Posts by Murray Stassen

Why some record deals are being fast-tracked during Coronavirus lockdown

Doug Davis, Tunji Balogun and Ty Stiklorius took part in a Zoom conversation about COVID-19's impact on the music business

Over 70,000 new creators have signed up to Patreon since mid-March, including a 150% increase in the number of musicians

Platform also sees 20% increase in number of subscribers

Bucks Music Group inks sub-publishing deal with Velvetica Music in France

Deal sees companies represent each other in their respective territories

Valeisha Butterfield Jones appointed Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer for The Recording Academy

Exec was formerly the Global Head of Inclusion for Google

Warner inks exclusive global distribution deal with children’s entertainment giant Mattel

Deal will see WMG's Arts Music division act as the sole distributor of Mattel’s catalog of more than 1,000 songs

Rich Castillo joins Atlantic Records UK as A&R Director

Castillo joins Atlantic from Sony/ATV Music Publishing

News

The Hottest Independent Artists In The World: Nina Cobham, ELLIANA, Malaki, Ella Jane and mazie

Our latest pick of new artists discovered by Instrumental's A&R platform

Mechanical Licensing Collective makes five new leadership appointments

New hires will lead key posts including education and outreach, marketing, and customer experience

Artists can now pitch for songs from BMG songwriters as company opens up ‘myBMG’ app

Artists can submit written briefs or videos to BMG’s roster of songwriters

TikTok crosses 2bn downloads, after racking up 500m in just 5 months

TikTok reaches huge milestone amid COVID-19 crisis

Pan-European licensing hub ICE launches new self-service ‘Licensr’ tool

New tool enables smaller online music services to get multi-territory coverage for use of the ICE Core repertoire

Reservoir signs songwriter & producer Keith ‘Ten4’ Sorrells to worldwide publishing deal

Deal includes global rights to Sorrell’s entire catalog of works including No.1 single I Love Me performed by Demi Lovato and new single Actions by John Legend

Despite COVID-19, Spotify’s Premium subscriber base grew by 6m in Q1 2020, up to 130m

Total monthly active users (MAUs), meanwhile, grew 31% YoY to 286m.

Chris Gobalakrishna named SVP, Finance and Operations in Asia for Warner Music

Exec joins from WorldVentures where he was the company’s CFO

Facebook goes on music biz hiring spree – as it announces plan to let creators charge for live-streamed events

Run of music industry vacancies crop up amid major confirmation from social giant