Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: It’s a rainy day in Southern California so I decided to fool around with one of the things I like doing best … experimenting with guitar sounds. I must confess I used to be pretty promiscuous with tonal experimentation. I went [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: When did the Doors’ records start going downhill? The answer to this question is shortly after their third record, however, the band’s incipient tendency to write bad songs is evident as early as their first, as I will explain. The problem [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: African-American spirituality has been expressed in a profound tradition of music dating back to the first days of slavery in the United States. One of the consistent lyrical themes of this genre is the temporality of life, its transience and impermanence, the problem of evil, and the promise of a better world to come.

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: This is not about who is the better guitar player, viz, Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page. Maybe the question (and their theoretical rivalry) stems from the fact that both of them were in that smokin’ slab of 1960s pop-psychedelia, the Yardbirds; [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: The Los Angeles Times recently has carried several stories about a series of tuba thefts that have plagued local area high schools, colleges, bands, orchestras and other performing aggregations. A quick www search reveals that L.A. is not the only jurisdiction [...]

Music Industry Newswire REVIEW: Yes, OK, it took him a long time to get them done, and some people still haven’t gotten theirs from the initial production run. I am pleased to advise, though, that it is well worth the wait. Ours arrived from Europe [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: For immediate dispatch from the wild and wooly frontier south of Disneyland – after a decade of resisting the blandishments and imprecations of colleagues I finally re-attended this year’s NAMM convention (Jan. 19-22, 2012). NAMM of course stands for the National [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: The Sundance Film Festival begins today (January 19th) in Park City, Utah, and runs for an exhausting 10 days through January 29th. When I was an executive in the independent film business I attended Sundance regularly. I’ll never forget the frisson [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Somehow the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia managed to get backed into a political corner where it had to shut itself down for a day (January 18th) in order to demonstrate solidarity with those protesting proposed legislation to restrict the prerogatives of web site owners.

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: A press release today (January 17th) from Clear Channel announces a new division called Entertainment Enterprises, to be headed by John Sykes. I think Sykes is a nice guy; I used to work with him when I was at Capitol-EMI and [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: By 1984 I had become gravely concerned (of course along with other key executives) about the profitability of Capitol-EMI’s U.S. labels. I met with Bhaskar Menon, then Chairman of EMI Music, and told him we needed to re-start a distributed labels [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Part of a continuing series on the history of Capitol-EMI Music. One of the themes I pursued with Bhaskar Menon (then head of EMI Music) in the early 1980s was the logic of forming a separate distribution company that would operate [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: This note is about what I have come to characterize as the entropy or misalignment of how information gets transmitted in the music and film businesses. I will define what I mean by this, and then illustrate it with two examples. [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: At the end of the previous post in this series we left the Koppelman regime “in full affect.” It was a truism that at Capitol-EMI during the late 1980s – early 1990s, every six months or so something dramatic would happen [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: The history of Capitol-EMI in the late 1980s – early 1990s is one of constant turmoil and upheaval. Management devised, attempted to implement, and then discarded different strategies as it tried to respond to the dynamics and exigencies of a rapidly-changing [...]

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: For some time Billboard Magazine published a “Top 200” chart, which purported to identify the 200 best-selling records in the country. It used a variety of methodologies over time to comprise this data. Initially it relied on “store reports” from a [...]

COLUMN: In April 1971 Joseph Lockwood (then chairman of EMI) fired Stanley Gortikov as president of Capitol Industries and Sal Iannucci as president of Capitol Records. As Lockwood expressed in EMI’s 1971 annual report, there was “evidence of ineffective management and lack of strong cost [...]

COLUMN: I thought it might be interesting to recapitulate the last days of United Artists Music and Records Group, Inc. (“UAR”) and the circumstances under which Capitol Industries-EMI, Inc. (“Capitol”) acquired it. The information set forth in this note is based on my personal knowledge [...]

COLUMN: Johnny Mercer was Capitol’s first president. Glen Wallichs succeeded Mercer in 1947. Alan Livingston succeeded Wallichs in 1961. One of Livingston’s main accomplishments was creating the cartoon character Bozo the Clown. Livingston got fired in July 1968 and was succeeded by Stanley Gortikov. Gortikov [...]

COLUMN: Johnny Mercer, Glen Wallichs and Buddy DeSylva founded Capitol Records, Inc. in 1942. For a history of Capitol see Grein, P. (1992) Capitol Records – Fiftieth Anniversary 1942 – 1992. Mercer initially capitalized the company with $25,000 (later reports credit both Mercer and DeSylva [...]

COLUMN: It always is entertaining to look at Warner Bros.’ financial results. Throughout its various permutations and incarnations it has remained a diversified entertainment conglomerate with interests in both music and films. It always has been subject to the financial reporting requirements of the U.S. [...]

COLUMN: Busy savoring that new, close-in parking spot? Well you’d better read this if you want to hang on to it. Hollywood long has been known for its cunning business tactics, callous ruthlessness, cutthroat entrepreneurialism and all-around gleeful back-stabbing. OK, Sammy Glick gained the world [...]

COLUMN: People in the movie business historically view people in the record business as some kind of inferior beings. Just ask David Geffen when he became Vice-Chairman of Warner Bros. Pictures after a successful career as head of Elektra/Asylum Records. As described in Tom King’s [...]

COLUMN: The conflict between CBS Records and the Warner Music Group is the stuff of record business legend. During the 1970s – 1980s they dominated the U.S. record industry. Walter Yetnikoff was head of CBS Records from 1975 – 1987. Mo Ostin was head of [...]

COLUMN: My previous post on sales of Beatles albums in the U.S. seems to have precipitated a lot of interest so I thought I’d briefly discuss the history of the Beatles contracts. If you’re interested in reading them, copies of the pertinent agreements are posted [...]

COLUMN: I thought I would make a list of propositions that everybody in the music business can agree on, regardless of their stance on various philosophical, economic and theological issues. In other words these are supposed to be completely neutral and not biased towards any [...]

COLUMN: The Fab Four once again is in the news with the announcement that remastered versions of their catalog will be available in September 2009 (source: Allan Kozinn, “Beatles Fans Await Re-Releases,” New York Times, April 8, 2009). The Beatles were Capitol Records’ most famous [...]

COLUMN: The answer is $5.1 billion pre-tax operating income on $83.6 billion of operating revenue, which is about how much people spend on French fries during one year in the U.S. I went through all of the Warner Communications, Time Warner and AOL Time Warner [...]

COLUMN: The Recording Industry Association of America (“RIAA”) is the trade association for the U.S. record industry. The Motion Picture Association of America (“MPAA”) is the trade association for the U.S. film industry. One of their pretend jobs is to compile and disseminate statistics pertinent [...]