DDoug Morris’ words have a lot of weight in the music world. In his career, the 82-year-old American is at least among the top three industry giants Warner. Sony And Universal Music. The comments about his successor Lucian Grainge, who is at the top of the world, have also persisted accordingly. The seemingly harmless, cute little face and narrow-rim glasses, “but behind it is actually a murderous shark.”
The same Grainge took over in January 2011, and Morris was hired as the owner of Sony Music a few months later. At that time, today’s bright prospects and investors’ competition for music copyright seemed far away. However, a calm comparison of figures shows how the “killer” from London helped Universal Pictures emerge from the crisis and adapt to the new, mainly digital music world: It is said that in mid-2013, the parent company Vivendi rejected the acquisition from SoftBank. The offer is as high as 6.5 billion euros. In the latest stock sale on the eve of the IPO scheduled for September, Universal’s valuation is now 35 billion euros -Some analysts still believe that there is a lot of room for improvement. The 61-year-old manager can also understand this as an evaluation of his work.
The bet with EMI was very successful
In the late 1970s, when young Grainge played in the legendary London punk scene where The Clash and Sex Pistols grew up, the business was still different. However, he gained insight early on through his father, who owns multiple record stores, and his brother, record company manager. All this obviously left a deep impression: he just graduated in 1979 and hired music publishers in the field of “Artists and Repertoires” (A&R)-responsible for finding new trends, talents and supporting them. The rock band Psychedelic Furs was his first goal. After establishing the British publishing department of the music company Polygram in 1986, the department was merged into the current Universal Music Group in 1999 and turned to record companies in 1993. Through the management of the British Universal branch and the management of all operations outside the United States since 2005, he finally reached the top of the world’s largest music company.
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As Morris’ successor, he is said to have been established for a long time. Of course, there are various success stories on his business card: the rise of Amy Winehouse, Take That’s comeback, or the temptation of the Rolling Stones. Electromagnetic interferenceFor this great Arsenal London fan and his family, moving to the United States goes hand in hand with it. Grainge did not operate Universal like Morris from New York, but decided to locate in Los Angeles in a short time. This is the headquarters of many important Universal Groups, but the most important thing is to be closer to the technology giants. Bring the music business to the right place for digitization. Grainge was also one of the early people convinced by Spotify and the streaming media model, which recently enabled the music record market to grow for the sixth consecutive year.
Vivendi always gives him a relatively free hand
The streaming craze is not just a catalog craze. In a world where almost all music can be streamed permanently, works that have been years or decades old continue to generate revenue without the need for large new investments. In this context, taking over the EMI record company may be Grainge’s masterpiece. Universal acquired the copyright of the Beatles Records in 2012 for 1.9 billion U.S. dollars. When the industry was in a serious crisis due to piracy, it made a lot of money. Especially because the competition regulator also sold the cool play brand Parlophone.
But Grainge didn’t want to let the opportunity of contacting the British music icon slip away. “This is Lucian’s first brilliant coup as the boss of Universal,” Thomas Hesse, then Sony Music Manager, said in an interview with FAZ. Sony was preparing to make up for it. But with “the nature of the EMI business, Universal Music’s leading position in the record market has been consolidated.” To this day, Grainge is happy to give up how many people thought the purchase was a bad idea—and how he had the right nose again.
