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Tom Silverman

Tom Silverman
Founder & Executive Director

In the course of three tumultuous decades in popular music, Tommy Boy founder and Chairman, Tom Silverman, has created a striking success story for himself and his company. In the process, Tommy Boy has earned gold, platinum and multi-platinum albums by such artists as Everlast, Queen Latifah, Coolio, Naughty By Nature, Club Nouveau, De La Soul, Digital Underground, and House of Pain, and has been Billboard Magazine’s number one dance label for six years in a row.

In addition to unique artists and great records, Silverman’s innovative ideas about packaging, marketing and distribution of music helped separate Tommy Boy from the pack. In 1981, Silverman and his partners (Joel Webber and Marc Josephson) created the original New Music Seminar as a new kind of grassroots music industry gathering for disenfranchised music business upstarts.

From humble beginnings, New Music Seminar became the biggest and most important convention in the music industry; its combination of panels, workshops and live showcases became the model for CMJ, Canadian Music Week, Winter Music Conference and SXSW, among other followers.

Silverman is a founding member of the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) and Merlin; sits on the board of SoundExchange, the RIAA and We Are Family Foundation and has served on the boards of NARM, NAIRD, AFIM, The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Dance Music Hall of Fame.

Dave Lory
Executive Director & Producer
Dave Lory has an in-depth understanding of the music business that stems from a wealth of experience in several areas of the industry. He is one of the few executives to have worked in every major genre of popular music including rock, pop, country, folk, classical, jazz, hip-hop and R&B. His resume includes being a musician, chairman to artist management firms, heading international operations at a major record label, starting up one of the most successful independent record companies in the past decade, producing memorable live events, and coordinating and managing large-scale international tours.

In September 2009, Lory started DJL Music Productions LLC as a company which does production of live shows, events and tour management, as he returns to the roots of the entertainment industry he loves the most. Lory’s first clients were the New Music Seminar, where he is a partner with original NMS co-founder Tom Silverman of Tommy Boy as well as the Producer of the events, tour managed Perez Hilton’s US tour and coordinated Kid Cudi’s US while tour managing Semi Precious Weapons tour of the US with Lady Gaga.

Some of the highlights in an almost 30 year career includes managing artists such as Jeff Buckley, The Allman Brothers and Courtney Love, to running International Records at Mercury Records and Sr. VP of Artemis Records. Artist Lory has worked with include Bon Jovi, KISS, Shania Twain, Warren Zevon, Steve Earle and Elvis Costello among others. In addition, his teaching duties in the music business programs at William Paterson University and New York University, (where he attended college with a major in both Music Performance and Music Business) as well as his involvement in “Grammy in the Schools” program for N.A.R.A.S., has proven him to be a great motivator and educator. Recently, Dave produced the 3-day music festival Escape to New York for Secret Garden UK founder Fred Fellows in Southampton, NY.

NMS Executive Staff