See You At Music Biz!
The whole Jaybird crew will be in Nashville next week for the Music Biz 2024 conference. Let us know if you’ll be in town; we’d love to connect in-person! Don’t forget to check out our clients’ panels happening all throughout the conference.
Catch Our Clients at Music Biz!
Jaybird is headed to Music Biz! Our clients OpenPlay, Symphonic, LyricFind, Head Bitch Music, MIME, and DDEX will all be taking part in panels, roundtables, hosting mixers, and networking events. Check them out below!
Monday, May 13th
- Planning Your Next Release: Advice from the Experts – Randall Foster (Symphonic)
- 10:05 – 10:45 AM CT
- Arrested Development?: Demystifying the Pathway to Artist Success – Delante Murphy (MIME)
- 1:45 PM – 2:25 PM CT
Tuesday, May 14th
- Metadata Literacy Town Hall – Bill Rosenblatt
- 1:00 – 2:00 PM CT
- The Industry’s New SuperWeapon: Creatives As Executives – Jessica and Ryan Vaughn (Head Bitch Music)
- 1:00 – 1:50 PM CT
- Opportunities Abound: Latin Music’s Growing Popularity In Sync – Guillermo Bohorquez (Symphonic)
- 3:30 – 4:10 PM CT
- The Real Value of Independents – Tony Alexander (MIME)
- 3:35 – 4:40pm CT
- Complete Control? The Rewards & Risks of Cross-Copyright Ownership – Edward Ginis (OpenPlay)
- 4:00 – 4:50pm CT
Wednesday, May 15th
- Practitioners Perspective Part 2: The Support Infrastructure – Jonathan Bender (OpenPlay)
- 10:45 – 12:30 PM CT
- Music Rights & Data Collection: The Key To The Next Level of Revenue in the Music Industry – Bill Rosenblatt
- 1:45 – 1:55 PM CT
- Records Rights & Royalties: The Need for Metadata Improvement Solutions – Eshan Shah Jahan (Symphonic)
- 1:55 – 2:35 PM CT
- Lights, Camera, PDF? Modernizing Music Metadata for AV Content – Mark Isherwood (DDEX)
- 2:55 – 3:25 PM CT
- Outside Music: How Gaming, Film, Art & Finance are Fighting Fraud in Their Industries – Portia Sabin (Music Biz)
- 3:15 – 4:00 PM CT
Thursday, May 16th
- Maximizing Overseas Potential: How Publishers Are Taking Advantage Of International Opportunities – Teri Nelson Carpenter (Reel Muzik Werks)
- 11:00 – 11:50 AM CT
- Walking the Walk: Tactics to Boost Diversity & Inclusion NOW – Janette Berrios (Symphonic)
- 11:30 – 12:20 PM CT
- Are We Prepared?: The Ethics Of New Revenue Streams – Edward Ginis (OpenPlay)
- 12:50 – 1:40 PM CT
Jaybird Bizzy Award Nominees!
Congratulations to our clients OpenPlay and Jorge Brea from Symphonic Distribution for being nominated by the Music Business Association for the 2024 Bizzy Awards!
OpenPlay is nominated for the Maestro of Metadata Award for making a significant impact in the area of data processing, credit clarification, streamlining or otherwise promoting clean data and best practices.
Jorge Brea is Nominated for the #NEXTGEN_NOW One To Watch Award for being an executive under 40 whose work (professional and/or volunteer) has been exceptional, innovative, and stands out as a contribution to the industry.
Welcome to the Flock!
RyteBox is an end-to-end music rights and royalties administration platform built in the cloud for content administrators and their global network. RyteBox supports both the publishing and recorded music businesses. The SaaS platform was born out of leading music and media software developer Axispoint, and is enabling rights administrators to manage their contracts, catalog, and rights; aggregate and collect greater revenue; and pay out royalties timely and accurately. The global music industry is experiencing high growth, and RyteBox is uniquely positioned and differentiated to help music companies and their creators capture increased revenue share across growing markets. For more information, visit rytebox.com.
Recent Client News
Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP)
The AIMP New York Chapter has officially announced this year’s Global Music Publishing Summit, taking place on June 11 at the 3 West Club in New York City. The Summit will cover the business, sync, and creative areas of the music industry with programming including the “View from the Top: Indie Perspective” panel; a “Washington DC Update” panel with representatives from the NMPA, the RIAA, and ASCAP; an “Opportunities Abroad” international panel featuring ICE, SESAC, and AMRA; and more. Register here or contact us to learn about potential sponsorship opportunities.
The AIMP LA Chapter held their first ever Songwriting Camp in North Hollywood from March 25-28th! Hosted by AIMP LA President (and CEO of Angry Mob Music) Marc Caruso, the camp included three days of writing in four separate studios, with writing groups shuffled daily, and a listening wrap party back on the rooftop of Angry Mob Music. The camp was a massive success resulting in 15 songs (13 for briefs and two open writes) written in three days with just 14 songwriter participants (including four producers and 10 topliners), 70% of whom were female. Read more about it in Music Connection!
The AIMP also made statements discussing licensing issues regarding Spotify and TikTok, and their impact on the independent music publishing community.
