What drew you into the music business?
I’ve just loved music forever. Both of my parents were always blasting music when I grew up, just very different tastes. My mom was into a lot of old Soul and Funk; stuff like Love, Sly & The Family Stone, Ohio Players, Earth, Wind & Fire. My dad was more of on the Pop and Singer/Songwriter side of things. He loved Elton John and Billy Joel.
          So I’d always spend my money buying cassettes and albums, and then I worked in record stores; mostly independent record stores in the Bay Area. I worked for this really cool store called Modlang, where I worked with Aaron Axelsen, who went on to program Live105, the Alternative station in San Francisco. While I was in college, Aaron and I were roommates and worked at the college station, which segued into the music business. I became a college rep for Sony Music and worked my way up.

How did you decide radio promotion was your calling?
I kind of fell into it. I was a sales guy at Geffen, but always also Aaron Axelsen’s sidekick, and through him I met a lot of different Alternative programmers and we all just became friends. I wasn’t working anybody on anything. I was just Aaron’s buddy, sitting off in the corner cracking jokes. One of my friends Matt Smith, who was over at London Records, was leaving London to go to Dreamworks and said, “You know more Alternative programmers than most people whose job it is. You should do promotion!”
          I’ve always looked at this business like school. I want to learn as much as I can about as many sides of it as I can. It makes you a better executive if you have an idea what everyone else does. It’s also protection. In an industry that is constantly contracting and laying people off, the more things you can do the more valuable you are. So I was glad to learn how promotion works and started doing Alternative promotion for London Records, and I liked it! There is something really rewarding about seeing a band rise from playing clubs to playing Madison Square Garden and knowing you were a part of it.

Your rise in the RCA Music Group coincided with the most turbulent decade the industry has seen to date. How has the job evolved from the standpoint of goals, tools and methodology over that time?
In a nutshell, the job I took has very little in common with the job I have for a number of reasons, including that it was a tumultuous decade. Everything changed. All of our models changed because of file-sharing and the growth of the digital domain, so our old school methodologies had to be either completely thrown out the door or be vastly retooled.
          Think of how much more information we have at our disposal. Some of it’s good and some of it’s a terrible thing. Now we’ve gone from auditorium tests, perceptuals and traditional call-out, to online call-out, Mscores and PPM and you have guys who can make assessments on records based on the first spin and what’s happening in listenership. It’s a little insane. You’ve got BDS where you’re tracking constantly in real time, as opposed to by day. There is such a flood of data and you have to be really smart about how you filter it so you don’t get weighed down by it. You can get lost in it; paralysis by analysis.
          But a lot of it is still the same: Does the band have a big touring base? Is there a reaction to a band when they hit a market; Do you see sales go up? Do you see shows grow from a third-house to a half-house to sold-out? Those benchmarks are still the same. The fundamentals on how you gauge when a band is hit-bound is the one thing that’s still the same. But how we do business has changed; how we deal with radio and with sales and with everything has changed.

What helped you move smoothly through your career during this time?
You have to be adaptable. You have to be aware of everything and not fixated on one thing. For me, it goes back to trying to learn as much about as many different aspects of the business as possible. I never wanted to go through my career with blinders. So if there was an opportunity because someone got laid off – and sometimes there’s opportunity in hardship – you offer to help out and chip in. It helps the company. It helps you because you’re learning something that you may not have known before.
          So in general, I think it’s trying to be adaptable and trying to find the positive elements whatever your situation is. If you’re rigid and set in your ways you will go the way of the dinosaur. You have to adapt and evolve and try to do as good a job as possible.

