Jason Jordan
President
Company: Imagem Music U.S.
Website: us.imagem-music.com
From Kaiser Chiefs, Justin Timberlake and Vampire Weekend to Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Britten and Copland––not to mention the scores to musicals for The Sound of Music and Oklahoma––Imagem is an umbrella company for a group of divisions that encompass Creative Services and a Production Music library. Founded in 2008 by a Dutch consortium, the company’s scope is global as it defines itself as “The world’s largest independent publisher.”
What is the company’s strategy for signings?
Imagem Music is a contemporary company with both a deep and meaningful catalog as our roots, but also a foot firmly planted in the future. The company as a whole has the same thought process when it comes to signings, which is to discover and nurture both existing and new writers, in any genre. We simply want them to be the best at what they do. We like to keep our bandwidth at a manageable level, so we do not sign a lot.
Also, most of our signings are discussed on a worldwide basis, as we are a global company, so the things we do in New York do affect our colleagues doing the same job in London, and vice-versa. We are constantly communicating and sharing music through all of our offices, which are London, Amsterdam, Berlin, New York and Los Angeles, plus we have a regularly scheduled bi-weekly international Skype conference with all of our creative team. Since we do not sign a lot, everything we do sign is incredibly special to us.
What can you reference with significant recent activity?
This year alone, our American office has signed the prolific artist and writer Judith Hill who has her Prince-produced artist album that came out on October 23rd. We have also signed a seasoned Swedish songwriter named Niclas Lundin who is now stretching his talents into America with several co-writing sessions in Nashville and Los Angeles.
We’ve also just signed both an administration and joint-venture deal with the prolific company RebelOne who manage the careers of many artists, writers and producers, but are also an active publishing company on their own. Through this, we acquired songwriters like Scott Harris (co-writes on the breakout album by Shawn Mendes), Kyle Shearer (Phoebe Ryan, Tove Lo, Carly Rae Jepsen), producer/writer Robbie G, artist/writer Lesley Roy and artist/writer SIVIK. This year we have had artist albums released from Mark Ronson, Parade of Lights, Hunter Hunted, The Revivalists and more.
What is the philosophy behind the company?
When I joined Imagem Music as President in early 2014, I asked our Global CEO, Andre de Raaff, some simple questions about where the company would and should be going in the coming years. His short reply to my many questions about our mission statement was simply, “To be the best publishing company in the world.” We do not want to grow too large that we cannot creatively be effective, but we certainly want to be working with the best talent we can find in the business.
Does the company work with emerging young songwriters?
Absolutely. Molly Moore is an amazing young talent who is based in Los Angeles and is both a songwriter and artist in her early 20’s and very unique. We also just signed a New York City-based duo known as The Force (aka John Secolo and Anthony Natoli) who are amazing writers and producers. They can work with a wide array of artists in multiple genres seamlessly. There will be other signings that would fall under this category.
How does the company deal with the changes within the industry, and what trends do you foresee?
Like every other company, we are dealing with massive change in the digital world. We have to simply maneuver as best as we can to weather these changes and grow with them. As we are an independent company, we are able to adapt fairly quickly. Traditional sources of income for a music publisher have also started to dwindle (such as mechanical royalties from record sales, etcetera). As publishers we look to other revenue sources to both increase our business and promote our clients, such as income from synchronization in film and TV.
There is also the streaming world whose payout structures do need to be redefined to be more favorable to the artists first and foremost. When that bit is figured out, the rest will fall into place. It’s always the right place to start, with taking care of the artists. I think this is a very exciting time to be a part of the music business, with disruptive technologies emerging all the time.
