American Young Prepares Debut Album On Curb Records

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American Young

American Young

Country duo American Young will release a self-titled debut album on Curb Records on Aug. 5.

The duo is composed of songwriters Kristy Osmunson and Jon Stone. The project was co-produced by Stone and Curb artist Lee Brice (who appears on the track, “Eighteen.”) In addition, Osmunson formerly recorded as part of Bomshel, a duo that was signed to Curb.

American Young’s singles have included “Love Is War” and “Wasn’t Gonna Drink Tonight.” They released an EP on Curb in 2014.

“Jon’s a perfectionist and a finisher,” says Osmunson, a classically-trained violinist who met her future bandmate at a Lee Brice performance in Nashville. “He works harder than anybody I know. I’m all about the vibe and the feel of the moment.”

“The thing that’s so inspiring for us both is that we’re so different,” Stone said. “Everything that drives me crazy about her makes her a star. She’s everything I wish I could be, but once we’re together we’re like Voltron. It becomes selfless; all our needs become secondary to American Young.”

Stone’s songwriting credits include Brice’s “A Woman Like You,” Jerrod Niemann’s “Only God Could Love You More,” and Rascal Flatts’ “Me and My Gang.” Osmunson’s catalog includes Joey + Rory’s “Cheater, Cheater.”

Industry Ink: Rounder Records, Disney Music Group, C2 Media

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Nashville Celebrates Sean McConnell’s Upcoming Rounder Release

Pictured (L-R): Tracy Gershon, VP A&R, Rounder Label Group; Sean McConnell; Leslie Fram, SVP, CMT; Lanny West.

Pictured (L-R): Tracy Gershon, VP A&R, Rounder Label Group; Sean McConnell; Leslie Fram, SVP, CMT; Lanny West.

Industry execs and media guests celebrated the upcoming release from Sean McConnell at a house party/acoustic performance this week. McConnell’s video, “Holy Days,” premiered on CMT on Tuesday (June 28) and his self-titled album is set to release July 8 on Rounder Records, marking his first release for the label.

 

Disney Music Group Adds Sarah Beth Bateman

Sarah Beth Bateman

Sarah Beth Bateman

Disney Music Group has added Sarah Beth Bateman as A&R Coordinator in its Nashville office. Bateman was previously an A&R intern while studying at Belmont University. In her new role, Bateman will be responsible for providing support to the creative teams in Nashville and L.A., managing the catalogs of a growing writer roster, and overseeing administrative and creative processes.

 

C2 Media Adds Alanna Massey

Alanna Massey

Alanna Massey

C2 Media has added Alanna Massey for public relations. The University of Florida graduate previously worked to promote tourism in Florida. She has represented brands in the liquor and wine industry, in addition to working with country music artists such as Colt Ford, Confederate Railroad Lucy Angel and more. Massey brings along with her to C2 Media rising artist Clark Manson.

The C2 Media roster currently includes Lonestar, Clay Walker’s Chords of Hope, Brian Collins, Smithfield, Ayla Brown, Lucy Angel & More. She can be reached at [email protected].

 

Exclusive: Old Dominion Feel The Love On Music Row

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Old Dominion

Old Dominion. Photo: Dove Shore

RCA Nashville’s Old Dominion spoke to MusicRow about their 2016 Breakthrough Artist of the Year win at the 2016 MusicRow Awards, as well as the hurdles to success the band has faced. A quintet of songwriters, the boys have managed to keep upwards of 200 dates on the road while achieving outside cuts and maintaining families at home. Lead singer Matt Ramsey explains the marathon his band has just begun.

Read more about Old Dominion’s award win in the new MusicRow Awards print issue, available now.

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MusicRow: Do you feel the support of all of Nashville’s music industry?
Ramsey: We do, especially when we win an industry-voted award like this. Every time we come back to Nashville and see the people in the community we spent years working with, everyone tells us they are rooting for us and are proud of us. So we definitely do feel the love.

How does decision making happen with your team and band members?
It’s a five-way partnership. We’re all five equal decision makers in the band and we are all usually on the same page. If we’re not, it’s never a fight. It’s more a discussion where everyone is willing to listen to any idea. We certainly know that we don’t know everything, which is why we have this team of people to help us make those decisions. It’s usually fairly easy to get everyone on the same page.

