A+L Innovation Central Podcast: David Lowery
Chris Castle chats with musician/teacher David Lowery about fan outreach, and his students.
A+L Innovation Central Podcast – David Lowery
David Lowery is the founder of two commercially successful and critically acclaimed bands, Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven. Originally trained as a mathematician, Lowery has long been interested in the intersection of technology, finance and music. In 2008, while serving on the board of advisors for a website called thepoint.com, he created a tipping point “campaign” to get his fans to commit to buying tickets for a proposed music festival. The campaign was a success. The Point later became Groupon. Lowery also teaches music business finance at the University of Georgia. Follow David on Twitter: @davidclowery
“Jabberwocky” performed by Gardening, Not Architecture. Written by Sarah Saturday, Copyright 2012 Principiis Obsta Music (ASCAP), All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of SemaphoreMusic.com
A+L Innovation Central: Steve Greenberg on the Evolution of the Music Industry
August 10, 2012 12:00 PM
Steve Greenberg is President of S-Curve Records, based in New York, which he founded in 2000 and is re-launching in 2007. S-Curve has had great success with a wide range of projects, including releases from such artists as Joss Stone (the three million-selling “Soul Sessions” EP and the four million-selling “Mind, Body and Soul” LP) and Fountains of Wayne (the multi-Grammy nominated “Stacy’s Mom”). Steve was a 2005 Grammy nominee in the ‘Best Pop Vocal Album’ category as co-producer of “Mind, Body and Soul.” S-Curve’s very first release, “Who Let The Dogs Out” by Baha Men, sold over four million albums worldwide and earned Steve a 2001 Grammy Award in the ‘Best Dance Recording’ category as producer.
In January 2005, Steve Greenberg placed S-Curve in hibernation in order to take the position of President of Columbia Records. During Steve’s tenure at Columbia, the label released hit albums by such established recording artists as Bruce Springsteen, John Mayer, Barbra Streisand, System of a Down, Neil Diamond and the Dixie Chicks, while developing new talent including John Legend, Anna Nalick, Boys Like Girls, the Jonas Brothers and others. Throughout Steve’s Columbia period, S-Curve’s catalogue continued to sell briskly, leading to the label’s placement on Billboard’s August, 2006 list of “The 20 Biggest Independent Labels,” for 2005-2006, even though S-Curve at that point had not been operative for over 18 months.
Prior to founding S-Curve, Steve was Senior Vice-President/Head of A&R for Mercury Records from 1996 to 1999. While at Mercury, he discovered the pop/rock group Hanson and served as executive producer of their debut album, “Middle of Nowhere,” which sold over 12 million copies worldwide and was nominated for three Grammy Awards. He also worked on albums by a number of other Mercury artists, including Jon Bon Jovi’s multi-million selling 1997 solo album, “Destination Anywhere.”
Steve previously held positions as an A&R executive at Atlantic Records (1992-1995) where he was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1995 for his work on “Otis! The Essential Otis Redding.” From 1991-1992, he was Head of A&R for Atlantic’s Big Beat Records label, where he discovered such gold-certified acts as Robin S (“Show Me Love”) and the Grammy-winning reggae band Inner Circle (“Bad Boys,” “Sweat”). From 1988 to 1991 he served as Director of International Marketing/A&R for Warner Music International, during which time he was nominated for a Grammy Award as producer of “The Complete Stax/Volt Singles 1959-1968” 9-CD boxed set, which has since been certified gold—the largest collection of CDs ever to have achieved that distinction. Before that, he was Staff Writer for WEA International, based in New York. From 1982 to 1984 he worked as a radio and print journalist, based first on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. and subsequently in the Middle East. In 1981 he served a stint as a disc jockey on the legendary Voice of Peace pirate radio station, which broadcast from a ship in the Mediterranean to all nations in the region in the name of peace.
Steve holds a Master’s degree in Applied Communication Research from Stanford University and Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from The American University in Washington, D. C. He also spent a year as a research scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication. He is currently a Governor of the New York Chapter of NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences), the organization which sponsors the Grammy Awards and its sister foundation MusiCares. He contributed a chapter on the pop music culture of the 1980′s to the anthology “The 80′s”, to be published in 2008 by Oxford University Press.
