 John Rudolph is the CEO of Bug Music, Inc., a leading global independent music publisher and innovator in music business services for over 30 years, headquartered in Los Angeles with offices across the US and Europe. Handpicked by Bug’s founders Dan and Fred Bourgoise for his knowledge of music and writers and his proven, diverse business acumen, John carries on the legacy of one of the world’s most significant independent publishers. With a deep understanding of music publishing, copyright statute, technology and global finance, he is a future focused proponent of publishers and creators rights across the world. Since his tenure at Bug began, John has welcomed many significant publishers and writers, including Jamie Foxx, Evanescence, the Fred Alhert estate, the Woody Guthrie estate, and the Thomas J Valentino production music library.
Born in Chicago and raised in Hendersonville just outside of Nashville, John was first exposed to music through his father, who toured with Woody Herman and Stan Kenton’s bands, among others, in the ‘50s and ‘60s. He began his music career carrying his father’s trombone case to union gigs in the 1970s after his father left the road. From there his knowledge and love of music grew through his father’s work in promotions and radio in Nashville in the 1970s and 1980s, attending over 100 concerts by the age 12, and later working in a Nashville record store for five years throughout high school and college.
In 1989, John began his professional career in corporate finance with IBM and was a member of the LBO team that spun out the Lexmark printer company in a $1.6bn transaction in 1990. In 1991, after experiencing the entrepreneurial latitude within a large, global technology based organization at IBM, he continued to an international accounting and consulting firm, BDO, and was based in Atlanta. At BDO, his clients included a Fortune 500 client as well as middle market service and technology companies and he received awards for productivity and client service.
While at BDO in Atlanta in the early 1990s, John provided consulting and business strategy services to a small, upstart record label, LaFace Records (a joint venture of LA Reid, Babyface Edmonds, and BMG/Arista), that was recognized as a company that revolutionized Urban and Pop music, nurtured creative as well as executive talent, and put Atlanta on the map as the center of Urban music.
After a secondment with BDO in Sydney Australia in 1994, John returned to Atlanta to work as business manager to LA Reid, LaFace Records, Reid’s Stiff Shirt Music/Hitco, and other prominent Atlanta writer, producers and artists. During this time, John managed Stiff Shirt Music Publishing with Grammy winning and chart topping hits as TLC’s "Waterfalls" and Tony Rich’s "Nobody Knows". In 1996, due to the success of Stiff Shirt, he helped Reid’s Stiff Shirt create a joint venture with Windswept Pacific called Hitco Music Publishing, a premier urban music publisher.
From his experience with Windswept in the Stiff Shirt venture, John was recruited by Evan Medow, CEO of Windswept Pacific, and in 1998 was hired as Windswept’s Chief Financial Officer at the age of 30. Beyond the financial affairs, his responsibilities included strategic planning, international consolidation, technology and online markets, and the occasional creative signing. In 1999, John, with his fellow executives, engineered the sale of Windswept to EMI for a reported $200mm in what was one of the largest music publishing transactions at the time.
In 2000 John founded Sherpa Ears, LLC, a technology company based on "Influence Technology" he developed involving social networks and an early predecessor to social networking firms like MySpace and FaceBook. Managing all aspects of the business from technology development to marketing to key partnerships, he assembled the thought leaders in sociology/social networks and music from across North America as advisors.
Out of the ashes of the Internet boom in 2001, John founded and served as the CEO of Music Analytics, the leading strategic advisor to music publishers and record companies. Rudolph developed the firm into a recognized leader in the music and money space with experience in over $3.1 billion in recorded music and music publishing music transactions. Clients included Warner Music Group, Ryko, Leiber & Stoller, Saban Music Group, Dreamworks Music Publishing, Windswept Holdings/Hitco Music, Bug Music, Savoy Label Group/ZelnickMedia, Six Degrees Records, Dominion Capital/Compendia, Carlin America, and various estates, artists, private equity and legal firms, among others.
John assumed the reins of Bug Music as its CEO in July, 2006 committed to Bug’s core ethics of advancing publishers and creators’ rights and the melding of music and technology for the promotion of arts and commerce.
John received his Bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and passed the Tennessee Certified Public Accountants examination in 1992. He has spoken at such important events as the Billboard Music & Money symposium (02, 03, 05, and 06), the American Bar Association Entertainment Conference (06) and numerous other music conferences. He is an avid snowboarder and mountain climber, having climbed the highest mountain on five different continents.
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