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Live Nation boss tops Billboard’s power 100
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 31 January 2012
It’s always brave of an industry trade magazine to publish one of those ‘most important people in our business’ lists, given the politics of ensuring no key advertiser, subscriber or other influential contact is left out.
Old timers in the British record industry will remember that Sony-lite Music Week power list, and the subsequent fallout. But Billboard has put such concerns to the back of its mind and ploughed ahead with its first ever Power 100 list, lining up what it considers to be the 100 most important people in the American music business.
Five years ago the safe way to play it with one of these lists was to stick at geek in the top spot – usually Steve Jobs – so that all the egos actually within the music industry vying for the number one position could be told “well, you know, it’s all about computers these days, innit?” But Billboard hasn’t chickened out and gone with Mark Zuckerberg or Daniel Ek at the top, and instead has named Live Nation co-chief and veteran artist manager Irving Azoff the most important man in music.
Putting Live Nation, the biggest live music company in the world, ahead of Universal Music, the biggest music rights company in the world, is interesting for sure. Presumably Universal boss Lucian Grainge will take it on the chin though, partly because Live Nation and Universal became business partners last year, and partly because being officially labelled as only the second most important music company in the world could come in helpful when trying to convince American anti-trust regulators that letting Universal swallow up the EMI record company isn’t that big a deal really.
Grainge, though, isn’t even second, with Coran Capshaw, boss of artist management power house Red Light Management ahead of the Universal chief at number two. Although Capshaw has successfully dabbled in various music and online ventures over the years, his management agency is his core business. And given that Azoff rose to the top of Live Nation via his Front Line management business, now an important part of the live music conglom, I guess Billboard is really telling us the veteran artist managers have the real power in music at the moment.
Though the major label and publishing chiefs do start to appear as you scan down the list which you can find in full on the Billboard site below. And while most parts of the industry are covered, including music rights, live, management, digital and media, it’s not an especially diverse bunch. Certainly, if Billboard is to be believed, old white men are very much still in dominance at the top of the American music business.
The full 100 is here.
