The Alan Ett Creative Group has added former Windswept executive Evan Medow as a partner and named him president of its new Opus 19 Music operation, a partnership with Fuji Media Holdings through its U.S. subsidiary, Fuji Entertainment America.
Through this partnership, the former Windswept CEO Medow will acquire new assets on behalf of Fuji Entertainment America, which sold Windswept Holdings to Crossroads Median and Bug Music in 2007.
“There couldn’t be a better fit for our company,” AECG president and CEO Ett said in a statement. “With Medow’s highly skilled background in the music industry and his relationship with Fuji and extensive industry contacts, he’s ideal for the position.”
In making his first deal for the new partnership, Medow put together the acquisition of the Los Angeles-based companies Six Palms Music and Third Story Music from manager Herb Cohen. Those catalogs include compositions by Tom Waits (“Ol ’55,” “Tom Traubert’s Blues,” “I Hope that I Don’t Fall in Love With You”), Alice Cooper (“School’s Out” and “Eighteen”), Fred Neil (“Everybody’s Talkin’”) as well as “Hey Joe” (as recorded by Jimi Hendrix and countless others) and 1,800 other copyrights.
“Six Palms’ classic copyrights such as ‘Everybody’s Talkin’’ have endured over generations and have had a constant appeal in the current era of change,” Fuji Entertainment America president Hico Koike said. “We designed [the] FEA/AECG partnership as a platform to acquire classic catalogs and develop new methods of musical rights exploitation.”
Opus 19’s acquired assets will be administered by AECG everywhere except for Japan and Southeast Asia. The Alan Ett Creative Group properties include Alan Ett Music Group, a music production, clearance and administration company; the Opus 1 Music Library which distributes its own products internationally and is the exclusive U.S. distributor for fourteen European music library labels; Media City Sound, a full-service audio post-production facility; and Creative Production Group, a media production company.
“Our relationship with FEA provides us with the resources to acquire and develop music that we find interesting,” Medow said. “With the pervasive use of music in all types of media, the combined capabilities and catalogs of the new publishing company and AECG will allow us to provide or create music for any user.”
Medow’s career as a music attorney and music publishing executive includes being involved with the evaluation, selection and/or purchase of music publishing catalog deals that combined total more than $500 million; and he has prepared and supervised the selling of more than $375 million in music publishing catalogs.
