Rick Sackheim
Island Records formed Def Con II about a year ago as a new innovative and specialized team within the Promotion Department of Island Def Jam Music Group. The mission of Def Con II promotion was to give IDJ a wide reaching ability at radio on all of the artists delivered by the label’s joint ventures giving IDJ the opportunity to bring even more great music to the marketplace with a focus on Urban, Crossover and Rhythm radio. The Def Con II team is being overseen by Island SVP/Promotion Rick Sackheim. We recently caught up Sackheim to talk about the launch and development of Def Con II.
It was about a year ago Island Records President and Island Def Jam Music Group COO Steve Bartels along with Def Jam Records President/CEO Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter announced the formation ofDef Con II, an innovative and specialized team within the Promotion Department of Island Def Jam Music Group. The mission of Def Con II promotion was to give IDJ a wide reaching ability at radio on all of the artists delivered by the label’s joint ventures, and the newly formed Island Urban Music. Def Con II now enables IDJ the opportunity to bring even more great music to the marketplace with it’s focus on Urban, Crossover and Rhythm radio. Led by Island SVP/Promotion Rick Sackheim, there’s no doubt that the Def Con II venture was effective in helping Ludacris have his best year to date scoring multiple #1 hits and a Grammy, while also helping to develop new artists such as Shareefa. We recently caught up Sackheim to talk about the launch and development of Def Con II.
eQB presents excerpts from the FMQB May Magazine Rhythm Cover Story featuring Rick Sackheim
On the factors that led to the development of Def Con II…At the beginning of last year, Steve Bartels, [IDJ Chairman] L.A. Reid and Jay-Z decided that the obvious bread and butter of our company is Urban and Rhythm airplay, and that artists and/or records take a lot longer these days to develop and break. Sometimes records take longer to call-out and work, and with our marketing plans, nothing is racing up the charts like the old days. But having two promotion teams, and the fact that we’re working separate artists, allows us the time to take an unknown artist and really give them the proper push as opposed to having one promotion team push 10-15 records. Now we can split it up and one team push seven records and ideally we break more artists.
On the first year of operation and meeting or exceeding expectations… We didn’t get the Def Con II division really started until July of last year, by that time we had our staff in place with our three nationals including VP of Urban, Shawn “Pecas” Costner, Sr. Dir. of Urban Lisa Coleman; Sr. Dir. of Rhythm Noah Sheer, and our five regionals. Ludacris had his first two #1 Hot 100 songs in his career under our guide, and breaking a new artist like Shareefa, taking her from nothing to having a Top 10 Urban record, I think expectations were met. Granted our product flow wasn’t huge as we were staffing up, but this year with the signing of Jermaine Dupri and the start of Island Urban Music, our department will be working all those records under JD so our product flow is going to be immense.
On breaking new talent most notably Shareefa… Shareefa took six months to really get played on all the major Urban stations around the country and what happened with Def Con II it allowed us to stick with a project a lot longer and deal with certain leery or wavering call-out issues. It allowed us to focus and just really dig in and stay with a project a lot longer than most promotion departments would do if they have 15 records to work.
On being an effective promotion team… As a small team, the one thing we do effectively is promotion with our regionals and nationals. We combine Urban and Rhythm in our division, our regionals and nationals call Urban radio and Rhythm radio under one umbrella which allows the regionals to really be the mayor of their marketplace when it comes to R&B and Hip-Hop. It takes away a lot of politics that goes on amongst certain competitive stations in the marketplace.
On how radio stations and record companies can continue to strengthen their relationship…It’s just a matter of understanding the product and what our vision is, and taking the time to understand radio’s goals. Right now radio is so fragmented, everyone is wearing three different hats and radio stations’ web sites have now become a big tool for them. It’s really about showing them our vision, and that every project has a different vision, and sitting down and explaining what our short and long term goals are and working with them.
On if radio is still the most effective partner in breaking or developing artists…Yes. Radio is still our number one source of getting our songs out to the mass public. Even though the Internet has taken a strong lead, we still believe that radio is our life blood and that’s really why L.A., Jay-Z and Steve decided to create a separate promotion department because radio is that important to us.
On exciting growth areas that will help to expose and develop artists…The whole cell phone wave, whether it’s downloading songs or ring tones. I think we are going to see a lot more videos being downloaded to cell phones, and with the way technology is growing, not only is it exciting to us to find ways to break artists, but it also brings in new revenue streams.
On working with artists turned executives such as L.A. Reid, Jay-Z and now JD…We work with three of the best A&R producers/artists in the record business and it’s great to work for a company that is artists and A&R driven first outside of being strictly being business driven.
On what’s on tap from the Def Con II camp for the rest of 2007…With the signing of Jermaine Dupri as President of Island Urban Music, he is in studio and in A&R mode now. His first signing is an artist blowing up on the West Coast, called Hot Dollar. Johnta Austin is newly signed to our label as well as Jagged Edge. And you know that Jay-Z is going to be coming with a lot of records as well as the whole DTP camp for Luda between Bobby Valentino and some DTP surprises that are in the works that I can’t speak about but that are going to be very exciting in the very near future.
** QB Content by Bob Burke **
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