After more than a decade working in the European rights business, industry vet Jeremy Fabinyi is heading home to Australia where he will return to the helm of the country’s music publishers’ trade body.
With effect from April 10, Fabinyi will join the Australasian Music Publishers Association (AMPAL) as general manager, a position he held back in the ’90s.
Fabinyi enjoyed lengthy stints with PRS for Music in the U.K., and with European rights organization BIEM and CISAC in Paris.
He joined PRS for Music in 2005 as executive director and board member, and at one stage in 2009 served as acting chief executive of the collecting society. He departed PRS for Music on Sept. 1, 2010 after nine months as executive director licensing.
The new appointment, explains AMPAL chairman Catherine Gerrard, represents a “major step forward” for the association. “We have a strong plan to focus AMPAL as the leading body for publishers and publishing in our territory,” Gerrard says in a statement. “There is a lot we want to achieve and we cannot think of anyone better than Jeremy to set our new strategic direction into motion. Jeremy is well known in Australia and around the world and he will be a great asset to our organization.”
Earlier in his career, Fabinyi served as CEO of AMPAL and its sister mechanical rights body AMCOS, and as group managing director of Festival Mushroom Records. Fabinyi managed Australian rockers Mental As Anything, which had an international hit with “Live It Up” (Epic) in 1987, and were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2009. He’s also served as a board member to national audiovisual collecting society Screenrights and the Australian Copyright Council.
At AMPAL, Fabinyi replaces Peter Hebbes, who left in order to focus on his publishing company, Hebbes Music Group.