New media monthly Wired this month features a profile on and interview with Universal Music chief Doug Morris, in which the magazine is critical of Morris' role in developing, or not, the digital music sector, while Morris himself admits that all record company execs struggled to keep up when the internet suddenly started revolutionising their business in the late nineties.
Looking back, Morris admits: "There's no one in the record company that's a technologist. 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? We didn't know who to hire. I wouldn't be able to recognise a good technology person - anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me".
He's right on one level, of course. We should remember that turning a large company that exists to secure recording rights and manufacture and sell plastic disks into a multi-faceted, multi-media, online, offline, all-IP-embracing artist brand manipulation agency isn't an easy task, especially when most of your workforce only knows how to secure recording rights and manufacture plastic disks. Though I seem to remember most major record companies spending five years refusing to even try to make that change, preferring instead to evict anyone from their building who suggested they should (and then suing them). I'd probably be more vitriolic about this normally (given there's articles in the CMU archives from eight years ago warning labels about the dangers of their dodgy digital strategies) but I kind of feel I should be defending the labels given that Wired themselves do a very good job of laying into Morris et al.
Reviewing Morris' role in the development of online music services, including his more recent reputation for driving a hard bargain with new players in the digital music space like YouTube and Microsoft's Zune Marketplace, the magazine itself says: "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. In truth, his motive is simple: he wants to wring every dollar he can out of anyone who goes anywhere near his catalogue. 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".
Aside from all the bitching, Morris also discusses his new previously reported Total Music venture in the article, his attempt to work with rival record companies and leading technology firms to launch a new service to rival Apple's dominance in the download market. He says he has agreements in principle from Warner Music and SonyBMG to participate in the new venture, and that he will look to his technology partners to provide much of the funding, especially at the outset.