April 18, 2008
Farewell to the classic A&R man
These are hard times for the old guard of A&R men at music companies who have clung on to power and perks for decades.
The greatest of them all, since the death of Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records, is 76-year-old Clive Davis, who has just been removed as the chairman of the BMG Label Group at Sony BMG.
Mr Davis still has a touch: he signed Leona Lewis, the British singer, who has just topped the US album charts. But he did not exactly discover her in a smokey club - she was a winner of the X Factor television talent show in the UK.
Talent shows and internet social networks such as MySpace have become a bigger force in promoting new singers than the old-fashioned route of being discovered in said club by an A&R man.
That raises the question, which clearly occurred to Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, the overall head of SonyBMG, of why Mr Davis was being paid an estimated $10m a year in a shrinking industry in which all the old verities are being challenged.
It seems that Guy Hands, who now owns EMI Group (and perhaps wishes that he did not) is not the only one who doubts whether so many A&R men are needed, or must be paid so well. He has just appointed a new head of A&R for EMI.
As I wrote the other day, talent-spotters are still needed in music companies. But the days of the highly-paid, self-indulgent A&R person who styled himself as the star of the show, are over.
Mr Davis, it seems, finally overstayed his welcome.
Did Guy Hands buy a proverbial “empty box”?
Posted by: J.J. | April 18th, 2008 at 7:06 pm | Report this commentDownloading has spoiled the business, has it not?
An Artists and Repertoire man I knew of was looking forward to the time when he could sit on his terrace overlooking a large expanse of water, drinking a beer and listening to ….Mahler.
Affronted and self indulgent executives of the biggest players in the music business attempted to strangle the concept of downable music at birth using the power of the law. They stuck to this approach like glue being far more concerned with maintaining the status quo than adapting to new challenges and opportunities. But in taking this line they simply handed a large chunk of their trade over to a computer company; Apple. Now as the web grows, new and aspiring bands are both promoting themselves and taking greater control over their affairs. They don’t need talent spotters to determine their fate; their audience is already out there. That is why EMI and the rest of the ancien-regime are dying.
Posted by: figurewizard | April 20th, 2008 at 11:39 am | Report this comment