Fred Goldring
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FRED GOLDRING is an entrepreneur, strategic adviser and investor in media, technology, and brand marketing and development enterprises. He is also a former top music and entertainment industry lawyer, an Emmy-winning Executive Producer with will.i.am of the Yes We Can video, a longtime Huffington Post contributor, industry commentator, a Member of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities appointed by President Obama, and a musician (who was a guitarist in the TED House Band for the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach).

He is Co-Founder and Chairman of Aficionado Media, and a Co-Founder of Entech Holdings.

Fred is also a Strategic Advisory Board Member of several companies including Mandalay Media, Jawbone and Brooklyn Water Enterprises. Fred was a Co-Founder of Big Champagne (which sold to Live Nation), Co-Founder of Digital Turbine (which sold to Mandalay Media) and has been a strategic adviser to Gibson Guitars, Hasbro, McDonald’s, National Geographic, Tapulous (creators of Tap Tap Revenge which sold to Disney) and MP3.com.

Fred previously spent several decades practicing entertainment law as one of the top deal-making attorneys in the entertainment industry (with a focus on the music and new media businesses) as a founding partner of the Beverly Hills, CA-based boutique law firm Goldring, Hertz, & Lichtenstein LLP which represented many of the most important and biggest selling recording and performing artists in the world. As a transactional attorney, Fred was critical in the signing of many of his firm’s clients’ original record, TV and film deals and he also helped them to make the significant leap into other areas of the entertainment business. He and his partners were also widely recognized as being amongst the first people in the music industry to recognize, evangelize and embrace the seismic technological shift that is the digital music revolution.

Fred was appointed by President Barack Obama as a Member of The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and was sworn-in as a Member by Justice Stephen Breyer at the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. in February 2010. He also serves as a strategic adviser to the White House on the Let’s Move healthy eating and exercise anti-obesity campaign.

Fred currently serves as a Member of the Board of Advisors of The Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics (COLE) at the Fuqua Business School at Duke University.

Fred is the former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Rock The Vote, and he was the Executive Producer with will.i.am of the groundbreaking Yes We Can music video, for which Fred received an Emmy Award, a Clio Award, a Global Media Award, and an NAACP Image Award.

Fred was also a Co-Executive Producer of the documentary film/music project The People Speak based on Howard Zinn’s seminal work, The People’s History of the United States, and he was a Producer of the Soundtrack Album from the hit television series Thirtysomething.

In 2002, Fred and his former law partner Ken Hertz received the Bill of Rights Award from the ACLU for their extraordinary commitment to social justice. Fred was previously the Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Bogart Pediatric Cancer Research Programs in Los Angeles.

Fred has authored numerous articles for The Huffington Post, is a frequent speaker and commentator on the subjects of entertainment, marketing, media, technology, and politics in numerous publications including The New York Times, and has been an instructor at UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management. He is a longtime member of the TED community having attended the prestigious conference since 1995, and at the 2010 Ted Conference he delivered a TED TALK on the Safe Shake (which he literally co-created at the conference 24 hours before with Eric Hirshberg).

Fred is a member of the California and New York bars, and is a graduate of Duke University and the University of Miami School of Law where he founded The Entertainment and Sports Law Society and was the First Prize Winner of the ASCAP Nathan Burkan Memorial Writing Competition. Fred is a co-founder of DEMAN, the Duke Entertainment Media and the Arts Network. He is a 22-year voting member of The Recording Academy.

Blog Entries by Fred Goldring

The Republican Hunger Games

1 Comments | Posted March 20, 2012 | 8:12 AM

In the early stages of this Republican primary cycle, it seemed like we were watching an endless season of the reality television series Survivor. Each week (literally) we would wait to see which contestant would temporarily and surprisingly surge into frontrunner status, and which contestant would be "voted off the...

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A Strategic Insurance Policy for Self-Absorbed Rich People

12 Comments | Posted February 5, 2012 | 1:24 PM

Ok let's look at the current state of affairs in the U.S. from the perspective of that portion of the 1% who only sees things from their own completely self-interested viewpoint. You're someone who has worked really hard -- the old fashioned way -- to earn what you have achieved...

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Seeing An Old Photo Through New Eyes On My First Real Veterans Day

0 Comments | Posted November 15, 2011 | 6:40 AM

I had passed the photo in the hallway showing the smiling handsome young Naval officer in uniform literally thousands of times over the years, occasionally pausing to marvel at the fact that this was my Dad when he was in his late teens. He had told me many times of...

