About Don Gorder

Don Gorder, chair and founder of the Music Business/Management Department at Berklee College of Music, is an attorney, educator, and musician. He holds advanced degrees in law and music, has authored numerous articles on the music industry, and has spoken at many national and international music industry events. As an attorney, he has represented clients in matters of copyright and contracts, and he remains active as a trumpet player in a variety of jazz and commercial settings.

Don is Vice President of the NAMM-Affiliated Music Business Institutions, a past officer and Board member of the Music and Entertainment Industry Educators' Association, and currently sits on the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. He is active in NARM, NAMM, and the International Association for Jazz Education, where he is a member of the Resource Team representing music business/management.

About Valerie Lovely

Valerie Lovely is Assistant Professor of Music Business/Management at Berklee College of Music and a practicing transactional music attorney. Her clientele is limited exclusively to musicians, songwriters, publishers, record labels, and others with music law needs. The firm provides various transactional music law services, such as contract drafting, negotiation and explanations, copyrights, trademarks, band business evaluation reports, and other music business and legal services. Attorney Lovely also hosts a free informational Web site, MusicLawInfo, that provides numerous music law articles of interest to today's musicians.

Valerie has been a guest speaker, panelist, and lecturer at a variety of events sponsored by legal- and music-based organizations (American Bar Association, Massachusetts Bar Association, Berklee College of Music, Blacksun Festival, etc.). She has taught copyright law to attorneys as a member of the Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts faculty.

Valerie has also been a musician for most of her life. She plays several instruments, has performed in rock bands, chamber groups, wind ensembles, and in studio projects, and has composed music in various styles and for use in a variety of media.

About Steve Masur

Steve Masur is a member of Masur & Associates, LLC (MasurLaw). MasurLaw is a boutique intellectual property and business law firm at the forefront of the media, entertainment and technology industries. As a lawyer, board member and business advisor, Steve has served some of the most innovative new companies in the entertainment, music and information technology sectors in the last ten years.

He has helped organize, secure funding, draft contracts, do deals, negotiate successful exits, and work out solutions for a who's who of music industry clients. Firm clients have included: successful new music services like CD Baby, the Orchard, CDuctive, and Digital Club Network (now eMusicLive); multinational corporations like Yamaha; video game companies like PlayTV and En-Tranz; wireless content providers like Zingy, Vindigo, UPOC, and Chaoticom; and a wide variety of independent music, film, and entertainment and media clients, including Upright Citizens Brigade, the makers of Everquest, the nationally distributed newspaper India Abroad, and others. MasurLaw has worked with literally hundreds of innovative new companies with novel business model twists on advertising, publishing, media delivery, software, hardware, and licensing.

Before starting with MasurLaw, Steve was an attorney at Sabin, Bermant & Gould in New York, where he practiced corporate and cable television law, serving such clients as Advance Publications, Conde Nast Publications, Newhouse Broadcasting Corp., and Eastern Microwave. Steve received his J.D. from American University in Washington, DC and is a member of the New York and District of Columbia bars.

About Lauren Davis

As an accomplished music business attorney, Lauren B. Davis knows the music business inside and out. Davis has been in private practice since 1992, advising high-level recording artists, songwriters, music industry executives, record producers, managers, and music publishing companies. Before starting her own law firm, she worked as a Senior Associate for the law firm of Steven J. Massarsky, P.C., with a client list that included the Allman Brothers, the Psychedelic Furs, and Tim Collins (Manager of Aerosmith), as well as Nintendo of America Inc., among others.

With offices located on New York's 5th Avenue, she is situated at the heartbeat of the bustling New York scene, with labels like EMI, Blue Note, Jive, and Zomba just steps away—a proximity to the music industry that she was accustomed to throughout her life. The daughter of a record executive, Lauren Davis has a knowledge of the music industry that runs deep, with the lessons of Billboard Charts—and the importance of business sense and hard work in the music industry—being instilled in her at a very young age.

Today, in addition to maintaining a "who's who" roster of music industry clients, Davis has been actively teaching business-related courses about the music industry since 1996 at New York University (Tisch School of the Arts), Metropolitan College of New York, and Monmouth University. Widely recognized as an expert on the industry, she is a frequent lecturer, and has been an invited guest to speak at ASCAP in New York City, South by Southwest in Austin, the Winter Music Conference in Miami, and at Berklee College of Music.

Ms. Davis graduated from New York University in 1985 with a B.F.A and received her J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 1988.

About Dave Olsen

Dave Olsen has 25 years experience in the music print industry, ranging from roles in sales, business, and creative. As vice president of Alfred Publishing, he oversaw all copyright, contract, licensing, and royalty activities worldwide. Prior to that, Olsen was Director of Business Affairs and then interim CEO of Warner Brothers Publications, just eight months prior to its acquisition by Alfred Publishing. During his tenure at Warner, Olsen worked directly with musical greats such as Dave Brubeck, Henry Mancini, Marian McPartland, Cy Coleman, and Charles Strouse, among others.

Olsen is a Board of Directors member of the Music Publishers Association and a founding member of the original National Music Publishers' Association's Internet Anti-Piracy Taskforce. Among a host of his music-related activities, Olsen is regularly called upon to lecture on music property matters at music conventions and universities.

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