“Jabberwocky” performed by Gardening, Not Architecture. Written by Sarah Saturday, Copyright 2012 Principiis Obsta Music (ASCAP), All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of SemaphoreMusic.com
A+L Innovation Central Podcast – Brian McNelis of Lakeshore Records
Chris Castle talks with Brian McNelis of Lakeshore Entertainment
A+L Innovation Central Podcast – Brian McNellis
Brian McNelis is the Senior Vice President of Music and Soundtracks for Lakeshore Entertainment, the four time Academy Award winning film production company. Brian is a Grammy Award Nominated Soundtrack Album Producer, is the Co-Producer of the Lakeshore/MGM feature film remake of Fame, and has provided Executive Music Services to CBS Films first slate of releases.
During 2011 Brian music supervised the critically acclaimed films Drive and The Lincoln Lawyer both of which received critical praise for their use of music in film.
Some of Brian’s soundtrack and score album productions include Napoleon Dynamite, Fame, The Last Kiss and Underworld Awakening. He has Executive Produced the albums fromsuch Academy Award nominated and winning films as Little Miss Sunshine, City Of God, Into The Wild and The Hurt Locker.
In addition to his music supervisor and album producer responsibilities, Brian is principally responsible for Lakeshore Records, the company’s indie label. During 2011, Lakeshore Records released five iTunes Top 10 soundtrack albums, Drive, The Lincoln Lawyer, Blue Valentine, Beastly and No Strings Attached. Lakeshore Records has two Grammy Nominations, one each for Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine. Drive was recognized on over 50 Top 10 Best lists for music including The Boston Society Of Film Critics “Best Use of Music In A Film” Award.
“Jabberwocky” performed by Gardening, Not Architecture. Written by Sarah Saturday, Copyright 2012 Principiis Obsta Music (ASCAP), All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of SemaphoreMusic.com
Talking With Leslie Lewis, GRAMMY Nominees and Ted Soundtrack Producer
Leslie Lewis has had an active role as a record executive, producer, manager, recording artist, marketing executive, artists & repertoire executive, advocate, motion picture music studio executive, soundtrack music executive, and as the Director of the Producers & Engineers Wing.
She co-founded and continues to produce the successful GRAMMY Nominees album series — which has achieved gold certified sales nearly ever year since inception in 1995. The albums have continued their success, with the 2011 and 2012 GRAMMY Nominees debuting at #4, tying the highest debut in the history of the series. In addition to producing the Nominees records, Leslie oversees marketing and promotion for the series and launched a variety of web-based initiatives with The Recording Academy and its sponsors to promote the GRAMMY brand through innovative online marketing.
In addition to the Nominees recordings, Leslie consulted for 19 Entertainment working with the contestants on American Idol Season Six, and lead in the development and implementation of marketing campaigns for GRAMMY Award winners Radiohead, Dave Matthews Band, Third Day, Switchfoot, Corinne Bailey Rae and the Oscar-winning soundtrack, Once.
Leslie is producing a variety of projects including the soundtrack record for Seth MacFarlane’s first feature film Ted on Universal Republic Records. (The podcast version of this interview is available at Arts+Labs Innovation Central.)
Chris Castle: Today we are talking with record producer Leslie Lewis. Leslie, tell us a little about what you are working on?
Leslie Lewis: Right now I’m producing the Universal Republic soundtrack for Seth McFarlane’s motion picture Ted and I run a label called GRAMMY Recordings for The Recording Academy. I produce all of the Academy’s consumer releases including the GRAMMY® nominees record.
Chris Castle: I know that the nominees record has to run on a tight time frame given that it’s an event-based release. How do you produce it and what are the challenges that you have to overcome?
Leslie Lewis: It is a compilation album of the top nominated recordings for each GRAMMY Awards season via a partnership that we have with the big four distributors that rotates every year. It’s a worldwide release and we feature somewhere between 18 and 22 tracks depending on how many categories we can fit that year.
Chris Castle: It always seems like you work on an extraordinarily compressed time frame, how does that work?
Leslie Lewis: Yes, we don’t really know which artists we need to clear for the album until the nominees are announced, and that’s usually at the beginning of December or the end of November. At that point we have about ten working days to clear about 15 different categories having usually five nominees each.
Chris Castle: You have to clear about 70 tracks!
Leslie Lewis: Yes, in 10 working days, songs and recordings. The concept of this album is to give music fans and professionals all five nominated recordings in each category so they can listen to the nominees. That gives them an educated “snap shot” of each nominated recording, not just the recordings that win.
