John Esposito: The View From the Top at Warner Music Nashville

John Esposito: The View From the Top at Warner Music Nashville

By Bob Doerschuk

A handsome panorama unfolds beyond the windows of John Esposito’s office at Warner Music Nashville. Maybe it’s not as imposing as the New York City skyline that served as his backdrop while he was based back east as President and CEO of WEA Corp., Warner Music Group’s U.S. sales and retail marketing company. Still, it’s a reminder of the legacy as well as the intimacy of Music City’s industry culture, into which Esposito was introduced in September, when he came to town as President of Warner Music Nashville.

The scenery differs on the opposite wall, where memorabilia from Esposito’s history with other formats, stemming back to his seminal work in hip-hop and rock as GM and Executive VP at Island Def Jam Music Group as well as various positions with PolyGram and subsequently with WMG. Most prominent among these are an LP cover of Sinatra's Sinatra: A Collection of Frank's Favorites and manuscript of the music for "My Way," both autographed.

“You do see some photos of me with Country artists because I’ve had a love for Nashville artists for decades,” Esposito said, gesturing toward a cluster of shots perched on the low shelves next to those windows that overlook Music Circle. “But Springsteen and Sinatra dominate the wall because for me they are the measuring sticks. I want to be involved only with artists that have that level of authenticity and credibility.”

Esposito came to Nashville determined to grow the company business without cutting back on excellence or shying away from risk. Among his most important steps was the creation of Warner Music Nashville, comprised of Atlantic Records, Reprise Records, Warner Bros. Records and the company’s Christian Music division, Word Entertainment. Welcoming Atlantic into this picture is especially significant, given that the New York-based label had closed its Nashville office in 2001 but has recently revisited the Country market through the success of Zac Brown Band. Though Warner Bros. Nashville is home to Gloriana, Jessica Harp, Faith Hill, James Otto, John Rich, Blake Shelton, Randy Travis and other Country stalwarts, the company is committed to boosting Atlantic’s profile in the format as well.

“It’s never ’one size fits all,’” Esposito noted. “Artists should get signed to a roster whose people can help them in ways that are tailored to that artist. Also, you need additional lanes for radio promotion. If you put everything through one promotion staff, there are only so many records they can handle at any given time. So the idea of building a second staff gives us this opportunity to get more shots.”

The new hires brought in under Esposito’s watch augment and complement the Warner team already in place. “We’ve got a good number of people here,” he said. “It’s a wonderful staff. But when people start leaning into other people’s lanes, they’re not only not doing their job as well as they should, they’re getting in other people’s ways. I need the promotion department to be the most amazing promotion department in the world, not a promotion department that thinks they should be in A&R and marketing and publicity. Keeping our departments focused, so they achieve great results, is an important ingredient to success.”

With that clarity at his center of vision, Esposito is on track to expand the label’s staff in marketing, publicity and other areas, all with an aim to, in his words, “take care of our roster — as it were, to control more of our destiny out of Nashville, while always having our national staffs at Atlantic and Warner Bros., so that when an artist gets to a certain level, we can engage their large marketing and promotion machines on top of what we have here.”

Much of Esposito’s acumen stems from his early experience as CEO of Music and Movies at The Wiz retail chain and as Regional VP of Mitsubishi Electronics America. But he also brings an emotional engagement that stems from his experience as a musician. As a journalism major at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, he kept a busy extracurricular schedule that included working as a deejay on the campus radio station, booking concerts and coffeehouse shows and performing with two different bands. Then, after earning his bachelor’s degree, he left for Pittsburgh, where he gigged as a drummer and to Washington, D.C., to manage several record stores.

“My ability to play music and understand what that is all about gives me an interesting chance at unique dialogue with artists,” Esposito said. “But my successful competitors come from sales, promotion and finance, so I don’t believe that my being a musician singularly wins the battle. If I’m not successful as a businessperson, none of that matters.”

Esposito is leading his company’s efforts toward achieving that success on a number of fronts. The decision to release Blake Shelton’s Hillbilly Bone as a “six pak” of songs illustrates his willingness to scale the album concept toward the tastes and spending of an increasingly singles-driven market. At the same time, he is committed to maximizing achievement for Warner Music Nashville and its artists through multiple rights agreements, a.k.a. “360 deals,” in which the label is compensated for launching its artists’ careers with a percentage of subsequent earnings from merchandise, tours and other income generators.

“The major labels are investment banks for new artists,” he said. “You’ll need to spend a considerable amount of money by the time you get to the street with a record, before anybody in America even knows who the artist is. The Warner Music Group has been the most aggressive company in securing those rights because all of the earnings that artists can have outside of recorded music starts with the artist becoming a brand name. Now, there is an obligation on our part to help build the infrastructure to service those artists and achieve even greater results. It can’t just be a money grab. But because we did the R&D and made the investment, we believe we should participate in those income streams.”

Assertive and risk-friendly strategies can stir opposition. But as a relatively new guy in town, and a newer member of the CMA Board, Esposito is impressed by cooperation that unifies much of the Nashville music business. “Even the fiercest competitors know that it’s about raising all the boats,” he noted. “Success in Country Music is good for all of us and the sense of common mission that I’ve found here is inspiring. There’s nothing like it in the hip-hop world, the rock world or anywhere else I’ve seen.”