Joe Berman a native of Southern California, began his career in music soon after finishing high school songwriting and playing guitar in various Hollywood rock and roll bands. Aside from performing, Joe became very active in the local music scene by producing demos, booking shows, and helping countless local bands build street awareness through early “guerilla D.I.Y. style” street marketing campaigns. In 1993 Joe started his own record label (Smart Recordings) and released a series of compilation CD’s that showcased young and upcoming local rock and pop bands. These records featured numerous bands and musicians that over the years have moved on to become top name worldwide recording artists. Still producing, recording and releasing records in the late 90’s, Joe focused his attention on developing young, emerging artists, and started working with bands and record labels based outside of the US. He began coordinating independent radio promotion campaigns for these bands and labels creating US attention and awareness for many talented, yet unknown International artists. With phenomenal results through creative radio and marketing campaigns, Joe was able to secure recording contracts for numerous International bands / artists on various major US labels (Columbia, Epic, Capitol, Warner, etc.) through his management company Sumo Music. After witnessing a trend shift within the record label landscape in the early 2000’s, Joe shifted his focus to music publishing, building key relationships within the film, television and commercial advertising sectors. It was these efforts that ultimately paid off for Joe, as he began securing license deals for a multitude of his represented artists. To this day Joe has helped coordinate and secure license partners for numerous artists, in various television, film, trailer and advertising arrangements (Coca Cola, Apple, Hilton Hotels, Burger King, Honda, Mitsubishi, TGI Fridays, Sprite, ABC, CBS, FOX, HBO, Target, MTV, etc.)
In 2008, Joe served as Senior Vice President at Opus 19 Music Publishing where he oversaw all creative and licensing efforts for the ARC Music (Chess Records) and Six Palms/Third Story publishing catalogues, allowing him to work with and market copyrights by legendary artists such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Tom Waits, Tim Buckley, Alice Cooper, and others.
Five Fun Facts:
Joe likes vintage guitars, abyssinian cats, 70’s glam and punk, vegan burgers, and shopping for shoes.
Shauna Krikorian has been active in music for over 20 years. Her career began while attending the University of Georgia where she worked as a DJ for the college radio station and managed a number of up-and-coming bands in the Athens area. Upon graduating, Shauna moved back to her hometown of Los Angeles and spent the next few years working as a music journalist, interviewing hundreds of independent and major label artists for radio and TV.
Shauna spent the next six years immersed in the world of artist management. From 2001 through 2005 she was the day-to-day manager of major label artists Steve Tyrell and Paul Anka. She oversaw the publicity, licensing, and marketing of Tyrell’s three Columbia Records releases. She managed the marketing campaign, tour, press, radio promotion and licensing for Anka’s record Rock Swings, and she toured extensively with both artists nationally and internationally. During this time, Shauna worked with Rod Stewart on his Grammy winning record Stardust… the Great American Songbook, Vol. III, as well as other legendary acts such as Carly Simon, Art Garfunkel, Burt Bacharach and Engelbert Humperdinck in many different capacities.
In 2006, she transitioned into the area of music licensing and publishing. She was named Director of Film and TV Licensing for 615 Music, where she played a pivotal role in the development and marketing of the “Scoring Stage” series, which became widely prominent in the film advertising community. In 2009 she joined Opus 1 Music as VP of Creative Licensing, overseeing the roster of indie artists, library catalogs and the Opus 19 / Arc Music publishing catalog. In 2010, Shauna co-founded the creative music marketing/publishing agency MediaHorse with Joe Berman. Since its inception, MediaHorse has successfully created and placed music in various TV shows, trailers, promos and advertising campaigns, (Netflix, HBO, NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, Showtime, Marvel, Amazon etc.), music supervised numerous projects, and continues to consult for various music publishers, create reimagined covers and execute non-traditional marketing strategies.
Five Fun Facts:
Shauna likes ninja naps, playing Yahtzee, practicing piano, veggie burritos and old school 90s hip hop.