No one was as good a friend to me as Doug was at that time—and I’ll never forget that. After about a month of negotiations with Sony, I signed a new deal with Doug and Universal Music. I kept hearing my mother’s favorite expression: When one door closes, another one opens.
It seemed like a line of demarcation had begun to be drawn at that time. iTunes became the most popular digital retailer, and enter American Idol as the new platform for making more impressions than radio. Now, a decade later, with five music competition shows being televised on the major networks nearly every night of the week, it’s not far-fetched to say that for some people the public perception of the music industry is American Idol.
I can remember tuning in for the first time and loving Simon Cowell’s brash, occasionally rude, and always straightforward comments, and how well his attitude rubbed against Paula Abdul’s dizzy, zany advice. He is the ultimate A&R man and usually spot-on. Watching Randy Jackson on that panel also made me very happy, since he had worked for us at Sony for eight years, and it gave me great pride to see his brilliance shine. As time passed, it seemed that everyone on that panel was in one way or another part of my life. Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler was signed to our Columbia label and, of course, I had spent years developing and working with Jennifer Lopez.
The ironic thing about these music competition shows is that the roles have flipped. Now, the judges have become the stars and the talent has become fungible, almost disposable, entertainment. Of course, there were a few exceptions and breakthroughs like Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson, but it’s really not much different on X Factor or The Voice. I’ll bet you can’t name one singer who was on any of those shows the year before last. The singers are now just a momentary distraction for the audience as opposed to being compelling artists with great bodies of work, engaging album art, lyrics that could change your life, and music that inspired and motivated you to do great things. But you certainly wanted to watch to see what J.Lo was gonna wear that night, or what antics Tyler would pull on the next show. Or how Simon was going to put Britney down. These shows are built around the judges as stars and they pull it off. It’s simply great TV.
This shift is now part of the reason why you hear:
“Oh, I like the sound of that song. I’m going to download it.”
“Great. Who’s the singer?”
“I don’t know. I just like the song.”
Our ever-changing culture now instantly gets the one thing that it may want to hear by touching a screen and having the sound shoot straight into their ears. The industry was going through a whirlwind of these very changes throughout the time of my joint venture with Universal, which was called Casablanca Records. We had successes, but the digital landscape was turning the music industry into a different place. There was no clarity yet, and the only people making huge profits at this time were the people who weren’t making music—Steve Jobs and Apple. And if it seemed like the industry was navigating through a sandstorm to me, I can’t even imagine what it was like for Stringer and Lack, who had no idea of the terrain they were stepping into in the first place.
Apple had flipped the economics of the industry upside down. As singles began to be downloaded for 99 cents, the industry was thrown into a tailspin. Record companies accustomed to making profits of between three or four dollars on a CD were now bringing in nickels and pennies for a single. Without the usual profits, the record companies no longer had large reserves of money to devote time and manpower to nurture new talent and support the artist development process by meticulous recording and rerecording, detailed care with imaging, going the extra mile on videos, and providing rigorous backup on tour. All of which is exactly what the artist needs to have a chance to emerge as one of the world’s next great superstars. And—whether it was on the first, second, or third album—would enable them to present a body of work that is so compelling that it sells millions of copies. We had the luxury of time to do this right. Success didn’t have to happen on the first album. But diminishing revenues in this new environment created a one strike and you’re out mentality, and many companies began to shy away from taking risks. The economics simply could not support it anymore. A circle of creative destruction was under way. Artists who didn’t obviously fit into a formula or format were not being signed and developed because the companies became risk averse, which only accelerated the shift to social media and other digital platforms where artists could be discovered.
Digital technology and emerging social media platforms offered amazing opportunities and freedom to artists and fans. All the barriers were knocked down. No longer would an artist have to send in a demo or knock on the record company’s doors to ask for an audition. Anyone from anywhere on the globe could instantly upload his or her music, become a YouTube sensation, and have fifteen minutes of fame. But what happens after that fifteen minutes are up? Overlooked in this changing landscape was what was being lost—the invaluable experiences that an artist receives when he or she is allowed to perform in clubs, make albums, perfect their craft, and galvanize their image while trying to become the next Bruce, Billy, Bono, or Mariah.
Of course, Stringer and Lack had no experience creating iconic superstars. Within a short period of time, Lack failed miserably at trying to run Sony Music, confronting artists head-on instead of nurturing them, and having confrontations with people outside the company from Grubman to Jon Landau to Steve Jobs. All you have to do is turn to page 401 of Jobs’s biography by Walter Isaacson to understand what happened when Lack and Jobs met to negotiate selling music on the iPod. “With Andy, it was mostly about his big ego,” Jobs said. “He never really understood the music business, and he could never really deliver. I thought he was sometimes a dick.”
