Universal Music’s Top Exec Declares Proudly: “We’re Not In The Art Business”
Lucian Grainge, Universal Music Group's C.E.O, heads the world's largest music group. And if, as expected, UMG's merger with EMI goes through this week, his power to influence music and the music industry will grow exponentially. But in an interview with The New Yorker singing the praises of Justin Beiber manager Scooter Braun, Grainge made it clear that he believes running a music company has nothing to do with art:
“the company likes hits, the fans like hits, and that’s what he’s there to do – make hits.
We’re not in the art business.”
How does Braun view his on role as artist manager? "I’m a camp counsellor for pop stars,” he told the magazine proudly.
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Gee, could it be he’s saying they’re not in the business of selling pretentious bullshit that nobody enjoys, but poseurs like to masturbate over?
If these guys were as good at running their business as they are at making themselves look like assholes, they’d be trillionaires by now.
But I guess they’re waiting on their 75 trillion dollar Limewire settlement for that. #EPICFAIL
Yup..these characters are the complete Doughnuts, that have allowed this industry to go down the swanny river.
Joe Public.is paying more per single track, for a lesser quality product (mp3), & that product doesnt even belong to them (itunes licensed)…so they are really heading in the right direction!….All they have done is ALLOW music to become completely disposable!. So yeah they are earning their salaries alright.
and as ONLY this week….The UK (9000) sales.& The US (48000) sales have hit an ALL TIME low in Chart Sales…So its goodbye to the Cd format. These cretins have RUINED this industry, they havent the nouse, or intelligence to form a stable industry, If I was a shareholder,Id be going balistic. The industry is a mess, they have had plenty of time to come up with solutions to introducing a better model of sales generation & they have well & truly FAILED. Tossers the lot of them, All they are doing NOW is trying to tap into the Electronic scene, as with regards POP music, again they have failed in all depts. No real talent spotting, no real “New thing” band discoveries…
Christ almighty, set up a decent studio, (Like they just have for Zedd@Interscope) pay teachers/tutors/songwriters/Voice Coaches to TEACH the next generation the skillset needed, rather than “hope” the next Eminem will walk thru thru their office door. Majors Labels need a good slap & a modern approach to the 21st century music business model. Dinosaurs the lot of them.
Its this type of attitude that will lead him to not be in business at all in the next few years.
Wow, so much hate. Do you guys even know what a record label does? All Lucian did was give Scooter a compliment.
Straight from the article:
Universal Music Group, one of the “big four” record companies, recently signed a distribution deal with Braun’s label and named him its first technology “entrepreneur in residence.” Lucian Grainge, Universal’s C.E.O., told me, “He understands the entertainment business, he understands rights, he understands intellectual property, products, social networking, tech—that’s what I’m betting on.” Also, he added, “the company likes hits, the fans like hits, and that’s what he’s there to do—make hits. We’re not in the art business.”
Not sure if Hypebot is trying to insinuate something here by quoting Lucian out of context, but great job piling on everyone.
Why don’t you actually read the linked article before posting this kind of garbage.
I dont understand why this should be wrong? They are in the entertainment industry and why is that wrong? Is it wrong to earn money on music? Comeone guys…
A record label IS a commercial company and they also SHOULD be commercial. If they’re not, why should any artist pay some of their money (indirectly) to a label if the label is not capable of creating income for the artist (and the company itself)…
David……..garbage in your eyes it may be, but the “contextual quote” summed up the state of the industry that they are supposed to be in….
they may not be in the “ART business”…….But they also most certainly are NOT in the music business!!
The Ceo’s of the major labels need put up against a wall m8….their inability & failure to move quick enough with technology has made out industry purely disposable, and inits current business model is a shambles…..Your US based “Majors” ..as currently the UK has NO Major record labels left…Are supposed to LEAD by example. Of that they have failed miserably, IF they stop “doin lunch” for 5 minutes & get with the program, they might realise this.
BTW I am one of only a handful of Electronica artists that have ever been signed to a Major Label (Sony) So I have seen what the industry is about fella, from the inside out, Im not an armchair critic by any means)
They failed to move with Tech, they refused the most important delivery system offered to them for free (Fraunhofer MP3 Codec was offered to EVERY Major Label for possible inclusion, they ALL refused) here we are 14 years LATER ..in a devalued, financially crippled Industry
They stayed in their offices, living the dream while the rest of the world moved on…making our product & Industry currently completely valueless.
