In addition to her current role at Columbia Records, Rapaport has served as senior director of business and legal affairs at Sony Music Entertainment and RCA Records, and will be recognized as a Billboard Women in Music Executive Award recipient in 2023. It was done. Throughout her career as an entertainment lawyer, Rapaport has worked with notable artists such as Beyoncé, Lil Nas X, and Adele.
Trotman began the interview by asking Rappaport about her unique path to practicing entertainment law. Rappaport began her professional career with a bachelor's degree in architecture from Cornell University, but she quickly changed direction and earned a law degree with honors from American University Washington School of Law. I graduated.
“People go through a lot of journeys in their education that ultimately lead to decisions, and for me that journey started at an early age with art, design, and music,” Rappaport said. “I made a kind of compromise with my parents. They were like, 'You can't go to art school, you won't be able to support yourself.' They were right, I really couldn't support myself. I didn’t have one, so I went to law school.”
Mr. Rapaport began his legal career as an associate in the Washington, DC office of Arnold & Porter. Rapaport shared with the audience her experiences as a BigLaw employee and how her work with Arnold & Porter gave her a rare opportunity to break into entertainment law. . “I worked as part of the intellectual property litigation group because at the time they were dealing with the RIAA, the record label lobbying group,” Rapaport said. “We represented all the labels in large-scale copyright infringement cases and led the damages case. It wasn’t a very sexy job, but we got to really interact with all the record labels. I did.”
One evening, Rapaport, along with some of Sony's in-house lawyers, confronted a team of more than eight lawyers about issues related to the case. Overnight, Sony's in-house team left, leaving only Rappaport and another lawyer, and eventually Rappaport alone. “[Arnold & Porter] Weekends with clients left me alone. “It's like 1 a.m. and I'm still on the phone with Winston & Strawn, and this senior Sony lawyer says, 'I have to take a nap,'” Rapaport said.
Feeling outnumbered, Mr. Rappaport asked a senior lawyer if there were any other Sony lawyers he could call for backup, but the senior lawyer said there were no junior colleagues in the department at this time. answered. Recognizing a golden opportunity, Rappaport seized the moment and promoted himself on the spot. “I went back to my rented office, printed out my resume, and came back with more coffee and bakery products. That's basically how I changed jobs,” Rappaport said. “He asked me, “Do you want to do this?'' And I said, “Yes, I would love to.'' ”
Rapaport clarified that his role as in-house entertainment attorney does not include talent scouting, but is purely on the talent acquisition side. For the label, she believes it's probably best because she sometimes discounts highly successful artists.
“They didn't hire me based on my creative judgment, and I'm often wrong,” Rapaport said. “I was working on 'Little Nas But Little Nas X is more than Elvis or the Beatles, he's amazing and a creative marketing genius.
Sanders shifted the conversation by asking Rappaport about the impact of AI on the music industry and how entertainment lawyers are responding to or challenging those impacts. “AI is probably one of the biggest topics, at least for Sony,” Rapaport said. “All music companies are concerned that the music industry will be cannibalized, as digital piracy measures have been.”
Rapaport said the best way to counter the negative effects of AI right now is to contract AI the best way possible, but primarily by limiting artists' ability to grant AI the rights to their music. He explained. “The whole point of a recording contract, and the whole point of our company, is to get these exclusive rights,” Rapaport said. “We basically don't want other companies to flip it on us and re-record it. Like with Taylor Swift, there's a problem with re-recordings… people say they're not using the original We're rushing to buy re-recordings, and this is a similar concern for AI, which is why we've been working with AI-specific language to develop contracts… In terms of technology. Because I don’t want to be left behind.”
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