Executives
Ralph Tashjian Chairman
Ralph Tashjian has spent more than 40 years in a career with the singular focus of making hit music. Now he turns his passion and talent as a record promoter, marketer, and executive to maximizing exposure for independent acts with Intercept Music.
Ralph began his career in the industry as a major-label promoter and executive and has since created his own businesses dedicated to breaking and marketing new and established acts. He got his start as a promotions rep for MCA/Universal and within a few years, he joined 20th Century Records, breaking hits for Barry White and Carl Douglas. He next joined Motown and then Island Records, making hits for seasoned performers like Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, and Bob Marley.
Following his turns as a label executive, Ralph has since founded his own music marketing and promotion companies. His promotional success spans genres and generations of artists, including worldwide acts like Aerosmith, Madonna, and Prince, and upcoming artists such as Miguelito, the youngest musician ever to win a Latin Grammy.
Prior to Intercept Music, Ralph founded Digital Music Universe, a comprehensive digital distribution solution for independent artists. DMU’s deep partnerships and extensive pipeline power the global distribution potential of Intercept Music, where Ralph guides the company's direction and spearheads alliances with strategic partners.
Tod Turner Chief Executive Officer
For more than 40 years, Tod Turner has repeatedly developed software that addresses the needs of a specific market, and that sells-in to that industry at an enterprise level. He has led companies that offer software solutions in a wide range of industries including entertainment, healthcare, hospitality, real estate and technology, among many others.
Tod started his entrepreneurial journey in the 1970s by founding STAT Systems, one of the first companies to offer automated medical and dental billing software as an alternative to manual, billing service bureaus. After selling that business, he founded a software company based in Mexico called Romy d’Vallarta, which created property management, construction, and front-desk software for the hospitality industry. That company sold three years later; then Tod focused on software for the commercial real business, to track commissions and inventory; some of that software is still in use today.
Tod’s next venture was Fox Industries, a software development firm specializing in niche software for a variety of industries. During its 20-year run, Fox spun off several companies that offered huge promise within their niches. For example, Norfox Software, which focused on the equipment calibration industry, sold in to many global accounts including the United States Army, Navy and Marines Corps, as well as many defense contractors. With sales of up to $11 million annually, the company sold in 1999.
Mr. Turner then saw a need for collaborative online workspaces and founded LINQware. Before Skype or other web conferencing software we know today, LINQware developed 11 patents around telephony and collaboration. Those technologies are now used by Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Skype, Facebook, WhatsApp, and more than 80 other companies.
Prior to creating Intercept Music, he founded and is chief executive officer of LiveChime, a software-as-a-service company that enables real-time communication for online sales across any platform or device. Under his guidance, LiveChime developed several patents around interactive chat, which ultimately led to the development of the Intercept Marketing platform, which is the basis for the marketing platform used in Intercept Music.
In 2017, Tod saw that the Intercept Marketing platform could be custom-tailored to directly address the needs of more than 12 million global independent musicians who are competing for attention in a crowded music marketplace. Now Tod is leading the way to ensure that that vision, combined with insights of experts in the music industry and contemporary artists, delivers Intercept Music to its full potential.
James Barry Chief Technologist
James Barry, software developer and co-founder, is a team leader who maintains the end-to-end integrity of the Intercept Music software suite. He has more than two decades of experience as a programmer, software engineer and programming manager who has worked on expertly crafted, scalable software that has served and successfully sold to enterprise customers.
Most recently, he has served as applications programming manager for International Telcom, Ltd. in Seattle, leading a team of developers, testers and database administrators. Earlier, was senior software engineer for LiveChime, a company holding several patents for real-time communications, and which powers Intercept Marketing software, on which Intercept Music is based. Prior to that, he worked as a senior software engineer for LINQware, a company holding 11 patents around telephony and collaboration. Those technologies are now used by Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Skype, Facebook, WhatsApp, and more than 80 other companies. For nearly a decade prior, he was a software engineer for Fox Industries, a developer of specialized software for a variety of critical applications whose enterprise customers included the United States Army, Navy and Marines.
Jim Urie Board of Directors
Board member Jim Urie lends to Intercept Music both credibility and substantive know-how, as a universally recognized leader in the field of music distribution. Since beginning his career in music distribution more than four decades ago, Jim’s vision has been instrumental in shaping the direction of the industry through several periods of profound change.
For more than 15 years, Jim was a key executive for Universal Music Group Distribution, successfully leading the company through the transition from CDs sales to digital distribution models. During his tenure, Universal Music cemented its position as the world’s number-one record company, with more than 30% of all album sales in the U.S. alone and billions of dollars of revenue. Significantly, his direction at UMGD spearheaded the industry’s approach to preserving sales and profitability for both physical and digital music.
Jim was named a power innovator by Billboard Magazine, sharing the recognition with such legends as Steve Jobs of Apple and Jimmy Iovine of Interscope. Under his leadership, Universal Music Group Distribution also was named the top distributor in 2001, 2002 and 2008.
Jim began his career in 1972 as a college rep for CBS Records, later moving to CBS Records distribution. He then joined PolyGram as senior vice president of sales and distribution, two years later becoming svp of marketing. He also served as svp of sales for Arista Records before joining UMGD.
