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The Association of Independent Music has announced the departure of chief executive Silvia Montello, citing personal reasons. Montello began leading the London-based indie sector trade body in early 2023 following the exit of Paul Pacifico, who left for the Saudi Music Commission. Taking over on an interim basis is Gee Davy, who now occupies three C-suite spots as AIM’s chief executive, operating and policy officer.
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Davy, who joined AIM in 2017, previously handled day-to-day leadership of AIM in between Pacifico’s departure and Montello’s arrival. “With the trust of the inspirational team and board, and our excellent senior management at my side, I am looking forward to delivering on AIM’s commitment to support the UK’s innovative independent music community and level the music playing field,” Davy said.
Montello joined AIM less than a year after becoming the first-ever female CEO of the Association for Electronic Music (AFEM), the global non-profit representing electronic music companies. Prior to AFEM, she held senior roles at the U.K. arm of Universal Music, where she worked as director of catalog marketing between 2006 and 2010, and BMG, where she served as group senior vp of recordings operations and integrations from 2014 to 2016. She was subsequently appointed senior vp of operations at the then-Kobalt-owned artist services company AWAL, a post she held from 2017 to 2020.
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“It’s unfortunate that we are losing Silvia so soon into her tenure, but on behalf of the board I wish her well in her next endeavours,” said AIM chair Ruth Barlow. “The board and I are working closely with Gee and the AIM team as we continue to support and promote the independent music sector, delivering and creating value for our community via our membership events and activities schedule, industry affairs work and beyond.”
AIM represents more than 1,000 U.K. indie labels, artists and music companies, including Beggars Group, Domino, Warp and Ninja Tune. The U.K. is the world’s third biggest recorded music market behind the U.S. and Japan with sales of just under $1.7 billion in trade value, according to IFPI’s 2023 Global Music Report.
Bobo Producciones, the production and promotion company that for the past few years has produced the successful “90’s Pop Tour” in Mexico and the United States, this week expanded and launched new management, A&R and marketing departments in addition to a record label: Bobo Music.
“We are very excited about everything that is coming this year for our company. We continue to look for opportunities and expand strategically, especially in the Latin market in the United States,” Ari Borovoy tells Bilboard Español. The former member of pop group OV7 — which had its heyday in the 1990s — heads Bobo along with his brother, Jack Borovoy and Sonia Salvador.
For its expansion, the company brought in veteran music industry executives, including Humberto Calderón, who has headed marketing and A&R at BMG and Universal Music; Sabo Romo, the renowned musician, producer and founder of legendary rock band Caifanes; and Eliseo Reyna, who has been a key player in conceiving successful concept albums such as Rock En Tu Idioma and Rock En Tu Idioma Sinfónico.
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“Bobo’s strength and growth in Mexico, the United States, Spain and Latin America will be materialized with our offer of development and consolidation of artists,” says Calderón.
The team aims to develop new projects and expand marketing and production to strengthen the company’s work. Bobo has more than 15 years of experience in musical events and managing Mexican stars including Pedro Fernández, Lupita D’alessio and Sentidos Opuestos, among others.
The company’s most recent success is the 90’s Pop Tour, which last year toured 10 cities in the United States and Mexico, including a stop at Madison Square Garden. The tour has begun its sixth season, featuring Paulina Rubio on four dates, including a May 3 stop in Querétaro and another on May 18 in Mérida. The tour includes a cast of stars from the 90s, such as Caló, The Sacados, Magneto, Kabah, JNS, Ana Torroja, Mercurio and Sentidos Opuestos. In addition to performing their beloved hits that made history in Spanish language music, they also collaborate on new versions with their colleagues.
A U.K. Parliament committee has issued fresh calls for a “fundamental reform” of music streaming to address what it describes as “pitiful returns” for songwriters and publishing rights holders.
A report from the Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) Committee published Wednesday (April 10) calls upon the British government to “do more to make sure music makers are paid fairly” and to press ahead with a package of sweeping copyright reforms.
Those reforms include changing the revenue split between recording and publishing rights from music streaming, currently set at around 55% for recording and 15% for publishing. That weighting “does not reflect the importance of songwriters, composers and publishers in the music streaming process,” says the committee. Its members want government ministers to bring forward a consultation with fans, creators and industry stakeholders to “incentivise an optimal rate” for publishing rights that will “fairly remunerate creators for their work.”
