Clive Calder

Last updated

Clive Calder
Born
Clive Ian Calder

(1946-12-13) 13 December 1946 (age 77)
Johannesburg, Transvaal, Union of South Africa
Citizenship British citizenship [1] and South African citizenship - dual citizenship
OccupationBusinessman
Years active1971–2003
Known forCo-founder, Zomba Group
SpousePatricia
Children2

Clive Ian Calder (born 13 December 1946) is a South African-British billionaire record executive and businessman primarily known for co-founding the Zomba Group with Ralph Simon, and its subsidiary Jive Records. As of October 2021, Calder has an estimated net worth of US$5.5 billion. [1]

Contents

Early life

Calder was born in and grew up in Johannesburg, Transvaal, Union of South Africa. [1]

Career

Calder started his first record company in 1971 in South Africa with Ralph Simon. [2] By 1975, Calder and Simon had relocated to London and established Zomba as an artist and producer management company. By 1978, Zomba had expanded to include music publishing and opened offices in New York City. In 1981 Calder and Simon formed their first record label Jive, and Calder began to create a name for Jive as an important outlet for hip hop and rap music with the help of new hire Barry Weiss. [3] [4]

Jive's success was followed by Silvertone Records in 1988 and countless others throughout the nineties. [5] After an unspecified "ethical disagreement," Calder bought Simon's stake in Zomba and became the sole owner in 1990. [6] In the late nineties, Jive expanded its success to include teen pop phenomenons such as the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC and Britney Spears, all of which topped the charts. [7] In 2002 he sold Zomba for US$2.74 billion to the German-based media group Bertelsmann. [8] Though Calder was offered a position within the newly restructured Zomba Label Group, he instead chose to stay on temporarily as an advisor during the integration period, and eventually left the music business in 2003. The Zomba Label Group, which had been founded by BMG as parent for all Zomba labels in 2004, was integrated with all its labels into BMG Label Group in 2007, while at the same time the Zomba brand ceased to exist. In 2009 the group was renamed as RCA/Jive Label Group under Sony Music, and in October 2011, Jive Records, as well as the whole Jive brand, was discontinued, with their most successful artists being moved to RCA Records and partly to Epic Records. [9] In May 2018, The Washington Post reporter Geoff Edgers wrote "The Star Treatment", a lengthy article alleging music industry executives' willful blindness to label artist R. Kelly's sexually abusive behavior toward underage girls. Edgers reported that as early as 1994, Kelly's tour manager urged Calder to tell Kelly he would not release the singer's records if he continued to have "incidents" with young women and minors after every concert he gave. Calder told the Post that he regretted not having done more at the time, saying "Clearly, we missed something." [10]

In 2018, Calder and his son Keith invested $46 million into Cloud Imperium Games, taking a 10% stake in the studio behind the Star Citizen game. [11]

Personal life

Calder is married to Patricia Calder, with whom he has two children. They live in the Cayman Islands. [1] [12]

In May 2020, the ELMA Group of Foundations, which was founded by Calder and supports children's health and education initiatives around the world, pledged $107 million to fight COVID-19 in Africa. Around $26 million of this was allocated to fight the pandemic in South Africa, his birth country. [13]

Related Research Articles

Jive may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clive Davis</span> American music executive (born 1932)

Clive Jay Davis is an American record producer, A&R executive, record executive, and lawyer. He has won five Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a non-performer, in 2000.

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 Bertelsmann Music Group, 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jive Records</span> American record label

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bertelsmann Music Group</span> American record label

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sanctuary Records</span> British record label

Sanctuary Records Group Limited was a record label based in the United Kingdom and is, as of 2013, a subsidiary of BMG Rights Management solely for reissues. Until June 2007, it was the largest independent record label in the UK and the largest music management company in the world. It was also the world's largest independent owner of music intellectual property rights, with over 160,000 songs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sony Music</span> American multinational music recording company

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 Group Corporation. It is the recording division of the Sony Music Group, with the other half being the publishing division, Sony Music Publishing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J Records</span> American record label

J Records was an American record label owned and operated by Bertelsmann Music Group until it was transferred to Sony Music Entertainment when they acquired all of BMG's record labels in late 2008 at the end of their merger. It was distributed through the RCA Music Group. The label was founded in 2000 by Clive Davis and was dissolved into RCA Records in 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zomba Group</span> Record label

The Zomba Group of Companies was a music group and division owned by and operated under Sony Music Entertainment. The division was renamed to Jive Label Group in 2009 and was placed under the RCA/Jive Label Group umbrella. In 2011, the RCA/Jive Label Group was split in half. Multiple Jive Label Group artists were moved to Epic Records while others stayed with Jive as it moved under the RCA Music Group. In October 2011 Jive Records was shut down and their artists were moved to RCA Records.

