"Bring me STARS!"\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what the Sony brass told Tim Devine.\u00c2\u00a0 So he walked.<\/p>\n
Used to be you were dying to get IN!\u00c2\u00a0 Now those with jobs want to get OUT!<\/p>\n
Tim Devine is the weasel’s weasel.\u00c2\u00a0 The kind of guy made for the major label.\u00c2\u00a0 Sidling up to you as a friend but ultimately doing that which will benefit HIS career.\u00c2\u00a0 The benevolent friend who’s not a friend at all.\u00c2\u00a0 When business is involved, anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 And isn’t it all business.\u00c2\u00a0 When Tim Devine walks, you know it’s all over.<\/p>\n
Then there’s Phil Costello.\u00c2\u00a0 The promotion man’s promotion man.\u00c2\u00a0 The kind of prick who’d call you up and start yelling at the top of his lungs so loud and for so long that you could go to the kitchen, make a sandwich and EAT IT and when you came back on the line, he’d still be ranting.\u00c2\u00a0 One word in response was enough to get him started again.\u00c2\u00a0 And when it was all over, he’d forgotten he reamed your ass, after all, it was all in a day’s work.<\/p>\n
Tim and Phil sold their souls to the company man.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re not entrepreneurs.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re salaried men with expense accounts.\u00c2\u00a0 Ultimately beholden to a faceless man signing their checks.\u00c2\u00a0 And not giving a shit about it.\u00c2\u00a0 Selling out was not an issue.\u00c2\u00a0 Where did they SIGN??<\/p>\n
And now they’re gone.<\/p>\n
Tim Devine resurrected Bonnie Raitt’s career.\u00c2\u00a0 I won’t exactly say single-handedly, but he’s the man responsible.\u00c2\u00a0 And he believed in and broke Train when his corporate superiors wanted nothing to do with the act and wanted to bury it.\u00c2\u00a0 Tim is smart, and tenacious, and committed.\u00c2\u00a0 The kind of guy you want on your team.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’ve got a team.\u00c2\u00a0 But Sony is no longer a team.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a few dictators and common folk, doing what they’re told because they’re fearful of entering the big bad world and finding out with their skills they can only get a job for cents on the dollar.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know what Tim does now.\u00c2\u00a0 John Kalodner can’t seem to work.\u00c2\u00a0 But give the man props.\u00c2\u00a0 Hearing that Sony was not interested in artist development, not interesting in doubles as opposed to grand slams, he marched off.<\/p>\n
Radio promotion isn’t even the same business anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 What with Spitzer and tighter playlists and declining listenership.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, radio is where you reach the most people, but it’s not where it’s at.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s happening on the Internet.\u00c2\u00a0 Just ask the target audience, in front of their screens all day.<\/p>\n
In the early nineties every mid-level manager closed his shop and went to work for the label.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, the exodus is in REVERSE!\u00c2\u00a0 All the old execs in the U.K. are now managers.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, the managers are STRONGER than the labels.\u00c2\u00a0 And Phil Costello has jumped from the Reprise ship to work for John Silva.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be that management was a license to starve, if your act got cold, you couldn’t afford to eat.\u00c2\u00a0 Now the manager commissions a plethora of revenue streams, not only recorded music, and he’s got some control, he can decide whether to put his foot on the gas or let up, he has a modicum of power regarding his act’s longevity.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas the label, not having this connection, rapes and pillages at all times, only worrying about today.<\/p>\n
Once again, the story is not about stealing music.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather it’s how those in charge at the major labels, through sheer greed and ineptitude, and short-sightedness, didn’t see the future, ignored it when confronted with it and kept yelling that everybody should come back to the past.<\/p>\n
Tim Devine wanted to break acts.\u00c2\u00a0 Sony wanted to break records.<\/p>\n
Phil Costello wanted to have an impact, his options were limited in the corporate halls.<\/p>\n
So they both jumped ship.<\/p>\n
And their hypothetical replacements, the twentysomethings, NEVER had an interest in working for the man.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
"Bring me STARS!"\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what the Sony brass told Tim Devine.\u00c2\u00a0 So he walked. Used to be you were dying to get IN!\u00c2\u00a0 Now those with jobs want to get OUT! Tim Devine is the weasel’s weasel.\u00c2\u00a0 The kind of guy made for the major label.\u00c2\u00a0 Sidling up to you as a friend but ultimately […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-6P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}