By Traci Chapman
Published on July 17, 2008

Tate Publishing is hoping to hit a sweet note with its newest division, Tate Music Group, launched earlier this year.

The division - patterned in a way after the publishing side - was a dream of Tate leadership that happened much earlier than expected, founder Rita Tate said.

“We have a five-year vision out there. We were thinking maybe 2010 - but suddenly it was kind of an epiphany of saying, 'why are we waiting,' so we jumped into it,” she said. “If you know anything about Tate, you know we just jump on in there, find out about how you do it and then just do it - that's the best way to learn.”

The four-man team of the division - marketing representative Allen Finch and music producers Steven Jeffrey, Jameson Reynolds and Colin Ingersol - work with artists from start to finish, Tate said. Jeffrey was a graphic designer with the firm who played in a band and had a love for music, he said. Reynolds voiced books in Tate's audio book department and was a music minister. Ingersol, a new hire for the division, graduated from Southern Nazarene University.

Tate said the key in hiring the right staff for Tate Music was more high tech than classic music.

“Every one of these guys - this is a different kind of industry than it was before. We've had people who've applied for these jobs who've been choir leaders, band directors, they could play any instrument,” she said.
“That's not the key these days; the key is technology. It's a different genre altogether.”

The division exploded into inception, Finch said, with over 600 submissions from potential artists coming in each month. Of those, Allen said Tate signs about 25 to 30 artists each month “and it's growing every month.”

In fact, Tate said, the day Tate Music came online, the response was “overwhelming.”

“The first day we opened up this new music opportunity, we had so many hits on the Internet, we had to shut it down,” she said. “We knew we'd hit a nerve.”