Lack and Stringer then engineered and negotiated a terrible merger with BMG, allowing the execs from the German-based company to seize authority, until Sony was embarrassingly pushed into a corner and had to purchase the other half of BMG to regain control of itself. Shortly after that, Stringer was forced to push out his handpicked man. To save face, and to avoid his crony’s social embarrassment, Stringer kicked Lack upstairs.
Sadly, it was only the beginning of what was happening to the great Sony Corporation—which became a global electronics giant starting with the transistor radio back in the fifties and then kept producing state-of-the-art products over the decades—which should have, and could have, been where Apple is today, or at the very least, might have had an alliance in all of the cutting-edge music technology and devices with Apple.
Clearly Stringer and Idei had absolutely no finesse or experience like their predecessor, Norio Ohga, at making a partnership work the way Ohga did with Sony’s introduction of the compact disc alongside Philips-Siemens. In Jobs’s biography, Idei calls trying to work with Steve Jobs “a nightmare.” And Stringer added, “Trying to get together would frankly be a waste of time.”
Stringer, who never seemed to understand this revolution, succeeded Idei, and media accounts paint a sad portrait of what happened when the same parochial decisions mounted.
It had to be a huge embarrassment to the Japanese corporation that Microsoft’s Xbox triumphed over Sony’s PlayStation, for PlayStation had it all, even as a home entertainment device, not just as a conveyer of video games. With incredible holiday sales one year the company simply had fallen extremely short of product demand, and that opportunity to get a grip on the market slipped away. The company that invented the renowned Trinitron, the global brand leader of the television industry for so many years, handed over the entire flatscreen business to Panasonic and Samsung, and then was left in the dust. Sony Corp recently wrote off $6.4 billion in losses on Stringer’s watch. These accounts, which have appeared in every major newspaper around the globe, suggest that only a few men without foresight turned one of the greatest companies in the world into a mere shadow of what it once was. And to nobody’s surprise, now Stringer, too, has been cast aside. The only one bright spot is that before Howard’s de
mise—and only because timing was on his side—he hired my dear friend Doug Morris to run Sony Music.
Fear and panic might have gripped many in the music industry at the height of what initially felt like a sandstorm. But the sky has cleared and we can all see the astonishing advantages that technology has given the world of music. In ten years we’ve gone from the iPod to iTunes to Facebook to iPhone to YouTube to iPad to nine hundred channels on TV to social games on mobile devices to streaming, subscription services, digital radio, Twitter, Instagram, and Spotify. In the time it took me to drive over to a party and be handed a demo tape containing Mariah Carey’s voice, I can now listen to hundreds of artists living in every inch of the world. And any manager can now tell you exactly how many followers his or her artists have on Facebook and Twitter and reach them all directly in an instant. The monetization of music is also showing signs of working out. New models like YouTube and Internet radio are bringing revenue to record companies. They are streams of income now, but as Doug Morris points out, they will merge into a river that will become the future of the music business. Most people don’t realize this because they’re looking at the tumbling sales of albums. But a million things are happening right now that will always take us back to the same starting point.
That is this: Greatness and great music will always rise to the top. Look what happens when the new paradigm works. After a friend of Adele’s posted her demo on Myspace in 2006, the English singer attracted the attention of XL Recordings. Put together Adele’s incredible voice, great songs, lyrics that resonate, fantastic arrangements, horns and a great rhythm section, some savvy marketing, and guess what? There are 20 million CDs sold. Serious talents like Adele and Lady Gaga will fill venues, even stadiums, just as the void and the demand for a new teen idol will never go away, and why a really talented artist like Justin Bieber, who was discovered on YouTube, was able to step up and hit it out of the park. Anybody can put his or her music up on the Internet. But Justin Bieber’s talent wasn’t harnessed until he signed with Usher and had a record company putting the wind at his back.
So on reflection, I must say, it’s amusing to me. It’s not like the old game ended when the iPod came out and then a new game began. In fact, there really was no line of demarcation. The A & R process is still the same game for the record companies. You find a spark, whether it’s on YouTube, iTunes, Instagram, or Facebook, and you fan it until it becomes a global fire. Content and great artists are still king and queen—just as they’ve always been, and just as they always will be. But now that the pool is open to everyone there is so much more content. In this landscape, the world more than ever needs filters like the record companies that also know how to expertly fan that precious spark once it’s discovered.
The fashions will continue to evolve, just as Elton John’s large glasses and feathers and the vogue spectacles created by Cher and Madonna have given way to the stunning abstract visuals conceived by Lady Gaga. The music will go in new directions, just as hip-hop has now become pop music and the DJs and electronic dance music have superstars with names that rival all of the greats. Not long ago, disco beats turned into new forms of music, and the beats coming from the current DJs will also evolve into something incredible.
Just as consumers get to pick the songs they like with the touch of a finger, I’m now blessed to be able to handpick the projects that I am working on.
