Reality TV producers open music management branch

By Ann Donahue

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Reality TV producer Bunim-Murray Productions is launching a music management division, M Music, with the goal of representing artists who could play just as well to the mass market as to MTV.

The first band signed to M is A Cursive Memory, a just-out-of-high-school pop act whose music has already appeared on Bunim-Murray's "The Simple Life." The group's first album, "Changes," arrives February 19 via Vagrant.

With hit-the-jackpot reality successes like MTV's "The Real World" and E! Entertainment's "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," why would Bunim-Murray take the leap to the riskier world of artist management? For Bunim-Murray vice president of music Dave Stone, it was a natural extension of his job of breaking undiscovered artists through the company's shows -- for instance, he first placed a John Mayer track on "The Real World" in 2000.

Stone discovered A Cursive Memory on PureVolume.com several years ago and arranged a meeting with the band, only to discover to his chagrin that the members were a bunch of 14-year-olds. He promised to take them on once they finished high school.

"I was hooked on these demos they did," he said. "They figured out really early how to write some tremendous, hooky pop songs. It's been three years getting them some shows, being strategic and pacing them out. I wanted people to take them seriously."

A Cursive Memory just completed a tour with New Found Glory and is working on a music video for online distribution. For its TV debut on "The Simple Life," "all our families got together to watch and kind of geeked out," singer/guitarist Colin Baylen said. Up next, The band will be seen on a segment of MTV's "Real World/Road Rules Challenge" as part of a promotion for Jessica Alba's next movie, "The Eye," which is produced by MTV's corporate sibling Paramount Vantage.

Bunim-Murray COO Gil Goldschein said the company wants to expand its music management division slowly, possibly adding just one more band to its roster in the coming year.

And with more than 30 music cues on any given episode of "The Real World," Bunim-Murray still wants to be the company that breaks all kinds of bands in front of a younger audience -- not just the ones it represents.