Chris Castle: So from a production point of view, on Dec. 1, you have to clear them all in ten days and then what happens after that?
Leslie Lewis: I have to simultaneously clear everything, and then I start putting together my wish list of sequences while I am simultaneously clearing the nominated artists. I do several sequences. Depending on who actually gets cleared, I pull the trigger to master and go into production.
Chris Castle: Who makes the money from sales of the record?
Leslie Lewis: Two of the music industry’s primary charities are the beneficiaries, which are comprised of The Recording Academy’s MusiCares and GRAMMY Foundation. We are partners with the four major distributors, and 50 percent of the net proceeds of this album benefit those charities.
Chris Castle: You’re really kind of a one-woman army working on the sales plan for the nominees record long after the GRAMMY Awards telecast. How have the sales been in terms of configuration mix between physical and digital over the last five years?
Leslie Lewis: The nominees record historically has been a physical sales release, but we have been very focused on the digital consumer for years now. It has been challenging to engage that digital consumer to buy the nominees record, especially when they don’t get a great golden embossed package! Plus they may already have some of the tracks purchased as singles. We have consistently improved our marketing and distribution tools for GRAMMY Recordings, and this year we were effective in raising our configuration mix from an average of 10 percent digital sales to about 17 percent today.
Chris Castle: You have pretty much doubled your digital sales this year, that’s great! What did you do differently this year?
Leslie Lewis: I think traditionally everyone thought of the nominees record as a soundtrack to the GRAMMY Awards. Historically, we release two to three weeks before the GRAMMY Awards telecast in February, so a lot of the marketing started in January. This year we decided to approach this a little differently. We have our special, “The GRAMMY Nominations Concert Live! — Countdown To Music’s Biggest Night”on CBS broadcast television in December where we announce the nominees. This year we created a campaign that launched during the nominations special on Dec. 1. At the same time I was learning who the nominees actually were for the album, we were already advertising a pre-order for the album that same day focusing on the album itself and not the artists who would appear on the album.
Chris Castle: What’s your advertising message since you don’t know the track listing at that point?
Leslie Lewis: We created artwork that’s a generic version of what ultimately gets used, so it looked very similar except it didn’t have any artist names on it. It reminded people that, no matter who’s on it, the Nominees album will be the best music of the year. We created a campaign with that kind of advertising byline and then created tools that we added to the advertising of the pre-order. If you pre-ordered that album during that period you also had a chance to win tickets to attend the GRAMMY Awards. I also think it’s about multiple impressions. We figured we would have a certain amount of press attention and also get focus from the audiences at home that watch the show, so we wanted to let them know that the album was coming.
Chris Castle: What were the social media or online channels you used to increase your digital sales?
Leslie Lewis: We did a number of things. Contests were a big help. Some of the contest companies we worked with said that the participation was unprecedented. We had quite a response! We had a great ratio of people who signed up for the chance to win tickets and who converted into a pre-order sale, so we were really happy with that. Secondly we used social media in a number of ways to engage the consumer, with an emphasis to engage a younger consumer as well. Traditionally with the physical market for the nominees record, we knew that our main demos have been in the 25 to 54 range. We wanted to try and engage a younger consumer who may already have a lot of these records. We tried to find ways to get them more excited about our record, so we created some tools for them.
Chris Castle: So you feel you are getting a good conversion ratio when you offer fans an opportunity to be more involved with the GRAMMY experience?
Leslie Lewis: In any given year, the nominees in certain categories obviously dictates a big portion of the shape of this album. This year we were fortunate enough to have diverse nominees like Skrillex. Having artists like that mixed in with Adele and some of the other favorites definitely helped us go into those artist’s fan communities, where we have not been able to in the past. We aimed to get in front of the music connoisseurs as well as the general public. This is an industry charitable project and those professional communities of people are part of this. We list extensive credits so that people know who engineered or produced these albums as well as who the featured artists are.
Chris Castle: And you feel like you have expanded the demographic of the buyer of your record by your effective use of social media?
Leslie Lewis: Absolutely!
A+L Innovation Central Podcast – Leslie Lewis of Grammy Recordings
Chris Castle talks with Leslie Lewis of Grammy Recordings
A+L Innovation Central Podcast – Leslie Lewis
Leslie Lewis has been an active professional in music, television, and film for over two decades. Her vast experience has been the culmination of her active roles as a record executive, producer, manager, recording artist, marketing executive, artists & repertoire executive, advocate, motion picture music studio executive, soundtrack music executive, and as The Recording Academy’s Director of the Producers & Engineers Wing.
