Hello I am here to save the Musak Business (and the shareholders)

This is the man who is promoting Paul Potts (and a few others). This article is very interesting, but it now has to purchased. Mathew Ingram, who put me onto the article, summarises the state of play in the music industry. Good if you are a consumer. Not so good if you are a Music Monopoliser. The balance of power has changed.

Rubin’s abilities have helped to create acts such as The Beastie Boys, and rescued fading stars such as The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond from oblivion. But can he save the entire industry? That’s the subject of the NYT piece, which goes into some detail about how iTunes and file-sharing have eviscerated the business, and how young music lovers pay little or no attention to the radio or buying CDs any more.

In fact, hiring a guy like Rubin — who refuses to attend meetings or have an office at Sony’s Columbia Records despite now being co-chief executive, and who wears cargo pants and a T-shirt instead of a suit — should be evidence enough that executives in the industry are scared out of their wits. And it’s clear that one of the things Rubin wants to focus on is the music, which would be a refreshing change.

I bought all of Johnny Cash's later stuff produced by Rubin. I loved the dark themes and the production. Clearly a very talented music man. Not sure he will be able to turn around a greedy capitalist music empire. I was interested in the article that places like Tower Records had failed and that MTV hardly played music videos. Shows how out of touch I am. Tower Records was hot stuff when I was in the US in the 1990s. Although we have an MP3 Player in the house, I never use it and don't really know how to sync and load files. Is that what you do?