Thursday, February 21, 2013
Sony Music Chief Will Cross the Pond Next Week to Discuss Creativity and Change in the Music Biz
Doug Morris will share his encyclopedic knowledge of the biz at the
University of Oxford’s
Distinguished Speaker Seminar. The special event, hosted by the University’s
Saïd Business School, will take place
next Thursday (2/28). It has a really snappy title: “From Adele to Zeppelin: Managing Creativity and Change in the Music Business” (although it’s technically “from Zeppelin to Adele”). Note: There will be absolutely no smokin’ in the boys’ room during the event.
But there will be plenty of knowledge dropped by the legendary exec, whom
Business Week described as “the godfather of the music industry” in a recently published
profile, which is a must-read, even if you think you know everything there is to know about the guy.
‘He’s as crazy as the rest of us,”
Stevie Nicks told writer
Devin Leonard. “He’s a real music guy.” Said
Mary J. Blige, “He always had my back. He’s like a father to me.”
Bono was effusive in his praise, stating, “He’s not just the president of Sony Music Entertainment. He’s the president of the entire music industry.”
“The industry is transitioning itself into something that will be very valuable, unless we screw it up,” Morris says in the piece. “There’s big money coming in from videos. Huge money. There’s a transition from ownership to access personified by something like
Spotify. We’re making a lot of money from this explosion in Internet radio, the
Pandoras of the world. You can see
Apple getting ready to get into it. It’s a better business. The margins are higher.”
Later in the piece, he says, “I get into trouble because I’ll say that nothing has changed in the whole industry since I started. What hasn’t changed is you need a hit. What has changed? We distribute music differently, and we sell music differently. Big deal.”