Universal Music Group Dissolves Island Def Jam

By Ruben Lone

Sometimes a whole record label isn’t quite as great as the sum of its parts. Case in point for Island Def Jam, the Universal Music Group subsidiary comprising the Island, Def Jam, and Motown record labels. The layers of sublabels belonging to the various companies are deep, but Island Def Jam’s daughter labels are known as home to Kanye West, Drake, Erykah Badu, Bon Jovi, and other huge pop acts.  The move comes after Barry Weiss, CEO of Island Def Jam and Universal Motown Republic Group resigned from his position, spurring a drastic adjustment that allows Island, Def Jam, and Motown to handle their own publicity and A&R.

Though the label claims to be giving each subsidiary its own independence, the move seems to reflect a shift back from labels being corporate giants to being brands that carry their own aesthetics and artistic values. As independent labels and artists become more successful from visible online presences and organic outreach (and making better music on smaller budgets), major labels are less attractive to artists who can maintain their artistic integrity without the looming dollar signs of the corporate music machines.

What’s more, it seems the industry is retracting from its decade of compression, when the “Big Six” turned into the “Big Three,” made of Universal, Sony, and Warner.  From a business perspective, majors are better off breaking large struggling assets such as Island Def Jam into parts that are more easily managed without an extra line of command. Yes, letting the individual labels function on their own will hopefully ensure focused creative direction for their respective artists, but it also helps Universal address each label’s interests appropriately. The industry is long overdue for a corporate restructuring effort, but that effort is merely speculative without a philosophic overhaul that values music over money —and it’s unlikely that it will come from the top down.

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