The APM catalog contains every genre of music, but when it comes to musical outlook, it’s the social consciousness of the 1960s that comes to mind. Recent collaborations have put the company at the forefront of inclusion and diversity.
APM has teamed with the female-owned MPATH Music Library and the North Music Group to develop solutions that address the inequality faced by women and other underrepresented groups in the music industry. “We want to try to help the industry reach gender parity,” says APM president Adam Taylor.
The first album in what is to be a series, “Phenomenal Women,” drops in June, with styles ranging from rock to minimalism. “The focus is on “gender, not genre,” says Mirette Seireg, an expert on international food security and child nutrition who is partnered with film composer and APM artist Michael Levine. “We’re committed to producing one album per APM upload period,” or eight- to nine albums per year, Seireg notes.
Another project, “Unsung Heroes,” teamed combat veterans with APM songwriters at a studio in Nashville last year for results that manage to be gritty and slick. A partnership with CreatiVets, the first release, which came out last fall, features nine songs inspired by the solders’ experiences.
CreatiVets co-founder and executive director Richard Casper is a former infantryman in the Marine Corps, whose deployments include a tour in Fallujah, Iraq. During his deployment, he was hit by four IEDs in just four short months, causing him to suffer a traumatic brain injury. Once home, Casper suffered from PTSD until discovering the healing power of music and art. Says Taylor: “These veterans have a story to tell. We gave them the opportunity to tell it and make some money too.”