The only 2 companies making any real money in the “Music” industry are a computer company (Apple/Itunes) & an Events Promotion company (Live Nation)
SO I feel quite rightly CEOs of ANY Major deserve NO News, even if it is for stupid statements re “Art Business”. Once they start hiring Staff with a clue about the modern world & what people actually want, commercial or otherwise, when they start putting money back into the coffers again, when they move OUT of the red, it may be a different story, but as of NOW, Every Major on the planet is BANKING on Publishing to pull them into the red….
The numbers regarding buying back catalogues & hoping that Sync & Publishing put money in their pockets to survive…dont & will not add up, Labels receive No money from Live Gigs (Artists revenue) They Receive NO real money from Streaming (Spotify etc) as they were banking on 4-5 yrs ago…..SO where is the fruits of their well thought out Masterplan?.
Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group “Out of His Mind?”
We can appreciate that all businesses are free to operate the way that they see fit. The point of singling out Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group’s statement is to bring attention to the philosophy that is a foundational flaw to what has gone wrong with record labels. The numbers don’t lie when it comes to what works, and what works is artistic expression!
If you were to take a look at the list of the largest selling albums in history, a vast majority of them have one thing in common and that is the artist had free reign of artistic expression. Regardless of the style of music, with each of these albums the artist was able to execute at a high level what they wished to express. The result was the labels having a catalog of music in which the same product finds large numbers of sales each time a new music format arrives on the scene. With that being said, when record labels offer themselves for sale the only thing they have to offer is their catalog! So the question is what makes a good catalog?
In short, a good catalog is a collection of music that resonates over time while consistently gaining new audiences who find themselves identifying even if the music was made 30 years ago. The only type of music the can truly pull that off is those works that contain the fullness of the artistic expression. Again, numbers don’t lie and a quick glance at the list of the biggest selling albums of all time will prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt. Labels can point the finger and complain about pirated music as much as they want, in reality it appears that “fast food music” was the real issue and pirating became the perfect scapegoat.
That leaves us with this formula: Full artistic expression + People relating + Proper exposure= Huge sales figures over long periods of time!
Written by: A.K.I.
Member of the group VEIL
http://www.soundsofveil.com
Yeah if by “pretentious bullshit that nobody enjoys” you mean stuff that won’t make your ears bleed and people will want to buy naturally without having to cave into peer pressure and at the same time being under the age of 13.
There’s a reason more and more people are turning away from the music industry and why sales are down. If you want to listen to Farrah Abraham, be my guest, and leave the good music to those of us with a working cerebral cortex.
I think that is a sad admission but he´s probably not the only one who thinks it. 🙁 Architectural practices manage to balance (perhaps not art) but design with commerce sucessfully (Norman Foster etc). Their design *is* their business. Record companies should be able to find a way to apply this to their own sector.
If you’re talking about the distributor side of the equation it’s the music business not art business. If you’re coming from the artists, suppliers to business sider, it get’s tricker as to which they see themselves in or doing. Of course the consumer’s have a whole different notion and this quote seems to sum it up. “it’s easy to tell when a song is bad, but only the public and the market decide what sells.” @tullman and I’ll add what’s art.
LMFAO @ everyone here defending “the art business” — but what is the art business? A multi-billion dollar market in status symbols for the extremely rich that has a strong secondary role in laundering drug money.
If anyone here seriously thinks they’re in “the art business” that’s adorable. Pray that you find a manager with the clarity of Lucian Grainge.
Lowest Common Denominator. He’d rather sell 10 million copies of Justin Bieber & Rihanna than 50,000 copies of 200 great albums, as there’s a bit more profit in it.
But as someone really arty once said “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?”
It just cheapens us, like Reality TV, gossip mags and tabloid newspapers. He’s telling us that The Biggest Music Company in the World, just about to eat the last big British one, is NOT INTERESTED IN MAKING & SELLING GREAT ALBUMS ANYMORE. well, fuck off then you total fucking waste of space. I want to hear another Dark Side of the Moon, Exodus, Abbey Road, Highway 61 and on and on. If that’s not your goal you are no longer fit for purpose. You should leave your job immediately and go and find something useful to do. Fuck, we have seriously gone wrong somewhere.
The lowest common denominator of anything is always the most accessible, yet considered the worst kind of whatever it is by those that study it. Hence anyone who knows anything about music being disgusted by mainstream radio, or anyone that knows anything about movies being disgusted by movies like “Transformers”…