One of your songs released as an independent band, “Shut Me Up,” was left off your major label release. What went in to that decision?
We felt like it had run its course by the time it got to making the album. We already had an EP out and “Shut Me Up” had got pretty high on satellite radio’s countdown and people knew that song. We just wanted to get as much new music out as possible with Meat and Candy, so “Shut Me Up” was left off to make way for a new song.

What do you think it was about your No. 1, “Break Up With Him,” that really connected with fans? 
It’s a fun song. For the most part, people get the joke. It is real life and definitely a thing that happens. We’ve seen it numerous times. Couples come up to us and say that they are together because that song gave them the courage to realize they were with the wrong people. That’s a great thing for us. There’s a big part that is luck. You never know what’s gonna connect when it gets out there.

Tell us about the fan reception of follow-up singles “Snapback” and “Song For Another Time.”  
A fair amount of people still ask us what a snapback is. They love the song and a lot of times we open our show with that. It’s a big sing-along. We wanted to bridge ourselves into something more serious from “Break Up With Him” to something that is more substantial as far as songwriting, which would probably be “Song For Another Time.” So we felt that “Snapback” was a good middle ground, as far as the sound of the song, from a fun summery song to more serious subject matter.

We’re lucky we even have “Song For Another Time” on the album because we thought we were done recording the album. We were out on the road and Matt Jenkins was out with us and played through the song at soundcheck and we fell in love with it. So we convinced everybody to let us fly home for one day and assemble the entire team to record that one song.

What are the challenges new artists faces that songwriters don’t?
There are a lot of challenges. One would be finding time to write. We spent so much time in town writing every day to play 200 shows a year. All of a sudden you have all kinds of other things to do. You don’t have that time to write and lose that sense of songwriting community you have built. We’re lucky that we write together, but being a new artist definitely eats into your writing time—out there doing what you need to do to push your album.

Early on you’ve been given the stage at many stadiums, what have you learned works or doesn’t work when compared to a smaller stages?
Anything that works in a stadium will work in a smaller venue. It just doesn’t go the other way—things that work in smaller venues don’t necessarily work in stadiums. We learned to work on our transitions from song to song to eliminate dead space. Especially with a new artist, you have to keep the set list moving and energy high. We still watch Kenny [Chesney’s] show every night and take notes.

What can we expect in the next phase of Old Dominion?
We’re writing a lot now. We’ve figured out the groove of writing on the road and thinking ahead at what our next album will be like. We’re playing some of them in our set right now to gauge the fan response. We’ve got all kinds of shows, some 160 shows this year, so touring through the fall.

In countless ways, we’re lucky we’re songwriters together in this band. It’s not just one person but the whole band contributing. We’re lucky to be out here constantly bouncing ideas off each other and our fans to get their response.

Updated: Music Publishing Industry Concerns Grow Following Department Of Justice Ruling

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DOJ LOGO

Updated 8:15 a.m.: ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews has released a statement regarding the Department of Justice’s ruling. Her full commentary is published below.

The Nashville music publishing community responded with disappointment, shock and surprise when the Department of Justice unexpectedly introduced a 100 percent licensing model involving PROs.

The decision on 100 percent licensing means that a song co-written by an ASCAP songwriter and a BMI songwriter would be available to license with approval from just one PRO. It also means that if a songwriter owns only a portion of the song, he or she can license the full song, as long as that songwriter ensures the other credited writers are getting paid. Under the current system, known as fractionalized licensing, each copyright owner in the song takes care of licensing their portion.

Meanwhile the ruling declined requests from major publishing companies to have a right to negotiate licensing rates with digital music providers like Pandora and Spotify. The original consent decree was enacted in 1941, and pertained specifically to ASCAP and BMI, but the music industry has lobbied for the last two or three years to modernize the law. Their requests were all denied in the ruling.

Technically, both PROs must consent to the changes. The next step is approval from federal rate court judges.

