This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Labels & Publishers
Future Sony email leaks could focus on music
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 22 January 2015
Could the Sony record company be the next division of the entertainment giant to be embarrassed by a flurry of email leaks? Well, it could I suppose. And the New York Post reckons that top execs at Sony Music US are nervous that could be about to happen.
A stack of confidential correspondence between execs at Sony’s US-based entertainment business leaked late last year, of course, after the firm’s servers were hacked, seemingly in protest at the conglom’s backing of the film ‘The Interview’, which portrays the imagined assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Though most of the embarrassing notes leaked related to Sony’s film and television businesses, with the only significant music-related emails made public being those in which some senior Sony execs considered the merits of selling its music publishing joint venture Sony/ATV (something Sony/ATV chief Marty Bandier has since said won’t be happening).
But, says the Post’s gossip-gatherers, it’s thought further emails seized in the hack could be published online and as a result “top executives at Sony Music are bracing for more embarrassing emails to leak … after their boss – Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton – called to offer a ‘blanket apology’ in advance of any details that come out”.
One of the Post’s sources says that “Lynton called a number of department heads within Sony, including Marty and [Sony’s label chief] Doug Morris to give a blanket apology in advance for whatever else comes out”, while another added that concerns are highest that details about artist contracts or senior exec pay packets might leak.
Though the paper itself conceded that another source has played down the levels of panic at the major, insisting that Lynton “did not make a blanket apology” about possible future leaked emails, and instead had spoken to two top execs – possibly Bandier and Morris – about some specific matters relating to last year’s hack.