Other recommendations in the CMS report include the introduction of a statutory “private copying” levy like what exists in other European countries such as France, Germany and Italy. That would require a small tax to be charged on the purchase of electronic devices and blank media that can be used to store songs, which is then paid out to artists and songwriters via collecting societies. The introduction of such a scheme would generate between £250 million ($313 million) and £300 million ($376 million) a year, claims the CMS committee, and safeguard reciprocal payments from other markets where private copying mechanisms exist.
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“Not only does a lack of such a scheme in the U.K. prevent British creators from receiving payments from the domestic market, but it has also put their payments from abroad under threat,” says the report, calling for the introduction of a private copying levy within the next 12 months.
On the subject of artificial intelligence, the CMS committee echoed its previous demands for stronger enforcement of creators’ rights against AI developers using copyright-protected works for training purposes without consent or fair compensation.
“We are concerned that the status quo simply favours AI developers, given creators’ concerns that their IP is already being used in AI development without licence or any practical means of recourse,” states the report, which criticizes the government’s lack of progress on establishing a code of practice around the use of AI and intellectual property.
More support also needs to be given to freelancer staff and the self-employed working in creative industries, such as the music business, in response to long-held complaints around contracts and working conditions, say committee members.
The CMS report is the latest chapter in a long and ongoing series of government-led interventions into the U.K. music industry fueled by artist discontent over low payments from streaming, beginning with a 2020 Parliamentary inquiry into the music streaming business. That probe wrapped the following year by calling into question the major record labels’ dominance of the industry and declaring that the music streaming business “needs a complete reset.”
Numerous government-led working groups, investigations and initiatives followed, including studies looking at “equitable remuneration” and the impact of AI on the music industry. A working group focused on creator remuneration is due to meet for the first time this month.
Despite the progress that has been made, CMS committee chair Dame Caroline Dinenage MP said the U.K. government “needs to move further and faster to ensure music makers really are properly rewarded for their work.”
“If creators are no longer to be the poor relations, the government needs to play catch up by plugging the gaps in outdated copyright and intellectual property regulations,” said Dinenage in a statement accompanying Wednesday’s report.
In response, Jo Twist, chief executive of British labels’ trade body BPI, said the committee was right to highlight creators’ concerns around generative AI, which she called “unquestionably the most significant issue facing the creative industries today,” but said the report fails to recognize that, “with the support of their labels, more U.K. artists are succeeding in the streaming economy than ever before.”
“In an increasingly competitive global industry, their approach risks limiting investment and harming the U.K. talent of the future,” said Twist in a statement.
Umbrella trade group the Council of Music Makers, whose members include the Musicians’ Union and Music Managers Forum, was more positive about the committee’s findings. In a statement, the organization said the report provides a good summary of the issues and some of the proposed solutions to improve creators’ remuneration, but cautioned that for real progress to be made, “we need stakeholders from across the music industry to stop denying reality and to, instead, come to the table with solutions, whether that’s the copyright reforms proposed by MPs or a negotiated agreement.”
When he first started his own agency, Andrew Kelsey worked out of a tiny, windowless office in San Francisco’s Mission District. He had no experience as an agent, but he did have a passion for underground electronic music and an ambition to get bookings for artists who were making it.
Twenty years later, Kelsey has a staff of 18, offices in San Francisco and Brooklyn — both of which boast natural lighting — and a roster of more than 140 house, techno and indie electronic artists whose “underground” sound has, over the last two decades, become the prevailing style of commercial electronic music in the United States.
Kelsey’s agency, the independently owned and operated Liaison Artists, now books 5,000 shows a year, including at major festivals like EDC Las Vegas, Ultra Music Festival and Coachella, where this weekend, Liaison artists Carlita, Folamour, The Blessed Madonna, Bicep, ANOTR, Eli & Fur, Ame and Innelea are all slated to play.
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“I thought it was going to be big,” Kelsey tells Billboard over Zoom, “but not this big.”
