My friend, and my wife’s colleague back in the day at Epic Records, Jeff Jones just got the baby boomers’ dream job, CEO of Apple Corps, The Beatles’ record label. (You can read more about it at Reuters.) It’s hard to wrap your head around that there’s even such a job.

Funny how I was just writing about the Fabs the other day.

This post is a continuation of the “My Favorite Brands” series, but somehow the idea of a band as a ‘brand,’ while incredibly popular in the music business, completely rubs me the wrong way (in fact, I’d argue it is one of dozens of reasons their biz in flushing down the toilet).

But, it’s true, great artists of all stripes –notice “great”– have many of the attributes by which we would define a brand, and to me The Beatles are the explemplar of this phenomenon in the last 50 years.

Here’s what I’ve always admired:
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Mosaic Records has led the way as one of the first record companies offering “limited edition box collections” by catalog (and now the web); they’re the leader in their field of complete recording collections of jazz musicians. They are part of the community of jazz fans (co-founder Michael Cuscuna is the leading reissue producer in the history of jazz recordings) and they know what they stand for. They’ve steadily stuck by their guns (their vision, that is). Long after competitors have come and gone (though they’re virtually the only ones whose primary offerings are available only by mail), long after others have expanded/contracted/exploded their versions of the box set, Mosaic has made a consistent set of promises from the first day of their existence. (Here’s a full profile of the company.)

Mosaic is so confident in their beliefs they list them in every catalog and on their website:

• Complete, definitive collections.

• Highest quality remastering.

• Important artists, not just popular ones.

• Numbered, limited editions.

• Elegant boxes with rare photographs.

• Thoroughly researched discographies, biographies, and musical analysis.

The proprietors of Mosiac have pride in their company, their products, their beliefs, and their customers. There’s every reason they’ve stayed in business successfully and happily for almost 25 years.

(Full disclosure: My former partner/brother-in-law/great friend Alan Goodman and I helped establish the Mosaic catalog in 1986, and Alan continues to write it.)

There are endless conversations about how to navigate the changing media landscape, and it feels to me people are working way, way too hard to create a new conventional wisdom. Let’s leave out that any conventional wisdom is suspect, but really, let’s be a little looser.

I’ve learned some of my greatest lessons from the musicians I most admire, and this picture of saxophonist/composer/theorist Ornette Coleman with my friend, Yahoo’s Todd Kreiger, reminded me (more…)