She co-founded and continues to produce the successful GRAMMY® Nominees album series – which has achieved gold certified sales nearly ever year since inception in 1995. The albums have continued their success, with the 2011 and 2012 GRAMMY Nominees debuting at #4, tying the highest debut in the history of the series. In addition to producing the Nominees records, Leslie oversees marketing and promotion for the series and launched a variety of web-based initiatives with The Recording Academy® and its sponsors to promote the GRAMMY brand through innovative online marketing.
In addition to the Nominees recordings, Leslie served as a 19 Entertainment consultant for the contestants on American Idol Season Six, and the lead in the development and implementation of marketing campaigns for GRAMMY® Award Winners Radiohead, Dave Matthews Band, Third Day, Switchfoot, Corinne Bailey Rae and the Oscar-winning soundtrack, Once.
Leslie is actively consulting for a variety of projects including producing the original motion picture soundtrack for Seth MacFarlane’s first feature film Ted on Universal Republic Records.
“Jabberwocky” performed by Gardening, Not Architecture. Written by Sarah Saturday, Copyright 2012 Principiis Obsta Music (ASCAP), All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of SemaphoreMusic.com
Jay Frank of DigSin Reinventing the Record Label, Part I
I interviewed Jay Frank, owner and CEO of DigSin, a new singles-focused music company that allows subscribing fans to obtain music for free. DigSin signs new artists to deals that leverage new platforms, social networks and analytics that expose music to a wider audience, building popularity outside of traditional methods.
Prior to forming DigSin, Frank was the Senior Vice President of Music Strategy for CMT, an MTV Network, Vice President of Music Programming and Label Relations for Yahoo! Music, responsible for all the company’s music programming, senior music director at The Box Music Network, worked in marketing and A&R for Ignition Records, managed a live music venue, programmed broadcast radio stations and created two local music video shows.
Chris Castle: Jay, tell us a little about DigSin and what brought you to starting the label.
Jay Frank: I started DigSin to implement some positive ideas about moving the music business forward, particularly in trying to define the role of a record label. The idea for DigSin really started with a book I published in late 2009 called FutureHit DNA. It seems like a lot of people have been saying for a long time now that the traditional major label model is broken, but haven’t offered any realistic alternatives. My thought was that I don’t know if there’s a real problem or not but there certainly are viable alternatives to the historical operation of record companies. I worked on the idea for DigSin from the premise of “can a label be built with how people are consuming music today versus how we with how we wish they were consuming music,” starting with singles versus albums. I just kept on thinking and returning to that basic idea of a “new” label model. Every time I came up with some problem to the traditional label model I’d find some solution and I’d challenge myself to see how that solution might be able to work financially, both for the label as well as for the artists on the label. And at some point I just realized I either had to take chance and make it reality or keep it as a pipedream and I’d rather not live my life regretting not trying something new and exciting.
Chris Castle: Tell us a little bit about the specifics. From what I’ve seen your label is very social media-oriented in how DigSin presents itself to fans?
Jay Frank: Certainly social media is a crucial part of how we market ourselves. The most important thing from a consumer’s standpoint is anybody can come to our site, sign up through their email address and we will sign them up to our list 
and give them all of our releases for free for life. It’s a promise and commitment that I want to make and I think that, again, that’s it’s a reflection of how people are consuming music. I’d rather have somebody come and get the music free through a mailing list than having them go and steal music. More importantly, I’m able to go and monetize that relationship through some advertising. I’ve found that most people listen to a free download once. They’re really doing it just to check out the music. At this point in the discovery process I can make roughly as much for the artist by selling advertising as the artist will make off of Spotify and YouTube — without developing a direct relationship with the fan like we have at DigSin.
Chris Castle: That is a hugely important point — artists are routinely asked to have their fans benefit someone else like Spotify or YouTube who has at best an atomistic relationship with the fan and inserts themselves between the fan and the artist.
Jay Frank: While we could sit here and spend the entire podcast debating the royalty rates that places like Spotify and YouTube pay, the reality is that I can make those same figures off of the free downloads, so I’d much rather be able to make that money in house through a mailing list that I can communicate with regularly than a third party. I’m perfectly happy if people discover our artists through the third party, too, but I think the artist is better off in the long run doing it the way we do at DigSin.
