Rick Rubin – Recording Industry – Rock Music – New York Times
One of his conditions for taking the job at Sony, which owns Columbia, was that he wouldn’t be required to have a desk or a phone in any of the corporate outposts. That wasn’t a problem: Columbia didn’t want Rubin to punch a clock. It wanted him to save the company. And just maybe the record business. What that means, most of all, is that the company wants him to listen. It is Columbia’s belief that Rubin will hear the answers in the music — that he will find the solution to its ever-increasing woes.
Sony and the other majors have been concentrating on selling rather than creating. Creating has to come first. Hiring Rick Rubin might have been the smartest move they have made in a decade. Now they need to create some synergy between their hardware (gear) and software (music and film) departments.
I don’t think the subscription idea would work, nor do I believe that the “iPod is dead” or even close… Ruben is a visionary though.
Steve: I agree w both of your points.
Thanks for posting a link to this article. It was a good read. What with the ‘questionable” music that gets released by labels these days, it encouraging to see that someone in the mist of all those executives trying to sell music, still cares about the creativity factor…
All is not lost….there is still hope…