Music Industry CEO Ascribes Confidence to Rutgers MBA: MBA News

Michael O’Neill, a Rutgers MBA alumnus, offers an interesting standpoint on the inherent challenges of the music industry. As CEO and president of Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), he heads up a company that serves the songwriters, composers and publishers at a time when freedom of access to music has never been greater.

“The internet has this whole concept of free, but for the songwriter that doesn’t work, so how do we get businesses to step up and pay for it?” asked Michael O’Neill in a Rutgers University feature. O’Neill was at his alma mater earlier this month to give a lecture as part of the school’s CEO series that draws on Rutgers MBA alumni.

BMI’s challenge in the music industry, as a nonprofit performing rights organization, is one of a very different nature to that of a record label, and O’Neill has repeatedly found himself entering legal proceedings to battle on behalf of BMI’s clients’ rights.

Of course, Broadcast Music, Inc. - founded at the end of the 1930s as an alternative to ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) – couldn’t be better established in this field, boasting a roster of 650,000 artists and publishers whose musical works number in the millions.

O’Neill is charged with overseeing all BMI’s operations and strategy both domestically and internationally. Having joined the CBS-TV Network after completing his Rutgers MBA, he moved to BMI in 1995 and quickly began to work his way through the ranks – a rise that culminated in becoming CEO in 2013, and president in 2014.

Rise to BMI CEO credited to embracing opportunities 

At the event, and in front of a crowd dominated by today’s Rutgers MBA students, O’Neill attributed his rise in the music industry to embracing the opportunities that kept coming his way:

“People trusted me, and they kept giving me things, and I kept taking them for the ability to learn something new,” he said.

Stepping up to the challenges of taking on these new roles and responsibilities was something he, in turn, credited to the hands on approach of his MBA education – something he said had allowed him, “to be more confident in taking on the challenges and to feel I had the ability or the knowledge to be able to do things.”

It certainly seems that O’Neill’s self-belief has not been unfounded. Last year, BMI was able to report a record revenue of US$977 million, of which over US$840 million went to its songwriters, composers and music publishers – according to a press release for the company. The same release also name checks BMI’s biggest music industry earners from the last financial year: Daft Punk, Taylor Swift, Shakira and ‘Let It Go’ from Disney’s animated film, Frozen, to name but a few.