Music News (8/2/17)

Jimmie Allen Signs With BBR Music Group/BMG

Back Row L-R: Colton McGee, Director, Legal and Financial Affairs, BBR Music Group; Eric Torres, Producer; Ash Bowers, President, Wide Open Music/Producer; Amy Hendon, Creative Director, Wide Open Music; Rick Shedd, General Manager, BBR Music Group; Lee Adams, VP Promotion, Broken Bow Records; Carson James, Sr. VP Promotion, BBR Music Group. Front Row L-R: Jon Loba, EVP, BBR Music Group; Jimmie Allen; Zach Katz, U.S. Repertoire & Marketing, BMG

BBR Music Group/BMG has signed Jimmie Allen to its roster of artists.

A Delaware native, Allen has toured the world playing for the U.S. Armed Services, and this summer/fall he will open for Toby Keith’s Interstates and Tailgates Tour. Allen has also penned a song featured in a Super Bowl commercial, and is currently in the studio with producers Ash Bowers and Eric Torres finishing tracks for an upcoming project.

Allen is booked by United Talent Agency. He is a SESAC writer and is signed to Wide Open Music for management and publishing.

ASCAP, BMI Reveal Comprehensive Musical Works Database

Performing rights organizations ASCAP and BMI have joined forces to create a single, comprehensive database of musical works from their combined repertories that will deliver an authoritative view of ownership shares in the vast majority of music licensed in the United States.

Elizabeth Matthews, CEO, ASCAP and Mike O’Neill, President and CEO, BMI announced the database, which will feature aggregated song ownership data from both PROs and offer greater transparency in song ownership. ASCAP’s and BMI’s respective databases will continue to be available on each organization’s respective website during the creation and initial launch of the joint database.

Read more at MusicRow.com.

Adele Moves To SESAC For Performing Rights Representation

Adele has moved to SESAC Performing Rights for representation in the United States, it has been announced by John Josephson, chairman and CEO, SESAC Holdings, Inc. Adele was previously with BMI.

SESAC’s main headquarters are based in Nashville.

Adele joins artist-songwriters including Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, RUSH, Zac Brown, and Lady Antebellum on the SESAC roster. Among other benefits, SESAC pays royalties on a monthly rather than quarterly basis, and also offers singular licenses that include both performance and mechanical rights.

Big Loud Rebrands, Launches New Capital Venture

Big Loud Records, led by industry veteran Clay Hunnicutt, celebrates two years in operation this week (August 1). The label boasts a roster including Morgan Wallen, Jillian Jacqueline, and Chris Lane, who last year celebrated his first No. 1 with “Fix,” which was also the first single Big Loud Records ever promoted to radio.

To celebrate, Big Loud partners Craig Wiseman, Kevin “Chief” Zaruk, Joey Moi, Seth England, and Big Loud Records president Hunnicutt have revealed a rebranding for the overall Big Loud operations, which places the company’s various divisions, including Big Loud Shirt Publishing, label Big Loud Records, artist management company Big Loud Mountain and a newly-announced venture fund, Capital, all under the name Big Loud.

The rebranding also includes the newly-created, centralized website bigloud.com, new signage at the company’s 16th Ave. S. headquarters in Nashville, as well as a new logo, which simplifies the original Hawaiian shirt logo that represented Big Loud Publishing.

Newly added to the Big Loud offerings is Capital, a venture capital fund launched by Wiseman, Zaruk, Moi and England. 

England says Capital has invested in approximately 10 companies so far, a mix of music, tech, and non-music companies. Chief among those is Stem, a digital distribution service co-founded by Milana Rabkin, Tim Luckow and Jovin Cronin-Wilesmith. Stem analyzes the share of income a vendor should receive from music platforms like Spotify and Pandora, collects revenues, and automatically splits the payments among different collaborators, who set up vendor accounts.

Read more at MusicRow.com.

Songwriter Bob McDill Donates Life’s Work To CMHoF

Pictured (L-R, Front row): Bobby Bare, Bob McDill, Don Schlitz; Back row: Jon Byrd, William Michael Morgan, Allen Reynolds, Thomm Jutz, Jamey Johnson, Kyle Young in Nashville, Tennessee. Photo: Rick Diamond/Getty Images for Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum

During his nearly 30-year career, songwriter Bob McDill penned 31 No. 1 songs.

Among his numerous contributions to the country music world are classics including Keith Whitley’s “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” “Amanda” (recorded by both Don Williams and Waylon Jennings), Dan Seals’ “Everything That Glitters Is Not Gold,” Alan Jackson’s “Gone Country,” Mel McDaniels’ “Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On” and “Louisiana Saturday Night,” Alabama’s “Song of the South,” “It Must Be Love,” recorded by Don Williams and later by Alan Jackson, and Sammy Kershaw’s “She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful.”

McDill was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985. He retired from songwriting in 2000.

For years, the handwritten lyrics to those notable hits and numerous others, some 200 recorded songs, and written on 217 legal pads during this three decades as an active songwriter, sat in McDill’s basement.

On Monday (July 31), McDill donated his personal collection to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, including all 217 legal pads of handwritten lyrics, along with 110 awards and plaques, and his Martin 1967 D-28-S that he played exclusively for songwriting for decades.

Read more at MusicRow.com.