Who We Are
Nick Ashton-Hart
Nick Ashton-Hart’s involvement in the music business spans four decades. He started working for seminal punk band the UK Subs at 19 in the 1980s, and has since managed the careers of artists as diverse as Heaven 17 and the late, legendary Godfather of Soul, James Brown.
His experience as a negotiator is second to none in the global music industry. Aside from dealmaking for legendary artists, he is a long-time negotiator in international telecommunications on the delegation of the United Kingdom, and has been the lead negotiator for the European region’s 48 member-states on a portfolio of Internet-related economic policy issues in multilateral negotiations over the past 10 years. He is one of the world’s most respected experts in digital trade policy and law and its application to national competitiveness in the digital economy. This gives him a unique ability to understand how digitisation will continue to impact the dissemination of creativity, as he sees it from both within the music sector and also globally.
He became a manager to protect artists from those who wanted to unfairly exploit them, which eventually led him to get involved in the work of the Music Managers Forum; this led to his election to two terms as Executive Director of the International Music Managers Forum (IMMF) in the noughties where he advocated for the interests of featured artists to policymakers worldwide. He has advised the world’s most popular streaming video service on relationships with top-tier featured artists and spoken on behalf of artists and their interests in the European Parliament and in international copyright negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) over several years. At WIPO he organised the opposition to a treaty demanded by broadcasters that would have dramatically increased their power position vis a vis creative people - to the detriment of creators worldwide. His efforts at WIPO were pivotal to Stevie Wonder intervening personally in the negotiations for a treaty that gives the visually impaired worldwide dramatically improved access to copyrighted works without harming the creators.
More recently he has given witness as an expert to the House of Commons on legislation in 2018 (video here, written testimony here) and 2019 on UK policy related to international trade (video here). He is a published author, most recently in 2016, here, and is a guest contributor to the Council on Foreign Relations’ “Net Politics.”
He has been clean and sober for 24 years and has been living with HIV for more than 20.
Why is he returning to artist management?
When I left management in my mid-30s I had been managing a legendary artist with incredibly complex affairs, generating mid 8-figures in turnover each year, and I realised there wasn’t much of a challenge in front of me as a manager. I had thought of coming back several times over the intervening years but when I asked myself “what do you want to do that you haven’t done yet as a manager?” I didn’t have a good answer.
When I met Joanne and we talked about a management firm specialising in clients in recovery, I realised we’d found something that needed to be done: showing artists, and the broader industry, that you don’t have to live in mentally and a physically unhealthy work environment as a professional musician in recovery. The idea of creating a professional environment that supports healthy living for recovering people, and is an interesting challenge and worth turning into a reality. If a firm like this had existed years ago perhaps some of the brilliant musicians who have died of drug and alcohol abuse would still be with us.
Favourite deal for a client: Nick got one of the world’s largest broadcasters to agree the artist had complete freedom to exploit the sound recording of a major broadcast programme, worldwide, for life of copyright, in return for a nominal percentage of net income.
The broadcaster’s starting position was that it owned and was the author of the entire programme and could use it in whatever manner or form it wanted for life of copyright without payment of any kind; the ending position was that the artist licenced the audiovisual performance to the broadcaster, owned the sound recording, and the broadcaster had to pay the artist for every use of the audiovisual programme that the broadcaster itself got paid for.
Joanne cut her teeth in her early career alongside industry veterans David Enthoven and Tim Clark where she started, as many others do, answering the phone on the reception desk of the legendary management company, ie:music. Joanne swiftly moved through the ranks in the ie family and had the honour of working as a part of the team that manages Robbie Williams and specifically, was a pivotal part of the production of Robbie’s ‘And Through it All’ DVD whilst also playing part in the production of the world’s first cinecast gig as Robbie played live at the Berlin Velodrome in 2005. It was during this time that Joanne also spent much time and creativity helping to support the growing career of then Zero 7 chanteuse, Sia. Whilst at ie:music, ever the multi-tasker, Joanne also helped to get the early careers’ of the Mike Rosenberg Band (later to be named Passenger), and Ladyhawke off the ground, helping to support each the managers of each Artist with everything from merch to last minute visa bookings for far flung tours or PR appearances.
It was during this time that Joanne was also editor and music writer for underground lifestyle magazine, SuperSuper, which is most known for being the first UK mag to feature Lady Gaga on its cover.
Joanne then migrated her musical passions over to Europe’s capital of all things electronic and glitch by moving to Berlin to work a stint at City Slang Records as well as writing about her musical adventures through interviews with Artists as diverse as JD Samson, Wolfgang Fluer (Kraftwerk), Caribou and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club for T-Mobile’s Electronic Beats Magazine and underground glossy, BangBangBerlin.
But then - everything stopped and Joanne hit her rock bottom. Luckily, a flight back to David Enthoven in London was to be the action that would save Joanne’s life. A suggestion towards 12-step recovery in that encounter has seen Joanne in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction for one decade.
Since getting clean, Joanne worked in frontline mental health services to share her recovery with others which included the founding of the country’s first Women’s Institute (WI) groups for women in recovery at the NHS foundation Trust, CPFT. The pull to come back to the music industry was always great and again, David Enthoven inspired this change but this time under much more solemn circumstances with his passing away in 2016.
Since then, Joanne began volunteering as Sponsorship Rep collaborating with brands like Marshall, Novation/Focusrite and Roland for Girls Rock London, a charity that is a part of the Girls Rock Camp Alliance, whose mission is to inspire women, girls, trans and non-binary people though music. Alongside this, Joanne joined the music industry sponsored and focussed charity, Music Support, and was honoured to be hired as the charity’s first volunteer turned full-time employee. As Services Officer for the charity, Joanne is responsible for overseeing the support of anyone from the music industry who reaches out for mental health or addiction support - whether that be acting as a listening ear of helping someone to gain funding and start their journey through therapy and or rehab.
Favourite moment created for an Artist: This one has to definitely be helping to amass a street team across USA for Sia - long before the days of instant info on socials. It is absolutely because of the dedication from Sia's fans on her then message board of her website, that Sia's unmistakable voice and talent was soon conquering America's shores. Servicing their power and energy as a group of people up and down the country, who spent their own time pounding the pavement to their local venues, handing out flyers, badges (and sometimes even their own phone numbers!), to help people get to shows, whilst acting as ambassador for Sia herself, was by far one of the biggest honours of my career to date. Especially now that Sia's name is a household one - I would say that those formative years for her were the reason why she is celebrated as the down-to-earth Artist that she is.
