Motéma Music Turns 15: Jazz, Soul, World Music & More

On West 127th Street, inside the Harlem brownstone where she runs Motéma Music, label founder Jana Herzen, 58, sits in a high-ceilinged office with a stack of CDs in front of her. In recent years, an array of jazz, soul and world music artists have knocked on Herzen’s door and auditioned for her.
                                                 

Motéma has launched the careers of jazz-soul singer Gregory Porter, child-prodigy pianist Joey Alexander and Latin-funk bandleader Pedrito Martinez, among many others. It also has given refuge to veteran artists from major-label upheavals, including National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master pianist Randy Weston, pianist Monty Alexander, vocalist René Marie and the late pianist Geri Allen. In 2014, the label also released Why?, the first album in 13 years from former Cream drummer Ginger Baker.

How did you transition from theater to being a singer-songwriter?

I left the theater to pursue my muse as a musician. I traveled around the world and eventually recorded an album [Soup’s On Fire] produced by a French African [Shaka Ra Mutela]. That was in 1999. When I was promoting it, I got the idea of starting my own label. I got a couple of bites to sign, but I decided to do the DIY thing that led me to make it grow by promoting other people.

You went from artist to entrepreneur?

I had this huge learning curve, and [former Narada label executive] David Neidhardt helped me figure out how to run a label. We got noticed at the center of the jazz scene at the time. People like Todd Barkan at Jazz at Lincoln Center helped me to meet the right people musically, like [pianist] Randy Weston. I came from way outside of the jazz world, so I knew I could bring a new flavor in my approach to it.

How did you finance the label in the beginning?

I came into a little bit of money. My parents were arts supporters. Through their scientific work, significant patent money emerged. They told me at one point, “If there’s anything you want to do, talk to us, and maybe we can support you.”

Facebook has taken its first real steps into the music business

Facebook is finally getting into the music business.
                                             

Mark Zuckerberg isn’t selling songs or music streaming subscriptions. But his company has signed a deal with Universal Music, the world’s largest music label, that the two companies have been working on for some time.

For users, the deal means that if they upload a homemade video clip to Facebook or Instagram that has a part of a Universal song in the background, the clip can stay up without generating a takedown notice. That has obvious benefits for Facebook, as well (but to spell it out — Facebook wants to do anything it can to encourage people to make and share content on its services).

And for Universal, the deal means that the company now has a significant new revenue source — neither side is commenting on financials for now, but industry sources assume Facebook wrote the music a label a very large check as an advance, and that Universal can make more over the course of the multiyear deal.

Crucially, the deal does not give Facebook the right to create its own version of Vevo, the music video service owned by the music labels that generates most of its views on YouTube. On the other hand, now that Universal has its first licensing deal with Facebook, it opens up the door for other stuff down the road.

Perhaps most important for Universal is that it now has a credible bargaining chip when it talks to Google’s YouTube.

For years, the labels and YouTube have been in a symbiotic-but-strained relationship: The labels’ product generates lots of views for YouTube, which says it pays the labels plenty of money in return. But the labels have consistently complained that YouTube doesn’t pay them nearly enough.

Now Universal (and eventually the other big labels) can more credibly tell YouTube that they will take their product off the world’s biggest video platform and move it to the worlds’ biggest social network.

Not a coincidence: The press release announcing the deal quotes Tamara Hrivnak, the Facebook business exec who negotiated the deal with Universal. Up until last year, she was in charge of negotiating similar deals for YouTube.