As tastes have shifted toward the style of music Liaison has always championed, the agency has grown in tandem. The company doubled in size just before the pandemic, then doubled again when live shows returned. The staff now includes eight agents, including Kelsey and his partner, Mariesa Stephens, who joined the agency in 2008 after meeting Kelsey through the Bay Area nightlife world.
Following the pandemic, veteran agents Emma Hoser and Meryl Luzzi joined the team, bringing in clients including house titan Jamie Jones, techno pioneers Adam Beyer and Nicole Moudaber and artists from the revered Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep labels. Beyond the agents, Liaison employes four accountants and several coordinators who, Kelsey says, “make the machine run.”
There was no machine to speak of when Kelsey moved to San Francisco in 1998. He arrived with one bag from his native Buffalo, N.Y., where he’d booked clubs while earning a criminal justice degree and interning at the courthouse. (“I just had a moment of like, ‘this is miserable,’” he now says of the experience. ”) In San Francisco, he found a thriving electronic music culture and knew he had to be a part of it.
But with minimal experience, there was no clear “in.” Eventually, Kelsey hustled his way into an internship at Urb Magazine, a job for which he’d “bomb the city with materials” like CDs, posters and show flyers. This led to a four-year run doing distribution at Om Records, where – after observing the label’s in-house booking agent – he decided he wanted to be an agent, too.
When his boss at Om told him no, Kelsey “quit on the spot and started an agency with no experience,” he says. He made inroads by seeking out the music he liked and persuading a few artists that, with his “absolute dedication to working hard and just making it succeed,” he could represent them. Liaison officially launched in 2004, with Kelsey signing his first big artist, Claude VonStroke, in 2006.
Around that time, Kelsey spent a summer traveling to festivals throughout Europe, then did a five-month stint in Berlin, where he was converted to the religion of techno. (He also opened a Liaison office in Berlin from 2007-2009.) The experience in Europe “just changed my life,” he says. “It was another epiphany of wanting to bring that music to the U.S.”
At that time in the United States, the house and techno scene mainly existed at warehouse parties and smaller clubs in cities like New York and Los Angeles. Then-nascent festivals like EDC Las Vegas and Ultra Music Festival in Miami were booking the genres, but Kelsey says most festival stages for this music were “1,000 capacity with no production, in the mud, on the side, just a complete afterthought. There wasn’t even any hospitality onstage, just a couple of warm beers in a dirty cooler.”
Then everything changed. The EDM boom of the early to mid-2010s brought electronic music to mainstream consciousness in the United States, where it became a major economic force. When the boom’s bombastic “mainstage” sound cooled off, it was replaced in popularity by house, techno and the many subgenres that exist under these two styles. That’s when things shifted for Liaison.
“I’d say in 2015, it really started moving,” says Kelsey. Suddenly, artists who’d previously been playing 500 capacity clubs were getting booked for much larger stages. San Diego’s CRSSD Festival launched in 2014 to service the sound, and Coachella launched its club-style Yuma Stage in 2013, with that space growing from 1,500 to 7,000 capacity over the last 11 years. Anjunadeep showcases used to max out at 500 people; now they happen at Colorado’s 10,000-capacity Red Rocks Amphitheater.
Andrew Kelsey and Mariesa Stephens
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Chicago’s ARC Music Festival, which features house and techno exclusively, launched in 2021, with longtime Liaison client Honey Dijon headlining in 2022. This weekend the artist (who won a 2023 Grammy for her work on Beyoncé’s dance-oriented Renaissance) will also play Coachella’s new Quasar Stage, which will host three to four extended dance sets.
“I remember watching the festival change, with [Coachella co-founder] Paul [Tollett] and company putting underground dance music artists on [the festival’s massive] Sahara stage, which was kind of the next organic step for this music,” says Kelsey. “I feel like all the major promoters have been in lockstep… We used to do 200 capacity shows together and all grew together with this music.”
With this growth has come revenue, and competition. In the earlier days, Stephens says a $40,000 fee for a bigger name underground artist “was often the ceiling.” These artists were usually relegated to 2,000 capacity rooms and smaller side stages at major festivals.
Now, “the entire game has changed,” Stephens continues. “Underground artists are selling out Madison Square Garden and 25,000 cap stadiums” and playing festival headlining sets for tens of thousands of people. She says “artist fees have certainly followed suit.”
