plays a day. That’s what the concept of it is, you’re building an artist from a small level to a big level.
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BREAKING NEWS: ASCAP Gets A New Member
Word on the street is that longtime industry veteran Sue Drew has been tapped for the creative-membership position at ASCAP. The PRO has been interviewing numerous candidates for months to fill the open position since longtime ASCAP execs Tom DeSavia and Jennifer Knoepfle both exited their posts to work at pubcos Notable Music and Sony/ATV, respectively. Drew has held executive A&R positions at Elektra and Reprise Records. She recently was an independant A&R consultant working with a variety of artists/projects.
08.6.09Singled Out: Ron Burman
Ron Burman (3rd from right) with Nickelback
The first piece in our new Singled Out industry spotlight series, is Roadrunner Records’ Sr VP of A&R Ron Burman. We recently caught up with the big man and asked him to show a little swagger when telling us what he’s been up to (truth be told, it didn’t take much convincing), so here’s the latest on Ronnie B’s projects: Theory of a Deadman’s Scars & Souvenirs LP has already surpassed gold certification in the U.S. and with Top 3 singles at both Active and Hot AC radio, it’s on its way to platinum sales… Fellow canucks Nickelback, who are no strangers to the sales bling, have gone double platinum with their Dark Horse LP and are currently making their way through a sold-out summer tour… With their AC/DC-infused guitar sound, Aussie rockers Airborne are currently in the studio with hot-shot producer Johnny K. working on the follow-up to 2007’s Runnin’ Wild album… Coming out later this month is the new Collective Soul S/T release on Tom Lipsky’s recently minted Roadrunner imprint, Loud & Proud. Their first single “Staring Down” has already entered the Hot AC Top 20 chart and continues to climb… With no evidence of slowing down, Burman has inked a couple of new signings soon to be announced. Stay tuned…
08.4.09Nods, Odds & Sods
2nd Annual Sunset Strip Music Festivlal to Bring Chaos to the Order
Lots of buzz building around the 2nd annual Sunset Strip Music Festival taking place on September 10-12. The event will enclose a section of the Sunset Strip to feature two outdoor stages and six venues: the Roxy, Viper Room, Key Club, Whiskey A Go-Go, Cat Club and House of Blues. Event promoters recently added Korn to the eclectic line-up, which also includes Chris Cornell, Pepper, Unwritten Law and Shiny Toy Guns, to name a few. We give props to the Roxy’s Nic Adler and event producers for what is shaping up to be a must-see music festival. For the full line-up and more info: www.sunsetstripmusicfestival.com…
On the Film/TV front, congrats goes to Bob Thiele Jr. on his Primetime Emmy nomination for the theme to FX’s Sons of Anarchy. Thiele also held music supervision duties for the show, which featured a number of emerging artists such as Audra Mae, Lions and Year Long Disaster, helping to distinguish the show as a new tastemaker outlet…
We mentioned how much we liked the new Wolfmother album, Cosmic Egg, and it looks like we’re not the only ones. We hear a hefty pub derby (in the 7-figure range) is brewing with both majors and boutique pubcos who are trying to ink the Brisbane-based trio led by Andrew Stockdale. Publishers in the mix are Universal Music Publishing, Sony/ATV, Chrysalis Music, Cherry Lane and Warner/Chappell. Stay tuned…
Meanwhile, after releasing 2008’s Elephant Shell via Saddle Creek Records, it appears that Tokyo Police Club has found a new label home with Mom & Pop Records, which is a division of Q-Prime and run by well-respected industry vet Michael Goldstone…
Finally, SoCal locals Call the Cops have made it into the final 5 in the MySpace/Toyota-sponsored Rock the Space contest. The winner of which receives a deal with MySpace Records.
