No Rock And Roll Fun

MAJOR LABEL GUY SOUNDS LIKE US: The people who make a fine, creamy living off the music industry seem to have been Stepfordian in the last few years, firmly insisting that the only thing wrong with their businesses is the threat from those damn kids and their computers and CD burners. Now, at last, one of them has broken ranks: John Grady, president of Sony Music Nashville, has suggested that the game's over for Big Music:

"I believe the major label [business] model is broken. It's too expensive, it's too slow, it's too big. Being too slow and being too big - and it's big in every way - makes it too expensive. And with a major company comes a lot of red tape and bureaucracy that makes [it] not extremely nimble."

And there's more: sounding like every fourth posting on No Rock over the last couple of years, Grady makes a simple observation about what the record industry needs to do to stop the rot:

"The first thing we have to do in order to do that is to make some music that somebody wants to buy."

This man shouldn't be in the country offshoot. He should be given control of the whole music division.