Happy New Year! We hope your holiday season was one of respite, joy, renewal and peace. Welcome to our first issue of 2012, a new year, a new beginning and a celebration of marking our 20th year as a publication. The beginning of any new year is always a rich time of renewal, new beginnings, and reflection. The beginning of such a milestone in our publishing of Music Industry contact directories and even more remarkably in the music business in general however, makes this an even more poignant time especially given the fundamental shifts we have seen in the Music Industry over the last two decades. It seems as if it was only yesterday that we released the first edition of the A&R Registry in 1992, a ten-page Word (or was it WordPerfect then?!) document that was printed out on a MAC Classic (Lord knows how long that took!), and then photocopied, stapled and sold one by one, often being hand delivered. Like many things in the Music Industry, we've come a long way.

Reviewing letters to our readers these past two decades, we were struck by how often we kept referring to the changes occurring within the Music Industry as nothing less than a revolution. Revolution defined as a 'radical upheaval of the established order', these last two decades were not only among one of the most revolutionary in terms of just the music business, but more profoundly, those changes reflected a culture in transition on many levels. Someone once said that a revolution can be deemed a success when you not only change people's attitudes, but change their behaviors! We can't think of better way to sum up the culture of music discovery and consumption today. And with those changes in behavior, it creates a dramatic shift in our very relationship to music itself, not to mention its intrinsic value. To a great extent, music (like so many other forms of media) is no longer something tangible that we possess, but rather has transformed over the two decades to something we access - for better or worse!

And then there were three! Even though we started predicting this day back in 2009, last November we finally saw the sale of EMI Records to Universal and EMI Publishing sold to a consortium including David Geffen to Sony Music Publishing. Of course, it will probably be six months or so before the entire regulatory process is complete and the challenges will most likely be greater with the European Trade Commission than the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. The probable result, not unlike Universal's purchase of BMG Music Publishing, is that certain assets in various territories will have to be sold before the necessary regulatory blessings will be given. Of course, EMI was not the only Major Label to be sold last year. In May, Warner Music Group was sold to Access Industries. The great upset and surprise to many industry pundits is that the traditional thinking held that the day had finally arrived (after two previous attempts) when Edgar Bronfman, Jr. would get to fulfill a decade-long dream of purchasing EMI and folding it into the Warner Music Group. Now with the sale of EMI to Universal, it raises the question of what effect this sale will have on Sony who is now the market's number two contender. Now that Warner Music Group is the smallest of the Major Labels, will Warner Music Group now become the next entity to be sold (again) and then possibly combined with Sony? The answer of course depends on Sony's willingness to make a significant financial commitment to recorded music. Keep in mind, Sony was only willing to be one of the partners (financially speaking) in the EMI Music Publishing deal (Sony Music Publishing will only own 38% of EMI Music Publishing, but they will have full administration rights for the new company; the rest of the company being owned by a consortium of financial backers). Of course, the greater and more urgent question is that in an era where what a Major Label can provide is less and less relevant to more and more artists, what is the future of a Major Label as a business model moving forward? The next few years will be very interesting to see how the answer to that question evolves.

Another development this year, though not on the seismic scale (yet) of the EMI or Warner sale, was the alliance between Universal and Live Nation. Even though Universal's owner Vivendi breached Live Nation's territory by its purchase of the UK ticketing company SeeTickets, the two music industry giants later announced a new joint venture to focus on direct-to-fan platforms and branding. That move, surely sending chills up the spines of Indies, also resulted in the announcement of the two behemoths' agreement to collaborate on Madonna's next three albums. And we would be remiss in any review of 2011 if we did not at least give a nod toward the ongoing skirmishes over copyright law, digital royalty disputes, file-sharing and take-down notices. Of course, 2011 also saw subscription services starting to hit their stride. With Rhapsody's acquisition of Napster, Spotify, Pandora, Sony Music Unlimited, rdio, MOG, Blackberry's BBM Music, Android Music, Muve and Rara with several more hitting the digital listening landscape, subscription-based music seems to be flirting with profitability and real market penetration (including a nod to subscription radio as well). Of course, MySpace has revamped, reenergized and is showing life again and Facebook certainly has the financial gravitas to continue to shake up the landscape whenever it sets it sights to providing services (and stop angering its users). So all in all, 2012 is shaping up to be a year to be watched with anticipation, wonderment, hopefully a little amusement, and we pray, a year of great music.

