British record industry veteran Korda Marshall has admitted he disagreed with some of the digital policies of Warner Music when he was running one of the major’s UK divisions. Marshall left the major in 2008, subsequently relaunching the indie label he had run in the 1990s, Infectious Music.
In an interview in the TW:Guide to next week’s City Showcase festival in London, published earlier this week, Marshall says of his decision to leave Warner: “As soon as the then Warner UK chairman Nick Phillips left and a few releases slipped, I knew they [the Warner Music top guard in the US] had their sights on me, but by that time I’d been ground down a bit by Corporate America anyway. I philosophically disagreed with their protectionist digital strategies and the accountants appeared to be running the company and making the decisions. Plus I’d been there eight years by this point, and I was fifty years old, and felt it might be time to move aside for the youngsters”.
He adds that when he initially left Warner Music it wasn’t his plan to relaunch his former indie label, and that the motivation for that came when Australian music business veteran Michael Gudinski, whom Marshall had worked with when running Mushroom UK, introduced him to the first signings to version two of Infectious, The Temper Trap.
Says Marshall: “After a month planning a round the world trip I got nervous, and then Gudinski rang me up and asked if I could check out his new band The Temper Trap, as there was a lot of interest in them in the UK and the States. I went and saw them and fell in love with them. By chance the next day my current business partner Michael Watt called to see what I was up to, and offered to finance a new label. So the day after that I met up with my old colleague Pat Carr, who agreed to work with me again, and three years later here we still are, and still in business!”
Marshall will be in conversation as part of the City Showcase workshops programme on Friday 12 Oct at 4.30pm at the Gibson Guitar Studio on Rathbone Street. You can get free access to that and most other City Showcase events if you register for a free wristband in advance via this link.
The full interview with Marshall is in the TW:Guide to City Showcase, published by CMU’s sister site ThisWeek London. Read the interview on the City Showcase website or in the digital version of the full TW:Guide.
Sections: Music Business | Tags: City Showcase, Korda Marshall, TW:Guides, Warner Music
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