Artists and repertoire

Artists and repertoire (A&R) is the division of a record label or music publishing company that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists and songwriters. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label or publishing company; every activity involving artists to the point of album release is generally considered under the purview, and responsibility, of A&R.

Responsibilities

Finding talent

The A&R division of a record label is responsible for finding new recording artists and bringing those artists to the record company. Personnel in the A&R division are expected to understand the current tastes of the market and to be able to find artists that will be commercially successful. For this reason, A&R people are often young and many are musicians, music journalists or record producers.

An A&R executive is authorized to offer a record contract, often in the form of a "deal memo": a short informal document that establishes a business relationship between the recording artist and the record company. The actual contract negotiations will typically be carried out by rival entertainment lawyers hired by the musician's manager and the record company.

Record producer

A record producer (or music producer) has a very broad role in overseeing and managing the recording (i.e. "production") of a band or performer's music. A producer has many roles that may include, but are not limited to, gathering ideas for the project, selecting songs and/or session musicians, proposing changes to the song arrangements, coaching the artist and musicians in the studio, controlling the recording sessions, and supervising the entire process through audio mixing (recorded music) and, in some cases, to the audio mastering stage. Producers also often take on a wider entrepreneurial role, with responsibility for the budget, schedules, contracts, and negotiations.

In the 2010s, the recording industry has two kinds of producers with different roles: executive producer and music producer. Executive producers oversee project finances while music producers oversee the creation of music.

A music producer can, in some cases, be compared to a film director, with noted practitioner Phil Ek describing his role as "the person who creatively guides or directs the process of making a record, like a director would a movie. The audio engineering [person] would be more the cameraman of the movie." Indeed, in Bollywood music, the designation actually is music director. The music producer's job is to create, shape, and mold a piece of music. The scope of responsibility may be one or two songs or an artist's entire album – in which case the producer will typically develop an overall vision for the album and how the various songs may interrelate.

Rigo Morales

Riggs Morales is an American music executive, known as the Vice President of A&R at Atlantic Records. Morales was formerly a music editor at The Source magazine.

Early career

Between 1995 and 2001, Riggs wrote and edited stories while overseeing columns such as Hip-Hop Quotable, Fat Mix-Tape, Singles Watch, the 5-Mic Rating System as well as the Unsigned Hype page, where he spotlighted young acts such as David Banner, Kardinal Official, Juelz Santana and Eminem. After six years at The Source, Morales gave up full-time writing duties to pursue the executive side of the business.

Management

By mid-2000, Morales was overseeing production management at Goliath Artists, Inc., the management firm of music executive Paul Rosenberg. Morales helped Goliath Artists, Inc. expand clientele by heading the Producer Management division of the company, where he helped navigate the careers of artists such as DJ Muggs (Cypress Hill), Dame Grease, DJ Shock, The Beatnuts and The Alchemist. In 2001, Rosenberg and Eminem appointed him as Director of A&R at Shady Records.