Jem Aswad, who launched Variety’s music section with executive music editor Shirley Halperin in 2017, has held senior editorial posts at Billboard, MTV News, Spin, Time Out New York and CMJ. He also has worked at three record labels (Atlantic, Warner and Caroline), two record stores, one performing-rights organization (ASCAP) and even helped out at CBGB for a few weeks while one of said labels was filming a documentary there. A lifelong music obsessive, over the years his work has been published in Rolling Stone, New York magazine, the Village Voice, Esquire and other publications. He has won several Los Angeles Press Club and Southern California Press Club awards — including the LAPC’s National Arts & Entertainment Journalist of the Year/ Online for 2022 — appears regularly on television and at conferences speaking about music, and sporadically guest-lectures at Syracuse University’s Bandier Program and New York University. He is based in Variety’s New York office.