Following the announcement of these decisions on Wednesday (June 29), BMI President & CEO Mike O’Neill, Sony/ATV Music Publishing President/CEO Martin Bandier, and Bart Herbison and Lee Thomas Miller from Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) offered statements expressing their disappointment.

Elizabeth Matthews, CEO, ASCAP:
Yesterday, ASCAP and BMI met jointly with the Department of Justice Antitrust Division to hear the government’s proposal regarding our respective consent decrees, which have been under formal review for nearly three years.

As several news reports have mentioned, the DOJ’s current proposal would require that ASCAP and BMI license all songs in our respective repertories on a 100% basis, ending the long-standing industry practice of fractional share licensing.

Unfortunately, the DOJ indicated that because of the complexities of the transition to this 100% licensing requirement, it will not consider the updates we requested to our consent decrees at this time but, instead, may revisit those issues after a transition period.

We strongly disagree with this view and we are disappointed that the DOJ has chosen to focus on this issue, which was not raised by any of the parties to the decrees. Rather than fostering more competition and innovation in the modern music marketplace, we believe that this approach will only create confusion, chaos and instability, harming both music creators and users. Even more troubling is the fact that the government chose this path, despite the fact that more than 15,000 songwriters and composers, as well as the US Copyright Office, members of Congress and others in the industry, registered their strong opposition to 100% licensing with the DOJ.

ASCAP, BMI and key industry stakeholders each have a team of legal experts evaluating this proposal, and we are considering all options, including legislative and legal remedies.

ASCAP takes great pride in being the only PRO owned and run by its music creator members, and we will proceed in a way that is best for our members – the songwriters, composers and publishers who are the foundation of the music industry – and in a way that moves the industry forward.

Mike O’Neill, President & CEO, BMI:
Yesterday, BMI and ASCAP met with the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice to hear its proposal regarding our respective consent decrees. After almost three years of deliberation, the DOJ is recommending no changes to the current decrees. In addition, it has determined that the PROs must follow a 100% licensing model, a practice that has never been the industry standard and one that presents numerous challenges for the marketplace. We have informed the DOJ that we are evaluating its proposal and will get back to them in the near term.

We are disappointed with the DOJ’s recommendation, which after years of hard work and discussion brings us no closer to much-needed consent decree reform than when we started. Instead, the DOJ chose to address only the issue of 100% licensing, a concept we never raised and one that the marketplace has worked out on its own over the last half-century. We are surprised that the DOJ feels it needs to restructure a world that is efficient into one that we believe won’t be. We are also extremely disappointed that the DOJ did not take in to account the nearly 13,000 BMI songwriters who strongly voiced their concerns over a shift to a 100% licensing model and the creative and financial impact it would have on their ability to create music.

While we had hoped for a different outcome, we will continue to make every effort to reach a mutually agreeable solution with the DOJ. The DOJ realizes that change of this magnitude is not an easy process and it intends to give the PROs at least a year to work through the challenges presented by its proposal. We will evaluate all of our options consistent with our core mission to protect the value of music and the creative freedom of our songwriters top of mind.

Bart Herbison, NSAI Executive Director
“This would create Armageddon in the professional songwriter community. Since one performing rights society does not hold information on co-writers who are members of other societies, there is no effective way to make sure those co-writers are paid. Administrative costs will soar and there is a strong likelihood that songwriters may now only write with songwriters from the same performing rights society.”

Lee Thomas Miller, NSAI President:
“If accurate, this is unimaginable and the worst possible outcome for songwriters. Earlier this year in Washington D.C., I explained to DOJ that our profession was already decimated and how mandating 100% licensing could put the final nail in our coffin. I am stunned and sickened. DOJ did not take the impact on songwriters into account when issuing this ruling.”

Martin Bandier, Chairman and CEO of Sony/ATV Music Publishing:
“We are incredibly disappointed by the unjust way the Department has decided to interpret the consent decrees. Its decision is going to cause a tremendous amount of uncertainty and chaos in a market place that has worked well for years and will adversely impact everyone in the licensing process, including PROs, licensees, music publishers and most of all songwriters who can ill afford to hire lawyers to figure out their rights under this inexplicable ruling. The decision raises more questions than answers.”