LONDON (VIP NEWS) — Music business veteran Brian Lane has been appointed head of United Stage International, the new London-based office of leading Swedish booking agency United Stage Artist.
Brian Lane has been responsible for building and managing the careers of such artistes as Katherine Jenkins, Asia, YES, A-ha, amongst others.
United Stage Artist is one of Sweden’s biggest and most successful booking agent. The company has run for 30 years and has around 230 artists across the Nordics on its books, staging around 2800 shows per year.
United Stage International office will be located in London. Lane specializes in taking unknown artists to super stardom and the artists he has guided have sold well in excess of 120 million records between them. Among his many success stories, Lane negotiated a multi million pound record contract with Warner Brothers for Katherine Jenkins, being the biggest deal ever for a classical singer, and brokered the multi million dollar sale of Stockholm Records to Universal Music.
The partnership between Lane and United Stage will see Lane taking existing clients of United Stage into the global music market, exploiting their international potential around the world. This is the second office United Stage has opened outside of Sweden, having recently moved into Oslo, and marks the continual expansion and growth of the company. Lane is currently building the team outside of the Nordics with an initial hire of Mel Westwood, from The Leighton Pope Organization, together with Valerie Potter as Artist Development Manager.
Brian Lane said “I’ve worked in Scandinavia for the past 12 years and have seen how buoyant and creative the music market is there. Next to the UK and the US it’s the biggest market creatively and commercially, and I feel the global opportunities are immense. Also, we want to do fairer deals with the artists and properly support them at the start of their careers, when they need it the most, rather than taking a percentage of the small amounts of money they might make to start with. This is a long term strategy, we’ll be selective and make quality rather than quantity the hallmark of this new venture.”
Jonas Thulin, New Business Director, United Stage Artist said “Brian is a huge figure in the music industry and this partnership will deliver great things. We have got off to a fantastic start with the deals that have already been done and there will be many more to come. We wanted someone with real expertise and a hugely respected reputation to lead our charge across the globe and that person is Brian.”