There was a fair amount of activity over the last two months of 2011 including the hiring of five A&R executives including superstar producer Christopher 'Tricky' Stewart who joins Epic as Head of A&R, Shawn Holiday who joins RCA as Sr. VP A&R, John Ehmann who joins Interscope, Adam Herzog who joins Warner Bros., and Jaymes Foster who joins Verve along with her brother David Foster who exited Warner Bros. for his new role at Universal's Verve label. Over in the UK, A&R veteran Richard O'Donovan joins Polydor and Pete Sheldrake joins Lizard King. There were a few more A&R moves from one label to another over the last eight weeks including Colin Barlow and Ricardo Fernandez who both left Geffen for RCA, and Nick Shymansky who left Polydor for Island. In New York, both J.R. Lindsey and Harley Wertheimer of Columbia have moved to the LA office from New York as has Tom Mackay who moves to the LA office of Universal/Republic from New York. In LA, as we mentioned above, David Foster joins Verve from Warner Bros. and Chris Anocute joins Island Def Jam from Universal/Republic. Also, several longtime A&R executives have exited their current labels including Thom Pununzio and Evan Peters who both exit Interscope, Alex Shenitsky who exits Capitol and Leslie Dweck who exits Atlantic.

In reviewing all of the activity within the A&R community during 2011, some interesting statistics emerged. There were thirty-one A&R Executives hired in 2011, up from twenty-three in 2010, but down from the fifty-eight hired in 2009 or the eighty hired in 2008. Another surprising statistic was that there were twenty-six A&R moves (leaving one A&R job for another) in 2011, up from only ten in 2010 and fourteen in 2009. They include David Foster, Peter Thea, Jean Nelson, Nick Raphael, Ankur Malhotra, Shari Reich, Stephen Ferrera, Alaska Gedeon, Jo Charrington, Shani Gonzales, Nick Burgess, Ricardo Fernandez and Colin Barlow to name just a few. Sadly, there were thirty-six A&R Executives who exited their A&R position in 2011, down from forty in 2010, fifty in 2009, sixty four in 2008 and one hundred twenty nine exits in 2007. A sad side note of these exits is that out of the thirty-six A&R Executives who exited their A&R positions in 2011, only six of them so far have gotten another job in A&R (Shawn Holiday who is now Sr. VP A&R at RCA was previously at Interscope until February). In 2010, forty A&R Executives exited their A&R positions at the various labels and NOT ONE OF THEM had gotten another A&R job in 2010. And it's interesting to note that out of those forty A&R Executives, only one - Rob Stevenson - has gotten another A&R position so far. Let's hope that 2012 will be kinder to all of those who have shepherded some great music and artists over the years!

Sadly, in reviewing this past year, there seemed to be a tremendous amount of loss in 2011 of so many beloved Artists, Executives and others who have been such a rich and valuable part of our lives including artists such as Amy Winehouse, Nick Ashford, Teena Marie, Captain Beefheart, Gill Scott-Heron, Phoebe Snow, Heavy D, Gerry Rafferty, Dobie Gray, Gary Moore, Sylvia Robinson, Dan Peek (America) Clarence Clemons, Nate Dogg, Film Composer John Barry, Songwriter Jerry Leiber, Jerry Ragovoy, visionary executives such as Steve Jobs, Sony Chairman Norio Ohga and Don Kirshner along with beloved Music Executives such as Steve Popovich, Grammy Telecast Producer John Cossette, Veteran A&R Executive Don Devito, Promotion and Artist Manager Frank Dileo, Warner Bros. GM Rich Fitzgerald, legendary recording engineer Roger Nichols, veteran publishing executives Barbara Orbison and Mickey Goldsen, as well as veteran music attorney Johanan Vigoda to name just a few of the many that we lost in 2011. Our lives and musical heritage are the better for the contributions of those we have lost and we just wanted to take a moment to mark their passing as well as their contributions.

Turning back to the present, our brand new 2012 Edition of the Film & Television Music Guide will be ready soon. To reserve your copy to be sent as soon as it's available, give us a call at 800-552-7411 (or 818-781-1974 for our non-U.S. or Canada customers). We will also be coming out with a new edition of our Music Publisher Registry in February so if any of our publisher readers have had changes to your contact information or if any of you are aware of any changes such as personnel, contact or address changes, please let us know as soon as possible so we can make sure to get the information updated for the new issue. We also want to welcome our new advertisers to this issue Peter Oprisco, Analog and Masterdisc. If that wasn't enough, remember that all of our directories are also available online at www.recordXpress.net. You can call our offices at 800-377-7411 (or 818-781-1974 for our international customers) to order or you can order online at www.musicregistry.com.

Please know that we always try our best to make sure all of our directory information is correct at the time of release, 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!) It's a new year, so back to work everyone! As always, we remain

Sincerely,

Ritch Esra and Stephen Trumbull
Publishers