Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonathan Haskell
Hi Jonathan, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’ve had a passion for all things music for as long as I can remember. I started singing in local plays at the age of 10, all while playing soccer and baseball growing up. But it wasn’t until high school, where I met my future bandmate at a basketball camp of all places, that music really took over. Music was where my heart was, and still remains today.
After high school, I attended Pitzer College for one semester before dropping out. I then enrolled at Santa Monica College, eventually transferring into and graduating from USC’s Music Industry program. This is the single most pivotal experience in my career, as I ended up meeting a mentor of mine – Randy Grimmett, President of Global Music Rights – in Todd Brabec’s Music Law class. This led to an internship at ASCAP that turned into a job in the membership department, where I had access to a vast array of information and was able to help all those bands I grew up playing with sign up and start earning performance royalties. At the time, I was still playing in bands, which was really my true passion. However, as the years went by, I became simultaneously interested in the inner workings of publishing, and even more so, getting bands paid for writing music!
I soaked up everything I could at ASCAP, speaking daily with songwriters, publishers, attorneys, publicists, managers and everyone in between. Everyone has a specialty and focus in this business and something they’re trying to accomplish, and I was able to learn how to help. That job set me up for success and gave me the publishing knowledge and experience that led me to my next three roles at Criterion Music Corp., Universal Music Group and finally to ALIBI Music, where I am VP of Publishing.
ASCAP was also where I met my future wife, songwriter and business owner Kari Kimmel. I was helping with a songwriter workshop that ASCAP put on annually, and Kari came in around the time she was working on the film “Ella Enchanted.” Kari is the most talented, gorgeous and hard-working person I’ve ever met, and I help her company Glow Music Group navigate the publishing waters on the commercial music side of things, from clearance to general publishing administration.
Finally, to bring my experience at ASCAP full circle, I recently had the pleasure of speaking in Todd Brabec’s Music Industry class at USC as part of my involvement in the Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP) – where I currently serve as Treasurer of the LA Chapter — and its Linda Komorsky Scholarship Committee. It was the very same class that jumpstarted everything for me so many years ago. Todd and I are both AIMP board members, and his support in my career is something that I will forever be grateful for.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
First and foremost, I’m a musician. That was what I wanted to “be” when I grew up, so if I take a bird’s-eye view of my life professionally, I would say one major struggle I faced was the juxtaposition of working in the business and simultaneously pursuing a career as a creative in the industry. Thankfully, I think that’s changed somewhat over the years, in that you can now run a publishing company while maintaining an equally relevant and respectable touring career, but this wasn’t the case when work wasn’t as mobile.
I am still active in the music scene today, writing and recording in three bands – Seven Saturdays, Glasz, and Polla. But my expectations are more in line with what makes me happy, knowing that I have a family and other priorities that require my love and attention. Finding that balance in life was perhaps the biggest hurdle, but also the most fulfilling.
On a professional, day-to-day level, I’d say that our industry’s biggest challenge is the accurate communication of data. If a publisher uploads metadata to a server and then needs to revise that metadata worldwide, they face a number of cross-wired hardships that make that task challenging. But putting even more strain on our industry is the sheer amount of music that is being publicly performed, and the reporting requirements at the performance rights organizations (PROs) that need to be meticulously followed in order to see writers and publishers paid. I would say that tracking usages and continuously communicating with the PROs (which have such a monumental task on their hands to represent their vast membership) is where I spend the majority of my time. But ultimately, when our writers and publishers receive their statements each quarter, and it’s an accurate reflection of their work being performed in the world, it’s hard to beat that kind of job satisfaction. I’m grateful to all sides — the networks, the musicians and the PROs — for fostering such a dynamic community of working artists.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As I previously mentioned, I’m the VP of Publishing at ALIBI Music, a leading provider of music and sound effects for license in advertising, trailers, promos, programming, video games and more. My role at ALIBI is to oversee all things publishing: this includes royalty tracking, song registration, sub publishing, neighboring rights, mechanical collection, composer royalty statements and all the related offshoots of running a full-fledged publishing company. ALIBI is an indie, but we’re working with over 400,000 audio files, as well as a commercial record label that offers a curated selection of our music worldwide to stream on every DSP, so it can be a bit cumbersome to keep track of everything. But ALIBI’s vision is very tech focused, and we’ve built some great systems internally that make the publishing side of ALIBI run like a smooth machine.
What were you like growing up?
I was very fortunate to have had the childhood that I did. My dad was the Little League coach. My mom, a talented oil painter. They are incredibly supportive parents and always encouraged me to follow my dreams. I think there was one summer in there where I went straight from a baseball camp in Northridge to Tampa, Florida for a week in a musical theater camp that offered everything from tap, jazz and ballet to acting and singing, all culminating in a production of “South Pacific.” While that was my only time in ballet shoes, I still have my pair of jazz shoes signed by Savion Glover.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://alibimusic.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alibimusic/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ALIBIMusicLibrary
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1hTCrP89Iq4QTJQreg4D5K?si=p1UMLti_SQKdVs-F_N72DQ
Image Credits
Photographer Credits for Jonathan Haskell Photos: Zöe Ruth Erwin, Andy J. Scott, Mark Velasquez
