The Rocky Balboa of Sony Music
Now that the moves at Universal Music have begun, more will to come when Barry Weiss starts his new gig and reboots the East Coast operations. He’s tied to Sony until April, but that could change after the tug of war between Sony and UMG over when Doug Morris will be released from his Uni contract. Insiders speculate that Morris has probably agreed not to fire Rob Stringer as long as brother Howard stays at Sony Corp. One wag said that it really doesn’t matter because “Doug doesn’t fire anybody anyway.”
But there’s another player whose name will most likely be popping up sooner than later. You can probably expect to see Ivan Gavin, the current Chief Operating Officer at Sony Music, RCA/Jive Label Group, jump over to Universal along with Weiss. He and Barry are supposedly very thick and he’s evidently got some issues with the Columbia/Epic side of the company. It was reported in the NY Post’s Page Six that he and Steve Barnett, co-chairman of Columbia/Epic, nearly came to blows last year during the power struggle between Rob Stringer and Weiss for the top job at SME. Irish bookmakers picked Gavin in 4 rounds.
Ivan is no stranger to the music business. He spent more than a decade at the Zomba Record Group where he oversaw all of the company’s North American business for Chairman and CEO Clive Calder. In 2002 he moved to EMI as chief operating officer of EMI Recorded Music North America reporting to CEO David Munns. He moved to Sony/Jive after the Terra Firma purchase and subsequent shakeup(s) where he remains today.
So why does this matter at all? Because as an operations maven, Gavin would be very involved in making the decisions as to who stays and who goes on the East Coast. I’m sure that Steve Barnett won’t miss him at all. And vice versa.
© 2011, Wayne Rosso. All rights reserved.
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