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Virgin Music Group announced the members of its global leadership team on Thursday (Oct. 19).
The executives’ responsibilities are split across five regions. Jacqueline Saturn will serve as president of Virgin Music Group North America/executive vp of global artist relations; Thomas Lorain and Nick Roden will be co-presidents in Europe; and Victor Gonzales has been named president in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, with Cris Garcia Falcão working as MD of label and artist strategy/GM of Virgin Music Group Latin.
In Australia and New Zealand, Nathan McLay will assume the role of MD — working with Tim Janes as MD of global marketing for Virgin Music Group Australia — and Michael Roe will take the position of MD in Africa, Middle East and Asia (AMEA).
“It is an enormously exciting time to be working in the independent sector of our business,” JT Myers, co-CEO of Virgin Music Group, said in a statement. “In today’s market,” he added, “visionary music entrepreneurs can be successful on a global scale if they have the right team and infrastructure to empower them.”
In addition to announcing regional leaders, Virgin named Jay Blomquist as chief technology officer, Jeremy Kramer as execugtive vp of global marketing, Joy Larocca as executive vp/CFO, Liz Morentin as senior vp of global communications and brand strategy, Matt Sawin as head of global product strategy and operations, Nina Rabe-Cairns as head of global growth strategy and Zack Gershen as executive vp of global commercial and digital strategy.
The appointments are the latest step in a consolidation process for Universal Music Group’s various artist services outfits. In September 2022, the company lumped together Virgin Music Label and Artist Services, Ingrooves Music Group and the newly acquired mtheory Artist Partnerships into a new entity, Virgin Music Group — of which mtheory’s founders, Myers and Nat Pastor, were appointed co-CEOs.
“mtheory was founded on the idea that we could transform the music industry by offering better, more aligned partnerships with artists,” Myers said last year. “By bringing these incredible global teams and resources together, we have the opportunity to turbo-charge that vision, and deliver even more value to artists, labels and music entrepreneurs.”
Warner Music previously combined its Independent Label Group and Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA) under one roof in 2012. Sony Music merged The Orchard and RED under the Orchard brand in 2017.
A new R. Kelly album titled I Admit It was uploaded to streaming services Friday (Dec. 9), but it didn’t come from Kelly’s team or his label.
While the release credits Sony Music’s Legacy Recordings as the label, a rep for Legacy Recordings said the company was not involved in the project. Furthermore, sources at Legacy say the album came as a total surprise and they are inquiring with streamers such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music about how the album was delivered to them.
The album was uploaded by Universal Music Group-owned distributor Ingrooves, leaving involved parties scrambling to figure out what went wrong. Once Ingrooves executives learned of the release, according to a source familiar with the situation, they set about requesting that streaming services pull the release. By 3 p.m. EST on Friday it was down.
Now, the source says, Ingrooves is in the process of investigating what went wrong internally and is severing a relationship with the label Real Talk Entertainment, which released the album on a sub-label called Legacy Recordings — the same name as Sony’s imprint. Real Talk could not be reached for immediate comment.
In January 2019, Sony and Kelly agreed to part ways days after Lifetime released the Surviving R. Kelly documentary that detailed sexual misconduct allegations against the three-time Grammy-winning singer. Sony still represents Kelly’s catalog of music, however, including his early recordings under Zomba/Jive and then later RCA, both of which are Sony-owned imprints.
The 13-track project arrives as the disgraced R&B singer (real name Robert Sylvester Kelly) is serving a 30-year prison sentence after he was convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking charges in a New York trial last June. In September, during another trial in his hometown of Chicago, Kelly, 55, was convicted of several child pornography charges.
The album’s title track, “I Admit It,” was originally released as a 19-minute track on SoundCloud in 2018. It is now featured as three separate songs, each titled “I Admit It (I Did It),” at the end of the album which addresses the sexual abuse allegations against him over the last few decades and its virulent effects on his career.
Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, did not respond to Billboard‘s request for comment by the time of publishing. But she told Variety earlier Friday that the singer’s team is not behind the release and that he “is having intellectual property stolen from him.”
The last studio album Kelly released was a holiday album titled 12 Nights of Christmas on Oct. 21, 2016. It’s his final album on RCA Records before the label removed him in the wake of the Surviving R. Kelly doc.
This story is developing.
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