Because we have a direct relationship with that consumer, I’m able to go and actually work and promote more music to them and be able to cultivate a strong bond that hopefully will then lead to more and greater exposure for all of my artists. The hope is that we can really amplify the fan relationship through social media and then build that story into a successful song and a successful artist.
Chris Castle: That’s interesting, I remember when the web first started, we had a big argument internally at Polygram, about how we were going to present ourselves to the public on the web. Polygram, of course, wanted everything to be at Polygram.com and I said at the time, “You know, if someone is looking for Sting, who was on my label A&M, I think they’re going to go look for Sting first.” They might possibly think of A&M but they will never think of Polygram so why don’t we try to connect our artists more directly to the fan by branding off of the artist? But this is an interesting twist because basically what you’re doing is you’re branding the label site to the fan, and the fan is then coming to the label site to find out about artists on that label and engaging in commerce with the label as well as the artist. Is that a pretty good summary?
Jay Frank: That’s absolutely correct — and I think the properly analogy using Sting. If you go back to 1978 and 1979 when Sting was an unknown artist fronting a band called The Police, the band was on IRS Records [distributed by A&M]. At the time, the IRS Records community of artists was beginning to make a really strong name for itself as being really cool new music because the IRS Records brand meant something to a lot of people. I think to some degree since I’m dealing with new artists I believe that part of our goal is to bring that branding back to record companies. I think that there was a time when that branding was successful whether it was Def Jam Records for hip hop or Island Records for reggae because actually branding a label was an important sign of quality for great new music — and that made it a bit easier to get fans to take a chance on a new artist. It’s certainly no accident that putting my marketing efforts behind social media and online marketing techniques like this mailing list is part of that equation to get new fans to take a chance on our artists.
An extended version of this interview is available in a podcast at Arts+Labs Innovation Central.
How Artists Get Paid for Internet Radio: An interview with Mike Huppe, President of SoundExchange (Part 1 of 2)
by Chris Castle
I had a chance to talk to Mike Huppe, President of SoundExchange, about how artists get paid for the public performance of their recordings. This interview is available as a podcast at Arts+Labs Innovation Central.
Background: This is an important distinction that is frequently lost on the public — when you hear a recording of a song, there are actually two distinct copyrights involved, the song (also called a “musical work”) and the recording of the song. When recordings are played on terrestrial radio, the writer of the song gets a royalty and the performer of the song on the recording gets nothing (neither does the record company). Almost every other country in the world besides the U.S. recognizes a performance right for recordings so that the artist does get paid for radio or internet airplay. U.S. law changed in 1995 to pay a royalty for digital transmissions of certain kinds (satellite and Internet radio), and SoundExchange collects those royalties. If you are a featured artist or sound recording owner you can register at www.soundexchange.com.
Tell us a little about SoundExchange. I think a lot of people still aren’t really sure what SoundExchange does, so perhaps you can explain how the digital performance royalty for sound recordings in the U.S. came to exist and what is involved.
Huppe: SoundExchange has been collecting performance royalties for sound recordings since 1995. To give a little background, most people in the U.S. are aware of entities like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. For decades those groups have collected performance royalties for musical works [or songs] — the actual musical notes and lyrics that a songwriter creates. Until 1995, the sound recording side of the business, meaning the recording most people would recognize on the radio or on the internet, did not have performance rights in this country.
In 1995, for the first time ever in the U.S., the Congress established a performance royalty and a compulsory license for the sound recording for certain types of digital transmissions. SoundExchange was entrusted with the collection and payment of those performance royalties. We administer a compulsory license under the U.S. Copyright law, which means if a service like Pandora or iHeart Radio wants to stream a sound recording digitally, they can either obtain individual licenses from 5,000 rights owners or take advantage of a government license. According to federal law, that service would then simply file a two-page paper with the Copyright Office, meet the terms of the statutes, and then send their royalties and data every month to SoundExchange.
Just to give some perspective, how much money has SoundExchange distributed?
Huppe: To date, SoundExchange has distributed more than $900 million in total. In 2011, SoundExchange distributed more than $292 million in royalties — that’s enormous growth since our first distribution of $20 million.
We’ve had tremendous growth over the past 3-4 years as a result of a variety of factors which include an increase in the rates in 2006-2007 and a radical shift in the way people consume music. More and more people are accessing music through digital devices, mobile devices and through streaming content rather than downloading it. We’ve seen explosive growth, over 1,000 percent in the past five years.
