Julie Greenwald, President, Atlantic Records
By Danielle Cantor
Julie Greenwald always knew she’d have an impact on the world – perhaps as a teacher, or an advocate for children’s rights. But the Catskills native never expected to make her mark running one of the largest record labels in the world. Greenwald did teach briefly after college, but when a summer assistantship with talent manager Lyor Cohen cleared an unexpected career path, she followed it – up through the ranks of Island Def Jam Records (where she ushered rap music and its most legendary artists into the mainstream), and eventually to the top of the music industry. Now 38 and president of Atlantic Records, Greenwald is, according
Crain’s, Newsweek, Q magazine and others, one of the music industry’s most powerful players.
Describe your childhood and your family.I have three sisters and my parents both were amazing community-active people who raised four kids in Wurtsboro, New York. We had a normal childhood, went to public school. My Mom did a lot of work for the temple and Jewish Family Services; my Dad was a town supervisor. It was a very warm, loving family.
How did music fit into your upbringing?I have the best memories of driving in the car. My Mom used to listen to Top 40 radio and she’d always be singing the cool, hip songs. On Sundays we’d go out to dinner, which meant driving to Little Italy in New York City, and my father would play oldies music for us – things from the 1950s and ‘60s. My Dad loved Frank Sinatra. We preferred when Mom controlled the stereo in the car. Their tastes were totally different. Once I was able to drive I used to always listen to the stereo, and I’d make mix tapes from Casey Kasem’s Top 40 countdown. But I never thought I’d work in the music industry – I was always on the path of doing something else, not music. It actually just fell into my lap.
Do you have musical talent?I took piano lessons, sang in the chorus in middle school, but other than that I just love listening to music. I really appreciate artists: I love art, I love musicians, I see how hard it is to create something so wonderful and magical, and I hold that up as art, not as something that should be sold for 99 cents a song.
How did you land in the recording industry after studying English and political science in college?I did a program after college called Teach for America, which sent me to teach in the projects of New Orleans. When that was over in 1992 I took a summer job as the assistant to Lyor Cohen at Rush Management – he managed everyone from LL Cool J to Run DMC. He asked me to move over to his promotions department at Def Jam, and the rest is history. I just started doing more and more at the company, and little by little Lyor gave me more of the company to run. When I was 25 he said, “Hey, if you’ll stay with me forever I’ll give you a piece of the company. I don’t want you to leave.” He’s been an incredible mentor. Next I ran Island Def Jam with him, and when he left there I went with him, and we formed Atlantic Music Group four years ago.
Rap and hip-hop were just making their way into the mainstream when you started – what was it like to watch that genre evolve?When I was at Def Jam 50 people were working there. Rap was very big in the urban areas but we still weren’t on mainstream radio – only on Yo! MTV Raps on MTV. You could feel the excitement when it started to grow, that seismic shift from something that was considered urban to something that is now mainstream. It was fantastic to be part of that.
Earning a stake in Def Jam records made you a millionaire before age 30; how did that affect you, personally and professionally?Personally it gave me a lot of wonderful liberties to settle down, buy a home… I got married and I had my first kid before I was 30. It allowed me to know that I could take of myself in a nice style. A lot of people work so hard and never get that carrot in the end – it was great to work so hard and get rewarded for it. Professionally it was a little sad; I never wanted to sell Def Jam and I loved it being small and independent. But it allowed me to start a whole new chapter in my life with Island records, where I got into the rock world. Here I’d mastered everything there was to know about hip hop and now I had a chance to do something new – take the best of what I knew about urban music and apply it to the rock side.
Has your own experience with success at young age informed the way you work with young artists?I love young artists – sitting down with them and figuring out their goals and objectives and fears, and how to help them achieve their dreams. The greatest thing in the world is to take a new artist and help them break into the masses. To see them change their life economically – buy themselves a home, buy their Mom a home… To know that they trusted you with their livelihood and it paid off.
Were you or are you ever star-struck?I always wanted to meet Madonna, and I didn’t meet her until I came here to the Warner Music Group. But for the most part I wasn’t really star-struck because when you work with artists every day you see them as regular folk. They’re just like you and I, except that they have a gift to create this musical art. But I probably wouldn’t know what to say if I met Neil Diamond, except to tell him how much I love his work. His new album is incredible.
Which artists have you most enjoyed working with?You can’t ask me that! I’m a mom – I love them all equally and I’d never in a million years choose one over the other. They’re all so different and wonderful for so many different reasons. I can’t call one out.
Who’s surprised you?You don’t get surprised because we all show up to work committed to breaking an artist. We don’t sign artists unless we think they’re going to do something important. When you believe in someone and they don’t sell millions – that’s when you get surprised.
