Al Teller - Former head of CBS, Columbia, and MCA Records

In this week's episode of This Week In Music, Al Teller, former head of CBS, Columbia, and MCA Records, joins Ian Rogers in studio to talk about the music industry past and present. In a fascinating interview, Al talks about going into the music industry after receiving two engineering degrees from Columbia and a Harvard MBA, how the industry evolved over the past 30 years, and where he sees the future of the business going.


00:00 - Intro
00:24 - Ian introduces Al Teller
01:36 - "Coming from an Engineering background, how did you find your way into the music world?"
03:52 -"What drove you towards the management side of the business?"
07:07- "Was it a much easier business once upon a time because you had distribution and marketing?"
09:56 -"How, in your experience, did the business change between the 70's and 80's?"
12:28 - "When did all the various tech disruptions in the music industry (production, distribution, etc) start disrupting the business?"
14:58 - "Just how big was distribution in the past?"
17:35 - "Mass-saturation radio play is still the most powerful way for an artist to connect with a fan"
20:45 - "It seems that the music industry always relies on entities that don't actually care about the future of music...A big moment in the downfall of the music business, pre-internet, is when the big-box retailers became the strongest retailers in music. Do you share that view?"
22:32 - "Define a rack-jobber"
24:00 - "Was it your love of technology and love of music that made you decide that the Internet was the future?"
31:52 - Discussing INgrooves distribution platform
32:50 - "What would your advice be to someone that would be trying to start a new label in today's age?"
35:21 - "Is the music business less interesting today than when you first got into it?"
37:10 - "What would your advice be to an entrepreneur who wants to work in the music space?"
41:31 - Zoe Rogers, General Manager, WMBR, Cambridge, MA joins Ian to talk about her favorite summer concerts.
42:30 - Discussion of the venue The Royale in Boston
43:16 - Yeasayer
43:25 - Smith Westerns
46:00 - Breakfast of Champions Podcast information 8am-10am EST wmbr.org
47:15 -TWiMusic Online info

Special thanks to our media partner Billboard.biz for their support!

• Category

  • Entertainment
  • News

• Starring:

  • Ian Rogers
  • Al Teller

• Directed by:

  • Brandice Payne
  • Jesse Mills

• Produced by:

  • Will Thompson

[bhopradio]

I absolutely LOVE this show.

[Bruce Ten]

Worked with Al in the 90s and remember well the discussions with RealNetworks. If I recall correctly, they also involved the now senator from Washington. The company I was working with also had discussions with Apple and other tech companies about how best to work with music. I often think about how we were ahead of the game but the rest of the biz was pretty resistant. C'est la vie.

[tara21340]

I worked in A&R for Al at UA records and back then it was fun and I think profitable. We helped change the image of UA from a MOR company to a rock label.

[PurelyUnintentional]

BORING!!! This Week In was on the ball with Pensado's Place, but they really missed the goal COMPLETELY with this crap.

[rhythmhub]

Really interesting show. It was cool to kind of grab someone who was around during the hay day of the old music biz and see how he sees the industry today.

[steveninsomnia]

Ingrooves is good, but RouteNote is better!