ative director Natascha Augustin.
“It was like punk rock — very do-
it-yourself,” says Augustin, who has
signed many of the leading German
rappers to Warner Chappell, including
Summer Cem and Capital Bra, helping
the company overtake Sony/ATV as the
top domestic publisher in Germany for
the last two years.
To keep up with the new world order,
major labels have increased investment
in signing and developing local hip-hop
artists in all key and emerging markets.
Deals vary from traditional label con-
tracts to bespoke service-level partner-
ships in which artists benefit from the
promotion, distribution and marketing
clout a major label can bring, but still
retain a degree of independence and a
bigger share of the profits.
“What we are offering is a service
level, to different degrees,” says Frank
Briegmann, UMG president/CEO
Central Europe and Deutsche Grammo-
phon. “Some artists want a distribution
offer, some want more marketing and
some independent hip-hop labels we do
deals with want to feel the power of a
major company cross over their artists.”
Kulling says the shift toward service-
level deals offered by BMG — along with
Universal, Sony and Warner — reflects
the independent mindset of many hip-
hop acts. “We deal with rap artists who
have new ideas, who basically put the
business, in terms of contracts, up-
side-down,” she says.
“We have changed our structure to be
able to respond to these urban genres,”
says Brook Demissie, director of GOLD
LEAGUE, an urban-focused imprint of
Sony Music Germany launched in 2019
as part of a companywide reorganization
of Sony Music Germany. “Our deal struc-
ture has changed. Our way of communi-
cating has changed.”
But global domination is still the
ultimate — and most profitable — goal.
To grow their market shares, labels,
publishers and artists are encouraging
multilanguage and cross-border collabo-
rations. Such collaborations are helping
European hip-hop artists cross borders
and generate hits outside of their home
countries. Last year, Aya Nakamura be-
came the first French artist since Edith
Piaf to top the Dutch singles chart, with
“Djadja.” Niska’s “Mr Sal” topped the
charts in Belgium, as well as France.
Niska describes his style as “gangsta
rap with a thread of humor” and says
when he started out, his fans were
exclusively young men. “Today,” he says,
“men, women, children, teens, grown-
ups, people of all colors and origins
know the lyrics to my songs.”
Additional reporting by Heidi Taksdal Skjeseth.
I
N 1979, JIM AND JOHN D’ADDARIO
Jr. — two members of the name-
sake Farmingdale, N.Y.-based
stringed- instrument manufactur-
ing company — established the D’Addario
Foundation with Jim’s wife, Janet, as a music
showcase for classical guitarists who were
struggling to make a living. Forty years later,
D’Addario is still a family business — but now
it’s helping musicians of all stripes, with a
focus on the next generation.
On Nov. 2, D’Addario will host its first Back 2
School benefit show, with the likes of Mandy
Moore, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and
comedy-folk duo Garfunkel & Oates.
“It’s not your traditional gala,” says Suzanne
D’Addario Brouder, the foundation’s executive
director. The event at Los Ange-
les’ Palace Theater will provide
money to over 200 music educa-
tion nonprofits in 40 states.
As the Trump administra-
tion proposes yearly budgets
that would slash public funding
for the arts, Brouder says the
foundation is even more focused
on expanding access to music
education, especially in cities
and towns where families aren’t able to afford
instruments or music lessons.
“We’re trying to find places where music
education is missing, and a lot of that happens
in disadvantaged areas,” she says. “Those are
the areas that are hardest hit by the cuts in
music and education. The places where kids
couldn’t imagine ever owning an instrument.”
One of the foundation-supported nonprof-
its is New York-based Harmony Program, an
organization that has provided over 350,000
hours of free after-school music instruction
during the last decade to kids ages 7-18. And
in cities where the high school graduation
rate is roughly 50%, students who participate
in programs supported by the foundation are
graduating at a 95% clip, according to the
nonprofit watchdog GuideStar.
“We have a really personal, hands-on ap-
proach to what we do — we’ve seen kids who
started out in third grade and now are gradu-
ating high school,” she says. “It’s like, ‘What
else can we do to help?’ ”
This year, the foundation launched a new
college scholarship fund and gave out 10
financial-aid scholarships to students from
D’Addario Foundation-supported programs.
The new initiative will provide financial
assistance for four years to kids who can’t
afford tuition and supplies on their own. This
year, seven of those recipients are the first in
their families to attend college,
with scholarship winners set
to attend places like Berklee,
Villanova and Florida State.
D’Addario’s nonprofit is
also taking steps to reduce the
music industry’s environmen-
tal imprint. In January 2016, it
launched the Playback recycling
program for used guitar and or-
chestral strings, which can’t be
processed by typical recycling centers. In three
years, the Playback program has recycled over
4 million strings with the help of acts like U2
and the Dave Matthews Band and major festi-
vals like South by Southwest and Newport Folk
Fest, which recently placed string recycling
boxes backstage for performers.
“Playback asks the question: What other
steps can we adopt in our day-to-day lives
to cut down on wasting resources?” says My
Morning Jacket guitarist Carl Broemel, who
has used D’Addario products since 1995. “The
cumulative effect of lots of small steps can
make a difference.”
GOOD WORKS
D’Addario Marks 40
Years Of Giving
An upcoming benefit concert is the latest in the
stringmaker’s decadeslong history of charity initiatives
BY JOSH GLICKSMAN
Midori & Friends’ Harlem-based
CityStrings Guitar Camp is
among the programs supported
by the D’Addario Foundation.
MUSIC ENTREPRENEUR AND FORMER SESAC CEO STEPHEN SWID DIED AT AGE 78. SOUTH KOREAN POP STAR SULLI WAS FOUND DEAD AT AGE 25. THE CAUSE OF HER DEATH HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED.
OCTOBER 19, 2019 • WWW.BILLBOARD.COM 2 1