LA Reid

Moses Supposes

Moses Supposes: Goodbye, Edgar; We Hardly Knew Ya

Moses Avalon is one of the nation’s leading music-business consultants and artists’-rights advocates and is the author of a top-selling music business reference, Confessions of a Record Producer. More of his articles can be found at www.mosesavalon.com.

Is the Bronfman exit the sign of great things to come in the record biz?

So Warner Music Group chairman Edgar Bronfman quit. Who cares? Well, I do, and so should you if you’re an artist or anyone who services one.

I never met Mr. Bronfman. The closest I came was to sit a table away from him at an awards function years ago, and here is the embarrassing part: I didn’t even know it was him.

Ed changed the music business, and though we could argue for another ten years as to whether he changed it for better or worse, the truth is that it’s now irrelevant, because it’s his departure and this particular time that has meaning. Now that the most significant (albeit not the largest) label, Warner, is in control and positioned to be the most influential distributor in the game, what is the Russian guy who bought it gonna do? He’s going to clean house as step one.

Ed didn’t just quit. He was fired. Not with a pink slip, but by the natural merger and acquisitions attrition of a golden parachute and planned obsolescence. If you didn’t see this coming, you’re not paying close enough attention to the recent music-biz math.

Moses Supposes

Moses Supposes: Epic gives up the Ghost

Moses Avalon is one of the nation’s leading music-business consultants and artists’-rights advocates and is the author of a top-selling music business reference, Confessions of a Record Producer. More of his articles can be found at www.mosesavalon.com.

Ah, what happened to the days when being a music executive meant that you could party with the acts in your office, sleep late, yell at underlings, and get rewarded even if your numbers were bad? Well, they’re still here, unless you happen to have one important character flaw: a vagina.

You gotta read this Hollywood Reporter article on the firing of Epic president Amanda Ghost first, if you haven’t already.

You know, I’ve always said that as far as sexism is concerned, the music space defied the odds. We have far more female executives in positions of true power than probably just about any other industry, except maybe TV.

In my first book, Confessions of a Record Producer, in the “Miscellaneous Myths” section, I actually have a chapter called “Are Women Discriminated Against in the Music business?” Using statistics and raw data, it proves that the answer is “no.” We have a great deal more gals in the driver’s seat than any other biz. But after what Epic and, independently, the law firm of Boies Schiller have done, I think that I need to take another look.