Student Nicolas Schipper from the global entertainment and music business master’s program reflects upon the fifth of the Music Business Seminars, where he had the chance to listen to American entertainment lawyer Martin Frascogna.

He is a young international entertainment lawyer with an impressive background: more than 7 books about assisting artists with international expansion; professional lectures in the most important music conferences in the world, such as MIDEM; and many more amazing things. His name is Martin Frascogna, with whom we shared three amazing days. Marty talked about a lot of different subjects and the main theme was the music industry in the United States. He also talked about what is happening with music reproduction.

“Piracy, streaming is nothing more than a format change we have been going through”

 

Marty made me realize that what is currently going on internationally is another transition of the music industry, like it happened with the transition from cassettes to CD’s years ago. Nowadays the transition is to transform streaming so that we do not know what is going to be the next step. Marty taught us that we must know where our business is and foresee where to build it, what is going to be our next step according to all the “formats” that are happening in the music business. Marty talked about Anti-360 deal, my second favorite topic that we learned these days which gave me a new point of view to other ways of working with contracts.

“In today’s market if you don’t want to sign a 360, DON’T”

Marty talked about my favorite topic, management. Regarding this, he mentioned two ideas that I had not previously realized: to be honest to yourself and also with your artist, and to always work as a collective and to be part of the team. I apply these rules daily (at least I try).

The best experience that I had with Marty was not all the talks that he gave us but, after we had lunch with the ICC, I asked him if he had a minute because I wanted to ask him about trademarks. Then both of us took an orange from the ICC room and went to sit outside. He made me just one question: what do you want to do when you have your masters done? And I realized that now there are so many things that I would like to do so I answered – I just want to work with music – and he started talking about how he got to the business position where he is right now while he was trying to eat his orange without making a mess (it did happen though). He made me feel that I was talking to a guy with whom I already had had some beers and worked together in the past three years. He told me how I should go to the next level of music business and just do what I want to do because I am on the right way. For me it is really important to be a person, no matter where you come from, how much money you have or in what position you are and Martin Frascogna showed that to all of us. I think these kind of possibilities that the GEMB program gives us, such as meeting people that are in the industry, is very important because it teaches us what is going on and it opens our eyes to get to their position or higher.

Martin Frascogna

Just remember: “You don’t need to be on stage to be a Rock star.”

Latest posts by Bud Lake (see all)