FORMER B&T ENTERTAINMENT VP RESIGNS FROM MUSIC BIZ ASSOCIATION

The chairman of the Music Business Association, STEVE HARKINS, has voluntarily resigned his position, days after making a bad-taste joke about women artists who performed at the organization’s Music Biz conference, held in Nashville May 5-8, 2019.

Shortly after the Country Music Association put on a presentation at the conference May 6 which saw three female artists — Kassi Ashton, Cassadee Pope and Danielle Bradbery — each performing two songs that Monday morning, the Music Biz Assn. chairman, Steve Harkins — formerly vp/GM of music for Baker & Taylor and now with Ingram Entertainment — took the stage to talk about the association’s scholarship program. But he began with an apparent reference to presidential candidate Joe Biden’s inappropriate behavior with women, and after acknowledging the artists’ talent suggested to “smell their hair” of the women who had just performed.

As a consequence of what some said was a degrading joke, when it became obvious to Harkins that some were offended, he resigned from the post on May 8, and, sources say, apologized to the CMA. Harkins was viewed as an interim chairman, having replaced Facebook’s Fred Beteille, who had been chairman since 2014 but resigned in mid-December 2018 due to workload, according to sources.

More @ https://doitemedia.com/2019/05/13/music-business-association-chairman-resigns-following-annual-conference/

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/people/article/80514-cully-to-retire-from-baker-taylor.html

PW reports-

Cully to Retire from Baker & Taylor

After only two years, David Cully, who has seen Baker & Taylor through a number of transitions since joining the company in 2008, will retire at the end of August. B&T parent company Follett Corp. said Cully will be succeeded as president by Amandeep Kochar, who has been promoted to executive v-p of B&T. Kochar had been in charge of the company’s public library sales and technology teams.

Cully who sold B&T's Entertainment business to Ingram Entertainment, is currently overseeing the wind down of B&T’s retail wholesaling business, which is expected to be largely completed by the end of the summer. In May, Follett announced that it was closing B&T’s retail wholesaling arm, which supplies books to bookstores and other retailers to focus on its library operations, a move which better aligns B&T’s business with Follett.

When Cully first joined B&T he was in charge of its retail and merchandising functions, and in that role oversaw the purchase of Bookmasters and played a large role in integrating B&T into Follett following the company’s purchase in 2016 and George Coe's departure. He was named B&T president in 2017.

https://www.bookweb.org/news/ingram-entertainment-buys-baker-taylor-entertainment-assets-109558

Bookweb reports the following-

On Monday, January 14, 2019 Baker & Taylor announced that it has sold certain assets of its entertainment product distribution business to Ingram Entertainment Inc., effective January 11, 2019.

“The sale of our retail entertainment assets to Ingram Entertainment will allow both companies to bring greater value to customers through the strengths of our respective wholesale distribution businesses,” said David Cully, president of Baker & Taylor. “For Baker & Taylor, that means delivering the most innovative and efficient content distribution services to our retail, public library, and publisher service customers everywhere.”

Included in the sale are customer agreements for the wholesale purchase of pre-recorded DVD, Blu-ray, and audio music CD and vinyl record products; the sale relates only to entertainment products and does not involve book products.

“Baker & Taylor has been a respected competitor and a valued contributor to the home entertainment products distribution business for many years,” said Bob Webb, president and CEO of Ingram Entertainment. “Ingram Entertainment looks forward to the opportunity to increase our sales of products to video, audio music, and online retailers.”