Music News 5/6/10

Photo by Jude Ferrara

>>Nashville and the surrounding Middle Tennessee communities have been devastated by flood waters after the area received 15 inches of rain within a 48 hour time period. Thousands of Middle Tennesseans have been evacuated from their homes with many losing everything to the flood. Many of the victims do not have flood insurance and the demands on relief agencies are stretched to the limit. Our sister publication MusicRow Magazine has a special area for music related flood news at http://www.musicrow.com/category/flood2010/. Please visit the site for the latest updates.

>>Hitmakers, a new competition show about songwriters coming to Bravo, is holding a Nashville open casting call on May 23. Bravo and True Entertainment, producers of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, have partnered with The Writing Camp, the writers behind hits for Beyonce and Rihanna to discover hit songwriters in a wide array of genres.  The winner will receive a cash prize, a publishing deal with Sony/ATV, and a development deal with The Writing Camp for RCA/JIVE. Details on the casting call at http://hitmakerscasting.com.

>>Black River Music Group Publishing has signed Kentucky native Josh Osborne to a publishing agreement. “I’m very happy to be working with Josh and I believe he will prove to be an important writer and a name we will all recognize inthe not too distant future,” says Celia Froehlig, Black River Music Group’s Vice President, Publishing. Osborne has had songs featured in shows on the Fox network and his song “Stay Away” was featured in the Hallmark movie, Every Second Counts. He’s also had songs that charted on the Texas and Americana charts.

(l-r seated): Celia Froehlig, Josh Osborne; (Standing l-r): Jimmy Nichols, President BRMG, Tonya Ginnetti, Vice President, Director of Artist Relations

>>Congrats to RowFax subscriber Stephen Desjardins who has been awarded as one of the Decade’s Top Songwriters by the VH-1 Song of the Year songwriting contest. More details here.

>>In other publishing news, Mike Sebastian, formerly VP/GM for Blacktop Music Group, has been hired on as a consultant at ole, the publishing company that recently acquired Blacktop. Sebastian will continue to pitch the Blacktop catalog as well as work with ole/Blacktop writers Marty Dodson, Jimmy Yeary and Matt Nolen while also helping ole assimilate the Blacktop company into their system.

Jennifer Beavis

>>International, independent publisher ole, with offices in Toronto, L.A. and Nashville has launched “adminow,” an online resource for the company’s administration clients. “It’s akin to online banking,” explains Jennifer Beavis, Senior Director, Administration. “It complements ole’s expert, global customer service, and delivers the immediate transparency ole’s clients have come to expect from mainstream financial institutions.” According to ole, the company has customized an end-to-end royalty accounting system that includes the automated reconciliation of royalty and accounting systems. The newly unveiled “adminow” improves on the system by offering clients the ability to securely view their detailed account histories, song registrations, splits and royalty income per song, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Additional analysis tools are also on the way to assist clients in managing their businesses. Included will be access to instant advances on pipeline income that they will also be able to track online as it is earned. Clients will also be kept well-informed with news relevant to the world of copyright and music publishing.

Michael McCarty, ole president says, “ole is committed to staying on the leading edge of both technological and client service innovations in the music publishing industry. The slogan “transparent technology.powered by people” is intended to convey the true ole difference – even though we have great technology, quality music publishing service comes down, in the end, to personal service.”