Capitol Records back on track
LOS ANGELES — One of the first things Steve Barnett did when he took the helm at Capitol Records in 2012 was to pull down all the framed and platinum records that had long adorned the lobby of the landmark Capitol Tower offices in Hollywood. The cheap cardboard cutout of the Beatles that used to greet visitors, also gone.
The testaments to Capitol’s glory days of eras past symbolized Barnett’s biggest challenge to turning around the label’s fortunes.
“They were so burdened by the past they couldn’t think about the future,” said Barnett, 62, who was president of Columbia Records, the No. 1 record label in the U.S., before joining Capitol.
A little more than two years into Barnett’s stewardship as chairman and chief executive, Capitol Music Group finished 2014 as the No. 2 label group, tallying 8 percent of recorded music sales in the U.S. That was up sharply from its No. 5 ranking, with a 6.6 percent market share, just two years earlier.
The label group includes Blue Note, Harvest, Virgin, Motown, the Capitol Christian Music Group, Caroline, Astralwerks Studios.
A key part of that improvement has been Barnett’s eye toward the future, as Capitol scored two of the biggest breakout artists of the year: British singer-songwriter Sam Smith and Australian boy band 5 Seconds of Summer.
Smith and another Brit signing to Capitol, synthpop group Bastille, are nominated for best new artist going into Sunday’s 2015 Grammy Awards ceremony.
In fact, the Capitol group labels have 46 nominations in the 2015 Grammys, another indicator of its renewed potency in the business.
Vivendi’s Universal Music Group acquired Capitol’s parent company, EMI Music, for $1.9 billion a little more than two years ago. At the time, Universal
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Capitol Music Group Chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge announced that one of his priorities would be the revitalization of Capitol, the first major record label based on the West Coast.
The company had suffered during the previous decade from the technological shifts — from physical CDs to digital downloads to music streaming services — that other music companies also were grappling with.
“Move No. 1,” Grainge said, “was hiring the right CEO to actually execute that.”
That led Grainge to offer the post to Barnett. Early in his career Barnett was a talent manager for AC/DC, Cyndi Lauper and other acts, and most recently spent three years running Columbia, where he presided over runaway successes of British soul singer-songwriter Adele, boy band One Direction and LA indie-rock group Foster the People among others.
“We see ourselves as an artist development company,” he said. “We had to differentiate ourselves from the rest” of Universal Music Group.
Barnett said: “I felt strongly that Sam was someone we should bet the house on,” a hunch that proved astute.
Smith’s album “In the Lonely Hour” ranked third in SoundScan’s overall top 10 sales tally for 2014, behind only Taylor Swift’s blockbuster “1989” album and continued strong sales of Disney’s “Frozen” soundtrack, released at the end of 2013. “In the Lonely Hour” has sold more than 1.3 million copies in the U.S.
For Smith, the decision to sign with Capitol in the U.S. and Britain for his debut album came down to one thing.
“I based everything on passion,” Smith told The Times. “I did auditions for labels — they all came into a room and I sang two songs for them. Nick Raphael, the head of Capitol in the U.K., his passion for the songs I sang was second to none.”
“And Steve Barnett in America — as soon as I met him it was a done deal,” Smith said.