That’s All, Folks

When Warner Bros., Elektra and Atlantic Records merged into one international music-industry powerhouse in 1970, Cleveland had one of the new Warner Music Group’s first offices. And for decades, its sales and marketing force made it one of the stronger ones.

In May, when the Warner Group (also known as WEA, short for Warner
Elektra Atlantic) laid off John Koury, it released the last foot
soldier from a long line of sales and marketing pros that helped
influence what music took root in the city — and, sometimes,
across the country. Koury was the last major-label sales representative
in the city. Now, Northeast Ohio’s Sony and Universal sales reps work
out of Cincinnati. EMD/Capitol’s is in Pittsburgh.

Koury declined multiple requests to speak for this article. If his
severance is anything like the generous deal WEA gave to those who went
before him, it includes financial penalties for publicly discussing
company business. But WEA has a whole contingent of former employees in
the city. And their hush periods have expired.

Fifteen years ago, the Warner Group had 10 employees in the market.
By 2007, it had just three. Then the company slashed 400 jobs in
response to the industry’s digital-era downturn. From colleagues to
co-workers, Koury is remembered well. Koury was (is) a music person,
one of a peculiar breed you find in radio stations, newspapers,
magazines, blogs and — increasingly rarely — in record
companies. They’re people who are drawn to the music, who need to be involved with it. Koury, say the people who know him, was a man
of discerning taste, a fan of country, R&B, rap. A guy who wouldn’t
just talk about his accounts, but could discuss all labels’ music and
its relative merits.

Back in the 20th century, local sales reps affected what their
cities bought. In the 1950s and ’60s, reps simply took orders. Through
the ’70s and ’80s, go-getters reinvented the job into what former WEA
sales rep Bill Peters calls “smarketing” — sales plus marketing.
Peters started with Warner Group in 1981, unloading trucks. Over the
years, he worked his way up the ladder. Along the way, he made some
things happen.

Across the country, local reps like Peters used their connections to
make low- or-no-cost promotions. They improved print ads the national
office sent. They organized cross-promotions with local businesses like
Regal cinemas. Peters used his connections to sell a Black
Sabbath/Heaven and Hell DVD via a screening-Q&A session at the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. And occasionally, he helped create city-stopping
events, the stuff of legend — episodes that became Cleveland lore
right up there with Howard Stern’s visit to the city.

A Tori Amos listening party drew fans from five states when
Cleveland reps wrangled limited-edition promo items. In 2000, Peters
twisted corporate arms until he lured metal gods Pantera for an
in-store appearance at the Parma Heights Exchange. The event pulled a
crowd of 2,000 and turned into an all-day circus of stripping women,
beer-chugging dudes and a near-riot when the band turned up hours late.
That’s not the kind of music-based experience that fits on an iPod;
it’s one you don’t even get at a concert.

When WEA cut Peters loose in 2007, he was one of the country’s top
sales reps, but he was too expensive to keep. So the company
consolidated marketing, sales and merchandising positions into one,
with all duties assigned to Koury, the youngest and cheapest
employee.

With local diehards like Peters and Koury gone, WEA’s Chicago office
now decides what music is advertised and pushed in Cleveland. And now
if Cleveland gets a listening party, it’s more likely to be a low-key
gathering of fans who enter a room, sit down, listen to the new album
and leave.

“Anyone can go in and sell Madonna records or Led Zeppelin DVDs,”
says Peters. “If you have things you can do in your town, it makes a
big difference for your accounts. Smaller accounts like the Record Den
[and] the Exchange — they really benefit from having people here.
You could keep 20 of us and get rid of one high-pay executive. We know
our towns, we know what works in our markets — not some guy at a
desk in Burbank.”

WEA’s retreat could be taken as another woe-is-Cleveland story, but
it’s really about the entire record business. As with radio, overvalued
record companies changed hands, consolidated, choked on debt and let
executives with questionable credibility continue making bad decisions
that sank the company. To an outsider, it seems like the music industry
is giving up ground it doesn’t need to by pulling local reps, giving up
to the Internet and big-box stores, and saving the expense of a fight.
They might be right. Tastemaker jobs don’t pay what they used to, and
they’re drying up.

“It’s the nationalization of radio and the nationalization of
retail,” explains Ted Cohen, a music-industry guru who worked with the
WEA Cleveland office from the late ’60s through the early ’70s. “Other
than regional peculiarities, we’ve moved into an area where everything
happens, for better or worse, on a national level. It doesn’t happen on
a local level any more.”

Like Peters, Koury will always be a music person, whether or not
he’s working in the business. Corporate cost-cutting decisions aren’t
just clipping a few more local jobs. They’re impacting local
businesses.

“Guys like John Koury are the victims of guys at the top not having
any clue,” says John Shahinian, who dealt with Koury as a partner in
the Exchange, a regional independent chain. “All that John lost was a
job. Warner Bros. is too stupid to understand what they lost. If they
knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t have to chop heads. You don’t
get rid of people like John Koury. You build with people like John
Koury.”

dferris@clevescene.com

This article appears in Jun 17-23, 2009.