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Jay Frank dies
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 14 October 2019
Universal Music exec Jay Frank, a longtime proponent of new ideas in digital music and digital marketing, has died, aged 47. He had been diagnosed with cancer.
Commenting on his death, Universal CEO Lucian Grainge said: “Jay leaves an immense legacy. He was a creative and tireless leader who made significant contributions to the evolution of our global marketing efforts”.
“Many of the ways we market our artists and their music in the streaming era stems from Jay’s innovative work”, he went on. “But more than anything else, Jay was a loving father and husband. We send our deepest condolences to his family and friends. We will miss him dearly”.
Beginning his career in the music industry in the mid-90s, Frank began working with digital music after joining Yahoo in 2001. As VP Programming & Label Relations he worked with the company on its early foray into streaming music with Launchcast.
In 2009, he published his first book ‘FutureHit.DNA’, which analysed a raft of music-related stats to propose formulas for songwriters to follow if they wanted to score hits. A second book, ‘Hack Your Hit’, discussed how to market music online and through social media.
He put the recommendations from both books into action himself, launching Futurehit Inc to analyse the commercial potential of songs and, in 2011, digital singles label DigSin and subsequent marketing agency spin-off DigMark.
The latter was one of the first agencies to proactively pitch music to the owners of playlists on streaming services at a time when many of the biggest such playlists were compiled by independent curators.
Obviously, playlist pitching of that kind subsequently became a key strand of music marketing and – as the industry at large began to focus on such things – in 2015 Frank was hired by Universal Music to develop its playlist marketing strategy.