07.30.09Get It On…
AWOLNATION @ Viper Room Tonight
Following up on some of our recent updates… Heavy crowd including labels, publishers and film/tv out last night to see Burn Down The Mission’s first L.A. performance, and you’re going to want to watch that one closely. We hear there might be another performance in-town before the band heads back to the East Coast. We mentioned that publishers were circling buzz band Local Natives, and it looks like Universal Music Publishing Group has indeed signed the band out of the UK… Congrats to Myles Lewis who has joined up with Josh Abraham’s Pulse Recordings after a recent departure from his Senior Director of Writer/Publisher Relations position at BMI. A lot of action going on at Pulse, we wonder what he will be up to over there? Finally AWOLNATION, the new band featuring Aaron Bruno the former singer from Under the Influence of Giants, plays The Viper Room tonight. Head to the MySpace page to grab a free download of the new song “Burn It Down”. Playing with AWOLNATION tonight is All Wrong & The Plans Change, who is a must see if you haven’t had the chance yet, and Jinnrail who recently completed their new full-length New Angeles. See you there…
07.14.09Make ‘Em Feel The Heat
Bidwell @ Key Club Tonight
In case the heat has left you a little groggy from the weekend, here’s a quick Tuesday catch-up to get things going… Last night, L.A. saw the invasion of hipster-youth with LBC’s indie-wunderkind Avi Buffalo playing Silverlake Lounge and new Warner Bros. Records artist Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head, returning Spaceland to its disco-dancing genesis (sort of). Speaking of the bunny, celeb blog superstar Perez Hilton has been popping-up in the press lately with the confirmation of his new imprint label through Warner Bros. The impresario in pink who has been on their A&R payroll for over a year now and is a supporter of a number of artists via his blog, is indicating the announcement of his new signing will be coming soon. Could his first artist be one of the acts we listed in our recent posts? The line-up for Noise Pop’s third annual Treasure Island Music Festival in San Francisco was just announced, and an impressive one it is, with headliners including MGMT, The Flaming Lips, The Decemberists and many others. Congrats to Jordan Kurland and crew for continuing putting together a fantastic line-up… Finally, following up with the fiery locals Fitz and the Tantrums, the soul revivalists have confirmed a slot on the upcoming Flogging Molly & Hepcat tour, which kicks-off September 10 in Sacramento and will be at the Greek Theater in L.A. on September 12. A lot of folks sure to be out for Bidwell at Key Club tonight, get there early for The Real You and Goodnight Sunrise.
07.7.09Post 4th Catch-Up
Audra Mae Signs to SideOneDummy
Welcome back from the holiday weekend (we decided to delay our post for those who REALLY enjoyed themselves), we hope it was a good one. Also, thanks to everyone who made it to last Thursday’s Rumble L.A. event, it turned out to be another great night with some amazing performances. Here’s a little catch-up on what’s happening out there…
The usually steady landscape of performing rights organizations have seen some shakeups of late on the west coast, particularly with the open director position at ASCAP that had many throwing their hat in the ring. A little birdie tells us that the field is narrowed to a short-list and the final selection is imminent. Speaking of chirping, inquires about a similar west coast opening at BMI have started coming in due to a recent departure in the creative/membership department. Will we see a similar parade of applicants? Or will there be an in-house hire of one of their own creative execs who’s a rising star?
On the signing front, one of our favorite artists of the last year, Audra Mae, has signed with uber-indie label SideOneDummy Records. Kudos to Warner Chappell’s Blue Hamilton who signed Audra early on the publishing tip, and manager Marc Pollack, who recently returned to Hits joining The MGMT Co.. On the east coast, RCA Records A&R exec David Wolter, in tandem with Nick Burgess in the UK, has signed L.A.’s Funeral Party (formerly on Fearless Records). Meanwhile, the Ben McClane-repped Secret Secret Dino Club has signed with Drive Thru Records…
Currently in the mix is Marissa Renee, who is slated to appear on P-Diddy’s new MTV show, has performed with Kanye West and is currently writing for the Clique Girlz on Interscope. Quite impressive for the 19-year-old Phoenix native. We hear publishers are circling in… Speaking of Arizona, which seems to be an artist hot spot of late, the Tempe-based This Century appears to be finalizing a one-off arrangement through a Warner Bros. Records imprint… Finally, we recently mentioned that multiple labels were taking notice of the John Branca-repped AMD with label showcase requests piling up for the female-foursome. At press time, we hear there are offers in from majors on both coasts, while calls are still coming in. Stay tuned…
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