First and foremost, do no harm. Too often, the stewards of great legacy artists, in music and other artistic media, chase perceived opportunities without considering their impact upon the legacy they’re supposed to be looking after. Great performers’ works and images are priceless in the eyes of their fans, and every care must be taken to keep that connection intact.
At the same time, the work of such artists is too important to be kept under lock and key. It must be presented to new, young audiences, in the forms and venues those audiences use. Perhaps most importantly, pop culture tends to compress time: art and artists are being supplanted, replaced and driven into obscurity hour-by-hour, and it’s critical to maintain currency and relevance in a constantly evolving cultural zeitgeist. One must fully understand the artist’s role in society and history, as well as a scholarly approach to their art and all of its facets; but one can never just stand still and do nothing. We refer to the dynamic as “˜walking up a down escalator.’ If you’re not constantly climbing, then you’re not merely standing still ““ you’re actually moving backward.
Jampol Artist Management, Inc. is dedicated to the re-introduction of timeless art through modern means. We cultivate the recordings, images, writings and other creations of our legacy clients in order to keep them circulating in the cultural bloodstream, and we’re not afraid to employ brand-new methods to do it. But we know that every decision puts a priceless legacy on the table. We help iconic artist legacies make the transition to the digital age with integrity.
We’ve brought the work of our clients into hit TV shows and films that reach younger viewers; developed painstaking, comprehensive reissues of their works; overseen the creation of high-quality apparel and merchandise that respects the aura and depth of their creativity; produced revelatory documentary films that shine fresh light on their cultural impact and relevance; assembled and supervised comprehensive digital strategies employing multimedia messaging and marketing, social media platforms, fan forums, blogs, games, SEO, SEM and various interactive media across multiple platforms; carefully selected brilliant young creators to invent new graphics, remixes, mash-ups and other artifacts that extend the reach of our clients to new audiences; constructed visually arresting, content-rich online destinations that “œsuper-serve” longtime fans and newcomers alike; and much more. Of course, we’ve zealously protected those clients’ copyrights in the process as well.
But we have engaged in these ventures and strategies to expand artists’ legacies and brands without diluting them. Because it’s what we do: Unlike a record company, we don’t place physical or digital sales above all other considerations. Unlike a merchandising company, we don’t live or die by quarterly T-shirt numbers. Unlike a music publishing company, we don’t grade our success merely by the number of commercial placements we achieve without regard to their effect upon other facets of the artist and their identity.
We’re a management company, and our job is managing our extraordinary clients’ legacies.
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From The Licensing Plate, a website dealing with rights, clearances, IP news and resources