(Shmoo by Michael Paulus)
Seth Mnookin penned a great interview with Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group, in the December issue of Wired Magazine. There’s so much in those four pages to comment on, but the angle I found most compelling was Doug Morris’ propensity to not be had.
By anyone.
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“There was a cartoon character years ago called the Shmoo,” he says in a raspy tenor. “It was in Li’l Abner. The Shmoo was a nice animal, a nice fella, but if you were hungry, you cut off a piece of him and put onions on it, and if you wanted to play football you just made him like a football. You could do anything to him. That’s what was happening to the music business. Everyone was treating the music business like it was a Shmoo.
“It was only a couple of years ago that we said, What’s going on here?’ Really, an album that someone worked on for two years — is that worth only $9, $10, when people pay two bucks for coffee in Starbucks?” Morris sighs. “People never really understand what’s happening to the artists. All the sharing of the music, right? Is it correct that people share their music, fill up these devices with music they haven’t paid for? If you had Coca-Cola coming through the faucet in your kitchen, how much would you be willing to pay for Coca-Cola? There you go,” he says. “That’s what happened to the record business.”
Morris goes on to rail against criminal-minded college students and low-life punks who steal the music that his artists work so hard to create. He admits to being fairly ignorant about technology and insists that his job is to nurture the creative side of the business — work that’s being threatened by all of this other nonsense.
So how is it that an old-school music mogul who can barely hide his indifference to technology or his contempt for the download-loving public is out front on so many digital initiatives? Clearly, it’s not because he wants to improve the music experience for consumers. It’s also not because he finally understands that MP3s are fundamentally changing his business, whether he likes it or not. And if he’s “invigorated and challenged by the opportunities of digital music,” as Caraeff puts it, that’s only because he relishes a fight. In truth, his motive is simple: He wants to wring every dollar he can out of anyone who goes anywhere near his catalog. Morris has never accepted the digital world’s ruling ethos that it’s better to follow the smartest long-term strategy, even if it means near-term losses. As far as he’s concerned, do that and someone, somewhere, is taking advantage of you. Morris wants to be paid now, not in some nebulous future. And if there’s one thing he knows how to do, it’s use the size of his company to get his way.
The problem is that a strategy based on quick returns is unlikely to pull the music industry out of its morass. After all, it was a reluctance to look farther down the road that got the labels in trouble in the first place. But Morris is much less interested in figuring out how to make digital music work for everyone than he is in not being the Shmoo.
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That last line completely encapsulates the feeling I get when any of these major label guys open their mouths or allow their agile-like-a-cruise-ship businesses to bounce off their artists like icebergs in the night.
If Doug Morris wants to build a proprietary subscription-based empire (Total Music) for delivering Universal Music Group and their PIC’s recordings, he’s perfectly within his rights to do so. It’s a bold move to attempt to wrestle back market share from the iPod and iTunes with such a DRM-laden scheme, but Morris is in tight with his executive colleagues feeling the sting of iTunes growth into overall music sales, so I’m sure they’ll collude on whatever level necessary to see progress.
They want their “proper” cut back, even if they step on a bunch of potential customers in the process.
Personally speaking, I don’t give them much of a shot — they can’t even secure the domain name for the service.
In the end, it’ll be the bottom-line customer experience drivers of music fans that decides the success of Doug Morris’ venture. People really do like to play their music where and when they want, especially as technophobes die off and each new generation seems to have an additional USB port built into their skulls at birth.
The nut of all this is that major labels have been cutting into artist profits and ownership since Elvis hit the scene, taking their piece of the pie like a fat kid at Thanksgiving, but they don’t like it when “outsiders” like Steve Jobs flips the script on their own racket.
I’m getting hungry. Anyone have some onions?
More opinions:
- Universal Music’s CEO Gleefully Explains How Clueless He Is
- Open Season: Doug Morris
- Universal Music CEO Doug Morris Speaks, Recording Industry in Even Deeper Shit Than We Thought
- Is Universal’s Doug Morris the stupidest recording exec ever?
- Universal Music CEO is Like Your Cranky, Out-of-Touch Grandpa Who Happens to Run a Huge Record Label
- Apparently Abraham Simpson is running UMG
- The recording industry should thank Apple
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