I still run into artists who have never heard of SoundExchange, what do you do to encourage artists and sound recording owners to register?
Huppe: That’s a great question and you are absolutely right. SoundExchange’s name recognition and brand is certainly more recognizable now than it was 10 years ago, but you are correct there are people who don’t know who we are or confuse us with some of the other performance rights organizations, not recognizing that these other groups collect for a completely different right — for the song instead of the actual sound recording.
We do a lot in our effort to reach artists and rights owners. Every month, we get reports from people that we’ve never heard of, and who have never heard of us. Outreach is an ongoing effort, but the money comes to us, and it’s our job to find and ensure these individuals to sign up.
On first impression, we sometimes hear from those that haven’t registered that SoundExchange royalties “sound too good to be true.” Understandable, but we have a dedicated team of staff who are focused solely on tracking down performers and labels to get them to claim their money. We try to track and contact them through a variety of methods to get them to register, including: regularly placing ads in print and online news outlets; targeting individuals via social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube; speaking on panels; sponsoring events or exhibiting at tradeshows. We host regular “how to register” webinars; and have even coordinated with music conferences, like at SXSW, where we put up large banners and hand out flyers with band names asking them to register.
In addition, we’ve partnered with various industry organizations such as MySpace, CD Baby, Harry Fox Agency, among others to match their lists against ours and conduct email, mail campaigns — all with the message: “Do any of you know these people? If so, can you please contact them?” We are perfectly open to those third-parties doing the branding and getting the benefit of finding money — we just want to ensure the creative community gets paid for their work. We executed over 60 matches last year (more than one a week) resulting in tens of thousands of emails to various folks sharing that SoundExchange has money for them. We are quite confident that we are doing more than our fair share of reaching out and contacting those we owe money to, because it’s the right thing to do.
The real reward is when we register that individual or band where the money truly makes a difference. Nearly 90 percent of the 60,659 checks SoundExchange sent out last year (2011) were for less than $5,000. We often hear from artists who express gratitude that we found them or those who might have registered with us, and forgot until they receive a check in their mailbox.
Continued in Part 2
Follow Chris Castle on Twitter: www.twitter.com/musictechpolicy
A+L Innovation Central Podcast: Chris Castle Talks with Jay Frank CEO of DigSin, Part 3
Innovation Central Podcast – Jay Frank, Part 3
Jay Frank is the Owner and CEO of DigSin, a new singles-focused music company that allows subscribing fans to obtain music for free. DigSin signs new artists to deals that leverage new platforms, social networks and analytics that expose music to a wider audience, building popularity outside of traditional methods.
Frank is also the author of two books. His first book, Futurehit.DNA, is a #1 Songwriting book on Amazon and part of the college curriculum at a number of colleges and universities. The book explores how digital technology has changed the way people discover music and examines what an artist needs to make their song more hitworthy in the digital age. Frank’s second book, Hack Your Hit, is a how-to guide for musicians filled with free and cheap marketing tips.
Prior to forming DigSin, Frank was the Senior Vice President of Music Strategy for CMT, an MTV Network. Under Frank’s leadership, music video ratings reached all-time highs thanks to an aggressive multi-platform promotional strategy. Frank was also Vice President of Music Programming and Label Relations for Yahoo! Music, responsible for all the company’s music programming. He was instrumental in the exponential growth of Yahoo’s audience bringing in approximately 25 million people a month. He was also senior music director at The Box Music Network, worked in marketing and A&R for Ignition Records, managed a live music venue, programmed broadcast radio stations and created two local music video shows.
Frank holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY and sits on the Board of Directors of the Academy of Country Music, The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee and Leadership Music. Frank also serves on the Tennessee Film, Entertainement and Music Commission, is a co-chair of Leadership Music Digital Summit, and is a consultant at FLO (Thinkery). A respected leader in the music and digital communities, Frank has spoken at such conferences as MIDEM, South By Southwest, Canadian Music Week, ASCAP Expo, MusExpo, Digital Music Forum, CMJ, SF Music Tech Summit, New Music Seminar and Mobile Entertainment Summit, among others.
Frank resides in Nashville with his wife and daughter.
