Hope for the music biz?

I interviewed Hanson recently for an upcoming Q&A in The Other Paper. (Don't worry, I'm not naive--I fully expect letters demanding why we would waste ink on such a band. But I guarantee more people will read that interview than any other music-related article in the issue.) No matter what question I asked Isaac (the guitarist and oldest brother), he always came back to how messed up the music industry is, how it can't possibly go on in its current form. Though this made for a frustrating interview, compounded with the fact that he talked way too much and I only had about 10 minutes, it's worth noting that a band that has grown up in the music business is utterly jaded by its inner workings. I can't help but agree that major labels are ruining mainstream music. (Latent in that statement are some positives for independent labels, but that's for another post.)

So I was exceedingly encouraged and hopeful when I heard that producer Rick Rubin was going to be one of the top dogs at Columbia. I'd say it's the best decision Columbia has made since signing Bob Dylan. The New York Times Magazine has a great article on Rubin and his possible effect on the music industry. (Thanks to Donewaiting for the heads up.) A quick excerpt:

Rubin, who is 44, has never gone to an office of any kind. One of his conditions for taking the job at Sony, which owns Columbia, was that he wouldn't be required to have a desk or a phone in any of the corporate outposts. That wasn't a problem: Columbia didn't want Rubin to punch a clock. It wanted him to save the company. And just maybe the record business.

What that means, most of all, is that the company wants him to listen. It is Columbia's belief that Rubin will hear the answers in the music — that he will find the solution to its ever-increasing woes.