Of all you’ve achieved at Atlantic, what are you most proud of?I’m most proud of the fact that this company is a very flat organization; there isn’t a hierarchy or a lot of political drama. It’s just a creative, artistic company where everyone has a voice and an opinion. It’s about music, so there are no right answers. I love that our artists feel they can just come up and hang out and be part of the building. It’s a very familial environment. I’ve worked hard to create a small company culture, because if everyone feels that this is their company, they’ll care for it as their own.
Are there elements of the music business that you don’t like or wish you could change?Yes, I wish we could turn back the hands of time and figure out how to just sell albums online, as opposed to selling singles. I think the concept of an album is a magnificent ride and I love when artists take us on a journey. Now, when people pick it apart, it’s like selling just chapters of a novel. I wish someone back then had the foresight to say, “We shouldn’t allow albums to be broken up.” It’s hard to explain to artists why that happens. They want to make albums, they have a point of view and a reason why one song follows another – a beginning, middle and end.
Since you’ve taken reins Atlantic has started managing artists the “old-fashioned way” – with a focus on artists and branding. What does that mean, for those of us not inside the business? When you go to market an artist, you can focus on breaking a song or focus on breaking an act. To break an act you take a brand mentality – connect all the dots and spend lots of money on art, strong videos, radio, making sure their website is fantastic... We have a whole department that works on strategic advertising and corporate partnerships, getting an artist’s work into commercials for certain products. We honestly believe that if you get an artist’s song played as often as possible in as many markets as possible, you get something like James Blunt, who’s now a worldwide artist. Because each genre is so different, we don’t market any two artists alike; it’s a matter of understanding each one’s strengths and how best to get them to the masses. Every detail matters for us. I’ve taken us back to being a hand-stitched company, as opposed to a big corporation.
Does success in the music business require some clairvoyance about the next big thing?It’s not about the crystal ball. Success in the music business is about loving an artist, believing in it and not wavering. No one can be clairvoyant. You just have to believe in something that is so good and know that once you release it, others will join you. If you look at the most successful people in the industry, they’re the ones who believed in an artist and stayed with it and stayed with it and stayed with it… until that artist went all the way.
How do your family and Jewish values connect to your professional world?I don’t know if it’s a Jewish thing or not, but my Mom always said, “It never hurts to ask – the worst that can happen is someone will say ‘no’ to you.” I’m loud, I’m talkative, I’m very maternal and caring with my artists. Most people say I have a lot of chutzpah. And I feel like I got that from my family and my upbringing. I also worked for my Dad – he owns pharmacies in upstate New York – and I got a great work ethic in that big family operation. I watch every dollar as if it’s my own.
Do you apply Jewish values to your professional life?We just started giving everybody summer Fridays – so everyone can be home for Shabbat dinner if they want.
Are your kids impressed by what you do?My 9-year-old just started realizing how cool I am. Now she’s happy because she gets to come to concerts with me and come to the office, and Jay-Z knows who she is. My son, who’s 4 years old, could care less. It’s tough because bands play at night, Monday through Thursday, so I don’t get to see my kids a lot during the week. But then I spend the whole weekend with them. I love being a mother and I also love being a successful business woman, so I try to make it all work. You can’t have it all – anyone who says you can is lying and perpetuating a myth. You can have wonderful parts to your life – great husband, children, career – but there’s some give somewhere.
Do you keep your personal and professional worlds separate, or do they overlap?I have a lot of good friends in the music business after 17 years, so my professional life overlaps with my personal life. And I met my husband in the music business – he was at MTV when I was at Def Jam. For Rosh Hashanah I took a bunch of people I work with to services downtown.
You have to stay on top of technology in addition to every musical genre. What’s new and next?We have a whole department that keeps me up to speed on what’s happening in technology. Now it’s more about social networking on each artist’s website. If you can have more traffic, you can sell them yourself, mano-a-mano. We’re working on building websites that have more fan interactivity – fun things to do, like putting yourself into videos and things like that.
The Internet has obviously changed the music industry profoundly in the last decade; what has that evolution looked like from the inside?It’s been fantastic; we have a direct relationship with our consumers now. But it’s also very problematic. It’s too easy for people to download and share music now, so it perpetuates a crime that people don’t think is a crime, and as a result a lot of people don’t get paid. Parents teach kids not to steal – if a child walked into a store and stole a candy bar, a parent would be mortified – but now they buy a kid an iPod and don’t ask where the music is coming from. It’s stealing, and parents shouldn’t look the other way.