December News / Happy Holidays!

• View Webcasts of Panels – One of the many benefits of membership is our archive of past panels. If you missed the LA November panel Legal Luminaries: Music Experts In Our Constantly Changing Environment, Members can view the video, as well as all archives, here. All are welcome to view a sampling of video clips here.  

• Now is the time for AIMP members to lock down our biggest discount on tickets to this year’s expanded AIMP Global Music Publishing Summit, which will be held over three days June 8-10, 2020 in New York City. Andrea Martin, the new Chief Executive of PRS for Music, is confirmed to keynote.  Super early bird tickets are now available to AIMP members ONLY through December 31: $299 for Premier members and $399 for Professional members. Member prices will increase to $460/$560 as of January 1, and non-member prices will start at $700. To upgrade your membership, visit www.aimp.org/register. To buy tickets, click here.

• Congratulations to AIMP LA Chapter Board Member Todd Brabec and his brother, Jeff Brabec/BMG, who received the Apollo Award for their history of Copyright Advocacy from the California Copyright Conference on December 4th.  
• The Music Modernization Act that passed in October 2018 was hailed as a landmark achievement for the music industry in creating a solution to several issues that have long plagued the business, particularly in the digital age. Nov. 14th marked another critical step forward for the functions the MMA mandates, including the funding for a central database that will allow for the matching of song recordings to rights holders so that songwriters and publishers can get paid for the use of their copyrighted works.  Read more here.
• Now that the U.S. Copyright Office has designated the NMPA, NSAI, and SONA-backed Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) to begin implementation of the Music Modernization Act (MMA), the time has come for the music publishing industry to get its act together regarding data. Read more from Gary Baresh's op ed in The Tennessean here.  
• Legendary ASCAP songwriter-artist Garth Brooks earned an unprecedented seventh Entertainer of the Year Award at the 53rd annual CMA Awards, which was co-hosted by ASCAP and CMA Award-winning songwriter-artist Reba McEntire from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.  Read more about it here.  
• BMI presented its 2019 BMI Country Awards last month, honoring the prolific musical career of BMI President’s Award recipient Dwight Yoakam, as well as the Country Songwriter, Song and Publisher of the Year. The 67th annual event, which is the genre’s oldest awards ceremony, also celebrated the songwriters and publishers of the most-performed country songs of the previous year. BMI President and CEO Mike O’Neill hosted the ceremony at the Company’s office in Nashville, along with Jody Williams, BMI Vice President, Creative, Nashville.  Read more about it here. 
• SESAC celebrated its songwriters and music publishers behind the year’s most-performed country and Americana songs at the company’s annual Nashville Music Awards last month at the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum.  Justin Ebach was named SESAC’s Songwriter of the Year for the second time, taking home his first award in 2017.  Read more about it here.  
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Mike Molinar / Big Machine Music

Mike Molinar is the General Manager of Big Machine Music (BMM) where he brings twenty-two years of music business experience to lead operations since launch in 2012. Molinar oversees all aspects of BMM which ranked Top 10 in Billboard’s 2018 and 2017 Top 10 Hot 100 Publishing Corps and Top Country Publishing Corps. BMM has scored over twenty-three #1 hits and over thirty Top 20 singles on the Country Airplay Charts. Among the dozen BMM singles climbing the Country, Hot AC and Top 40 charts are “Speechless” (Dan +Shay), “The Bones” (Maren Morris), “Beer Never Broke My Heart” (Luke Combs), “The Ones Who Never Made It Back Home” (Justin Moore, “What If I Never Get Over You” (Lady Antebellum), “To A T” (Ryan Hurd), “Catch” (Brett Young) and “In Between” (Scotty McCreery), among others.

BMM is home to such breakout, artist/songwriters as the reigning CMA and ACM New Male Artist of the Year winner, Luke Combs, 2018 ACM New Artist of the Year and ASCAP Artist Songwriter of the Year, Brett Young, Grammy nominees Jessie Jo Dillon, Brandy Clark, Eric Paslay and Jonathan Singleton, CMA nominee Josh Thompson, hit-maker Laura Veltz, newcomers Daniel Ross and Benjy Davis as well as artist/songwriters Maddie and Tae, Tyler Rich, and Trent Harmon, among others. The BMM catalog includes songs recorded by superstars across genres such as Maren Morris, Jason Aldean, Dan +Shay, Tim McGraw, Kelly Clarkson, Ariana Grande, Steven Tyler, Christina Aguilera, and many more.

In 2019, Molinar was elected to the boards of the National Music Publishers Association, and the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) designated by the Copyright Office.  He also serves on the board for the AIMP Nashville and the Country Music Hall of Fame Education Council. He is an alum of Leadership Music (2015) and was named a Rider Scholar while attending Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J. He graduated from Middle Tennessee State University where he was named a Distinguished Alumni in 2013. He is a member of the CMA, ACM, CCMA and The Recording Academy.

Molinar’s industry experience dates back to 1997 as a Songplugger with Starstruck Writer’s Group where he pitched the catalogs of Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Mark D. Sanders and BMI Writer of the Century David Malloy, among others. As Creative Director at Cal IV Entertainment, he managed 2007 Billboard/ASCAP Country Songwriter of the Year Dave Berg, as well as Jim Collins and Odie Blackmon, to career heights. Molinar later opened his own boutique publishing and artist development companies, including Effusion Entertainment.