Range Media Partners and Big Machine Music have inked Grammy-nominated songwriter Geoff Warburton to an exclusive songwriting and joint publishing deal.
Warburton’s credits include Shawn Mendes’ #1 hit “There’s Nothing Holding Me Back” and his Grammy-nominated single, “In My Blood,” as well as tracks from Machine Gun Kelly (“Love Race”), Keith Urban (“Polaroid”) and Jake Owen (“Best Thing Since Backroads”), among others.
“Geoff is an elite songwriting talent and the perfect complement to our well-established team in Nashville and what we have been building within our LA office this past year,” said BMM GM Mike Molinar.
"Working with Geoff over the last five years has been one of the greatest privileges of my career thus far,” added Range VP of A&R and Publishing Sam Drake. “His talent and dedication is so inspiring to myself and everyone at Range and we couldn't be more excited to partner with Big Machine Music on what will be an amazing new chapter."
Seen just before synchronizing their team walkie-talkies are BMM's Michelle Attardi, Warburton, BMM’s Alex Heddle and Molinar.
Lex Borrero and Tainy's NEON16 has added hot producer Frank Rio to its management roster. Rio is rising musica Mexicana star Ivan Cornejo's go-to collaborator and served as the executive producer to his most recent album, Dañado (Deluxe), which reached #1 on Apple Music's Latin chart.
Rio ended his breakthrough 2022 climbing to #3 on Billboard's Latin producer chart in December. His song credits include Jhay Cortez f/J Balvin & Bad Bunny's "No Me Conoce (Remix)," which has 1b+ streams on Spotify, and A. Chal's "Hollywood Love" f/Gunna.
Along with his NEON16 affiliation, Rio's 2023 also includes working on Cornejo's next studio full-length, as well as collaborations with Becky G and Albert Hype.
EMPIRE's publishing arm, EMPIRE Publishing, has partnered with Hit-Boy's Surf Club collective.
The partnership will allow the Grammy-winning producer and Surf Club to build a publishing roster utilizing its catalog’s analytics, financials and royalties. EMPIRE Publishing is led by Al Mclean and Vinny Kumar. EMPIRE Publishing A&R, Brett Sweeney, secured the deal, while EMPIRE’s Directors of Business Affairs, Benedict Paz and Sarah Beth Gerlecz, negotiated and finalized it.
The deal includes new signees G Dav, Dr. Blum and Bandz whose production credits include tracks for Nas, Roddy Rich, the late Nipsey Hussle, Kehlani and Twenty One Pilots.
"We want to build Surf Club up to be great, create outstanding pieces of work and music,” Hit-Boy said. “I’ve been looking for a publishing situation for years, and Empire really made it happen.”
Surf Club is helmed by Hit-Boy with Nima Nasseri serving as managing partner, Jameel “Double” James in the role of president and James Bentley acting as Head of A&R.
Hit-Boy is currently nominated for Album of the Year for his work on Beyonce’s latest album, Renaissance. We, on the other hand, are simply trying to avoid the tsunami that is our life.