When you started, promotion pretty much drove the bus; radio was the key to success. But hasn’t the synergy at many labels changed, with a lot of other departments contributing equally these days?
Even going back to the past, there always was that synergy. We certainly didn’t have the social networking lever we use as predictors of that hit potential, but I think any good company has to be a well-rounded company. Radio is still certainly being very much the biggest single driver in audience and awareness – and by extension, sales – but you can’t do it yourself, because that radio profile alone isn’t sometimes enough. We’re pieces of the puzzle. Radio gets the exposure and the airplay, then the online department helps to brand image along with our marketing department to make it so the artist has “a face” for the public.
          The ability to utilize so many different avenues, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare, to reach different people in different communities and tie it into one collective whole is fun. Smart radio stations are doing the same thing. A lot of times to get that radio airplay, we need to inform these savvy stations about what’s going on online and in the rest of the world.
          No one wants to just play a song, no matter how amazing the song is, if there isn’t enough else going on to make it rise above the other great songs. If there’s not a touring marketing department doing great with shows, a sales department that’s doing great with product placement and an online department doing everything it needs to in order to build the social network numbers, most radio stations won’t respond. So we work with the other departments to bring the “what else?” to radio.

Before both the music and radio industries started to go through the upheaval of the 21^st century, the relationship between them was almost like teammates helping each other achieve their respective goals. Does it still work that way?
I can’t really speak to the “old days,” because I’ve only ever really known it in this era, where most radio stations are owned by major public corporations, as are the labels. I didn’t grow up, unfortunately, in the era of “mom & pops.” That would be a simpler relationship because there’s a lot more autonomy when you’re not beholden to shareholders. That changes the dynamic.
          But both labels and radio stations win when they do work together. There is almost always a common ground where both can win. Do we butt heads sometimes? Sure, that happens in any business. But at the end of the day, we both benefit when there’s a give and take. Neither can exist without the other. If you have a radio station with no music to play, you don’t have a radio station anymore. If you have a label putting out stuff with nowhere for people to hear it, you don’t have a label anymore. We have to have a synergistic relationship just out of definition.

You have experience with a wide range of formats, from Alternative to Triple A to AC to Top 40. Does each format require a different approach or can the same promotion principles be used across the board?
The fundamentals are similar, but psychology certainly comes into play just by the definition of each format. To think that I would have the exact same approach to a Mainstream AC station as I did when I was doing Alternative would be kind of silly. When I was doing Alternative we were all young and growing up together, so it was more about going out and getting to know each other and seeing bands. The Mainstream AC programmer may be more about what’s going on in the local marketplace and the information available rather than “the hang,” for example.
          But it’s not necessarily within each format. Each person you talk to is a little different from anyone else. You need to be smart on how you approach it based on each programmer’s personality and informing yourself on what they do and what their station does. Just because you have something that’s a priority at a format, you still have to realize there are a handful of guys at that format who don’t play by those rules. Different people step out on certain kinds of records and some people won’t go near certain records until they go Top 10 or Top 15. So there has to be individuality to the approach to each station and each programmer. Quite frankly, it would be a really boring job if there was cookie-cutter template and I was just a “telemarketer.”

You’ve had the opportunity to work with some pretty imposing and colorful personalities in this business. If you had to single out one mentor, who is it and what did that person bring to your career?
Let’s single out Clive Davis. To be able to have had any interaction with someone with the pedigree, history, intellect and experience of someone like Clive was mind blowing! Here was a guy who worked with bands that I grew up on, yet he’s still relevant dealing with stuff today. It’s still impressive. He still has his finger on the pulse of what is going on. It’s amazing!
          I learned so much working under Clive. The main thing I learned was to always be as prepared as possible and to inform myself on every level, because you couldn’t bluff your way through things with him – he was not that guy. I remember some record that was off like a rocket; up 350 spins and everything working. So I go into the meeting thinking I’m going to be able to go in and be “Rock star guy” and tell all this great news about what a bang up job we’re doing. So I do my spiel about the record exploding and Clive goes, “That’s great, Adrian; it sounds like things are really looking good. But why are you down 11 spins in Albany?” I was totally speechless for about two seconds because (to be honest) I was so excited about the overall success I hadn’t drilled down to even know where the holes were. I realized that you have to really dissect your records and, even with the most successful ones, you need to know where the flaws are so you can be in front of it and make sure it doesn’t become a bigger flaw.
          Clive holds you to an insanely high level, which is the same level he holds himself to and does across the board whether it’s with artists or the music or the songs or the promotional, marketing and sales efforts around those releases. It was really an amazing experience.