BusinessInsider.com –

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Mark Zuckerberg gave a keynote speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday, but it was so boring that many people either fell asleep in their seats or walked out midway through.
Zuckerberg was in Barcelona to talk about Internet.org, Facebook’s effort to co-ordinate mobile carriers to bring the internet to the developing world. That’s actually interesting, and people mostly paid attention when Zuckerberg was talking about that.

But the problems came when three carrier partners came on stage to talk about how they’re working with Facebook. They spoke about technical things, like how working with Facebook is affecting their bottom lines. Most people in the audience weren’t interested.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-boring-speech-at-mwc-2015-3#ixzz3TK2Xv6xh

billboard.com –

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Sony/ATV Music Publishing has tapped entertainment industry veteran Rick Krim to lead the company’s A&R operations in Los Angeles. Krim’s official title is co-president, U.S., and he’ll work alongside NYC-based Danny Strick on all A&R activities. Both will report directly to chairman and CEO Martin Bandier.

“Rick is a true music industry professional with deep relationships with the best artists, talent managers and industry executives,” said Bandier, who made the announcement. “He truly knows songwriters and will be a great asset to an already strong team.

Given his time at MTV and VH1, he will also bring to us a number of additional skills to complement his immense A&R capabilities.”

Krim arrives at Sony/ATV following a year-long stint at Republic Records, where he was executive vice president of artist development. Before that he spent much of the past 30-plus years working in television, dating back to 1982 as a business manager at MTV, where he eventually rose to vp of talent and artist relations. In the 1990s he made a career switch to EMI Music Publishing, led by Bandier at the time, spending six years overseeing the promotion and marketing department. He returned to TV land in 2001 when he was named evp of talent and music programming at MTV parent Viacom.

“I cannot wait to get started in this role as I am not only returning to music publishing, but will be reunited with Marty Bandier who I learned so much from during my time at EMI,” said Krim. “It is so exciting and such an honor after all these years to get a chance to work with him again, especially at a company as dynamic as Sony/ATV that is blessed with so many great songwriters and artists. I am also looking forward to working with Danny and the rest of the Sony/ATV team.”

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billboard.com –

The World Health Organization says millions of young people around the world are at risk of hearing loss from loud music.

The UN agency said Friday that a review of data from middle- and high-income countries shows almost half of all 12 to 35-year-olds listen to unsafe levels of music on their personal audio devices or cellphones.

And about 40 percent of teens and young adults are exposed to damaging levels of sound at nightclubs, bars and sporting events.

WHO says volumes above 85 decibels for eight hours or 100 decibels for 15 minutes are unsafe.

The Geneva-based agency recommends that young people take listening breaks, use apps to limit the volume on their smartphone and consider using personal audio players for no more than one hour a day.

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billboard.com –

Bob Moczydlowsky, Twitter’s L.A.-based head of music, will leave the company next month. He joined the company in 2013 from TopSpin Media, where he served as the SVP of product and marketing, and was brought on to strengthen partnerships between the music industry and Twitter.

When asked for comment, a Twitter spokesperson pointed to Moczydlowsky’s tweet from Friday afternoon (Feb. 27): “I’m ending my time at Twitter in a few weeks. I’ve loved every day of it, and will miss our great team. What’s next?

Shortly after Moczydlowsky was hired, the company shut down its music app Twitter #Music after just six months and was expected to revise its music strategy. (The But it’s possible the social-media giant hasn’t quite figured out its plan of attack. Moczydlowsky’s departure is the latest in a series of senior executive changes at Twitter, following the resignation of longtime media chief Chloe Sladden last June. In the months after Sladden left, the heads of her different departments soon followed, including sports head Geoff Reiss in July and news head Vivian Schiller in October. The company also saw its chief operating officer and former CFO Ali Rowghani depart in 2014 amid reports of culture clashes with CEO Dick Costolo.

One of Moczydlowsky’s most talked-about projects was linking Twitter with Lyor Cohen’s 300 Entertainment, a content company that uses Twitter’s data to measure artists’ potential and predict industry trends. When Billboard spoke to Moczydlowsky last February, he explained that giving 300 full access to Twitter’s data could potentially “help the industry figure out how to best invest in artists or how to direct their marketing campaigns,” and that the data would be available within a year.

Head of Twitter Music on What the Lyor Cohen 300 Deal Really Means (Updated)

Still, 300 executives recently confirmed to Billboard that no artist has been signed as a direct result of the Twitter alliance, and it’s unclear whether Moczydlowsky’s departure would create further snags. Cohen, meanwhile, announced last week that 300 signed Australian artist Meg Mac and will be bringing her to showcase at SXSW next month.

