28
RON PERRY, 38
Chairman/CEO, Columbia Records
Last Year’s Rank: 92
SOLD SONGS — WILL NOW RELEASE THEM: With partners Matt Pincus and Carianne Marshall, Perry sold SONGS Music Publishing to Kobalt Capital Fund for roughly $140 million, and on the same day that the deal was announced was named to the top slot at Columbia Records.
IT’S STILL ABOUT THE SONGWRITERS: “They are the backbone of the business,” says Perry, who — with 13 years’ worth of music-publishing relationships with (to name a few) Diplo, The Weeknd and Lorde — intends to make Columbia “the No. 1 cultural label of our time.” Expect him to move fluidly between the C-suite and the studio. “There’s a huge opportunity now for record labels,” he says. “The money is coming back in, and the music is great.”
MUSIC TREND THAT SHOULD BE RETIRED: “We have too many charts and metrics that only music-industry professionals can understand. We need to simplify the process.”
