October 22, 2024 (Santa Monica, CA) – OpenPlay Inc., provider of the music industry’s leading platform for asset and catalog management, has hired 20+ year music and technology industry veteran Chris McMurtry as a Senior Solutions Architect. In his new role, Chris will be responsible for helping OpenPlay expand their product features to further align with their label and publisher client needs, and will assist in evangelizing the importance of OpenPlay in today’s data driven market.
Chris McMurtry joins OpenPlay with more than 20 years of experience leading product development and music technology teams at multiple industry-leading companies. Before joining OpenPlay, Chris spent time at Artist Growth as their VP of Product, and at PEX as Head of Music Product – spearheading data efforts that changed the way creators are attributed and paid for their work, and how artists collaborate and share information with each other. Prior to 2022, McMurtry was the Head of Music at Exactuals, where he led the design and launch of RAI, one of their flagship products, which leveraged machine learning to correct and enhance song and recording metadata.
Chris got his start in the music industry with his own company, Dart Music (acquired by Core Rights in 2017), where he bult the first automated digital distribution platform specifically designed to handle the complex metadata of music genres including classical music. Amidst his professional career in music technology, Chris was named one of Billboard’s “2019 Digital Power Players” highlighting his work driving the success of the music business through the use of digital data.
In addition to his work in music technology, Chris is a multi-platinum recording artist with 26 albums to his credit and has written over 600 songs. He’s also the CEO and Co-Founder of human_underscore, a passion project between himself and Mason Frenzel that creates original music for film and television. Chris holds a degree in classical music from Middle Tennessee State University and is an active member of DDEX where he helps shape the future of digital music value chain standards. He currently lives in Nashville, TN.
“Chris has been on the forefront of data and rights management for as long as I’ve known him, and a strong supporter of OpenPlay since our very beginning,” said Edward Ginis, Co-Founder and Chief Client Officer at OpenPlay. “Chris has served as a sounding board for many of our initiatives over the years and him officially joining our mission at OpenPlay feels like a natural homecoming. We can’t emphasize how excited we are to have him on this journey with us.”
“I’ve been a huge fan of OpenPlay for more than a decade as one of the most forward-thinking teams in the music industry whose commitment to innovation is reflected throughout their platform,” said Chris McMurtry. “Throughout my career, my mission has always been clear: data should never be a barrier to attribution or payment; and as we move from the information age into the intelligence age, accurate data is more critical than ever. OpenPlay shares those same ideals, and I’m truly honored to join them in their mission to serve the music industry as the definitive leader in asset and rights management.”
You can read more about OpenPlay at www.openplay.co.
About OpenPlay
OpenPlay is the music industry’s leading asset management platform, trusted by major labels and independents alike to manage their catalogs — it bridges the gap between content creation, metadata management, assets, rights, and delivery. Designed and built from the ground up by music industry experts, OpenPlay services customers that manage the largest libraries of valuable media assets in the world. OpenPlay’s coupling of an intuitive interface with an extremely powerful enterprise toolset places it in a class above its competitors. With offerings for multiple different industry verticals, their entire suite of applications has solutions for every company no matter their size. Learn more about OpenPlay at openplay.co.