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“These moves will make us more effective in promoting EMI’s repertoire from outside North America to the U.S. market, they will make our labels and distribution arms more efficient and they will also help us super-serve the independent label community while maintaining the autonomy and indie sensibilities they have come to expect from Caroline.”
——EMI Music N.A. COO Ivan Gavin

CAROLINE, YES: ANOTHER EMI DIVISION GETS A FACELIFT

Repertoire Unit Established Incorporating Astralwerks, Relaunched Caroline Label and Internationally Known Imprint
EMI Music in the U.S. has unveiled a new organizational structure for Caroline designed to increase the unit’s capabilities in the indie music sector. Caroline will now become an umbrella for three distinct units focused on repertoire, artist development and independent distribution. The new Caroline organization will continue to be overseen by Caroline SVP/GM Bill Hein, who continues to report into EMI Music N.A. COO Ivan Gavin.

“EMI is funnelling resources into Caroline to strengthen our capabilities in the independent music sector, which continues to be a source of growth, and to better serve a broader spectrum of artists and genres,” Gavin explained. “These moves will make us more effective in promoting EMI’s repertoire from outside North America to the U.S. market, they will make our labels and distribution arms more efficient and they will also help us super-serve the independent label community while maintaining the autonomy and indie sensibilities they have come to expect from Caroline.”

Caroline will house a new repertoire unit to focus on releasing and supporting EMI U.K. and international music through Astralwerks, the relaunched Caroline Records and Internationally Known, the latter of which will begin issuing physical and digital releases for some select international pop titles, as well as some digital-only titles.

As part of the restructuring, Astralwerks GM Errol Kolosine will be leaving the company after a transition period of a few months.

“Errol has made extraordinary contributions to Astralwerks and EMI,” said Hein. “I personally want to thank Errol for establishing such high creative standards for Astralwerks, which we will endeavor to maintain. We wish him all the best in his future pursuits.”

Glenn Mendlinger will oversee the day-to-day management of Astralwerks, while Jeff Rougvie has been tapped to manage Caroline Records and the Internationally Known labels.

Caroline’s new artist development unit has been established as an optional shared service available to all of the independent labels distributed by Caroline as an optional service. Astralwerks’ promotion and marketing teams will move into the artist development unit, expanding their responsibilities to include the Caroline and Internationally Known labels. In addition, Caroline has brought on new regional and national radio promotion executives to increase the radio promotion firepower of the new unit. Imperial, which launched last year as an urban artist development and marketing services division, will also operate alongside this new rock-focused unit under Imperial SVP/GM Neil Levine.

Ramsey Dean, most recently GM of Victory Records, has been hired to oversee the rock genre for the artist development unit.

All of the above will report directly to Hein.