Naturally, major agencies have expanded their rosters to include these formerly niche sounds.
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t deeply competitive,” Stephens says. “For many years, the majors were less of a concern for us, but there has been a major shift recently where the music Liaison has been nurturing since our inception has become wildly popular, and things did change.”
While some of Liaison’s artists “did leave in search of greener pastures,” she continues, “they were few and far between, and most of our core artists have been very loyal to us.” (With Liaison specializing in North and South America, all of its artists have different agencies in Europe and the rest of the world which Liaison works in partnership with.)
Kelsey says it’s Liaison’s authenticity and its passion for, commitment to and knowledge of this type of music that inspires artists to stay.
“Liaison embodies the perfect blend of underground authenticity and mainstream appeal,” says Dominik Ceylan, managing partner of Temporary Secretary, a German artist management group with clients, including Dixon and Ame, who are represented by Liaison in North America. “If you’re passionate about music and see your booking agency as an integral part of an ecosystem dedicated to nurturing artists and helping them thrive, Liaison is your go-to partner.”
Currently, the agency is particularly focused on developing artists’ brands, with Dixon’s Transmoderna and Bicep’s Chroma – both of which feature custom multimedia experiences — giving Liaison the chance to “bring an artist’s vision to life in a very 360-degree way,” says Stephens. As one of the few Black agents in electronic music, she’s also particularly excited about developing Francis Mercier’s Deep Root Records family of artists. “Going to parties filled with black and brown faces [is] deeply inspirational for me,” she says
Both Stephens and Kelsey agree that the market for the music they specialize in only seems to be growing, with its name at this point only used for lack of a better word.
“There’s really,” Kelsey says, “not much underground about it.”
They love artists, they’ve got money to burn, and they’re the music industry’s new obsession: Say hello to superfans.
In January alone, Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl called for “stok[ing] the blue flames of superfans” and additional “direct artist-superfan products and experiences”; Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge highlighted the value of “superfan experiences and products”; and Spotify hinted at future “superfan clubs” in a blog post.
The following month, leaders at Interscope and Live Nation shouted out superfans. That was all before Joon Choi, president of the Korean fan platform Weverse, one-upped everyone by telling Music Business Worldwide that “the potential for growth in the superfan business and economy is limitless.” Stoke those blue flames right, and they’ll never stop burning.
All this runaway enthusiasm about superfans “goes back to that Goldman Sachs article,” says Mike Biggane, a former UMG executive and founder of Big Effect, which is developing technology designed to help smaller artist teams. Last summer, the financial institution posited that superfans — Luminate defines this group as listeners who “engage with artists and their content in five-plus different ways” — could inject more than $4 billion into the music industry by 2030.
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Goldman’s report also noted that the music business struggles “to fully monetize its content.” Nearly everyone listens to music, but the industry’s value pales next to that of gaming, for example. Games “have been more agile in terms of innovating and adopting ways to generate new revenue streams,” says Ben Sumner, managing director at Feel for Music, which helps games and brands with music supervision.
But for labels and streaming services, collecting new revenue from superfans may be easier said than done. “People are trying to find a simple way to mine fandom,” says Mike Pelczynski, one of the architects of SoundCloud’s “fan-powered royalties,” a payout system that aligns streaming revenue more closely with fandom. “It’s good for investors to hear, but it’s not simple. Every platform is different.”
Not only that: “So much of the conversation is about how to extract more out of the superfan, which I think is a big mistake,” says Bernie Cahill, founding partner of Activist Artists Management. “If you take care of them, you will get far more value out of that relationship than you will by selling them another piece of vinyl or a T-shirt.”
Pelczynski believes that “superfans want to be closer to, and most importantly seen by, their favorite artist.” They also clearly gain from their connections with like-minded enthusiasts — working together to orchestrate fundraising campaigns to support the acts they love, for example. Luminate found that superfans are 43% more likely than the average listener to say they “like to participate in the community” that springs up around an act.
These communities are defined by artist-to-fan and fan-to-fan relationships. It’s not immediately clear where labels can squeeze in.
