No More Double Dipping For The Barefoot Producer
The New York Post ran a story a few days ago reporting that Rick Rubin would be leaving Sony in a few weeks, well before his contract expires in 2012 and is rumored to wind up at Warner Music. Duh. Where else would he go? Lucien Grainge is too smart to fall for Rubin’s act and EMI certainly won’t spend the money. Besides, hasn’t Rick been working for Warner during his entire Sony tenure anyway? A Warner insider told me “if I were Sony, I’d be asking Warner to pay Rick’s salary for the last 5 years. Rick is the George Castanza of the music business–he’s been double-dipping for years now.”
The Post report goes on to describe the feud between Rick and his co-chairman at Columbia Records, Steve Barnett, which I have documented here over the last year.
The report points out that Barnett will take the hit for the soft sales of the last Beyonce album “in the eyes of new boss, Sony CEO Doug Morris”, and you read about it here back in July.
Just last month I called out Barnett for planting blind items in industry gossip rags dissing Rubin and taking credit for signing Adele. Yes, Barnett brilliantly out-maneuvered Epic Records to score the licensing deal for Adele, which, incidentally, originated from a licensing deal made with Sony UK. But sign Adele as an artist? Nope.
Barnett was clueless enough to post a comment to my post denying any knowledge of the blind item in question and went on to question the veracity of my sources. Evidently the NY Post is speaking to the same people who talk to me.
One thing is for sure though, Barnett’s PR people must have beaten the hell out of him for responding to my post, especially since I went on to spank him hard in an open letter a few days later and the Post reported “A Columbia rep said she ‘didn’t know’ about Rubin’s departure but said the feud between Barnett and Rubin was ‘100 percent not true’.” Sound familiar?
Related posts:
- Mud Wrestling At Sony Music
- Sony Music Palace Intrigue: Stringer Neutered ‘For The Good Of Mankind’
- Big Week At Sony While Beyoncé Sinks
- Leaving Town On The Marrakesh Express
- Numbers Belie Sony Music’s “Success”
Posted by Wayne Rosso
on Oct 25 2011. Filed under featured, Labels.
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Dude. Get off the Sony guys. It’s boring.
Anyone with half a brain can see you have an axe to grind with them.
Who cares how they got Adele? She’s the biggest artist in the world!