With U2 winning five Grammys (including Album of the Year and Song of the Year) and Black Eyed Peas nabbing one for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, the IGA contingent partied hearty at the downtown Palm at the Universal Music Group's post-show hoedown.
According to sources at UMG and IGA, the moves now being played out had their genesis when A&M President Ron Fair’s contract renegotiations coincided with the determination that the Jordan Schur-Polly Anthony power-sharing experiment at Geffen wasn’t working as planned.
As a consequence, Schur moves from the Co-Presidency of Geffen to form his own, predominantly rock-based label—in keeping with his impressive track record in the genre, having scored with Limp Bizkit, Staind, Puddle of Mudd and Weezer.
Fair, meanwhile, will add a number of Geffen artists to his existing roster, as the latest smash from the Black Eyed Peas (3.3 million), his A&R participation in the making of the Mary J. Blige album and especially the success of the Pussycat Dolls, move the veteran up on Jimmy Iovine’s executive chart.
The most significant unanswered question is, will Fair's heavy studio workload allow him to also oversee the day-to-day operations of this new entity? Enter Anthony, whom Fair is said to be not interested in sharing power with, but who could conceivably handle the day-to-day. Anthony is said to have a short time left on her contract, so her ultimate IGA destiny will undoubtedly be centered around these negotiations.
That said, these shotgun marriages rarely work, as the aforementioned Anthony/Schur pairing proved, merely being the latest in a litany of dysfunctional tandems that includes Iovine/Whalley at Interscope itself; Lyor Cohen/Jim Caparro at IDJ; Mike Bone/Ed Eckstein at Mercury; such Virgin pairings as Matt Serletic/Roy Lott, Phil Q./Nancy Berry and Ray Cooper/Ashley Newton; Sylvia Rhone/Seymour Stein at Elektra; and, of course, Flom, Kallman, Greenwald and their respective limo drivers at Atlantic.
But if not Anthony, how will the responsibility be split up? IGA President of Marketing Steve Berman is bringing in EA music head Steve Schnur in a high-level marketing role. Does this move free up Berman and President of Promotion Brenda Romano to co-manage the label, considering that the two already have overall responsibility for IGA's marketing and promotion departments?
As Bono himself put it, "Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own."
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