Working at a label directly with the artist on a new released product (not catalogue).

For example, when referring to marketing, front line marketing is creating a marketing campaign in collaboration with the artist.

Working at a label on an artist’s past recordings and releases.

For example, when referring to marketing, catalogue marketing is creating campaigns for the label's catalogue artists’ music.

Commonly mistaken for Talent or Artist Management. Talent Acquisition is the in-house HR team who are also responsible for hiring talent to work in the business. All major labels and publishers have a Talent Acquisition team.

A&R stands for ’Artist & Repertoire’.

An A&R is responsible for talent scouting and the artistic and commercial development of an artist.

A music supervisor selects and licenses music for film, TV, adverts, gaming and other visual media platforms such as YouTube. They work closely with rightsholders (labels and publishers) to license the music.

A plugger is responsible for pitching an artists’ music to radio stations and TV on behalf of labels or artist management.

A music agent, also known as a booking agent or a talent agent, work with promoters to book their artist live shows.

A copyright is an intellectual property right.

A music copyright is created once the songwriter/composer records or writes down the song.

The copyrght of a song enables the songwriter/composer to be paid for the use of their work.

Luckily for the composer/songwriter, every song has two copyrights: the musical composition and the lyrics.

If the song is recorded, a sound recording copyright is created.

The term ’Business Affairs’ refers to the management and operation of the business aspects of the industry related to contractual relationships with artists, producers, writers and other contributors to music. Often people in Business Affairs are lawyers because the music business is largely run on contracts and so there is an importance to understand the law.

Royalties are how songwriters/composers and recording artists make money.

Each time a song is downloaded, played on a streaming service, at a bar/ pub/cafe, on the radio/TV, performed live or sync'd to visual media the copyright owner generates income.

A publisher collects mechanical and performance royalties.

A record label collects record sales revenue and digital performance royalties.

CRM stands for ’Customer Relationship Management’. In layman's terms it is email marketing.

There are several types of copyright.

A mechanical right is the right to reproduce or copy a copyright into a physical form (CD, DVDs) or digital form (streaming and downloads).

Mechanical royalties are paid to the writer of a song/composition whenever it is reproduced in some form.

In the UK, MCPS (a division of PRS) administers mechanical royalties.