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Dear Tea/Republican Party: Be Careful What You Wish For -- And I Want My Country Back!

0 Comments | Posted July 24, 2011 | 6:59 PM

If the Tea-Party-dominated, no-tax-increase-under-any circumstances Republicans in Congress do not vote to raise the debt ceiling by August 2, they may finally be granted their ultimate wish to "get the government out of [their] lives" -- completely. It is perhaps only then that these ideologues will realize how much of...

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Could Rafa Nadal Be the Greatest Tennis Player of All Time?

0 Comments | Posted June 6, 2011 | 2:50 PM

Let me begin this by pointing out that I am a huge Roger Federer fan and for a long time I have been a true believer when people have said Roger is probably the best tennis player who ever lived. There certainly has never been such an elegant player with...

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New Year's Resolution 2011: Start Supporting President Obama

0 Comments | Posted December 23, 2010 | 1:03 PM

As we approach the end of President Obama's second year in office, it seems that, despite his numerous major achievements, the President has thus far managed to disappoint just about everybody. To some, it is because he has failed to meet their unrealistic great expectations; to others it is because...

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Duke Basketball: Passing On A Passion to the Next Generation

0 Comments | Posted April 7, 2010 | 12:41 AM

During my junior year in college in 1978, our Duke Men's basketball team (which included a number of my friends and classmates) incredibly went from nowhere in the ACC the previous year to the NCAA National Championship final game. Although we lost that game to Kentucky, like many Duke students...

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The Main Point: Musicians, Arts Education And The E Street Shuffle

0 Comments | Posted November 28, 2009 | 6:52 PM

David Brooks' fantastic essay "The Other Education" in The NY Times Op Ed Section on Friday resonated with me on so many levels that it's hard to know where to begin. Like David, I grew up as a teenager in Main Line Philadelphia and the Jersey Shore in the 70's....

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Reflections of a Would-Be Astronaut, 40 Years Later

0 Comments | Posted July 19, 2009 | 11:04 AM

When I was a kid, I was pretty convinced I was going to become an astronaut. In fact, I was obsessed. I memorized tons of facts and figures about the space program, learned the names and backgrounds of all the astronauts in each of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space...

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"Yes We Can" Music Video: A Pre-Election Reprise

0 Comments | Posted November 3, 2008 | 2:38 PM

A week before Super Tuesday last February, a bunch of inspired Americans got together over two days to make a music video. Will.i.am had just written a brilliant song based on Barack Obama's speech following the New Hampshire primary. As a long-time supporter of Barack, I had been encouraging Will...

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The Power in a Genuine Obama Mandate

0 Comments | Posted November 2, 2008 | 12:28 PM

I've been thinking a lot recently about an article I read some years ago. The author had asked about 50 people how they would define the word "power". There were the usual responses one might expect, such as "rich and famous", "strength" or "being able to have anything you want"....

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The End of the Bradley Effect -- and the Dawn of The Palin Defect

0 Comments | Posted October 19, 2008 | 9:56 PM

There has been much discussion recently about whether the so-called "Bradley Effect" will contribute to the outcome of this presidential contest; whether voters in the private confines of the voting booth will actually pull the lever or punch the ballot for an African-American candidate. When Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley,...

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John McCain: Four More Years of 'You Just Don't Understand"?

0 Comments | Posted September 27, 2008 | 3:22 PM

For eight years now, the overarching strategy of Bush and Cheney has been to condescendingly bludgeon the public, the world and even members of their own administration with the notion that "you're either with us or you're against us." There has been no room for questioning or discussion, no transparency...

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"Flight 2008, Your Plane Is Now Boarding"

0 Comments | Posted September 17, 2008 | 3:46 PM

During the 2004 presidential election and for several years thereafter, I was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Rock the Vote, the well-known non-profit young voter registration and education organization. At my suggestion, we decided that our 2005 Rock the Nation Award would be given for the first...

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American Idolatry and Sarah Palin

0 Comments | Posted September 12, 2008 | 7:13 PM

American Idol hasn't actually begun its eighth season yet, but the verdict is already in and we have a winner. However, unlike the winners from every other season, this new Idol's path to victory was unique: it only required a single (albeit impressive) performance. She didn't have to audition, or...

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