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Universal hires Jay Frank to lead on playlist marketing
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 6 August 2015
In an interesting move, Universal Music has appointed Jay Frank to the newly created role of Senior Vice President of Global Streaming Marketing. His key focus at the mega-major will be developing the firm’s playlist marketing strategy.
Frank already has experience in this area, being founder of DigMark, a company which pitches songs to popular playlists on Spotify, and which was discussed at this year’s CMU @ The Great Escape conference, and in this interview with the firm’s Aileen Crowley in the most recent CMU Trends Report. As part of the new deal, Universal has also committed to partner with DigMark and the free single label it grew out of, DigSin, whose headquarters Frank will continue to work from.
Universal’s Executive Vice President of Recorded Music Michele Anthony said: “As the popularity of streaming services continues to grow, it’s important that our artists and labels are well-positioned in their home territory as well as globally to maximise on the opportunities provided by these new platforms. Jay and his team bring a proven track record of helping labels successfully support artists on emerging streaming services around the world”.
Frank added: “Streaming is opening new opportunities daily for artist discovery leading to strong bonds between artists and fans. Successful campaigns will lead to enormous opportunity for new releases and catalogue alike. It’s an honour to join Universal Music and work with such a forward-looking executive team on harnessing the incredible power of discovery represented by playlists”.
It’s not Universal’s first appointment in the online playlisting domain, Matt Allard being appointed by the major’s UK division as Head Of Streaming last year, with playlists part of his remit too. Though Frank’s recruitment and the DigMark alliance does demonstrate that pitching to third party playlist owners is an increasingly important part of the music marketing mix.