And it’s notable that, historically, labels actually excel at reaching passive fans. A record label is unmatched when it comes to taking a song that’s connecting with audiences in one space and making it so ubiquitous that it becomes inescapable, the kind of thing that casual listeners run into at the gym and the supermarket. “We can reach Fall Out Boy‘s superfans pretty easily,” says Jonathan Daniel, co-founder of Crush Management (FOB, Miley Cyrus, Lorde and others). “When they have a song that raises its hand above the superfans, different opportunities come for them, and that’s where you really need the label — they’re great at taking it really wide.”
What’s more, in an age of artist empowerment, it’s hard to imagine many acts ceding control of their superfan communities to record companies. “Smart artists really curate a direct connection themselves,” Cahill says — they know their diehard followers keep them afloat. (It’s jarring to hear executives say things like “fandom is the future,” as if it wasn’t also the past.)
These days, due to the fact that artists can record, distribute and market themselves all on the cheap, they usually amass a dedicated following before they even sign to a label. This tends to give them a lot of sway in contract negotiations, and as a result, 360 deals — where labels take a share of the money that artists make from touring and merchandise sales, for example — are out of favor with young managers and lawyers, limiting record companies’ ability to cash in on superfans’ passion.
Nonetheless, to the extent that labels can encourage superfans to stream more or buy additional vinyl variants, they stand to gain financially. All the major labels also own merch companies, so if they can stoke demand for t-shirts that are subsequently manufactured by their own outlets, that’s another win. And UMG recently invested in Weverse and NTWRK’s acquisition of Complex, allowing it to benefit indirectly from superfandom.
Warner has another plan altogether: In February, Kyncl said that he’s “assembled a team of incredible technology talent” to construct “an app where artists can connect directly with their superfans.” While he hasn’t shared any additional details on what this will look like, users would presumably only have access to Warner artists on a Warner superfan platform. However, most listeners probably also want to connect with some acts signed elsewhere, to the extent they even know what labels their favorite artists are signed to.
The other hurdle for new superfan apps, or streaming platforms trying to add new superfan features, is all the existing options: The majority of artists already try to interact with their most passionate fans on TikTok, Instagram, Discord, Reddit and more. As a result, “artists’ time is very scarce,” says Roneil Rumburg, co-founder and CEO at Audius, a blockchain-based streaming service which enabled direct payments from fans to artists last year.
If more streamers try rolling out superfan features — SoundCloud, for example, allowed acts to message their top fans last year — then artists’ time will be crunched even further, as each platform will presumably require a different approach to engagement. In fact, Kyncl used exactly this reasoning to justify Warner’s venture into platform building. Artists “don’t want to optimize just for one platform over another,” he said.
“The few companies that are trying to build their own ecosystems, I applaud it,” Pelczynski says. However, “I think it’s going to be very challenging to make something that people will be willing to spend their time on and add to their daily usual behaviors.”
Like labels, the most prominent streaming services have spent a lot of time in the past decade figuring out how to serve music up to passive fans. (Spotify once had a messaging system, but it was discontinued in 2017 due to “very low engagement.”) They have had success using various recommendation methods — editorial playlists, algorithmic playlists — to ensure that people keep listening.
But a new generation of listeners appears less interested in throwing an editorial playlist on in the background. Younger, more engaged fans like to slow down their favorite artist’s track, mash it up, or duet with it, leading to the proliferation of homemade re-works across social media platforms.
“For the first time ever, an artist can put a song out and it might be a fan-created flavor of it that connects,” says Gaurav Sharma, founder of Hook, a platform that helps rightsholders monetize user-generated remixes. “Community is being built around music on social media, and fan remixing is a way to be unique in that expression.” It may be hard for major streaming services to cater to this type of fandom, though, due to rights issues: Labels probably aren’t going to condone unauthorized remixes on prominent music streamers. (This is the problem Hook is trying to solve.)
There has also been speculation around the industry about streaming services charging superfans extra for early access to music, a tactic that calls back to the exclusive album windows of a decade ago. That said, “fans expect a LOT of value to justify a monthly fee, especially with subscription fatigue,” according to a recent (subsequently deleted) tweet from Emily White, a former Spotify and Billboard employee whose “team was exploring artist fan clubs.”
