Doug Morris | |
|---|---|
 Morris in January 2010 | |
| Born | November 23, 1938 |
| Education | Columbia University (BA) |
| Occupation | Record executive |
| Years active | 1960s–present |
Doug Morris (born November 23, 1938) is an American record executive. He served as chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Universal Music Group from 1995 to 2011, as well as Sony Music Entertainment from 2011 to 2017. He founded the record label 12Tone in 2018, where he's since served as CEO.
Born to Jewish parents, [1] Morris grew up in Woodmere, Long Island, in New York state. [2] His father, Walter Bernard Morris, was a lawyer, and his mother was a ballet instructor. [2] He is a graduate of Columbia University. [2] He began a career in the music industry as a songwriter for Robert Mellin, Inc., a music publisher. In 1965, Morris produced the self-titled debut album by the now-legendary garage band the Barbarians, which spawned two hit singles: "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl" and "Moulty", the latter of which Morris co-wrote. [3] Morris wrote "Sweet Talkin' Guy", a 1966 hit for The Chiffons, and produced the hit "Smokin' In the Boys Room" (1973) for Brownsville Station. After joining Laurie Records as a songwriter and producer in 1965, Morris eventually became vice-president and general manager of the record label. He later started his own label, Big Tree Records, which was acquired by Atlantic Records in 1974, which led to Morris becoming president of Atco Records and an association with Warner Music.[ citation needed ]
Morris became president of Atlantic Records in 1980, and became co-chairman and co-CEO of the Atlantic Recording Group, alongside Ahmet Ertegun, in 1990. Morris played an integral role in making Atlantic the leading company in the Warner Music Group. In 1994, Morris shifted to the position of president and chief operating officer of Warner Music U.S., and was soon named chairman. Morris lost an executive battle at Warner leading to his departure from Warner Music in 1995. [4]
Morris began working with MCA Records in July 1995 by forming a joint venture record label, which became Universal Records when Morris was appointed chairman and CEO of MCA Music Entertainment Group in November 1995. The company was renamed Universal Music Group the following year. He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; his ceremony was held on January 26, 2010, at the corner of Hollywood and Vine.[ citation needed ]
Morris was heavily criticized by music journalists for his approach to streaming services, especially the infamous PressPlay. [5]
Lucian Grainge replaced Morris as CEO on January 1, 2011, and later replaced him as chairman on March 9, 2011. [6]
Morris became chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment on July 1, 2011. [7] After Morris' arrival, Sony Music restructured two of its label groups. The RCA/Jive Label Group had been split in half, being separated from the Jive Label Group. Peter Edge was promoted to CEO of the RCA Music Group. [8] L.A. Reid became the chairman and CEO of Epic Records shortly after Morris' arrival. Some Jive artists have been moved to Epic while others have been moved to the RCA. In addition to splitting the RCA/Jive Label Group, the Columbia/Epic Label Group was also split. [9] In October 2011 Morris announced that Mel Lewinter had been appointed executive vice president of Label Strategy at Sony Music. [10] On April 1, 2017, he was replaced as CEO of Sony Music Entertainment by Rob Stringer, who was the CEO of Columbia Records. [11] [12]
In 2018, Morris founded the label 12Tone Music Group under Warner Music Group. [13] His first signing to the label was American rapper Anderson .Paak. [14]
Morris's progressive digital strategies led him to become the first media executive to monetize online music videos, essentially helping to create the music video-on-demand market online. [15] And nowhere is this more apparent than with the success of VEVO.
As the founder (and former chairman) of VEVO, Morris partnered with Google chairman Eric Schmidt to launch the new premium music video and entertainment service in late 2009. Within its first month of launch, VEVO amassed an unprecedented 35 million unique viewers in the U.S., instantly making it the #1 music entertainment destination on the Web, according to comScore. [16] [17]
In 2013, Morris served as co-producer and lead financier of the Broadway musical Motown: The Musical . Based on the life story of Motown founder Berry Gordy, and featuring classic songs from the Motown catalog, Motown: The Musical was nominated for four Tony Awards [18] and was the top-selling new musical of the 2012–13 season. [19] [20]
Morris serves on the board of directors of CBS Corporation, The Robin Hood Foundation, The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and The Rock -N- Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. In 2003, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) awarded Morris with the President's Merit Award, honoring his consistent creative commitment to artistic and entrepreneurial excellence and longstanding support for the music and world communities. In 2008, Morris was honored with City of Hope's Spirit of Life award, and in 2009, he received the NARAS Icons award as well as a star on the world-famous Hollywood Walk of Fame. [21] In 2014, Morris was honored by the Songwriters Hall of Fame with the Howie Richmond Hitmaker Award in recognition of being a star maker in the music industry who has been responsible for a substantial number of hit songs. [22] In 2015, he received an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music in recognition of his achievements and influence in music, and for his enduring contributions to American and international culture. [23]
RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America.
Arista Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the American division of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. The label was previously a division of BMG Entertainment, the North American division of German conglomerate Bertelsmann. Founded in November 1974 by Clive Davis and deactivated in 2011, Arista was re-established in 2018. Along with RCA Records, Columbia Records, and Epic Records, it is one of Sony Music's four flagship record labels.
