Congratulations to two of the women on Primary Wave’s Business Affairs team – Amy Ortner and Sam Rhulen – for being featured on Variety’s Power Of Law 2022 list!
Check out the full article on Variety.
Amy Ortner, Samantha Rhulen
IN-HOUSE
General Counsel
VP, Legal Affairs & Business Development
Primary Wave Music
Ortner and Rhulen, Primary Wave Music’s legal team, closed key acquisitions worth more than $500 million in 2021. In the fourth quarter alone, Rhulen closed more than $200 million worth of deals, while Ortner has negotiated more than $350 million of acquisitions since joining the company in May. Among assets recently landed: estates of James Brown and Toto’s Jeff Porcaro, works from Def Leppard, Paul Rodgers, Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley and Mike Starr, Survivor’s Jim Peterik, and the Regent Music and Jewel Music catalogs. Beyond that, the pair oversees all legal and business affairs with regard to asset management and exploitation, content development and branding initiatives. Projects they’ve facilitated: an immersive Las Vegas show built around the music of Bob Marley, Sun Records-centered podcast “Midnight at the Sun Diner,” a Whitney Houston cosmetics line from MAC, Styx-themed “Oh Mama” beer, and Air Supply’s Valentine’s Day promotion with Edible Arrangements, along with biopics and docs in development, including “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” the film about Houston that premieres in December.
Be nimble: “We manage our daily juggle,” says Ortner. “On any given day we might be considering a complex chain of title issue in acquisitions, licensing interpolations of a gem in our catalog, negotiating a consumer-products deal for an estate, sorting terms to produce a podcast or planning an NFT drop. We have to be ready for anything the creative team throws our way.”