All the mistakes, all the lessons learned, all the relationships and alliances formed, all the consumer behavior that I’ve dissected and studied over the years, have now become all of the positives in my day-to-day business life: whether it’s applying those skills in private equity, where billions of dollars are at stake, and many of the deals have even greater consequences and financial rewards than the ones I did in the music industry, or in the Broadway shows we’re now developing and producing, or in the launching of television shows and other new ventures, or while sitting on different boards of directors.
My business life and my personal life have come together in exactly the place that I want them to be. Like I’ve always said, if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. And my family has moved forward, too. Thalia and I both had our hands on the scissors that cut the umbilical cords of our daughter, Sabrina, and our son, Matthew. And spending more time with Michael and Sarah, after living through the hurricane of the eighties and nineties, has made me realize the precious value in the moments there are for us now. I am so blessed to be with Thalia, who understands me so well, and who makes me realize every day just how grateful and appreciative I am to have gone through so many challenges to get to the ground on which I now stand.
And, yes, I’m still always looking for that next great beat, that next great song, that next great artist, that gives me chills.
Round 3…
Acknowledgments
I never thought I would write a book. I’ve always believed that the work I’ve done should speak for itself. To me, at the end of the day, the only thing that really matters is to have accomplished a goal and achieved a result.
But a good friend of mine, Dan Klores, who’d watched a lot of the work unfold during the Sony years, kept pushing me to tell the story. “You’ve gotta do a book,” he’d say. “So much has happened. You have to document it!”
That was to be expected. Dan is a filmmaker and documentarian. He arranged some meetings with agents and writers. I met with them, but didn’t go forward.
A few years passed, and then I came across a newspaper story about a guy who went into one of the last remaining music stores that was open at that time. He asked the clerk behind the counter what section the Frank Sinatra CDs would be in.
The kid behind the counter was of college age. “Frank Sinatra… Frank Sinatra…” the kid repeated, as if he were searching the back alleys of his mind. “You know, I think I’ve heard of that guy. I think my father used to listen to him.”
That became one of the motivating factors for me to tell my story. Otherwise, I thought, the years would pass and all the work would eventually turn to vapor.
This book has allowed me to tell the story about some of the things I did right, or tried to do right, as well as my mistakes and what was going on behind closed doors when I made certain decisions.
Now that I have finished, I have to say, I feel pretty good about it. But the thing that I feel best about is that years from now my children, Sarah and Michael and Sabrina and Matthew, will be able to pass this book on to their children, and say, “This was my father. This is what he did.”
For this, I owe much gratitude, because it took so many people to help me through this long process.
So I’d like to sincerely thank everyone who made this book possible, whether they’re acknowledged on these pages or not, but especially:
Elvis. You lit the fuse.
Daryl Hall and John Oates. You guys started the fire. We had the ride of a lifetime, and I’ll always treasure every minute of it.
Allen Grubman. Your friendship and your daily reality check have kept me on track through all the years.
Norio Ohga and Akio Morita. My Sony godfathers. You fully supported me through this journey and were the unrelenting visionaries, inventors, and world leaders in technology.
Jeb Brien. You’ve been through nearly every minute of the hurricane with me and have always come up with the best ideas—all the while watching my back.
Al Smith, Randy Hoffman, Brian Doyle, and the rest of my family at Champion Entertainment. You are the definition of the word trust.
Joanne Oriti. You’ve dealt with fourteen thousand people every day at Sony, not to mention my insanity, and still managed to masterfully and politely handle all the details perfectly and always, always, make me look good to all.
Dave Glew. My buddy. You were always there with your steady and unrelenting positive energy to make things better, along with that yellow legal pad filled with details, and it was the details that took us to the head of the pack. I’m proud to sa
y you’re my friend.
Ann Glew. The energizer. You should’ve been running Sony. On top of that, you are the best event planner the world has ever known and now you are Tía Ann to my children. We love you.
Michele Anthony. You’ve been my right hand and sometimes my left hand, too. You put up with me night and day and helped me through every single dilemma—including trying to document this, make sense of it, shape it, and then layer in the richness of this amazing period of music. There’s no way we could’ve stayed ahead of the pack without you.
Mel Ilberman. Hyman Roth. Yoda. You provided my college education and PhD in music “business” on a daily basis, and I learned more every time you chewed me out.
Ronny Parlato. You’ve been through it all with me since riding our bikes when I was two years old in the Bronx. You are in the spine of this book in the same way your spirit has been in the too many homes that we’ve built together.
Doug Morris. A great friend. A fierce competitor. I will never forget you calling me every single day after Sony, which finally led to us to work together after thirty years. Your friendship means everything to me.
David Vigliano. The agent. You connected the dots and now here we are. How much did I pay you?
Ben Greenberg. The editor. You were the first to dive in, never wavered in your commitment, and came through with some incredibly creative ideas, constantly pushing me and pushing me.
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