Dick Wingate (born April 6, 1952, in New Haven, Connecticut) is an American music industry and digital entertainment executive, currently serving as principal of DEV Advisors.
[7] During his tenure at Columbia, he product managed Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town,[8] Pink Floyd – Animals, David Gilmour's first solo LP, Nick Lowe's Pure Pop for Now People, Peter Tosh's Legalize It and Equal Rights albums and the three album initial marketing campaign for Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True,[9] This Year's Model[10] and Armed Forces.
[11] 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.
His other notable signings included Face to Face who had a top 20 pop single "10-9-8";[12] Garland Jeffreys whose Escape Artist album he executive produced[13] (Time magazine named it one of the year's 10 best records in 1981);[14] and most notably 'Til Tuesday's Voices Carry album (1985)[15] which he executive produced, and included a top 10 pop single ("Voices Carry") and won the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist 1985.
[16] During his tenure, successes included the development of Bon Jovi from Gold (500K) unit sales to 10× Platinum on Slippery When Wet[17] 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[18] (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.
[21] At Arista over the next two years he promoted 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.
At BMG, he completed a deal with AOL[22] Liquid Audio became a consulting client in 1997, along with music database provider Muze and EMCI.
Wingate joined Ted Cohen's TAG Strategic in middle of 2009 as General Manager, East Coast Business Development.
The role, based in New York, saw him focus on Crowdmix's strategic collaboration with music industry stakeholders, including artists, record labels and marketers.