“Jabberwocky” performed by Gardening, Not Architecture. Written by Sarah Saturday, Copyright 2012 Principiis Obsta Music (ASCAP), All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of SemaphoreMusic.com
A+L Innovation Central Podcast: Chris Castle Talks with Jay Frank CEO of DigSin, Part 2
Innovation Central Podcast – Jay Frank, Part 2
Jay Frank is the Owner and CEO of DigSin, a new singles-focused music company that allows subscribing fans to obtain music for free. DigSin signs new artists to deals that leverage new platforms, social networks and analytics that expose music to a wider audience, building popularity outside of traditional methods.
Frank is also the author of two books. His first book, Futurehit.DNA, is a #1 Songwriting book on Amazon and part of the college curriculum at a number of colleges and universities. The book explores how digital technology has changed the way people discover music and examines what an artist needs to make their song more hitworthy in the digital age. Frank’s second book, Hack Your Hit, is a how-to guide for musicians filled with free and cheap marketing tips.
Prior to forming DigSin, Frank was the Senior Vice President of Music Strategy for CMT, an MTV Network. Under Frank’s leadership, music video ratings reached all-time highs thanks to an aggressive multi-platform promotional strategy. Frank was also Vice President of Music Programming and Label Relations for Yahoo! Music, responsible for all the company’s music programming. He was instrumental in the exponential growth of Yahoo’s audience bringing in approximately 25 million people a month. He was also senior music director at The Box Music Network, worked in marketing and A&R for Ignition Records, managed a live music venue, programmed broadcast radio stations and created two local music video shows.
Frank holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY and sits on the Board of Directors of the Academy of Country Music, The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee and Leadership Music. Frank also serves on the Tennessee Film, Entertainement and Music Commission, is a co-chair of Leadership Music Digital Summit, and is a consultant at FLO (Thinkery). A respected leader in the music and digital communities, Frank has spoken at such conferences as MIDEM, South By Southwest, Canadian Music Week, ASCAP Expo, MusExpo, Digital Music Forum, CMJ, SF Music Tech Summit, New Music Seminar and Mobile Entertainment Summit, among others.
Frank resides in Nashville with his wife and daughter.
“Jabberwocky” performed by Gardening, Not Architecture. Written by Sarah Saturday, Copyright 2012 Principiis Obsta Music (ASCAP), All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of SemaphoreMusic.com
A+L Innovation Central Podcast: Chris Castle Talks with Jay Frank CEO of DigSin, Part 1
Innovation Central Podcast – Jay Frank, Part 1
Jay Frank is the Owner and CEO of DigSin, a new singles-focused music company that allows subscribing fans to obtain music for free. DigSin signs new artists to deals that leverage new platforms, social networks and analytics that expose music to a wider audience, building popularity outside of traditional methods.
Frank is also the author of two books. His first book, Futurehit.DNA, is a #1 Songwriting book on Amazon and part of the college curriculum at a number of colleges and universities. The book explores how digital technology has changed the way people discover music and examines what an artist needs to make their song more hitworthy in the digital age. Frank’s second book, Hack Your Hit, is a how-to guide for musicians filled with free and cheap marketing tips.
Prior to forming DigSin, Frank was the Senior Vice President of Music Strategy for CMT, an MTV Network. Under Frank’s leadership, music video ratings reached all-time highs thanks to an aggressive multi-platform promotional strategy. Frank was also Vice President of Music Programming and Label Relations for Yahoo! Music, responsible for all the company’s music programming. He was instrumental in the exponential growth of Yahoo’s audience bringing in approximately 25 million people a month. He was also senior music director at The Box Music Network, worked in marketing and A&R for Ignition Records, managed a live music venue, programmed broadcast radio stations and created two local music video shows.
Frank holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY and sits on the Board of Directors of the Academy of Country Music, The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee and Leadership Music. Frank also serves on the Tennessee Film, Entertainement and Music Commission, is a co-chair of Leadership Music Digital Summit, and is a consultant at FLO (Thinkery). A respected leader in the music and digital communities, Frank has spoken at such conferences as MIDEM, South By Southwest, Canadian Music Week, ASCAP Expo, MusExpo, Digital Music Forum, CMJ, SF Music Tech Summit, New Music Seminar and Mobile Entertainment Summit, among others.
Frank resides in Nashville with his wife and daughter.
“Jabberwocky” performed by Gardening, Not Architecture. Written by Sarah Saturday, Copyright 2012 Principiis Obsta Music (ASCAP), All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of SemaphoreMusic.com
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