Still, despite all the potential obstacles, “We’re seeing a lot of momentum on the institutional music side to figure this out and do it quickly,” Rumburg says, before adding a note of caution: “When so many hopes and dreams get injected into one word or concept, there’s no way it ever lives up to the hype.”
On Tuesday evening (April 9), as Belmont University’s Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business celebrated a special “Belmont at the Opry” program, the program also revealed a $58 million lead gift from music industry executive and philanthropist Mike Curb and the Mike Curb Foundation, which will fuel a further expansion of the program’s presence on Nashville’s Music Row, with the renovation of existing buildings and the construction of a new state-of-the-art facility.
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The expansion comes as Belmont’s music business program celebrated its half-century milestone last year. The program launched in 1973, founded by the late Robert E. Mulloy and with support from former University president Dr. Herbert Gabhart and music industry executive Cecil Scaife (who was part of Sun Records in Memphis before relocating to Nashville), with the intent of providing formal education and real-world career experience to young adults with aspirations of entering various sectors of the music business, including record production, label operations, songwriting, music publishing. The Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business was established in 2003 and is located at 34 Music Square East in Nashville (Belmont has contributed to preserving the historic Music Row recording studios Columbia Studio A and Owen Bradley’s Quonset Hut). The program is also a mainstay on Billboard’s annual Top Music Business Schools list.
The expansion project will be in two phases. The first, which is underway, includes the renovation of the historic Buddy Lee Attractions/Capitol Records building at 38 Music Square East. The renovation will add 17,000 square feet of space, including songwriting rooms, live sound classrooms, listening spaces and student lounges. The renovation will also include an updated space for Nashville’s Leadership Music office.
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Phase two will involve developing a 75,000-square-foot building behind the program’s current Music Row-area building, with construction of the new facility beginning over the next 24 months. The building will serve both students and the greater Music Row-area community, encompassing a performance venue that can accommodate more than 150 people, as well as networking and gathering spaces for both students and industry professionals, a coffee shop, content creation rooms and underground parking. Phase two will involve a broader fundraising campaign, which launched Tuesday night.
Curb’s gift, and renderings of the spaces, were unveiled during a reception held just prior to the “Belmont at the Opry” event, which featured prominent Belmont University alumni, including artists Trisha Yearwood, Brad Paisley, Tyler Hubbard, Hailey Whitters, Ashley Cooke and Ian Munsick, as well as songwriters Ashley Gorley, Hillary Lindsey and Nicolle Galyon.
Other Belmont alumni among Nashville’s music industry community include Steven Curtis Chapman, Josh Turner, COIN, Brian Kelley, Sony Music Nashville CEO Rusty Gaston, producer/guitarist Dann Huff, UMG Nashville chair/CEO Cindy Mabe, Spirit Music Nashville CEO/Chief Creative Frank Rogers and Warner Chappell Nashville president/CEO Ben Vaughn.
“Mike Curb’s remarkable generosity and partnership with Belmont over many years has been invaluable in advancing entertainment and music business education,” Belmont University President Dr. Greg Jones said. “This latest transformational gift solidifies Belmont’s position at the forefront of developing the next generation of music industry leaders. We are profoundly grateful to Mike and Linda for their continued investment in Belmont’s mission.”
“As Nashville’s music industry has grown and evolved into an international entertainment hub, it’s crucial that our education system keeps pace to develop skilled talent,” Curb added. “Belmont has been a fantastic partner over the years in preparing aspiring artists, songwriters, engineers, and music business leaders who go on to become invaluable employees for record companies throughout Nashville and the industry at large. With this latest investment, we’ll build upon that strong foundation to push entertainment and music business education ahead to the next level, ensuring a steady stream of well-prepared professionals for the ever-growing industry.”
“For 50 years, our faculty, stage and world-class facilities have made Belmont a top destination for future music executives, engineers, artists and songwriters. Mike’s partnership over decades has allowed Belmont to continually elevate our entertainment curriculum and facilities in lockstep with industry needs,” said Brittany Schaffer, who joined the Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business as dean in May 2023. “This lead gift allows us to deepen our integration with Music Row, creating an unprecedented immersive experience that will directly connect our students with industry leaders and opportunities while driving innovation alongside our partners in Nashville’s entertainment landscape.”
