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Dick Wingate (born April 6, 1952 in New Haven, CT) is an American music industry executive. With over three decades of experience in the recorded music and interactive media industries, Wingate currently serves as the General Manager of East Coast Business Development at TAG Strategic, a digital entertainment consulting firm.

A 40 year industry veteran, Dick Wingate is a member of the NARAS (Grammys) and an advisory board member of Myxer, Nimbit, Songza and Music180.com and a board member of Big House Publishing.

Early Days
As a teenager, Wingate frequently went to concerts, and was lucky enough to see Cream, The Beach Boys, The Jeff Beck Group featuring Rod Stewart,  The Rolling Stones and an infamous Doors concert in New Haven in which Jim Morrison was arrested on stage in December, 1967. In 1970, having developed strong passion for music, Dick opted for Brown University (in Providence, RI) over Yale based on their liberal curriculum & their impressive progressive rock radio station WBRU-FM. He started out as a DJ and soon progressed to Music Director in 1972 and to Program Director in 1973. At WBRU-FM, Wingate made many important professional relationships including one with Bruce Springsteen, who visited the station and performed at Brown University.

In 1974, after graduating, Dick Wingate moved to NYC as Director of East Coast Promotions / Operations for independent record label Chess / Janus Records and worked closely with artists Al Stewart, Camel, Caravan and Muddy Waters. In the meanwhile, he continued to flirt with radio and held a weekend DJ slot at WPLR-FM in New Haven, where among other accomplishments he first premiered ‘Born to Run' to southern Connecticut listeners.

Record Labels: Columbia, Epic and PolyGram
In late 1975, Dick Wingate moved to Columbia Records as Product Manager, and quickly became the manager of choice for their most prestigious and sensitive artists. During his tenure at Columbia, he product managed many notable releases including Bruce Springsteen – Darkness on the Edge of Town, Pink Floyd – Animals, David Gilmour's first solo LP, Nick Lowe – Pure Pop for Now People, Peter Tosh – Legalize It & Equal Rights albums and the three album initial marketing campaign for Elvis Costello's - My Aim is True , This Year's Model and Armed Forces. Dick’s close relationship with Springsteen was documented in Dave Marsh’s authorized biography, Born to Run, including a photograph of Springsteen and Wingate at the printing press as the covers of Darkness on the Edge of Town were being printed.

As a result of working closely with artists, Dick's interest in A&R (Artists and Repertoire) grew and thus he moved to Epic Records in 1979 as Director of Talent Acquisition. His first signing was the studio creation Flash and the Pan (Harry Vanda and George Young of Easybeats fame) from Australia which went on to sell over 150,000 copies. He then completed a label licensing agreement with Stiff Records and released new wave artists Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Lene Lovich, Wreckless Eric and Ian Gomm. Soon after, Dick got a #1 hit single and first gold album with Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue. His other notable signings included Face to Face who had a top 20 pop single “10-9-8” ; Garland Jeffreys whose Escape Artist album he Executive Produced (Time Magazine named it one of the year's 10 best records in 1981) ; and most notable 'Til Tuesday's - Voices Carry album (1985) which he Executive Produced, and included a Top 10 Pop single ("Voices Carry") and won the MTV Award for Best New Artist 1985.

In 1986, Dick Asher, the new President/CEO of PolyGram Records hired Dick Wingate as Senior VP of A&R, where he had responsibility for all US releases for both domestic and international artists. During his tenure, successes included the development of Bon Jovi from Gold(500K) unit sales to 10x Platinum on Slippery When Wet and 7 million on New Jersey; multi-platinum success with Cinderella’s Night Songs and Long Cold Winter, John Mellencamp; the signing of Robert Cray (platinum album and Grammy), LA Guns, The Fat Boys, Ivan Neville and Mother Love Bone (which went on to become Pearl Jam). In late 1989, Wingate left PolyGram and by early 1990 so had most of the senior management staff including CEO Dick Asher, head of marketing Jim Urie and GM Bob Jamieson.

Transition to Technology
In 1990, Dick Wingate began consulting InTouch Group of San Francisco, CA and soon became VP of Market and Business Development. InTouch developed the i-Station which married music previewing with interactive technology, database management and direct marketing. Dick acquired music catalogs from over 250 labels, developed and managed the database, helped negotiate an agreement with Billboard Magazine to feature interactive Billboard music charts on the i-Station, and organized and conducted demonstration meetings for label executives, investors, market researchers, retailers, press and analysts. Though it was a groundbreaking product featuring sampling and interactive marketing features that years later would become the norm on the web, the systems proved prohibitively expensive to produce and maintain and eventually the company went into re-organization in February, 1996. However Wingate had left in mid 1994 to return to a major label.

