Cool entrepreneurs in the history of the music industry. How did it happen?

Music has been following humanity since ancient times. Only in the last hundred years, music industry has made a significant push, transforming from a plain entertainment into a lucrative business. Today, musicians are not just hounded beggars, wandering from town to town, but are rather respected members of society, who are listed among the wealthiest people on the planet. How did it all happen? Storist have picked for you some magnificent and truly inspiring stories.

Legends of the music promotion

Perhaps, we would have never known the King of Pop Elvis Presley, and the Beatles would not have made it out of Liverpool clubs, if it was not for their genius managers. They often did not have a musical gift, but they possessed another quality that allowed their clients to become musical icons – business acumen.

Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk or Tom Parker

Even if this name does not speak for itself, you definitely know the one, who Parker made famous – Elvis Presley. The King of Pop would not have conquered as many hearts with his talent alone and without the genius of his manager. Parker showed wonders of music marketing by keeping up the level of people’s excitement about Elvis, for example, when the singer was drafted into the US Army at the peak of his music career. With the courtesy of Parker, this move was presented as an act of a true patriot, which sparked another wave of nationwide love towards Presley.

When he met Elvis, he had already been a musical entrepreneur in the US for 15 years. Parker immediately realized that he encountered a pot of gold. This is why he bought out Elvis’s contract from the Sun Records owner Sam Phillips for $40000, an unheard-of-sum at the time.

Interestingly, Tom Parker knew almost nothing about rock-n-roll – he did not need to. He had a knack for interacting with the press, which helped him in manipulating the crowds. As a result, in his first years of working with Elvis, he has already made a true idol out of him. Parker has signed Presley for RCA Victor, which made Elvis one of the most popular and commercially successful artists in the world. In the 60s, when the singer’s career went into decline, it was Parker, who persuaded Elvis to start shooting musicals. They helped Presley to overcome the crisis and come back to touring in 1968. The tandem of Parker and Presley was broken up only by the singer’s death in 1977.

Brian Epstein

He is the one to thank for the fact that the world has found out about The Beatles. He turned the four longhaired youngsters into The Four we know now. At the same time, it is hard to imagine Brian Epstein in the company of guys like John, Paul, George and Ringo. Born in the family of a successful businessman, being a fan of Sibelius, and studying in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he was from another world. Yet the occasion that brought them together, turned out to be fortunate.

Eventually Brian created the famous image of the group, taught them discipline and how to deliver their music. Using his reputation as an owner of “the best music store in Northern England”, Brian has arranged the recording of the Beatles first album in the EMI studio.

After the group members decided to stop touring, Epstein stayed engaged in music marketing and music promotion. NEMS Enterprises, the company he had created, has been working with many famous musicians of that time. The firm took interest in realty, purchased the Saville Theatre and continued its expansion in the area of management.

Peter Grant

Former wrestler and a bouncer, who had left the school at the age of 13 to start working at the steel factory. Just a few weeks later, he became a courier for Reuters and then worked at the Croydon Empire Theatre until eventually becoming a music manager. Due to Peter Grant, the world was introduced to Led Zeppelin and it absolutely loved them.

During the 70s, the band essentially replaced the broken up Beatles on the world music arena. Grant was the one to credit for it. He was focused on making musicians release new records regularly and going on long tours. This strategy led to great results – the public got so much used to the music of Led Zeppelin that the other bands remained insignificant.

Grant was known to deal with promoters and agents in an aggressive manner, demanding the lowest costs possible. At the same time, Grant tried to provide the highest percentage of ticket profits for the band. He relentlessly fought against the illegal sales of the group’s memorabilia at concerts and rounded up the stores selling Led Zeppelin bootlegs. In 1969 Peter Grant founded a publishing company, Superhype Music, and later a record label Swan Song Records. It enabled the musicians to control the distribution of their records more effectively.

Music as a business

The list of outstanding music promoters can be very long, given that there is a team behind every successful musician. Still, even today, the musicians are rarely seen as entrepreneurs. But if you look into it, they are just like startuppers – building their project, leading it, correcting the course and calculating risks. With the right approach, the music business won’t be less profitable than any other business.

In his book “Doing Music Business” Nigerian songwriter, gospel singer and producer Ezekiel Onyedikachukwu ThankGod, better known as EeZee Tee, presented some tips on how to run a music business:

Greed and striving for independence will never benefit to your growth;
Envy and unsound competition won’t help you in becoming more successful;
Participate in different events, be helpful;
Learn to appreciate other people, because even the smallest investment contributes to your development;
You will receive investments if you will match three major criteria: loyalty, reliability, competence.

Special business – special rules

Music is a special product, and ordinary methods might not work for its promotion. That is why all music entrepreneurs worldwide should look at The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore.

The authors are a certified instructor of unconventional thinking, the member of Creative Education Foundation and Creative Thinking Association of America and the professor of the UCLA Anderson School of Management and associate professor of IBM Advanced Business Institute. They believe that experience is the most promising type of an economic offer. Pine and Gilmore suggest turning down traditional relationships between a company and its clients. You need to become “the director of the experiences” instead. The clients will be your audience or guests. This concept fits the music industry very well. The book introduces the principles of preparing the experiences and theatrical methods to be used by anyone, who is going through music business internships.

One more book for aspiring musicians and their managers is “Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable”. The author Seth Godin suggests adding to the five P’s of the marketing (Product, Pricing, Promotion, Positioning, Publicity, Packaging, Pass-along and Permission) one more – a Purple Cow. It means something remarkable and unexpected, like a purple cow among the ordinary cattle. Seth analyzes customer’s psychology and offers practical advice and unorthodox methods. Many of them can be applied in music marketing.

These and other books can be found at Storist. The service also offers a huge number of interactive courses, which will help you learn main business principles in a simple and easy to remember way. Our interactive stories are inspired by popular business books. They let you quickly learn the key ideas of business bestsellers and start implementing them. In the meantime, you won’t have to actually read the book in order to get the essence of it. Tests and studying flow, thought out by experts, will plunge you into business situations and make you choose your actions in different scenarios. On each step, you will get the commentary about your choices and what they may lead to. As a result, you will not just read a book, but will learn how to use the tools and the skills from it.