Kings of A&R

A interview with Universal CEO Doug Morris that comes out in the December issue of Wired Magazine is a hot topic and has stirred up a storm of opinions. Doug Morris touches on several topics effecting the record industry including the iPod, iTunes, technology allowing new configuration, and file sharing. He says Universal Records will eventually transition from running a product-based business to running a service-based one.

Morris seems to be grappling with his emotions in the interview especially when it comes to downloading free music.

Morris Says:

An album that someone worked on for two years — is that worth only $9, $10, when people pay two bucks for coffee in Starbucks?” Morris sighs. “People never really understand what’s happening to the artists. All the sharing of the music, right? Is it correct that people share their music, fill up these devices with music they haven’t paid for? If you had Coca-Cola coming through the faucet in your kitchen, how much would you be willing to pay for Coca-Cola? There you go,” he says. “That’s what happened to the record business.”

“This business had been the same for 25 years,” he says. “The hardest thing was to get something that somebody wanted to buy — to make a product that anybody liked.”

This quote from Morris is spreading through the internet and is getting hammered by critics.

“There’s no one in the record industry that’s a technologist,” Morris explains. “That’s a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn’t. They just didn’t know what to do. It’s like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?”  “We didn’t know who to hire,” he says, becoming more agitated. “I wouldn’t be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me.”

Morris attempts to answer his critics by claiming that the record industry is a business of nurturing and breaking artists, not keeping up with the technological movement. Instead, Morris opened himself to more criticism. The record industry was well aware that the internet opened the flood gates and file sharing was becoming rampant. Rather than jumping head first into the digital age, the record industry is living  between two worlds (physical and digital) and trying to capitalize on both. Most industries like the record industry are grappling with the same problem.  I believe this quote  sums it up, “Today, we are living in a chaotic transition period to a new age defined by global competition, rampant change, faster flow of information and communication, increasing business complexity, and pervasive globalization”.