CULVER CITY, CA — Riptide Music Group has expanded its creative team with two significant new hires. Janine Kerr, former VP with FOX Sports Music, has been named creative director, while Taylor Amazan, former music supervisor and music producer with Ant Farm, will now serve as creative manager for trailers. In addition, Richard Hellstern has been promoted to VP of operations.
Riptide is a synchronization, rights management, and creative company that provides music to advertising, movie trailers, TV programming and promos, major motion pictures, videogames, and multi-media productions. The personnel expansion comes on the heels of the company’s Fall 2017 partnership with Mark Ross, who brought to Riptide a multi-million dollar investment to finance the future growth of the business. During the past six months, Riptide has been using the new funding to expand operations and personnel, acquire additional music, and sign and develop new songwriters, producers, and recording artists.
“It’s a very exciting time for us right now at Riptide,” says president Rich Goldman. “Working with Mark Ross has further energized our business and allowed us to pursue a number of exciting opportunities, while also hiring some of the best talent out there. We are delighted to welcome Janine and Taylor to our growing team, and to announce Richard’s well-deserved promotion.”
Kerr (pictured, left) will be responsible for placing the company’s music within film, TV and promos, as well as overseeing Riptide’s Licensing Department. Prior to joining Riptide, she was vice president, Fox Sports Music, where she was the head of music supervision and spearheaded the network’s music department. Before Fox Sports, Kerr was director, NBC Universal Promo Music Services, as music supervisor and head of promo music.
As Riptide’s creative manager, trailers, Amazan (pictured right, and formally Taylor Horton from Ant Farm) will work closely with Riptide’s roster of composers and artists to create and produce exciting music for the trailer community. The experience and skills she acquired in her career as a music supervisor and producer at one of the top trailer houses is invaluable to her new position at Riptide.
In her previous position at Ant Farm, Amazan worked on marketing campaigns promoting such hit movies as Transformers, Mission Impossible, Fifty Shades, American Hustle, and the video game Call of Duty, among many other entertainment properties. Amazan’s final project at Ant Farm was securing music for the Tomb Raider 2018 trailer, which featured the Destiny’s Child cover version of Survivor.
As Riptide Music’s vice president of operations, Richard Hellstern brings together his experience in finance, publishing, writing and producing to be an agile and effective head of daily operations for a growing company in a fast-changing music industry. He was previously royalties and finance manager for the company.