Universal Music Group N.V. is a Dutch–American multinational music corporation under Dutch law. UMG's corporate headquarters are located in Hilversum, Netherlands and its operational headquarters are located in Santa Monica, California. The biggest music company in the world, it is one of the "Big Three" record labels, along with Sony Music and Warner Music Group. Tencent acquired ten percent of Universal Music Group in March 2020 for €3 billion and acquired an additional ten percent stake in January 2021. Pershing Square Holdings later acquired ten percent of UMG prior to its IPO on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange. The company went public on September 21, 2021, at a valuation of €46 billion.
Jive Records was a British-American independent record label founded by Clive Calder in 1981 as a subsidiary of the Zomba Group. In the US, the label had offices in New York City and Chicago. Jive was best known for its successes with hip hop, R&B, and dance acts in the 1980s and 1990s, along with teen pop and boy bands during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) was a division of a German media company Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Sony Corporation of America on 1 October 2008. Although it was established in 1987, the music company was formed as RCA/Ariola International in 1985 as a joint venture to combine the music label activities of RCA's RCA Records division and Bertelsmann's Ariola Records and its associated labels which include Arista Records. It consisted of the BMG Music Publishing company, the world's third largest music publisher and the world's largest independent music publisher and the 50% share of the joint venture with Sony Music, which established the German American Sony BMG from 2004 to 2008.
Warner Music Group Corp. is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the "big three" recording companies and the third-largest in the global music industry, after Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music Entertainment (SME). Formerly part of Time Warner, WMG was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange from 2005 until 2011, when it announced its privatization and sale to Access Industries. It later had its second IPO on Nasdaq in 2020, once again becoming a public company. With a multibillion-dollar annual turnover, WMG employs more than 3,500 people and has operations in more than 50 countries throughout the world.
Sony Music Entertainment (SME), commonly known as Sony Music, is an American multinational music company owned by Sony Entertainment and managed by the American umbrella division of multinational conglomerate Sony. It is the recording division of the Sony Music Group, with the other half being the publishing division, Sony Music Publishing.
The Island Def Jam Music Group (IDJMG) was an American recording music unit, formed on New Year's Eve 1998 by Universal Music Group. It consists of labels created under the basic operations of Island Records and Def Jam Recordings. On April 1, 2014, Universal Music Group publicly announced the disbandment of the Island Def Jam Music Group, leaving IDJMG and its affiliated subsidiaries as separate sister labels.
Universal Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group and operated as part of the Universal Motown Republic Group. The label has been dormant since 2006, due to Universal Motown and Universal Republic Records being formed and taking all of the artists from it. Those labels were eventually combined to form the latest iteration of Republic Records.
Hip-O Records is a record label that specializes in reissues and compilations. It is part of Universal Music Group. Established in 1996, the label has distributed releases from 'out of style' genres such as disco and early hip-hop music as well as publishing film soundtracks. The label's name is a pun on the name 'hippo'.
Sylvia Rhone is an American music industry executive. Since 2019, she is the chair and CEO of Epic Records, a label owned by Sony Music Entertainment.
RCA/Jive Label Group was a short-lived American record label group, owned by Sony Music Entertainment and representing the merger of the RCA Music Group and JIVE Label Group. The umbrella group was formed in 2007 under the name BMG Label Group, was rebranded as RCA/Jive Label Group in 2009. In July 2011 it was finally dissolved into two separate labels: the RCA Music Group and Epic Records which took Jive subsidiaries until October 2011 when it retired Jive Records along with Arista Records and J Records. The artists on those three labels were moved to RCA Records.
Michael Mark Lynton is a businessman and current chairman of Snap Inc. He previously served as chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment. In 2017, Lynton stepped down as CEO of Sony Entertainment to become Chairman of Snap, makers of the Snapchat mobile app. On February 12, 2019, he was named as chairman of Warner Music Group.
Barry Weiss is an American music executive. He co-founded the record label RECORDS in 2015, an imprint of Sony Music Entertainment which specializes in young recording artists.
RCA Music Group was an umbrella group of labels distributed by Sony Music Entertainment that existed between March 2004 and 2009, and for a short period of time between July 2011 and October 2011 as all RCA Music Group labels were merged with RCA Records.
Columbia/Epic Label Group was an American record label group, owned by Sony Music Entertainment. The Columbia/Epic configuration began as the "Sony Music Label Group" during the last year of the Sony BMG merger, and was restructured in 2009 to form a larger umbrella for Columbia Records and Epic Records to continue to operate. The group also comprises Aware Records, and Daylight Records, while also handling the distribution of E1 Music via Epic Records. Additionally, in conjunction with Legacy Recordings, it also manages the back catalogs of American Recording Company, Portrait Records and Private-I Records. The Columbia/Epic Label Group ended the year 2010 with the largest album market share among all label groups with a 10.96 share, according to The Nielsen Company. Rob Stringer acted as the CEO/Chairman of the company.
Peter Edge is an English-American record executive. He is the chairman and CEO of RCA Records.
Mel Lewinter is an American music industry executive. He is executive vice president of label strategy at Sony Music Entertainment.
Kemosabe Records is an American record label founded by American record producer and songwriter Dr. Luke and owned by Sony Music Entertainment. The label is based in Los Angeles, California.
Tom Corson is an American record executive. He is the co-chairman and chief operating officer of Warner Records, a position he has held since January 2018. He was previously the president and chief operating officer of RCA Records.
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