I really enjoy Ruth Blatt's articles in Forbes Magazine about the world of music. She just wrote an article entitled: What Gets Lost When Musicians Become Businesses. Here are a couple of excerpts and the full article can be found at
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ruthblat...me-businesses/
I was thinking of Jon as I read the article especially since he (rightly) credits himself as creating and running a brand for 30 years:
"When David Geffen signed the Eagles to Asylum Records, he told Glenn Frey, “Don’t worry Glenn, you’re gonna be rich. I’m gonna be richer, but you’ll be rich.” For many decades, that was how the music business worked. Even now, the richest people in music are not the ones who create it, as can be seen in the Forbes list of the top earners in music.
Once you’ve crossed over into enterprise...your song is not a love child but a product, a calculated device for making money.
When Glenn Frey agreed to let David Geffen make more money from his music than he would, Geffen freed him from doing anything other than make music. “I’ll take care of everything else,” Geffen assured him. And he did. Whether their deal was fair is debatable. Less controversial is that The Eagles and their millions of fans benefited from having someone else taking care of business."
