We're pleased to announce our 2009 Year-End Edition of the A&R Registry has now been released. This time every year is always an interesting period for us to reflect on how the current year has unfolded. Needless to say, we're still in the midst of a dramatic revolution that continues to redefine all aspects of the Record Industry, especially for new artists.

Today's artists have much more power and control over their career than at any other time in recent memory. The most dramatic example of this new world-order are the growing number of artists who have chosen to not re-sign with a record label when their contract expires (Paul McCartney, Radiohead, Madonna, Trent Reznor, Oasis to name just a few). The primary reason we hear is that the artists can control more aspects of their career and make much more money even while selling fewer units than they could being signed to a label. That reality is also holding true for unknown artists and bands as we see more and more artists signing labels in a reversal of traditional roles to handle just distribution or just publicity. New business models such as Polyphonic (the venture founded by Radiohead Manager Brian Message, MAMA Group's Adam Driscoll and Nettwerk Music Group's Terry McBride) are being formed - and funded - as ways to allow artists to maintain control over their creative output by keeping ownership of copyrights and master recordings. We're also seeing a growing number of acts out there who have garnered very successful followings while not being signed to a label at all (Clap your Hands & Say Yeah, Jupiter Sunrise). The most significant element to these artists' success is that they have all built a very successful live-following which is the key to having a career in this new world order. If you want to read an interesting take on this phenomenon, we recommend Kevin Kelly's article 1,000 True Fans where he outlines how any artist, musician, designer or author can make a very comfortable living by just acquiring 1,000 'True Fans' (and we thank you for being one of our true fans!). Of course, some business models will fail miserably and some will succeed phenomenally. Either way, welcome to the 21st Century Music Business!

The end of the calendar year is also the time where we look back over the previous twelve months and take note of all of the movement and activity with the A&R Community. Interestingly in 2009, there was far less activity than in years past. There were 58 A&R Executives hired in A&R and 51 people exited A&R positions in 2009. An attention-grabbing, but sad statistic is that only 5 out of the 51 A&R Executives who exited have been hired in another A&R Capacity (Josh Sarubin, Lorne Behrman, Valerie Gross, Ricardo Fernadez, and Steve Proud are a few). 14 A&R Executives were fortunate to leave one A&R Position for another and finally, 31 Labels moved from one location to another.

The changes that have occurred over just the last 8 weeks since our last issue of the A&R Registry include the return of Rob Cavallo as Chief Creative Officer for Warner Music in California, Ed Johnson joining Warner Bros. from EMI Music Publishing, and Darby Bowen joining Epic. Over in the UK, there was a lot of activity as Zack Strubel joined Columbia, Jos Watkin joins Parlophone, Scott Jason joins Polydor, and Steve Proud joined Warner Bros. Ollie Hodge returns to Columbia-UK from his short stay at Columbia-NY, Angus Blair exits Island, Marc Jones exits Columbia, and Gary Harris exits Warner Bros. In New York, Steve Ralbovsky's label Canvasback Music joins Atlantic from Sony while Pete Giberga exits Epic, Daniel Davis exits Atlantic while Jamaal Meeks exits SRC. And the big label news (as in not so quietly kept secret) is that Universal Music Group's CEO Doug Morris is making plans to have Universal's international chief Lucien Grainge take over as CEO sometime this summer (Morris is expected to remain as Chairman).

In news here at the Registry, we are currently wrapping up the new 12th Edition of the Film & Television Music Guide due out early-2010. If you want to be included in THE PREMIER CONTACT SOURCE for Film, Television and Video Game music, be sure to give us a call at 800-377-7411 or 818-995-7458. You can also email Ritch at ritch@musicregistry.com for more information. And for you Managers out there, we are also currently updating our new Artist Manager Registry for publication so please get us all of your latest updated information on your company and your clients. 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 818-995-7458 for our international customers) to order or you can order here by going to our 'Products' page.

Until our next issue, 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!). Happy Holidays to all. Until then, we remain

Sincerely,
Ritch Esra and Stephen Trumbull