Universal Music CEO Doug Morris Speaks, Recording Industry in Even Deeper Shit Than We Thought
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/11/universal_music_ceo_doug_morris.html
In the December issue of Wired, Seth Mnookin sits down with Universal Music Group CEO/supervillain Doug Morris for a pretty excellent profile (which is, tragically, not yet online). In it, Mnookin paints the 68-year old Morris as a crotchety executive who's upset that he can't focus more on simple product and artist development because he's too busy worrying about iPods, MP3s, and his company's digital strategy (which was never really supposed to be part of his job description when he took the gig in 1995). In a way, he almost comes off as cute, like if your grandfather were accidentally hired to run Google (at one point, Morris hilariously compares his embattled industry to a character in "Li'l Abner," a comic strip that stopped running in 1977).
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When Morris is asked why the music business didn't work harder, in
the early days of file-sharing, to build its own (legal) online
presence, there's this exchange:
"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?"
Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that
wasn't an option. "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."