How I Listen: HFA’s Michael Simon

In our new series, How I Listen, we're asking industry leaders and artists to share how they discover and consume music.

This edition features Michael Simon, President and CEO of HFA.

1) What device(s) do you use to listen to music?

iPods in the gym, my computer connected to streaming services in the office and a Technics SL-1210 MK2 & Sony CD player at home.

2) What streaming music service(s) do you use most often?

Rhapsody and Spotify

3) Besides recommendations from friends, how do you discover new music?

Mojo Magazine, 89.3 The Current (online from Minnesota Public Radio), "related artist" recommendations from Spotify and Rhapsody and SiriusXM ("Sirius XM U" and "Alt Nation").

4) What new music are you listening to most this week?

"Prisms" by Temples, "Keep You" by Wild Belle, "Turn the Radio On" by The Suburbs, "Feathers" by Fanfarlo & the new, soon-to-be-released-on-my-label, And The Professors album entitled "Our Postmortem".

5) Shameless Plug: What are you promoting/launching/planning that you want to share.

Most people think of HFA as the place to go for mechanical licensing but we also offer an entire soup-to-nuts rights management service, Slingshot, which was designed to enable the licensing of content and facilitate the administration of intellectual property rights for traditional music licensees like record labels and distributors as well as non-traditional entrants into the music space – for example, marketing, advertising and technology firms. Simply put, we make it easy for companies that are not in the business of licensing to obtain the rights they need and properly compensate the rights holders.