Janie Jennings – Principal/Consultant –industryworks@gmail.com

Ms. Jennings has spent the last twenty years committed to development of the independent record label and artist.   Focusing on the administrative and logistical structure of a release, she has had the pleasure of working with hundreds of independent record labels across the country and spanning many genres of music.  Ms. Jennings began her career in 1989 with the Musicland Group in San Diego, California as a customer service representative while attending college.  She later entered management with Suncoast Motion Picture Company- a division of Musicland group in Aiea, Hawaii.   While managing the first Hawaii based store, she increased the sales of that location to over one thousand dollars a square foot. (1.2 million Gross annually)  This was an accomplishment never done within the Musicland Group.  After leaving Hawaii, Ms. Jennings moved to New Orleans, Louisiana (1995) where she was placed into stores that dealt primarily with urban product.  As a “clean up” manager she was utilized to re-establish staff, product and day to day operations of a location.  On average she was able to raise stores sales by twenty percent (20%) annually.

It was in New Orleans, while managing a Musicland store, she found that local labels such as Cash Money Recds, Big Boy Records and No Limit were selling three to one (3 to 1) over major releases. Despite this fact, these local labels did not a sufficient understanding of sales and distribution.  As a result, Ms. Jennings discovered the need to educate and facilitate programs for urban independent record labels. She would then assist the labels in examining their statistics. Inevitably those experiences created opportunities and she found ways to incorporate her business and entrepreneurial background into the music business and retail environments.

In 1997 Ms. Jennings moved into music distribution with Big Easy Distributing, serving both as a sales representative and as urban product manager. She along with the team at Big Easy earned the NARM – National Association of Record Merchandisers, small distributor of the year award both in 1998 and 1999.  In 1999 she moved to Houston, Texas to work with Southwest Wholesale in the distribution division as the Urban Product Manager.

In 2000 she began a new enterprise, JABI – Just Another Bright Idea that utilized her background, knowledge and experience in the industry.  In 2004 she changed the name to Industry Works. Ms. Jennings primary objective for her integrity driven company is to provide complete label, publishing, management, distribution and consulting services to the independent urban entrepreneur.  IW has now expanded to include a nationally syndicated column as well as work with some of the most promising new labels entering the market.  To further expand her enterprise, Ms Jennings incorporated her management background to create an artist management division of IW.  Currently her roster includes the artists, Coldhard of Crucial Confilct, Reggie Ruckus. Lilana and Mitchy Slick as well as Co-management of Grammy winning Producer Easy Mo Bee. 2008 marked a new chapter for Ms. Jennings  when she signed a distribution deal with Universal/Federal.  This will now allows her team to develop a collection of urban artist and labels that span across the genres including: Rap, Hip Hop, R&B, Jazz and Neo Soul.