Publishing
Hipgnosis Songs Poaches Publishing Vet Richard Rowe
Prior to that, Rowe co-founded R2M Music Publishing. Rowe made his mark with the Sony Music Group, in particular its music publishing division, which he helmed for 15 years as president. Today, Rowe is “one of the most important and successful executives in the music industry,” Mercuriadis acknowledges in a statement. “He helped build Sony ATV into the company it is today and played an important role in bringing Round Hill Music Royalty Fund successfully to the market in the wake of Hipgnosis.” Mercuriadis paid tribute to Rowe’s “incredible” dealmaking skills, including the partnership with Michael Jackson bringing The Beatles copyrights to Sony ATV, and the acquisition of Acuff-Rose Music which included the catalogs of Roy Orbison and The Everly Brothers. Rowe’s career started in 1979 at ...
Sony Music Publishing Signs The Kid Laroi to Global Deal
Born Charlton Kenneth Jeffrey Howard, the Kamilaroi musician made history in his homeland earlier this month when his mixtape F*ck Love (Savage) climbed to No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart. As a result, he’s now the youngest Australian solo artist to nab top spot on the survey, aged just 17 years, 5 months and 22 days. F*ck Love bowed at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 last year, and he scored three ARIA Award nominations, for best male artist, breakthrough artist, and best hip-hop release. More recently, the mixtape hit No. 3 on the Billboard chart. In Australia, the set hasn’t left the ARIA Top 40 since the original version was released last July, and it’s amassed more than 1 billion global streams. Were it not for the domination of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License,”...
How ICPC is combating corruption in MDAs, stopped diversion of N189 billion personnel cost
File Photo In the past few years, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other-Related Offences Commission, as part of its statutory mandate, has been conducting systems study and review of ministries and organisations in the federal public service. The overall objective of a system review is reform of the systems and procedures of public agencies with a view to identifying and eliminating, preventing, blocking and obstructing opportunities for corruption. To achieve this, the exercise targets detecting areas of vulnerabilities, actual weaknesses, leakages and corruption risks and to recommend ways of strengthening these systems and removing the discretionary gaps and such opportunities for both individual and institutional malfeasance on public resources. In addition, the review also targe...
How ICPC is combating corruption in MDAs, stopped diversion of N189 billion personnel cost
File Photo In the past few years, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other-Related Offences Commission, as part of its statutory mandate, has been conducting systems study and review of ministries and organisations in the federal public service. The overall objective of a system review is reform of the systems and procedures of public agencies with a view to identifying and eliminating, preventing, blocking and obstructing opportunities for corruption. To achieve this, the exercise targets detecting areas of vulnerabilities, actual weaknesses, leakages and corruption risks and to recommend ways of strengthening these systems and removing the discretionary gaps and such opportunities for both individual and institutional malfeasance on public resources. In addition, the review also targe...
NMPA President: Unmatched Royalties Finally Turned Over to MLC Brings Insight and Progress (Guest Op-Ed)
How we got here is complicated. Separate from the effort to improve how much songwriters are paid from streaming is the challenge of even receiving the money at all. It’s been well known that streaming services were stockpiling unpaid royalties, and over the years that money continued to accrue with little recourse other than costly lawsuits that didn’t solve the underlying problem and threatened the growth we needed in a post Napster world. For over a decade experts have estimated, debated and debunked theories about how much was being held. Spotify, Apple, Amazon and others have long said they employed exhaustive searches for copyright owners. There have been congressional oversight hearings, studies done by the U.S. Copyright Office and industry experts, however the magni...
Jorge Drexler Signs Global Deal With Warner Chappell Music Spain
Santiago Menendez-Pidal, managing director of Warner Chappell Music Spain, said about the signing: “Jorge is an absolute legend with an army of fans across Spain, Latin America and well beyond. He is also the go-to partner for some of the biggest Latin artists in the world. I’m so excited to be working with him and know that his upcoming album is going to make a huge impact.” Born in 1964, Drexler released released two albums in Uruguay in the early 1990s before getting his “big break” after Spanish songwriter Joaquin Sabina invited him to Madrid to collaborate with a wide range of artists. Most recently, Drexler’s COVID-19-inspired “Codo Con Codo” was nominated for best song at the 21st annual Latin Grammys. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you...
