Al Teller

I was reading about Al Teller the other day, his name pops up in The Big Payback. He was the head of Columbia when the first Beastie Boys album came out on Def Jam, distributed by Columbia. Apparently he had to field an irate call for the top boss at CBS, telling him to pull the album, as the plane on the cover had similar marking to American Airlines, and the chief of American Airlines had threatened to pull his advertising from CBS tv stations. Teller refused, saying he would be the laughing stock of the record biz if he gave into this.

Frpm Hypebot...

"Al Teller ran CBS, Columbia and MCA Records, but in this interview with Ian Rogerson This Week In Music, he shares a visionary view of where the music industry is headed. It starts as a history lesson, but things get interesting around 17:30. Topics include how (sadly) mass-saturation radio play is still the most powerful way to connect with fans, and at 20:45 Rogers asks: “It seems that the music industry always relies on entities that don’t actually care about the future of music (Wal-Mart, iTunes)… Do you share that view?”.