Indie Rights Group Merlin Names New Board

Having completed their two-year term, global independent music rights group Merlin's inaugural board will step down and are being replaced with a board that includes some members of the inaugural group plus new faces from across the global music business.

Since launching for operation in April 2008, Merlin has been an outspoken critic of ventures that it feels devalue indie labels like major-label owned MySpace Music and has struck digital deals for its label members with Spotify, Catch Media, MUZU.TV and i-Mesh and others.

The newly elected board members are:

North America:

USA:

• Bob Frank, Merlin Chairman
• Josh Wittman, Red Eye/Yep Roc Records
• Steve Savoca, Domino Records USA
• Thomas Silverman, Tommy Boy Records

Canada:

• Geoff Kulawick, IDLA

Europe:

• Hein Van Der Ree, Epitaph Records Europe, Netherlands
• Horst Weidenmueller, !K7, Germany
• Martin Mills, Beggars Group, UK
• Michel Lambot, [PIAS] Entertainment Group, Belgium
• Thomas Lorain, Naïve, France 

Rest Of The World:

• Colin Daniels, Inertia, Australia
• Marcus Seal, Shock Entertainment Group, Australia
• Hilton Roth, African Dope, South Africa
• Plus the current WIN President, Alison Wenham

In addition, 5 non-voting observer members have been appointed from the unsuccessful candidates in the election as follows:

North America:

• Peter Wright, Virtual Label, USA
• Susan Ferris, Long Live Crime, USA

Europe:

• Florian Von Hoyer, Galileo MC Spain
• Michael Pohl, Kontor New Media, Germany

Rest Of the World.

• Takashi Kamide, Musicmind, Japan

The board is appointed for a two-year term.

Together, Merlin’s members represent over 9% of the US digital market. In a recent posting on their blog, Spotify confirmed the importance and value of the Merlin offering by revealing that Merlin’s members’ repertoire represented over 10% of the overall usage on the service.
 
Artists signed to Merlin member labels include Adele, Animal Collective, Arctic Monkeys, Bjork, DJ Khaled, Katie Melua, Franz Ferdinand, Maxïmo Park, Tom Waits, Vampire Weekend and The White Stripes.