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billboard.com –

Music industry veteran Breyon Prescott has joined Epic Records as head of urban A&R. In addition to developing new and existing talent, Prescott will house his Chameleon Entertainment imprint at Epic.

Prescott is among the executive producers on R&B group Jodeci’s new Epic album, The Past, The Present, The Future. His A&R and production credits include projects by Drake, Kanye West, D’Angelo, Jamie Foxx and Angie Stone. In his role as president/CEO of Chameleon Entertainment, he is currently executive producing Foxx’s new RCA album, slated for December, and also managing artists Brandy and Nikki Williams.

Chameleon has previously held joint ventures with RCA, J Records and Island Def Jam.

In a statement announcing Prescott’s new post, Epic chairman/CEO L.A. Reid said, “His instincts, relationships and ability to deliver the hits are a perfect match for our A&R team.”

Read more at billboard.com –

venturebeat.com –

Kobalt Music, which uses a proprietary technology to speed up the collection of music royalties, has reportedly closed a $60 million Series C round of financing from Google Ventures and Michael Dell.

The New York-based Kobalt built algorithms to help musicians, who often have to wait for long periods of time for royalties, get paid for their work. This has increasingly been a problem in a world where music can be played anywhere at any time, across countless digital platforms.

The news was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

digitalmusicnews.com –

The following comes Steve Gordon, regarded as one of the top attorneys in the music industry. Last week, he outlined 11 contracts that every artist, songwriter and producer should know. So here’s the first one: management contracts.

In this installment, we will discuss management agreements.

As I wrote in “Now You Know Everything about Music Managers,” managers have never played a more important role in the music business than they do today. If you have taken or are ready to take the next step in your music career, you probably need one.

A good manager advances the career of her client in a variety of ways. Traditionally, a manager provided advice on all aspects on the artist’s professional life, used her relationships to generate opportunities, negotiated deals when the opportunity to do so arose, and helped the artist select other members of the “team,” such as accountants, lawyers, booking agents, and publicists. A manager’s principal job was, however, searching for the “holy grail”—shopping the artist to record labels, particularly the majors, with the hope of signing a lucrative recording agreement. Signing a record deal meant a payday for both the artist and the manager. Managers work on commission, so the goal was to sign with a major label and negotiate the largest advance possible. In the 90’s, when I was a lawyer for Sony Music, we paid advances to new artists ranging from $250,000 to upwards of $500,000. If the artist caught fire, both the artist and the manager could become very wealthy from record sales alone. Those days are largely gone.

Starting in 1999, income from recorded music has declined more than 75%, accounting for inflation. As a result, the major labels (Sony, Universal, and Warner, along with their affiliates) sign fewer artists and pay those new artists far more modest advances. An artist may never get a deal, or may be dropped from the label’s roster much faster than in the past, when labels had spare cash to support a developing artist. For instance, Bruce Springsteen did not catch fire until after Columbia (now a Sony affiliate) released two albums. But, Columbia had faith and supported him through the early disappointments.

Today, with the major labels fighting just to survive, a story like that is far less likely to occur. Labels would rather put their resources behind already established acts, where a return on investment is more certain.
In these days of financial insecurity in the record business, the manager’s role is more important than ever. In the past, once the artist was signed to the major label, the manager’s primary function became to serve as liaison between the record company and the artist. The manager lobbied the label to do more, spend more, and focus more on the manager’s artist. However, due to budget cuts and massive layoffs at the labels, today’s manager does a lot of the work that the label used to do. For example, the manager may take over social networking, search for opportunities to get the artist’s music in movies or commercials, or find branding opportunities with sponsors. And, if the artist can’t find an acceptable record deal, the manager may become the artist’s de facto label and take on the responsibility of securing funding from investors or crowd funding to produce records, arranging physical and digital distribution, and everything else the record companies traditionally do.

The Pro-Manager Agreement (With Pro-Artist Commentary).
In the following PDF, I critique a standard pro-management agreement and explain in the comments the changes an artist should negotiate. There are a number of important terms where the interests of the manager are directly adverse to the interests of the artist. For example, it is generally in the manager’s interest to have a long initial term and several options to extend the duration of the agreement. The artist, conversely, will want to be able to get out of an agreement quickly if the manager is not meeting the artist’s goals. This issue is addressed in the comments for the first paragraph of the pro-management agreement.

(if you’d like to download the PDF, it’s here)

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