Wow.
There’s a coup going on at Atlantic Records, the formerly great music label of Ahmet Ertegun.
It’s not 1980 anymore.
Long time chief Julie Greenwald — a huge success for 20 years — has been ousted. She announced it at a company town hall, according to hitsdailydouble.com.
Greenwald saw the writing on the wall. Last week, Elliot Grainge — son of Universal Music chief Lucien Grainge — was given her job. Greenwald was sent — as we used to say about Conde Nast — “to the 34th floor.” This is amazing.
Grainge is 30 and married now to Lionel Richie’s daughter, Sofia. He’s been a music manager, with some success from Ice Spice and a bunch of hip hop artists we’ve never heard of. Oy vey.
According to hitsdailydouble, all this volatility within the Warner Music groups is attributed to Val Blavatnik. Who he? The young son of WMG owner Len Blavatnik. In April, 25 year old Val was put on the Warner board by his dad. Seems like he called another Elliott and formed an alliance of young sons of moguls.
Atlantic is part of the Warner Music Group, which recently put Robert Kyncl in charge after he wrested power from Max Lousada, who was successful and popular.
Hits points out that Atlantic — which was booming a short time ago with Ed Sheeran and hit soundtracks from “Hamilton” and “The Greatest Showman” — has fallen behind. So change was in the wind. Atlantic doesn’t have much going on this summer aside from Charlie XCX and her “Brat” album. Pointing that out to Blavatnik Sr. was probably enough to get the ball rolling for major changes.
Greenwald is far from ancient. She’s 54, and among her finds was Cardi B. Bruno Mars is also on her resume, although he’s not released anything new in a long time, and seems to be embroiled in vast personal financial drama.
Atlantic has never been pacific. Just read former exec Jerry Greenberg’s book about the label’s history, “Whole Lotta Music.” That will tell you the whole bloody story.
All this and there are no new artists be played on radio, the charts are frozen with Taylor Swift, and there will four different awards shows this coming year celebrating the same small group of acts. Unreal.
