Indie Spotlight: Edward Ginis of OpenPlay

Edward Ginis is a 20+ year tech executive veteran focused on the music industry. He has held multiple roles in engineering, from entry-level to CTO, with a deep background in computer science.

Ginis also mentors startups and entrepreneurs in music and entertainment to help them find their footing and bring new tech advances to fruition.

by A2IM

How did you get your start in the music industry, and how it lead to the work you do today?

One of my main interests growing up and more so after college was being involved with building and connecting large scale technologies. This interest led me to join a consulting firm, giving me incredible latitude in working with clients across many disciplines. The firm I worked for offered services for companies with older technology and I was fortunate enough to have been introduced to Concord Records who at the time, had recently relocated to Beverly Hills and needed to implement new systems for their business and in particular, needed sound financial, royalty, and reporting infrastructure for their acquisition of Fantasy Records.

I never thought I’d see myself working in music as it was never something I grew up with, but it was Bob Valentine from Concord that really helped me get excited about the immense challenges the industry had ahead of it and I knew I could make a meaningful contribution. After 6 months of consulting, I joined full time and the next few years felt like a fast-paced montage of incredible of discoveries, surprises, and exposure to all the things that made me fall in love with the space. 

With every new acquisition, new challenges arose, and those challenges always seemed to revolve around central metadata, rights, ownership, assets, and financial performance reporting. Being in the front row seat really helped uncover a direct need to build something that not only helped us at Concord do more and be better, but bring something to the space that could potentially help everyone. Due to its already growing size, Concord was in a unique position to invest and build something magical — especially with their leadership being deeply invested in its own quality of data. From there, Symphony was born and thrived until it was spun out and became OpenPlay, with a very focused vision to bring the best software tools to everyone in our industry, allowing them to compete on artistic content and not metadata systems. 
I love what we do, our team, the people we work with, and the continued challenges we are on the forefront of. 

Is there a success story or career milestone that you are most proud of?

There are many, but the proudest moment in my career was during my tenure at Concord Music. I was fortunate to help them develop and evolve their technological capabilities and be a part of bringing them to scale and becoming the acquisition juggernaut they are. And from that we were able to spin that technology off to form what is now OpenPlay and bring that technology and capability to the rest of the market. 

Outside of your work in music, do you have any other hobbies/ particular areas of expertise/interest etc.? 

I enjoy teaching and giving lectures to the next generation of entrepreneurs and industry leaders, I love spending time with my kids and focus on my family as much as I can, and I have developed a new affinity for outdoor activities and take part in them frequently. 

Are there any projects you’re working on or company updates that you’re most excited about?

We’re working on a few new areas of innovation for OpenPlay that we think will have a great response from the market. Our Self-Service program will be launching soon, which will allow labels and individual artists to access OpenPlay in the same way major labels do. We’re also expanding our existing publishing tools to bring them more in focus, and are deeply exploring interest in the neighbouring rights space to launch in 2023. 

Anything else to add?

Of the many wisdoms I pass on to others, I always give these two pieces of advice.

1) Perseverance is the only path to success. When rejection is felt, you have to fight through the urge to stop and keep attempting to bring your vision to bear.

2) Making a decision is the most critical aspect of leadership. Great decisions are wonderful and bad ones are there to learn from, but making no decision puts you on the path to failure and is oftentimes the one thing that will hold back greatness.