Music Biz Features

This story appears in Rolling Stone‘s 2021 Future of Music issue, a special project delving into the next era of the multibillion-dollar hitmaking business. Read the other stories here. Neil Jacobson calls himself the best salesman in the music business. It’s not without reason. Over the course of his two-decade …

Depending on who you ask, live music won’t be back in full force for months, seasons, or even several more years. Even after a Covid-19 vaccine rolls out around the globe, it’ll be a while before concert tours can reassemble and restart. So AEG, the largest music promoter in North …

Sign up to receive your free exclusive Grammy Preview magazine for next year The most sensational moment of the 2020 Grammys took place a week and a half before the ceremony. With hundreds of artists and music executives en route to Los Angeles for the January 26th awards show and …

In an earlier life, Jason Owen worked in television for visionaries like Aaron Spelling. Now as one of Nashville’s most influential managers, he’s taking what he learned from the 90210 creator to revive country music’s long-standing history with TV — and maybe catapult the next real superstar in the process. …

British executives are flying high in the global music business. The leaders of Universal Music Group (Sir Lucian Grainge) and Sony Music Group (Rob Stringer) are both Brits, as is the global head of recorded music at Warner Music Group (Max Lousada). Elsewhere — global A&R at Kobalt is run …

At Workis a Rolling Stoneseries exploring how decision-makers in the fast-changing music business spend their hectic days — as well as what burgeoning ideas they’re keen to explore, what advice they’d give to industry newcomers, and more.Readearlier interviews here. Few people have a résumé as eclectic as Paris Cabezas. He …

By and large, major music companies will be thankful not to be Disney right now. The “Happiest Place on Earth” has had fair reason for glumness of late, due to the economic turmoil evinced by, you guessed it, the knock-on effects of COVID-19. Disney’s annual revenue in fiscal 2019 stood …

This is the tenth installment of Rolling Stone’s seriesAt Work, in which we explore the fast-changing music business from the perspective of a different industry leader each week. Readearlier pieces in the series here. When John Mayer was just a promising new guy with a ton of potential, he needed …

Most residents of Los Angeles view their daily commute as a traffic-clogged nightmare. Anne Kavanagh sees all that dead time as opportunity. Kavanagh is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Steereo, a two-year-old startup that pays ride-sharing drivers to play independent artists’ music, effectively turning drivers into indie promoters. …

Listen to an audio version of this story below: When Bob Donnelly entered the music business as a lawyer in 1976, payola, or pay-for-play, was standard in the radio industry. “When I first started, it was hookers and blow [to help get songs on the air],” Donnelly says. “Then that …