Advisors
Dave Sholin National Radio Personality
In his career spanning four decades, broadcaster Dave Sholin has cemented a place as one of the most innovative and award-winning on-air hosts and producers in the country. Starting out as a program director and on-air host, he has also served as a music director and promoter on the recorded music side, bringing his passion, depth of experience and musical knowledge to projects with some of the biggest artists in the world.
Sholin received his first Program Director of the Year award while he was a student and PD of San Francisco State University’s campus radio station. Shortly after graduation he began his professional career at KLIV/San Jose. Sholin helped develop a new format, and within six months it became one of Silicon Valley’s highest rated stations. He then joined station KFRC in San Francisco, winning the award for Major Market Music Director of the Year at the Gavin Report Convention in Kansas City. Under Dave's leadership, KFRC won Billboard’s Major Market Station of the Year award seven years in a row.
Following his success at KFRC, RKO Radio promoted Dave to National Music Director, overseeing the playlists and music libraries for stations around the country. Dave also produced a string of radio specials and conducted interviews with Rod Stewart, Bob Seger, Paul Simon, The Doobie Brothers and Paul McCartney. He oversaw production of the in-depth Beatles documentary "From Liverpool To Legend."
On December 8th, 1980, Dave and his production team spent the afternoon with John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their apartment in New York City. It was the first radio interview Lennon had granted in five years. Five hours later, the famous Beatle was tragically shot and killed.
Sholin returned to San Francisco to join The Gavin Report and later revamped it into the Gavin magazine. In addition to serving as on-air personality and program director of KFRC, he also hosted weekly syndicated radio shows including “Countdown USA” for Westwood One and "The Insider" for Premiere Radio.
In his next role, Dave became Vice President of Promotion for Island Records and later served the same role at Capitol Records. When CBS Radio decided to relaunch San Francisco’s KFRC, Dave was the first person they contacted; he became the station’s morning drive radio host.
Today, Dave is a regular guest on KGO San Francisco on the Ronn Owens’ show. In 1995 Sholin was named a charter member of the radio section at the Rock ‘N Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland. He was the Rockwell Award recipient at the Conclave, a national radio and record convention. In October 2008 Dave was inducted into The Bay Area Radio Hall Of Fame.
C. Casper Casparian Marketing Communications Strategy
C. Casper Casparian is an experienced marketing-communications leader with a diverse background across several industries, both in-house and on the agency side. He began his career working with Fortune 500 companies including Dole Food Company (fresh and packaged foods), Activision (videogame entertainment), EMI Music (then the world’s third-largest music company) and Mattel, Inc. (the world’s largest toy company). In those roles, he developed corporate communications, both internal and external, as well as product-focused marketing communications pieces.
After leaving corporate roles, he worked for a boutique marketing-communications agency as vice president of client strategy focused on healthcare, technology and nonprofits. While at the agency, he had responsibility for building new and existing client relationships, managing creative development and optimizing agency operations and processes. Five years later, he established his own marketing-communications firm, CMC LLC, a California corporation that serves a range of clients with media relations, media buying, and online and offline creative development services. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a J.D. from University of Southern California.
Bob Catania What's In-Store Music
For more than four decades, Advisor Bob Catania has been a leading promotions executive who has run campaigns for the biggest acts in the world.
Bob began his career in Philadelphia as the local RCA representative before moving to New York in a national capacity. After RCA, he joined Island Records in rock promotion, and soon became the Head of Promotion. Following his tenure at Island, Bob worked as Head Of Promotion at leading labels including Charisma, Geffen, Giant, and Curb Records.
Scores of artists across the range of genres have benefitted from Bob’s promotional vision and expertise, including U2, Melissa Etheridge, Robert Palmer, Aerosmith, Nirvana, Beck, Counting Crows, The Eagles, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Lisa Loeb, Steely Dan, Disturbed, Leann Rimes, Tim McGraw and countless more. In 2008, he started Right Way Music Group and ran hundreds of radio campaigns for artists from both the major label and independent sectors.
Most recently, Bob joined fellow Intercept Music Brand Ambassador Scott Emerson as a partner in What’s In-Store Music. The experience and relationships of these two men has offered musicians a powerful resource for promotion and marketing, whether signed to a major label or independent.
Howard Rosen Howard Rosen Promotion, Inc.
Howard Rosen began his career in 1970 at Bell Records and Elektra where he got his feet wet with The Partridge Family, Barry Manilow, Mountain, The Doors, Carly Simon, and Harry Chapin. From there he became Senior VP of Promotion at famed Casablanca Records where he broke such acts as Donna Summer, KISS, The Village People, and Parliament.
In 1980, Howie became president of Bearsville Records and was instrumental in the careers of Todd Rundgren, Utopia, and Foghat. After Bearsville, Howie became Senior VP of Promotion at Warner/Reprise working with many artists who are still relevant today including Prince, Van Halen, Fleetwood Mac, Madonna, Rod Stewart, The Doobie Brothers, and Frank Sinatra.
In 1984, he was recruited by Motown Records and made VP of Promotion and Marketing where he worked with Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, and The Temptations. This was followed by some time at A&M where he was Director of Special Projects.
In 1985, Howie decided it was time to start his own companies: Howard Rosen Promotion, Inc. and Take Out Management. Here, Howie has transmuted his decades of label experience into a thriving full-service Independent Radio Promotion Company that is still going strong more than 20 years later.