RadioandMusic
| 19 Apr 2024
Jay Frank joins UMG; Gets DigSin and DigMark to partner with label

MUMBAI: Universal Music Group (UMG) has brought on board veteran music and media executive, Jay Frank to lead the company’s streaming marketing strategy. Frank will head the newly created role of senior vice president of global streaming marketing, and will report to EVP of Recorded Music’s- Michele Anthony, and president of global marketing- Andrew Kronfeld.

He will analyse data and information collected from across streaming services to maximise the performance of UMG’s artistes across the streaming platform. He will also been seen evaluating the effectiveness of the company's global streaming marketing efforts and identifying opportunities for artists on streaming platforms. Other than maximising profits through streaming, Frank will also be curating and managing Universal Music’s global playlists coordinate a cohesive worldwide playlist strategy across the company's labels and work with third-party playlist owners to promote artists. Frank said, "Streaming is opening new opportunities daily for artist discovery leading to strong bonds between artists and fans. Successful campaigns will lead to enormous opportunity for new releases and catalogue alike.”

Additionally, music and marketing analytics companies DigSin and DigMark, founded by Frank, will partner with UMG. Frank and his employees will continue to operate from DigSin and DigMark headquarters in Nashville.

This shows the growing attention UMG is planning to give digital space and the importance to data collection. Lack of understanding of data and the lack of appropriate data, have been major set-backs for the streaming business, and the situation has often been criticised.

Commenting on streaming, Anthony said, “As the popularity of streaming services continues to grow, it is important that our artists and labels are well-positioned in their home territory as well as globally to maximize on the opportunities provided by these new platforms.” Adding to Anthony, Kronfeld said, “With streaming, we are working in a new landscape of constant consumer interaction that extends well beyond a single transaction. To harness the potential of this connection, Jay and his team will incorporate new data-driven methods to maximize the exposure of our artists and create new opportunities on popular streaming services."

Frank founded DigSin as a singles-focused music company that leverages streaming promotion to foster artist growth. He later founded DigMark to design and implement data-driven marketing campaigns. He has authored books that range from technology that have changed music discovery to ways to create inexpensive online marketing opportunities.

Prior to starting his own firm, Frank was SVP of music strategy for Viacom's CMT, where he used innovative multi-platform promotional strategies to help drive music video ratings to all-time highs. He also served as vice president of music programming and label relations for Yahoo! Music, where he was responsible for all of the company's music programming and was senior music director at The Box Music Network.