NY Times on Rick Rubin

“Less than two years after Sony Music Entertainment made a daring move by hiring the legendary music producer Rick Rubin to run its Columbia Records label, the company is learning a lesson from baseball: sometimes the best players don’t make the best managers.

Mr. Rubin, in the words of his close friend, the hip-hop mogul and philanthropist Russell Simmons, “likes to work at his own pace,” and it appears he has done little so far to lift Columbia out of the doldrums that is the contemporary music business.

In recent weeks, as several executives at Columbia who were closely aligned with Mr. Rubin have left the label, questions have surfaced about Mr. Rubin’s continued executive role there, and about how much influence he has in the company’s business operations.

Associates of Mr. Rubin, some of whom spoke anonymously because they did not want to anger him, described the situation as one in which Mr. Rubin has steadily lost influence over the organization because his style is so different from that of the usual executive and because he is often absent from the corporate offices. The impression from these interviews is of a power game within Columbia in which Mr. Rubin refuses to participate.”

(Read the full article here)