BMG Heritage Records was the record label of the BMG Strategic Marketing Group reissue division of Sony BMG Music Entertainment which handled the reissue of recordings first issued on the RCA Victor, Arista, Buddah, Windham Hill and Jive Records, as well as other labels BMG or predecessor companies acquired over the years. It was founded on November 2001 and formally established on January 1, 2002 as the successor company to the Buddha Records reissue label. In 2005, Sony BMG folded BMG Heritage into Legacy Recordings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RCA/Jive Label Group</span> Short-lived American record label group

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.

Silvertone Records is a British record label, owned by Sony Music UK. Originally an independent record label, owned by Clive Calder's Jive Records, which was acquired in time by Bertelsmann Music Group, the original BMG company which would go on to merge with Sony Music, bring the Jive catalogue to Sony as the Zomba Music Group. In 2017, Sony Music UK relaunched the brand as a label for left-field acts, with indie, alt-folk, blues and jazz acts represented in its signings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry Weiss</span> American music executive (born 1959)

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.

Ralph Simon, FRSA, is a business executive, first in the music industry, and now in the mobile entertainment industry.

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.

RCA Inspiration is a gospel music group operating under Sony Music.

Peter Edge is an English-American record executive. He is the chairman and CEO of RCA Records.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LaFace Records</span> Record label

LaFace Records was an American record label based in Atlanta, Georgia, that operated as a unit of Sony Music Entertainment from 2008 to 2011 and was historically a part of Bertelsmann Music Group from 1989 to 2004. It was most active and achieved its greatest commercial success during the 1990s, dealing largely in the field of urban music. It was originally distributed by its co-creator Arista Records from 1989 through 2001, after which it was shuttered and absorbed into Arista. In 2004, the label was rebooted, and it began operating through Jive Records until both were absorbed into RCA Records in 2011. Today, the label's back catalog and reissues are managed by Legacy Recordings.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Forbes profile: Clive Calder". Forbes. Retrieved 12 October 2021.
  2. ↑ Malan, Rian (25 July 2002). "The $3 Billion Man: Clive Calder". Rolling Stone . pp. 26, 28.
  3. ↑ Goldstein, Patrick (19 June 1988). "A Rappin' Big Year for Little Jive Records". Los Angeles Times . Archived from the original on 13 December 2019.
  4. ↑ Newman, Melinda (25 April 2008). "BMG's Weiss brings business savvy". Los Angeles Times . Archived from the original on 30 May 2013.
  5. ↑ Newman, Melinda; White, Adam (5 May 2001). "The Untold Saga of the Zomba Group". Billboard . pp. 1, 98–100.
  6. ↑ "Jive Talking". Forbes . 19 March 2001. Archived from the original on 17 October 2002.
  7. ↑ Knopper, Steve (2009). Appetite for Self-destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age. Simon & Schuster.
  8. ↑ "History of Zomba Records Ltd. – FundingUniverse". fundinguniverse.com. Archived from the original on 1 December 2007. Retrieved 24 April 2009.
  9. ↑ Halperin, Shirley (7 October 2011). "RCA's Peter Edge, Tom Corson on the Shuttering of Jive, J and Arista". Billboard . Archived from the original on 10 October 2011.
  10. ↑ Edgers, Geoff (4 May 2018). "The Star Treatment". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on 4 May 2018. Retrieved 9 May 2018.
  11. ↑ Perez, Matt. "'Star Citizen' Studio Gets $46 Million Investment From Billionaire Clive Calder And Son". Forbes. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
  12. ↑ Williams, Grant (24 November 2005). "Big New Grant Maker Plans to Make Awards in Africa". The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  13. ↑ "Africa: $107 Million Cash Injection to Fight COVID-19 in Africa". allAfrica.com. 15 May 2020. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.