Welcome to our third edition of 2009 and another digital PDF version of the A&R Registry! It's hard to believe that it's already June, the time for weddings and graduations - and just when we were getting used to it being a new year! This is such a fascinating time in the Music Industry. It's become apparent that the very foundation that built this industry over the last forty-five years to its zenith no longer exists today. Not only has the power shifted back to the Artists, but the role of the Major Label has been made nearly obsolete today. The Major Label system worked when it had control over the Artsits as well as most of the elements of the marketplace including radio and retail. It was the only game in town so you either played by their rules or were marginalized. The labels' power derived from both the developing and established Artists they controlled. As we all know today, the Major Labels no longer have any interest in developing talent (they have neither the time, patience, money or manpower anymore) and no established act (with rare exception) stays with a Major Label today once their contract expires.

Today, there's very little a Major Label can offer an established Artist that makes it worth the commitment. You might be thinking that Artists can't get those Multi-Million Dollar deals from anywhere else other than the Major labels. The truth is, established acts con make 80-85% more on their music outside the Major Label system than they can within it. We remember a quote from Irving Azoff speaking about his client Christina Aguilera and he said, 'She derives maybe 4-5& of her total income from recorded music." A statement such as that from someone such as Irving Azoff makes you realize that the entire musical game has changed as well. An Artist's music has become the calling card if you will, and not the stand-alone economic force it once was. This is why successful Artists of the future will be ones that have a strong ability to draw fans for live events. Otherwise, there's just no money in it. But, even more important is the fact that the Artists themselves will also be very different in terms of their drive, tenacity, work-ethic and determination. There will also be a profound shift in the way that we define success. Success used to be determined by the Top-10 Singles on Radio and the rotation of videos on MTV and VH1 and the Platinum Album attainment. The new definition of success for future Artists will be their ability to be able build a viable career for themselves by building a fan base that wants to hear their music and will pay to see them live. Those Artists who have successfully addressed those questions will be the success stories moving forward.

Switching gears a bit, we have been continuing to receive questions asking why the change to digital delivery instead of print? This change has actually been coming for years. While this move has been simmering on our back burners, we have seen our subscriber base diversify from a typical corporate customer (lots of copies going to the same building address) to more individual customers all over the United States, Canada and as far away as Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, England and the rest of the UK, Thailand, Arab Emirates, Israel and South Africa just to name a few of the countries where our customers reside. Having to rely on postal services and custom agents, our customers have patiently waited for their copy of the A&R Registry to arrive while the contact information in the directory was aging by the day. Moving to a digital delivery of the A&R Registry will get the information into your hands about two-weeks faster by eliminating the time that it takes for each issue to be sent from us to the printers, back to us and then finally to our readers.

The other major reasons for this change to digital delivery? Cost savings and a concern for our environment. We have recognized that many of our customers who used to wield corporate American Express cards with abandon are either now strictly restrained or watching every single dollar being spent because those expenses are now coming out of your personal account. We have tried our best over the years to hold down costs and our subscription prices. In fact, the last time we raised our subscription prices was almost three years ago. However, in these past three years we have seen our expenses for everything from shipping, postage, printing and paper cost keep rising. Also, doing some research on the impact of publishing printed directories on our environment, we found that according to a study just released by the Green Press Initiative and the Book Industry Study Group, the average carbon emission is about 8.85 pounds per book. Considering the trees cut down for paper, the fuel used for transport and the chemicals involved in color and black and white printing, that's 8.85 pounds of carbon released just for one book. Given that we publish the A&R Registry six times a year multiplied by the number of copies for each subscriber, the size of our carbon footprint was sobering given our current environment concerns. And we think you'll be so excited about the new features available in a digital version that you'll soon forget that we ever even published printed directories.

In the A&R world, there has been quite a lot of activity over the last few months. We're always happy to report new hires to the A&R fold. Jeff Levin joins Atlantic while Sunny Lee joins Motown and Tom Lee joins Mercury. Wait -- there's even more! Max Gousse, David Wright and Angelo Sanders all join Island's West Coast office. We're always sad to report exists from the A&R World. Kenny 'Tic' Salcido and Joseph Weinberger exit Warner Bros., Lorne Behrman exits Blue Note, Susan Riley exits Word in Nashville and Steve Buckingham exits Vanguard. And we have one correction and a mea culpa. We mistakenly reported in our last issue that David Wilkes had left Koch (E1) which is not the case. We apologize for problems or inconvenience our error may have caused.

We want to extend a special welcome to our new advertisers Vegas Disc/Hit Track Studios, Saltmine Studios, Open All Nite, Elysium, White Tiger Records and Wolf Note. Please be sure to check our updated Calendar of Events and Manager Vicky Hamilton's interview with ATO's Bruce Flohr. Of special importance for those of you who may have not heard already, the brand-new 11th edition of the Film & Television Music Guide is now available as a digital download as well as online at www.recordXpress.net. You can call our offices at 800-377-7411 (or 818-995-7458 for our international customers) to order or you can order online at www.musicregistry.com. Also, the brand-new updated issue of the Music Publisher Registry is also coming soon.

Until our next issue in July 2009, please know that we always try our best to make sure all of our directory information is correct at the time of printing, but if you ever come across a bad telephone number or email address, just let us know and we'll make sure to track down the correct information (if we haven't already!). Until then, we remain

Sincerely,