Ron Stone (music industry)
| Ron Stone | |
|---|---|
 Ron Stone | |
| Background information | |
| Genres | Rock, pop |
| Occupation(s) | Artist management |
| Years active | 1968-present |
| Associated acts | numerous |
Ron Stone is an American personal manager, and musician's advocate. Stone is outspoken on Internet piracy and has influenced legislation on the issues of digital music, file sharing, and musician's intellectual property distribution rights.
Biography
Early years
Stone began his career during music’s ‘golden age’ in 1968 at Geffen and Roberts Management alongside industry names such as David Geffen, Elliot Roberts, and Irving Azoff where Stone managed the careers of Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, The Eagles, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Bob Dylan, The Band, Devo and America and Tom Cochrane.
Recent career
With Danny Goldberg and Burt Stein, Stone formed Gold Mountain Entertainment in 1985 after having signed Bonnie Raitt and Belinda Carlisle. With the elevation to partner of John Silva, Nirvana, Beastie Boys, Beck, Foo Fighters, and Sonic Youth were added to Gold Mountain’s client roster. In 1992 Stone parted company with Goldberg (who had gone to Atlantic Records) and continued to sign artists like Ziggy Marley, Rickie Lee Jones, Tracy Chapman, The Baha Men, and Joss Stone.Currently Gold Mountain Entertainment's roster includes Ray Davies, The New York Dolls (with Jerrod Wilkins), Lou Gramm ( Foreigner) also with Jerrod Wilkins, Nakia, Ambrosia, Jonah Tolchin, and Rickie Lee Jones (with Peter Wark). Stone also serves as a consultant for Transcendental Music, a non-profit record company affiliated with film director David Lynch.
Stone leveraged his stature in the entertainment industry during the Internet boom to be a spokesman for the rights of artists whose intellectual property and content were being distributed freely via peer to peer applications like Napster.
When commenting on how file sharing has devalued music, Stone commented: “Music for a generation has become disposable and it used to be a collectible.”[1] Not to mince words, Stone targeted Napster when he said “It is the single most insidious website I’ve ever seen…it’s like a burglar’s tool”[2]
In a Los Angeles Times article on Net Music, Stone was asked to comment on what price consumers would be willing to pay for downloaded music: "Forty-nine cents seems like the appropriate amount," said Ron Stone, president of Gold Mountain Entertainment, an artist management firm. "if you can get kids to spend 49 cents, consider it a gift. Make it 99 cents, you won't sell any, particularly if the singles market is a kids market."[3] Stone continued to criticize his own industry as well as the Internet when he said “Were kind of stuck in this plantation system with the record companies. And they’re the only games in town. And we looked at the Internet as an opportunity to extricate ourselves from this situation and deal directly with our audience. And now it’s not an option because the option now is we can have the relatively bad contractual arrangement with one of the majors, or we could have our property taken for free. These are very bad choices.”[4]
With Stone's counsel, Napster was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America on behalf of record labels for enabling piracy on an 'unprecedented scale'. In an article in Forbes: The murky legal issue is whether Napster is materially contributing to infringing the copyrights, even if the company doesn't actually store the offending files. "Napster is driving the getaway car," said Ronald Stone, a manager with Gold Mountain Entertainment in Los Angeles. Stone says he has found unauthorized copies of every single one of his artist's songs through Napster. With a group of other artists and management, he is planning a series of television, radio and Web commercials urging the public to stop using the trendy program.[5]
Stone worked as a consultant on digital and copyright issues to the RIAA. Stone along with Noah Stone formed the first artist driven coalition against piracy, Artists Against Piracy and he was part of the formation of The Recording Artists Coalition.
In 1989, Stone founded and ran World Domination Records for 7 years in partnership with Dave Allen from Gang of Four. In 1992 Stone founded and ran Rock-it-comics for 5 years. He now runs the label, Something Music with partner Tony Valenziano.
In film, he launched Ron Stone Productions in partnership with Curb Musifilms, produced the 1992 feature film “The Harvest”, written and directed by David Marconi.[6] While managing the Nu Kat's, Stone and Jay Landers introduced the lead singer's then wife, a young Demi Moore, to a Hollywood agent, resulting in Moore's foray into Soap Opera acting.
Stone's Gold Mountain has offices in Nashville, Montreal, New York City and Charleston, South Carolina with Gold Mountain. He has recently started a new record label called Something Music. Their first release will be the new Berlin record. Stone lives in Hollywood with his wife of 47 years.
References
- ↑ Ron Stone Biography
- ↑ http://riaa.com/newsitem.php?news_month_filter=&news_year_filter=1999&resultpage=&id=6446F9E7-95A3-F900-5648-43B6CCEFC6EB RIAA News Room: Recording Industry Sues Napster for Copyright Infringement
- ↑ http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jun/12/business/fi-universal12 Los Angeles Times Business Section: Net Music That's a Steal - but Not Stolen
- ↑ http://www.demophonic.com/bio/ronstone.html
- ↑ http://www.forbes.com/2000/04/14/mu4.html Forbes: Metallica Sues Napster
- ↑ http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=The+Harvest&x=0&y=0
External links
Ron Stone interview on Artist Managers as entrepreneurs - Midem, June 2015