Universal Leader
Robold Applies EMBA Training to Changing Times in Nashville’s Music Business
Ken Robold, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Universal Music Group in Nashville, never dreamed of having his dream job. “I lucked into it, to be honest,” he says.
Growing up on Long Island, Ken was always interested in music. But he never expected to have a career in the music business. Instead, he wanted to work for a Wall Street brokerage house. After earning a degree in accounting and passing the CPA exam, he realized, with a strong nudge from a slumping economy after the stock market crash of 1987, “it wasn’t for me.”
His friends on the Street advised him to pursue another path. Following one of his longtime interests (sports was the other one), he landed an interview at Polygram Records in New York City, then landed a job—first in distribution and then for Mercury Records, Polygram’s rock label.
Four years later, Ken says, “an opportunity came up for substantial career growth,” and he found himself in Nashville. For someone who’d never lived outside New York, resettling in the Southeast demanded some acculturation adjustments. But, like so many others who have come to Nashville and Vanderbilt from another city, it didn’t take Ken long to feel at home.
“I loved Nashville from the get-go,” he says. “I met a bunch of friends right away and fell in love with the quality of life and the quality of the people here. Initially, I thought I’d get a couple of years of experience and then move back to New York or L.A. But I realized what a special place this is, so I decided to stay and go back to graduate school—luckily, at Vanderbilt.”
By the time he enrolled in Vanderbilt’s Executive MBA program in 1997, Ken had reached a point in his career that he shared with almost all of his fellow students: He believed he was ready to take on greater responsibility for his organization, but needed more knowledge to get there.
Barely six months after Ken graduated with his EMBA degree and an augmented set of skills in 1999, Napster hit the market and created a paradigm shift in the music business. “The industry had been growing before the online aspect,” Ken recalls. “Now, the retail environment has changed. Record stores are disappearing. The whole industry has been turned upside down.”
But the extraordinary challenges that record labels face today also opened extraordinary opportunities for an executive with the problem-solving, team-building and leadership abilities that the EMBA program nurtures. At Owen, Ken says, “you learn you have to work within a team. You can’t get by without your classmates. When you face challenging times, as our industry has, you have to pull together.
“Above anything else, you learn a lot of valuable management skills. You learn to analyze things more clearly. Just getting through the program while having a full-time job makes you a lot more efficient.”
Since earning his Executive MBA degree, Ken has remained with the same company, whose name has evolved from Polygram to Seagram’s Universal to Universal Music Group. His title and responsibilities have evolved, too. Now, he oversees one of Nashville’s major music operations, with more than 70 employees.
Though it’s hard for some to believe—especially when you get to interact with artists under your label who range from Willie Nelson to Ryan Adams—Ken insists that the life of a music business executive is not all glamour. “It has its sexy aspects but its mundane things, too,” he says. “Recently, we flew to New York see one of our artists, Lucinda Williams, at Town Hall, and then saw Reba McEntire honored as Woman of the Year by Billboard magazine. On the flip side, I spend a lot of my day talking to our internal lawyers.”
There are sales and marketing meetings to attend, contracts to review, and finances to manage (along with his other titles, Ken also remains CFO of Universal’s Nashville operation).
But just as the people who produce the product he sells are artists, so there is art as well as science in Ken’s work. Especially today, the challenges of the music business demand creative thinking and fresh strategies. Instead of getting more prominent displays in the now defunct Tower Records, the challenge today might be more about trying to get Universal’s music on the front page of iTunes.
“When your job is to generate growth in a struggling industry, it’s a challenge. But that also makes it an especially exciting time to be part of this field. You learn to juggle and adapt,” he says. “It’s hard work, but it’s a lot of fun.”
