HOW MUSIC GOT FREE CHAPTER 9Dominic Magli

DOUG MORRIS- UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP

Doug Morris is a record executive. He was previously been the CEO of then Universal Music Group from 1995 to 2011 before being the current CEO of Sony Music Entertainment. One of the most important years of his time being at the Universal Music Group was the year 1999. This is primarily due to the fact in the 12 months following the merger Universal Music Group pulled in over $6billion in revenue which came from CD sales and at the time was the largest music company in the world that was controlling one quarter of the global market. These key markets were both North America and Europe.

He was not a huge fan of technology, seeing it as an annoyance and instead was focused on making big hits from music videos. One of the reasons why he was so successful was that he followed the standard business techniques, such as stretch revenue targets and incentivized contracts. Morris had a billion dollar budget sign and had over 10,000 employees under his command. Universal's back catalog contributed to 30% of the company’s overall revenue stream.

The Polygram record label, which merged with UMG in 1998, had dominated the music industry. Due to this, Morris became the most powerful record executive in history. In June 2000, Universal would be sold to Vivendi, the French media conglomerate. Morris had became the best paid man in music for a decade(from 2001 to 2011) due to the resulting contract.

JAY Z- DEF JAM

The artists that were unmerging into the music industry with the help of the Universal Music Group promoting their music and their labels. For example, Jay Z at the time was signed to Def Jam which was based in New York and with the help of the universal music group it had pushed the average realized retail price of an album to $14 per disc. Jay Z, whose real name is Shawn Corey Carter had collaborated with the music producer Timbaland and Texas rap duo UGK(Underground Kingz) to create the crossover hit ‘Big Pimpin’ which was released in April 2000 when Carter was 29 years old. In late 1999, Jay Z suspected that a rival producer had leaked his album Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter, a month before it’s release. Carter had confronted the producer in a night club and had stabbed him.

Jay Z in the ‘Big Pimpin’ video

UGK members Bun B & Pimp C

Timbaland

LYOR COHEN AND JIMMY IOVINE FUED

Lyor Cohen led Def Jam, which at the time was said to be the ‘most important African American music company since Motown’ by the magazine Newsweek. Cohen had feuded with Jimmy Iovine; who worked with the many major artists, one of them was the infamous Eminem at the time, who in later years has been regarded as one of the best rappers of all time. Jimmy Iovine was also working for the record label Interscope in Los Angeles in 1999. Iovine was the co-founder of interscope. The two started to cut backroom deals in order to steal each others artists, Cohen went after Sisqo who is a R&B singer and Iovine went after Limp Bizkit which are an American rock band. Ultimately, this rivalry between the two labels actually only had one man who was really victorious and that was Doug Morris. This is because they both work under Doug Morris and he encourages these record dealers to battle over supremacy in the music industry.

Lyor Cohen

Jimmy Iovine

SHAWN FANNING- NAPSTER

Shawn Fanning is a computer programmer. In June of 1999 when Fanning was 18 years old, he had released a new piece of software that he developed called Napster. The idea he had with Napster was to have a peer-to-peer file sharing service which connected users to a centralized server where they could trade songs which were encoded into a MP3 format. This allowed music piracy to be available to everyone instead of a select group of people.

Overtime, download speeds had improved as technology was improving which made it easier for people to download songs from Napster. Furthermore, Fanning had accomplished what Dieter Seitzer couldn’t, which was creating a digital jukebox. The digital jukebox was an idea to have a secure storage of where music can be stored and have accessed to.

The year 2000 was a big year for the software, as it had just under 20 million users and as the year progressed over 14,000 songs had been downloaded every minute. In addition, it was also a free software, so many people would’ve gone onto it to download music without paying for it. Fanning had employed Sean Parker, who had became the public face of both Napster and Facebook.

In addition, Shawn’s uncle John Fanning had became the CEO and chairman of the company due to the exchange deal which gave Shawn 70% of Napster’s equity. Napster boom the coincided with the two best years of the recording industry had ever saw, this was because it without a critical mass of portable music players, mp3s fueled were still an inferior good. In the end, Napster severs went offline in July 2001, however it had opened the door for piracy of music and since there have been many new iterations of illegally download programs.

Shawn Fanning

Sean Parker

John Fanning

HILARY ROSEN-RIAA

Hilary Rosen is an American communications consultant and worked for the RIAA(Recording Industry Association of America) for 16 years before becoming the CEO from 1998 to 2003. Rosen had came out after the Grammy Awards to address a group of music business power brokers in the Beverly Hills Hotel. After this event, Rosen had became the public figure of the record industry’s opprobrium which made her an unpopular figure. However, although she was denouncing Napster publicly, behind the scenes she was actually pushing for Napster to cut a deal with the major labels.

This assisted Napster because major record label heads we’re interested in making an investment in the software such as: Junior and Thomas Middlehoff. There was a lawsuit that was filed by Doug Morris which was a plan to wipe the MP3 out of existence, he did this by using the RIAA to sue the device makers of the MP3 which were Diamond Multimedia Systems. In the end, Napster which was on the side of the RIAA won against Diamond in 2000.