Return to a Major Label
Dick Wingate returned to major label Arista Records in June 1994 as Senior VP of Marketing to work directly for Clive Davis. He and Arista had great success over the next two years with numerous artists including TLC, The Notorious B.I.G., Sarah McLachlan, Annie Lennox, Toni Braxton, Boys on the Side's soundtrack, Real McCoy, Crash Test Dummies, Barry Manilow, Kenny G and Ace of Base.

While working at Arista, Dick continued to develop his love for interactive marketing, technology and now was fascinated by the internet. Sensing the importance and potential of digital music in 1996, he moved to Arista’s corporate parent, BMG North America as New Media Consultant, helping to develop BMG’s online & internet strategy. At BMG, he completed a significant deal with AOL and met with early online music services and technology providers. One of those, Liquid Audio became a consulting client in 1997, along with music database provider Muze, EMCI and others.

Liquid Audio
Liquid Audio had developed one of the earliest standards for streaming and downloading audio on the Internet. CEO and Co-founder Gerry Kearby was highly impressed with Dick Wingate, and hired him full time as Senior VP of Content Development in July 1998. Over the next 3 years, he was responsible for managing music business development, label relations, affiliate management and content programming. He completed commercial licensing deals (notably prior to iTunes) with Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, EMI Music, BMG Music and over 1000 independent record labels, thus building a significant digital music distribution inventory; and managed a network of retail and lifestyle websites that utilized Liquid Audio’s technology or music catalogue including Amazon.com, Best Buy, CDNow, Barnes & Noble, Billboard, Hard Rock Café, Sam Goody, Music Boulevard and Tower Records. Liquid Audio went public with an IPO in 1999 and in January 2003, it was acquired by Anderson Media/Anderson Merchandisers During these years Wingate was a frequent speaker at many conferences including Jupiter Plug-In, Webnoize, CMJ, Midem, Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse, Business Week, SXSW, Interactive Music Expo and Gavin conferences. Among the many promotions Wingate succeeded in getting for Liquid Audio were exclusive downloads from a live PBS performance by Dave Matthews Band, the first time music from a superstar artist was made available for purchase exclusively on the Internet.

While at Liquid Audio he was also the subject of a feature article in the NY Times Sunday Business section (“A Watchdog for Online Music” 5/7/2000), a front page LA Times article , Entertainment Weekly, Hits Magazine as well as quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine , USA Today , the NY Times Magazine and many times in Billboard Magazine. In addition, in 2000 he was selected as a representative of NYC’s Silicon Alley to meet President and Mrs. Clinton and five U.S. Senators.

In 2004-2005 Wingate served as President, Content & Programming for BPOD Networks aka Digital Transaction Machines Inc., an interactive systems provider for in-store delivery of digital products for clients including McDonald’s and 7-Eleven. DTM’s systems enabled consumers to build playlists, burn custom CD’s and get ringtones sent to their handsets.

Going Mobile
In 2006, Wingate joined Nellymoser Inc. as President, Media Development & Chief Content Officer. At Nellymoser, Wingate's focus turned full-time to mobile and he dug himself deep into mobile media delivery, mobile application development and streaming music to cell phones. He worked closely with major media companies such as ABC, Sony/BMG, Warner Music Group and MTV on application development. Nellymoser’s Warner Music Jukebox application was the first music streaming on-demand service on any US carrier (Sprint). As CCO, he was responsible for direct licensing of content and for content partnerships and programming for Nellymoser’s own mobile music services which were offered on wireless service providers AT&T, Virgin Mobile and Alltel. In 2008, Dick Wingate left Nellymoser but continued consulting the company as a Digital Media Consultant along with other clients like Myxer, Nimbit, Music180.com, Cava Capital and GyPSii.

TAG Strategic
Dick Wingate joined Ted Cohen's TAG Strategic in middle of 2009 as General Manager, East Coast Business Development. and has gone on to work with clients including MediaNet, Masterbeat, Rosenzweig & Company, Sharetones, Applied SB/Vervelife, SuperGlued, Madacy Entertainment, Moshcam and others, while continuing to work as an advisory board member of Myxer, Nimbit, Cava Capital, Music180.com and Big House Publishing. He provides multi-platform digital media strategy including business development, strategic and distribution partnerships, and content licensing, working with online service providers, app developers, content owners and software developers.