Jason King
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Mondo.NYC Speaker

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Jason King

Jason King

Chair, The Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, New York University

Jason King is the Chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. A Canadian-American scholar, journalist, author, musician, performer, producer, songwriter, radio and video host, and event curator, Jason has served in leadership positions since the founding of The Clive Davis Institute. He was the Institute’s founding full-time faculty member, working alongside music impresario Clive Davis to help develop the program. He served as the Institute’s first Associate Chair (from 2003-2006), the Institute’s first and only Artistic Director (from 2006-2012); and the Institute’s Director of Writing, History and Emergent Media (2003-2022). He has also been the Institute’s inaugural Director of Global Studies, developing the international study abroad program Clive Davis Institute x Berlin: Future Pop Music Studies in Germany, and the Institute’s annual course in Havana.

As a Professor at the Institute, Jason has been teaching classes on popular music history, marketing and branding, and the social aspects of music technology for more than two decades. Among his courses: "Artist Development, A&R and Personal Branding," “Conversations with Technology Entrepreneurs,” “Immersive Experiences,” “The Business of Music: Worldmaking, Values and Ethics,” “Failure” "The Record Producer as Creative Artist," "Music Recommendation and Discovery," "R&B," and "Hip Hop: History, Music and Culture.” He taught the inaugural class at the NYU Abu Dhabi campus in the United Arab Emirates, and he returned as Affiliated Faculty to teach classes in global music production at NYU Abu Dhabi for four years. Jason also taught post-graduate studies in Producing Transnational Media Ventures for the MFA program in International Media Producing at Tisch School of the Arts Asia in Singapore.

Jason’s scholarly essays on music figures like Beyoncé, Drake, Luther Vandross, and Roberta Flack have been published in numerous anthologies and edited collections, and he is the author of The Michael Jackson Treasures, a Barnes and Noble exclusive biography on the King of Pop, which has been translated in more than 7 languages. He is a regular contributor to publications like Pitchfork, Slate, and NPR Music and he has been an expert witness in copyright infringement cases for Drake, Katy Perry, Jay Z, Timbaland, Lady Gaga, Madonna, and others. King has appeared in many music documentaries, including Spike Lee's pair of Michael Jackson documentaries, Bad 25 and Michael Jackson’s Journey from Motown to Off the Wall. He was a series regular on CNN’s Soundtracks as well as CNN’s American Style and the series consultant on the Grammy and Emmy nominated eight-part PBS series on the history of popular music Soundbreaking, in which he also appears. King is the host, co-writer and executive producer of Spotify’s 2022 Sound Barrier podcast: season 1 focused on the life and times of Sylvester. He was the host and co-producer of NPR's Noteworthy, a flagship video series on the creative process of music superstars like Dua Lipa, Alicia Keys, and Miguel, as well as the curator of NPR's R&B radio channel. He is working on a biography of Freddie Mercury and producing and directing documentaries. Follow him on Twitter and IG: @jasonkingsays

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