James Diener is almost certainly the only head of a music label who's reading for pleasure the worlds hundred best books. Right now, hes slogging through Theodore Dreisers Sister Carrie, a novel that's a century and a universe removed from his world. But Diener's reality as CEO and president of A&M/Octone Records is far from whatever passes for normal in todays music business. For one thing, A&M/Octone is small. Two pizzas could feed its New York-based staff. Nine years after its launch as Octone Records, it still has fewer than 15 acts under contract. And yet every move Diener makes is designed to produce long-term careers and blockbusters.
He came slowly to the idea of a little company with big dreams. His father, Steve Diener, was president of ABC Records in the late 1970s. At his New York private school and in college, Diener played in pickup bands, then cover groups and bar bands. But he was also an honors graduate of Johns Hopkins, and it didn't take the fledgling record exec long to realize his company was ripe for a new business model.
At Columbia Records and then RCA Music Group, he achieved a rare double title: vice president (senior at RCA) of both A&R and marketing. But he felt conflicted, because while established artists got world-class promotion, new ones were orphans. We signed a lot of acts that didn't get a decent shot, he says. I wanted to change that. So he started an independent label to nurture bands until they'd sold, say, 100,000 CD's then upstream them to a major label for the push to millions.
In 2000, with several partners and handpicked investors, Diener made a deal with Sony BMG while continuing to work creatively with Octones acts after they moved to the big leagues. The double tracking paid off he enjoyed major success with Maroon 5 and Flyleaf; Octone moved on to A&M; and Diener, now 39, is struggling to find time to read.