AIMP’s statement on Spotify addressed the affects their new audiobook and music bundle tier will have on independent music publishers. You can read the statement in full on Music Ally here.
The AIMP highlighted that any deal with TikTok going forward must reflect the value that music brings to the platform, and independent publishers should handle their decisions based on what’s best for them. You can read the full statement in Variety here.
OpenPlay recently announced enhancements to their Direct Delivery offering by partnering with Stem! As a result of this partnership, users will be able to seamlessly send music and video assets, and corresponding metadata, directly to DSPs without needing to negotiate their own licensing deals. In addition, OpenPlay Direct Delivery customers can take advantage of it all for a competitive single-digit rate of net royalties that is unmatched in the industry. Read more about the new partnership here!
Deborah Mannis-Gardner
Congratulations are in order to Deborah Mannis-Gardner for being honored on Billboard’s prestigious Women in Music list! Deborah was chosen due to her work clearing samples for legendary hip-hop group De La Soul, allowing their albums to be released on streaming services for the first time, and clearing the music for Beyoncé’s feature film Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé. We can’t wait to see what the future continues to hold for the Queen of Sample Clearances.
Head Bitch Music
In addition to their upcoming Music Biz panel, Jessica Vaughn will also be speaking at A2IM on the panel “Sync Success Strategies: Placement to Optimization,” where she and other panelists will discuss essential strategies for securing and maximizing sync deals, delve into real-world examples, and gain insights into assessing the ROI of sync deals, comparing license fees to potential exposure.
LyricFind
A2IM interviewed LyricFind Co-Founder and CEO, Darryl Ballantyne for their Featured Executive Spotlight on May 8th! In it, Darryl discussed his proudest achievements, how he started and how he got to where he is, upcoming projects, and his hobbies. Read the full interview on A2IM’s website here.
Symphonic Distribution
Symphonic announced the appointment of Stephen Nightingale as Vice President, A&R and Business Development, Canada. Stephen will be responsible for building a strong roster of Canadian artists and forging strategic partnerships with Canadian companies. Read more in Music Business Worldwide!
Also, Jorge Brea and Janette Berrios were both featured in the 2024 Billboard International Power Players list, recognizing their work in driving success outside the United States and contributions to a ninth consecutive year of growth for the global recorded-music business. Read more in Billboard!
Brea was recently featured on The Music Biz Future of What Podcast episode #229 Music Fraud Update: Combating Bad Actors From All Angles, where he joined Portia Sabin to explore how music professionals and companies are developing internal tools and best practices to fight fraud, while also learning lessons from others who have dealt with bad actors in the finance, film, and game industries and beyond. Listen here!
Congratulations to Symphonic on their nominations for two A2IM Libera Awards: Brea for Independent Champion and Symphonic itself for Distributor of the Year.
DDEX
DDEX held their 43rd Plenary in Los Angeles, CA. The Plenary held spirited discussions around formats, NFTs, AI, and more! Stay tuned for the 44th Plenary being held in Europe in November.
RyteBox, a cloud-based end-to-end music rights and royalties administration platform, has acquired SR1, a digitally-native royalty calculation suite, from Exactuals. This acquisition greatly expands the capabilities and customer reach of both RyteBox and SR1. Joe DeCanio, President & CEO of SR1, and his team are joining RyteBox and will continue to support the SR1 customers.
SR1 streamlines all aspects of royalty management for its clients, including mechanical licenses and reporting, expense processing, royalty statement generation, deal management, sales and income processing, master licensing and invoicing, and neighboring rights. These capabilities will both complement and expand on RyteBox’s current offerings, which include contract and catalog management; revenue and royalty calculations, statements, and analytics; relationship management; and much more, to support both recorded music and music publishing. Read more here!
Music Business Association
The Music Business Association, Record Store Day, and Luminate have partnered together to report physical music sales data across independent retail sector in the U.S. The new partnership, which took effect on April 19, 2024, sees Luminate collecting independent physical music sales — inclusive of CDs, vinyls and cassettes — from StreetPulse, a music industry data provider that receives daily sales metrics directly from stores. The new agreement and inclusion of data provided by StreetPulse will continue to drive the mission of increasing quality and accuracy of the sales metrics Luminate reports from the independent retail sector forward, allowing them to report more direct U.S independent music retail data than ever before. Read more about it in Music Business Worldwide!
In addition, Music Business Association President Portia Sabin was honored as part of the 2024 Billboard Women in Music for the third time! You can view the full list here.
NY Tech Alliance
The April NY Tech Meetup was a collaboration with Blockchain NYC to showcase demoers with dynamic and innovative blockchain companies! Demoers included Lendvest, nCent Holdings, Folks Finance, BlockBar, K3 Labs, and Rabble. The event was co-hosted by Doug Binette, Acting Executive Director, NY Tech Alliance, and Jamiel Shiekh, Founder & CEO, Scifin and Founder, Blockchain NYC. In addition, Stuart Haber, one of the Co-Founders of blockchain, gave special remarks during the opening. Watch the meetup on NY Tech Alliance’s YouTube Channel!
The NY Tech Alliance also announced all their Meetups this year will be held on the second Monday of each month! You can view all the meetups on their website.