Annie Lin is a San Francisco-based attorney with more than a decade of business experience in content licensing, rights management, digital media distribution, entertainment branding and music supervision. Her diverse background includes both dealmaking and problem-solving for enterprises in music, film, advertising and new media.
As a rights consultant, Annie has helped startups, game developers, advertisers, brands and marketing companies develop cost-effective licensing strategies and find solutions to complex rights issues. Her work as a licensing director with San Francisco-based rights clearance company The Rights Workshop encompassed both traditional and emerging media, with projects ranging from webisodes to corporate videos to virtual world gaming, for companies such as CISCO, Microsoft, HP, VMWare and RedBana.
As a music supervisor for film and television, Annie’s credits include narrative features such as “Lovely, Still”, “Half Life”, “Putty Hill”, “Flying Lessons” and “Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead” (20th Century Fox), and documentary films such as “Marwencol”, “Have You Heard from Johannesburg”, “Copyright Criminals” (ITVS) and “Down The Barrel” (ESPN Films).
Prior to moving to Bay Area, Annie worked The Orchard, a New York City-based digital distributor of independent music. As director of creative licensing, she was instrumental in building and launching the company’s creative licensing unit and established the business as a major player in the synchronization licensing space. Her music placements can be seen in numerous films, television shows, advertisements and interactive media projects, for brand properties such as Target, British Airways, Lexus and Crayola, and programs including “The Wire”, “Dexter” and “CSI:Miami”.
Annie came to the entertainment industry through her early career as a touring artist and performing singer-songwriter, and released three albums independently. She worked in Texas civil courts, as well as a variety media entities including Citysearch (a subsidiary of IAC/InterActiveCorp), Cherry Lane Music Publishing and Juris Publishing. After graduating with a B.A. from Rice University, she studied intellectual property and entertainment law, earning a J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center.
Annie is a member of the California Bar and is fluent in Spanish and Chinese. She is a co-founder of the San Francisco Mixtape Society.
Publications
- Scatter/Gather: Razorfish Digital Content Strategy Blog. – “SXSW Q&A” 2010
- Nonalignment Pact, PopMatters – Freelance Music Blogger
- VentureBeat – “Do You Have The Right To Socialize On Multiplayer Games?” 2009
- Buffalo Intellectual Property Law Journal – “Who Owns The Cow When We Give Away The Milk For Free? Fair Use And The Protection Of Web-Posted Materials” 2005
Professional Honors, Presentations and Affiliations
- SXSW Interactive Music Licensing For Emerging Technologies Panel – Speaker 2010
- Grammy Foundation Sound Tables: Deals & Dollars – Speaker 2010
- American Advertising Association West – Member 2009 – Present
- HBO/Producer’s Guild of America Music Licensing Panel – Speaker 2008
- BMI/Women In Music Industry Roundtable – Speaker 2008
- Independent Music Awards – Juror 2008
- Asian-American Film Lab Music Rights Seminar – Lecturer 2007
- CMJ Music in Television Panel – Moderator 2006
- Baker Botts L.L.P. Writing Award – Best Intellectual Property Paper 2005
- SXSW Interactive Future of Music Panel – Speaker 2004