Okay.\u00c2\u00a0 Howard Stringer fires Tommy Mottola.\u00c2\u00a0 And inserts Andy Lack in his place.\u00c2\u00a0 Then Andy Lack gets kicked upstairs and Sony’s people get blown out.\u00c2\u00a0 This isn’t about Donnie and Marie as much as it is about the ineptitude of Sir Howard.\u00c2\u00a0 The man with the teflon skin upon which the shit never resides.<\/p>\n
Sure, Tommy overspent.\u00c2\u00a0 But in comparison to what Sony’s got now, Tommy looks like Bill Clinton.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone flawed who could get the job done.\u00c2\u00a0 Better to have reined Tommy in than blown him out, at least with hindsight.<\/p>\n
Ironically, Tommy’s paradigm is the only one that still works at major labels.\u00c2\u00a0 Find some marginal talent and hype it to the ROOF in order to sell tonnage.\u00c2\u00a0 Tommy wasn’t interested in the little acts, and there’s not a major label in the business that now is.<\/p>\n
Oh, don’t get me wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Tommy had to go.\u00c2\u00a0 You always have to fire the underling who will report to no one, who believes he’s beholden to no one, but how did Howard get it so WRONG?\u00c2\u00a0 Why didn’t he hire someone with some EXPERIENCE?\u00c2\u00a0 Tried to get Roger Ames when he was available.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, on the surface music looks simple.\u00c2\u00a0 But in order to play you have to be involved for EONS!\u00c2\u00a0 To know where all the bodies are buried.\u00c2\u00a0 To install Andy Lack as head of Sony Music is to have CONTEMPT for music.\u00c2\u00a0 And never forget, if Andy Lack had not been the general, the merger with BMG never would have taken place.\u00c2\u00a0 One so lacking in details that you’ve got the present implosion.\u00c2\u00a0 Wherein BMG basically runs the operation.<\/p>\n
Rob Stringer is a good man.\u00c2\u00a0 But it takes YEARS to take over and ramp up a label.\u00c2\u00a0 Survey the landscape, put the right people in place and sign acts.\u00c2\u00a0 By time Rob Stringer achieves critical mass the CD will be dead and major labels will be in free-fall.<\/p>\n
Donnie Ienner is a brilliant promotion man.\u00c2\u00a0 One who motivates his troops like no other.\u00c2\u00a0 To give him a managerial position, one where he oversees as opposed to being in the trenches, is a huge mistake.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like making Jay-Z an executive.\u00c2\u00a0 WHOOPS!\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s America.\u00c2\u00a0 Where someone has to be PROMOTED instead of being allowed to play at the same level, with more MONEY!<\/p>\n
What’s going on at Sony now is a mess.\u00c2\u00a0 Charlie Walk is old school.\u00c2\u00a0 A promotion man who’s paid his dues and gotten power.\u00c2\u00a0 Didn’t we see this movie with Polly Anthony? And THAT certainly didn’t work.<\/p>\n
Greenberg is a decent A&R man.\u00c2\u00a0 But a bad manager.\u00c2\u00a0 Barnett is a good manager with no A&R skills.\u00c2\u00a0 Tell me THAT’S going to work.<\/p>\n
Then again, what were Donnie’s options?\u00c2\u00a0 With BMG breathing down his neck he had to pull a rabbit out of his hat, and that can’t be done in the music business, it takes TIME!\u00c2\u00a0 Do anything quickly, and it blows up in your face.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, you need hit records!<\/p>\n
As for Michele Anthony…\u00c2\u00a0 I always saw her as Tommy’s hit man\/woman.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not sure what she added to the mix other than intimidation.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, she’s intelligent.\u00c2\u00a0 But she was a lieutenant, not a visionary.\u00c2\u00a0 And Clive Davis is a visionary.<\/p>\n
Not that I’m in sync with Clive’s vision.\u00c2\u00a0 But it works for him.<\/p>\n
And now Clive has won.\u00c2\u00a0 Only one problem, he won’t live forever.\u00c2\u00a0 And THEN what?\u00c2\u00a0 There’s not a single soul in that operation who can succeed him.<\/p>\n
So what you see today is an operation imploding.\u00c2\u00a0 Through the ineptitude of Andy Lack, overseen by Howard Stringer, the smiling man SAVING Sony.<\/p>\n
Maybe, like Jason Flom, Donnie gets another gig.\u00c2\u00a0 Donnie’s skills are not rusty.\u00c2\u00a0 But would he be willing to run a label again?<\/p>\n
Michele…\u00c2\u00a0 She’ll find a gig if she wants to.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe join a law firm.<\/p>\n
But really, it’s the end of an era.\u00c2\u00a0 The Tommy Mottola era.<\/p>\n
The slate’s been wiped clean.\u00c2\u00a0 But what’s important here is the replacement slate is irrelevant.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re still following the major label shenanigans, you don’t have your eye on the ball.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s no longer about machinations, but acts.\u00c2\u00a0 Working them from the ground up.\u00c2\u00a0 Bonnaroo has got much more to do with the future of the record business than Top Forty radio.<\/p>\n
The major labels are not prepared to deal with this paradigm.\u00c2\u00a0 They want big acts, that they only coin money on from recorded music.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a business, they’ll continue to rule it, but its share of the music pie will be ever-decreasing.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, as any teenager will tell you, the stuff on major labels is SHIT!\u00c2\u00a0 Indie’s where it’s at.<\/p>\n
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Okay.\u00c2\u00a0 Howard Stringer fires Tommy Mottola.\u00c2\u00a0 And inserts Andy Lack in his place.\u00c2\u00a0 Then Andy Lack gets kicked upstairs and Sony’s people get blown out.\u00c2\u00a0 This isn’t about Donnie and Marie as much as it is about the ineptitude of Sir Howard.\u00c2\u00a0 The man with the teflon skin upon which the shit never resides. Sure, […]<\/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-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-6W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","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=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}