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Universal shifts Verve Label Group under its global classical and jazz division
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 22 March 2019
You know about the worldwide growth in the consumption of classical and jazz repertoire, right? You’d want to capitalise on that, yeah? Well, do you know what capitalising on the worldwide growth in the consumption of classical and jazz repertoire requires? Yep, you got it, a focusing of all global artist development and marketing strategy for those genres under one unified management structure. That’d do it.
That’s what I think anyway. Meanwhile, Universal Music yesterday announced that “to capitalise on the worldwide growth in the consumption of classical and jazz repertoire, the company will focus its global artist development and marketing strategy for those genres under a unified management structure”. Can you believe they stole my idea?
This grand plan basically means shifting the mega-major’s US-based Verve Label Group under its existing globally focused Universal Classics And Jazz division, which also includes Deutsche Grammophon and the Decca Label Group. The move expands the portfolio of Universal Classics And Jazz boss Dickon Stainer. Meanwhile current Verve Label Group CEO Danny Bennett will leave the business.
Says Stainer about his expanded remit: “Classical and jazz are amongst the musical wonders of the world. Streaming has opened a flood of discovery and has further enabled us to ensure our artists have a global reach. The developing international success of Max Richter, Gregory Porter, Lang Lang, Jacob Collier and Sheku Kanneh-Mason, among others, has demonstrated that we need to work with a seamlessly coordinated global approach [to achieve] the greatest results possible on behalf of our exceptional artists”.
So that’s fun isn’t it? It’s a good move though. Like I’ve always said, Stainer is an extraordinarily creative leader with an open-minded approach to identifying artists and then marketing them in ground-breaking ways. What a guy.
Anyway, here’s Universal big boss Lucian Grainge with some thoughts: “Dickon is an extraordinarily creative leader with an open-minded approach to identifying artists and then marketing them in ground-breaking ways”. Hey, Luci, get your own opinions!