Lisa, the breakout singer, dancer and actress from the hugely successful K-pop group BLACKPINK, has signed with RCA Records for solo recordings, the parties announced Wednesday (April 10). The deal, a partnership between Lisa and her LLOUD Co. management and creative company with RCA, will allow her to retain ownership of her master recordings. In […]
In the music industry, I’ve realized how important it is to open doors for others. Being a Latin woman in this industry means running into quite a few locked doors. These barriers aren’t just about missing opportunities; they often come down to gender or where we come from, making it feel like we’re all scrambling for a key that’s hard to find.
After nearly 15 years in this field, we’ve been lucky enough to enter rooms we never dreamed possible. Having secured a seat at the table and pushed open doors that were once closed to us, we feel a deep responsibility to keep those doors ajar for others. This journey has highlighted the unique hurdles women face in the music industry and has motivated me to ensure these doors stay open, particularly for other women aiming to make their mark and overcome the challenges we once faced.
In the MIDIA Women in Music 2022 survey, when respondents were asked what would encourage women and other “non-male gender identities” to grow in the music industry, mentoring and coaching opportunities were overwhelmingly the top response. It’s a resource I wish I had when I was coming up through the business, as I often faced a lack of access to other women, and particularly fellow Latinas, who could help guide me throughout my career. I was fortunate to have lots of great colleagues who inspired me but I was always craving that deeper connection and a safe space to have open conversations with women in this industry who have stood where I did or could offer fresh perspectives.
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As a foundational team member at Symphonic Distribution, I’ve navigated the challenges of expanding a business within a small music market. As a Latina, these experiences have equipped me with the insight to provide the mentorship opportunities I always wished were available to me, to others. With the launch of the Women Empowered+ Program at Symphonic, we’ve created a testament to the belief that mentorship can change careers and lives, particularly for women.
Since beginning the program in 2022, we have connected 165 mentors from companies across the music industry with 340 mentees spanning the U.S., Mexico, Latin America, South America, Europe and Africa. This initiative reflects our commitment to dismantling the barriers that disproportionately affect women in music, providing them with the guidance, support, and opportunities they have historically been denied.
As we prepared to launch our third year of the program this March during Women’s History Month, I began reflecting on what we have been doing well and what we could do better going forward — not just at Symphonic but in the industry in general. With this perspective, I’d like to share some suggestions and insights aimed at creating effective mentorship programs for women and diverse genders in the music industry, for companies committed to making an impact.
Structure Objectives and a Matching Protocol
Define the program’s objectives upfront, ensuring both parties have a mutual understanding of their roles, expectations, timeline and time commitment. Launch the program with a clear framework, pairing mentors and mentees based on complementary interests and career goals. We created a simple Airtable form with all the details we felt were needed to fully understand each of our mentors and mentees.
Resources, Support and Honesty
Provide training and/or resources to prepare participants for effective mentoring relationships. The cornerstone of an effective mentorship is confidentiality, fostering an environment where open and honest conversations can occur, grounded in trust and mutual respect. Maintain a support system for addressing challenges, while allowing flexibility to meet diverse needs and schedules. This ensures the program is both supportive and adaptable to individual circumstances.
Feedback and Community Building
Implement a continuous feedback loop to refine the program and recognize participants’ efforts and achievements through the program through surveys. Foster a community of past and present mentees and mentors to encourage networking, shared learning and ongoing support, enhancing the overall impact and sustainability of the mentorship initiative. This can be done via Facebook Groups, Slack, Whatsapp or any other community-building platforms. We discovered that some of the mentors and mentees can help by being the community manager for these.
By bringing the next generation of female music executives up through your mentoring program, we are in turn training the next generation of mentors who will be able to reach out and continue to help bring people in. Whether mentoring or being mentored, we are all contributing to the common goal of making things better for those who come after us.
As we gear up for another year of fostering connections and growth through the Women Empowered+ Program, I’m reminded of the transformative power when we choose to support and uplift one another. We encourage every company in the music industry to create similar programs to cultivate more diverse talent and hope our experience can be a guide for others to take action and inspire even more women to join our industry. In a world where the music industry’s doors seem heavy and unwelcoming, let us be the force that opens them wider, inviting in the voices of women who have waited for their chance to be heard. Together, we can ensure that the next generation of female talent finds a nurturing space where their goals are encouraged, supported by a community that understands the unique challenges they face and believes in the power of mentorship to change not just careers, but lives.
