WMC 2011 Schedule Panelist

Ivan F. Alvarez - CdA Group LLC

Panelist Schedule:

March 10, 12:30 pm - Room B-211
Ivan Alvarez is the founder and principal of CdA Group, a full service entertainment company. Founded in September 2006, CdA controls close to 5,000 tracks from over 425 full length releases from artists as varied as The Weather Girls (Dance), Néstor Torres (Latin Jazz), Vico C (Urban Latin), Miguelito (Urban Latin) and The Children of the Plague (Goth Rock). The company specializes in a strong and targeted approach to all current and developing areas of the digital realm including DSP (iTunes, Rhapsody, etc), Mobile (Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc), Video (YouTube, Yahoo, Imeem, etc) and Social Networking (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc). Before founding CdA, Alvarez served as Senior Vice President, Latin America for Universal Music Publishing Group for more than ten years, where he founded and ran Universal’s Latin American region including Universal’s award winning US Latin division. Since Alvarez opened the region for then MCA in 1996, the operation grew to eight offices in the US and Latin America while the roster grew into one of the most prestigious teams of songwriters in the Latin music industry including hit songwriters, producers and artists such as Gloria and Emilio Estefan and the FIPP/EMPI writers, Gustavo Santaolalla (Juanes, Brokeback Mountain, Babel), KC Porter (Ricky Martin, Santana), Rudy Pérez (Cristina Aguilera, Luis Miguel, Cristian Castro), Jorge Luis Piloto (Cristina Aguilera, Celia Cruz, Jerry Rivera), AB Quintanilla III (Selena, Kumbia Kings), platinum Mexican rock act Molotov and Argentina’s, Alejandro Lerner. During his tenure, Universal was named ASCAP’s Latin Publisher of the Year for five of the nine years it was eligible including the last year of Alvarez’ stewardship when Universal’s BMI company was also ranked as Billboard’s number one music publishing company in the Latin market. Alvarez also served as President of FLADEM (the Federation of Latin American publishers). Prior to joining Universal, Alvarez was Director of Latin Membership for ASCAP, where he signed songwriters such as Enrique Iglesias, Arturo Sandoval, Juan Gabriel, Omar Alfanno, Olga Tañón and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and founded outreach programs such as El Premio ASCAP, now in it’s 16th year. Prior to this, Alvarez worked at the NMPA/Harry Fox Agency negotiating synchronization licenses on behalf of its publisher principals. Alvarez holds two degrees from New York University including an Associate in Arts and Sciences and a Bachelor of Science in Finance, Accounting and International Business. Alvarez also holds a Juris Doctor degree from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Legal training included international law studies in Hong Kong. Alvarez’ professional background also includes work at the law firm of Feinman & Krasilovsky (the law firm of acclaimed author M. William Krasilovsky, author of "This Business of Music"), where he represented clients such as the estate of Rachmaninoff, the estate of Grant Green and a number of publishing companies in areas such as publishing administration, royalty audits, contract negotiations, estates and general consulting.