Apple’s App Store hosting multi-million dollar scams – developer
Mobile app developer Kosta Eleftheriou has a new calling that goes beyond software development: taking on what he sees as a rampant scam problem ruining the integrity of Apple’s App Store. Eleftheriou, who created the successful Apple Watch keyboard app FlickType, has for the last two weeks been publicly criticizing Apple for lax enforcement of its App Store rules that have allowed scam apps, as well as apps that clone popular software from other developers, to run rampant. These apps enjoy top billing in the iPhone marketplace, all thanks to glowing reviews and sterling five-star ratings that are largely fabricated, he says. Up to now, I’ve been in the “Apple *wants* to do the right thing” camp. My viewpoint is starting to change. How to spot a $5M/year scam on the @AppS...
BMG Announces Restructuring, Ups Thomas Scherer to Repertoire & Marketing President
Since Scherer signed on to lead the Los Angeles marketing & repertoire team in 2014, the company has seen success on the recording side with releases from Run the Jewels, Jason Mraz, KSI and Curtis Waters, among others. He also launched a long-term partnership with Dark Horse Records and has led the charge on developing a stable of rock-focused acts in Los Angeles. A number of other executive promotions were also announced as part of the restructure. Monti Olson and Dan Gill have been promoted to executive vp roles and will be responsible for U.S. publishing and recorded music in Los Angeles, respectively, reporting to Scherer. In his new role, Olson will lead BMG’s Los Angeles, Nashville and New York creative teams, in addition to creative services for the company’s film and TV p...
Not for Sale: After Unloading AWAL, Kobalt Says Its Off the Block
Kobalt issued a statement Monday following news of the sale, saying it will strengthen its commitment to its publishing business and AMRA. “We are both excited for the big opportunities ahead across music publishing, AMRA and Kobalt Capital,” Kobalt founder and chairman Willard Ahdritz said in a statement. “Our team and capabilities will only grow stronger and play a continued role in making the industry better for creators.” Going forward the company says it will stick to its core mission. “Kobalt’s mission from the start has been to create transparency and fairness for creators,” Kobalt CEO Laurent Hubert said in a statement. “I could not be more excited to focus 100% of our efforts on our incredibly successful music publishing business. Through our world-class creative and synch t...
Can This Music Rights Search Tool Solve a Big Industry Problem?
Hines, who lives in Atlanta, and New Jersey-based Noble made strides in 2020, first with funding from Collab Capital, an investment fund that targets Black entrepreneurs, as well as WeWork Black Founders, Google Black Founders Academy and early angel investors. Nobles says that Google, for instance, has been “hands on” by providing resources, including a tech support contact who went “deep with us on architecture” and other questions. Hines and Nobles also worked with teams from YouTube and ContentID, the Google-owned platform’s audio recognition technology used for copyright protection. Also, Music Tech Works was in the 2019-2020 cohort of Project Music and Entertainment, the music-focused startup accelerator of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center. Rightsholder...
ASCAP & BMI Responds to DOJ’s Consent Decrees Inaction: Read the Open Letter
Read the full letter below. January 15, 2021 An Open Letter from ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews and BMI President and CEO Mike O’Neill in Response to the DOJ Closing Statement on the ASCAP and BMI Consent Decrees Two years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it would conduct a review of the ASCAP and BMI consent decrees to determine if they still served their intended purpose. Today, the DOJ has formally closed its review and will take no action to modify or terminate the decrees but left open the possibility of changes in the future. While we were disappointed that no action was taken, we are encouraged to see how the DOJ’s approach to these issues has evolved. In his closing remarks, AAG Makan Delrahim recognized several important truths that we have long understood: S...
Shakira Sells Full Song Catalog to Hipgnosis
“Being a songwriter is an accomplishment that I consider equal to and perhaps even greater than being a singer and an artist,” said Shakira in a statement. “At 8 years old — long before I sang — I wrote to make sense of the world. Each song is a reflection of the person I was at the time that I wrote it, but once a song is out in the world, it belongs not only to me but to those who appreciate it as well.” The amount paid for Shakira’s catalog was not disclosed, but the high-profile sale highlights the potential in international catalogs in general and Latin catalogs in particular. Although there have been few major sales of high-profile Latin catalogs, in November Hipgnosis announced that its acquisition of 42 catalogs from Kobalt included hits by Enrique Iglesias, among them ...