Janette Berrios is the vp of corporate marketing for Symphonic Distribution, a leading independent music distributor with a global presence. She was included on Billboard‘s prestigious Indie Power Players list in 2022 and 2021 and was honored with the “Wonder Women in Latin Music” award presented by the LAMC and Amazon Music.
Matthew Lazarus-Hall, the Australia-born live entertainment veteran whose resume includes executive stints with Chugg Entertainment and AEG Presents, joins venue management giant ASM Global.
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Announced Wednesday (April 10), Lazarus-Hall joins the group as executive vice president, entertainment & content, with a focus on working with ASM’s growing portfolio of venues in Australia and the Asia and Middle East, North Africa (MENA) regions.
Matthew Lazarus-Hall, the founder and CEO of consultancy Square Circles Creative Solutions, will also provide support on ASM’s strategic direction and development of entertainment and other content. Initially, his focus will be on the ASM Global-managed Kai Tak Sports Park, the largest integrated sports, entertainment and retail precinct in Hong Kong, which is due to open its doors in mid-2025.
“We have worked closely with Matthew over the past 20 years and he comes with great respect across the whole entertainment industry,” says ASM Global (APAC) chairman and CEO Harvey Lister of the new recruit. “He will bring different perspectives to our organization, and we look forward to the contribution he will make to the ASM Global family of venues.”
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Lazarus-Hall was CEO of Chugg Entertainment for 13 years, working alongside the legendary concert Michael Chugg. There, he toured and worked with the likes of Elton John, Robbie Williams, Radiohead, Coldplay, Keith Urban, Luke Combs, Bette Midler, Pearl Jam and AC/DC; worked on special charity events Wave Aid, Sound Relief and Live Earth; and led the CMC Rocks QLD and the traveling Laneway Festival.
Following his departure in 2016, he joined AEG Presents, Asia Pacific as senior vice president, overseeing all touring, festivals and sports for the live entertainment giant across the Pan-Asian region.
Earlier in his career, Lazarus-Hall was operations director at Ticketek, leading ticketing for marquee events such as the Sydney Olympic and Paralympic Games, the 2003 Rugby World Cup, and others.
Legends Hospitality last year acquired ASM in a multi-billion-dollar deal.
Music talent agents Michael Gorfaine and Sam Schwartz were honored at the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s (LACO) 2024 Gala Celebration on Saturday (April 6) at the Skirball Cultural Center’s Ahmanson Ballroom in Los Angeles. The agents, co-founders of Gorfaine/Schwartz, received the LACO Hollywood Ally Award.
In accepting his award, Gorfaine said, “John Williams shared something with me that I believe should be a guiding principle: ‘Be in service to music.’ It’s our responsibility to support the wonderful musicians who play, the talented composers who write, and the dedicated teachers who teach.”
For more than 40 years, Gorfaine and Schwartz have represented top composers, songwriters, music supervisors and record producers working in film, TV and video games.
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The event raised a record-breaking $1 million to benefit LACO’s artistic and educational initiatives. Highlights included a concert with LACO artists led by music director Jaime Martín.
Film composer James Newton Howard, who was honored by LACO in 2022, was the honorary chair. In addition to Williams and Howard, others in attendance included composers Glen Ballard, Sean Callery, John Debney, Harry Gregson-Williams, Corky Hale, Steve Jablonsky, Julia Newman, Thomas Newman, Mike Post, Theodore Shapiro, Alan Silvestri, Michael Skloff, Mike Stoller and Brian Tyler; and industry executives Spring Aspers, Paul Broucek, Alex Hodges, Tom MacDougall, Tracy McKnight, Alison Smith and Randy Spendlove.
Brigitta B. Troy and Alden Lawrence served as event chairs. Peggy Falcon and Anne Grausam were event committee co-chairs.
Shaheen and Anil Nanji, longtime LACO advocates, community leaders and philanthropists, received the LACO Heartstrings Award.
For information on LACO, visit LACO.org.