Piero Giramonti

Born in San Francisco to Italian immigrant parents who ran a restaurant in Marin County, Piero Giramonti eschewed law school to move to New York in 1989 and pursue his ambitions in the music business, where he worked at EMI for 12 years in both London and Italy. During the course of his 25-year career, Giramonti worked for all three major music groups in a variety of capacities, including marketing, international, video and DVD production and as head of L.A. indie Dangerbird Records. His longtime colleague Steve Barnett hired him in January, 2013, as GM of the newly reborn Harvest Records label, and was later joined by promotion veteran Jacqueline Saturn, where his signings include Banks, Death Grips, Glass Animals, TV on the Radio, Best Coast, and The New Basement Tapes project, among others. In December, 2015, he and Saturn were named co-GMs of Caroline Records, the independent distribution arm of Capitol Music Group.

The recent Capitol Congress truly pointed out that there's a lack of socializing in the current, online-intensive music business compared to the past.

I was just listening to NPR and they were talking about Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods, wondering why this Internet giant would be interested in acquiring brick-and-mortar stores. Amazon is also opening physical book stores in certain test markets. Which is the greatest irony because they're probably the single reason book stores have gone out of business in the first place. I used to go to the record store every Saturday morning with 15 bucks to buy a couple of albums. But it was as much for the social experience as anything ... Perhaps we're beginning to miss the interaction of being together in a common area. Humans are social animals and music is an art form at the height of that continuum. It's still amazing to me that a band can go on the main stage at, say, Coachella, and have 100,000 people watching them, with just music bringing them to that collective state of euphoria. Is there any other art form that does that?

How does a guy with a college degree in applied economics and English end up in the music business?

I was always fascinated with economics, because it has a lot of social and cultural import. I studied English because I wanted to be able to communicate effectively. While at University of San Francisco, I spent a lot of time at KUSF, which was one of the better college radio stations at that time. After graduating, I was going to law school, but had an encounter with a friend of my parents who was a federal judge in S.F., and he asked me what I loved about the law. I didn't really have a good answer. He wondered what I really loved and I told him music. So he encouraged me to move to New York and get into the business. It was an experiment that so far has lasted 25 years.

So your parents weren't disappointed you dropped out of law school?

They were in the restaurant business in San Francisco and then in Mill Valley and wanted me to take over that. I worked there from the time I was 15 until I finished college. I realized how brutally difficult the hours were. They were Italian immigrants who were able to put two of their kids through college, so it was a tremendous opportunity. I enjoyed doing it, but that wasn't my ambition.

You started out at EMI doing international marketing.

I came in as part of a management training program with two other guys. I was based in New York, while the others were based in London and L.A. We were tasked with an operational audit of the way the international structure worked. It was when Jim Fifield first came in, and brought in Boston Consulting to supervise a year-long project where we looked at release scheduling, timelines and a standard marketing planning form and protocol for coordinating U.S. and U.K. releases around the world. Back then, before e-mail, we just tried to improve the communication. It was pretty basic, but it gave me an understanding of the way international marketing worked. I spent a great deal of time traveling in the U.K. and Europe. At the end of the year, I told them I wanted to be an international product manager, so they moved me to London, where I coordinated the releases for the U.S. repertoire in Europe.

So you got an overview of the global business at the time?

I lived in London and did that job for three years. An opportunity then came up to be head of marketing for EMI Italy, which, given my background, was great for me culturally because I had a lot of family there. I thought it was just my parents were crazy, but I learned all Italians are, which was nice.

Then you came back to the U.S. to work for Tom Corson, who was head of international at the time for Capitol-EMI.

I returned to London after that and ran the international division for Capitol and Parlophone. We had some great records then ... Beastie Boys, Foo Fighters, Radiohead, Blur, Queen, Tina Turner. All told, I lived in Europe for almost 10 years ... six in London and three in Italy. At that point, Ray Cooper and Ashley Newton had taken over at Virgin Records U.S. and were looking for a head of marketing, so they brought me over. After 12 years of working for EMI, then I moved over to Epic Records with Steve Barnett, then worked for Sony Music. And in 2008, I took over as head of global marketing for Warner Bros. Records.

Having worked at all three major music groups, what are the differences between them?

The bulk of my experience was at EMI, which was really a U.K.-based company, with Parlophone the jewel in the crown. At UMG now, you have an English guy running the company and a lot of the senior staff come from the U.K. and global operations. There's a similar sort of feel and mentality.

Now there are British guys at the head of all three music groups with Lucian, Rob Stringer at Sony and now Max Lousada at WMG.

What I loved about working in the U.K., for the size of that market, the impact of their music around the world is inordinately huge. They consistently punch above their weight in that respect. Perhaps in the past the problem was, coming to America, you have to work for a while to develop those sorts of relationships because this country is so vast. It takes time. In the digital era, the business has become much more seamlessly global. You can talk directly to the audience in each country now from wherever you operate. Those parochial, geographical barriers have been lifted to a certain degree. At the core, this is a creatively run business. If you can break the U.S. and U.K. markets, it's going to go worldwide.

How does the partnership work between you and Jacqueline?

We cross all aspects of the business, but obviously Jacqueline has more experience and relationships on the radio side. We would never sign an act without both of us agreeing. We have creative differences sometimes, so it's important we find common ground. The split between Harvest and Caroline is definitely a challenge and continuing to evolve. We have great backroom support from Capitol, which is why it's great we're here in the Tower.

What's your take on the future of the music business?

There's just so much disruptive technology constantly changing the landscape that it's difficult to predict what's going to happen. There's a whole new generation of artists who are very savvy about getting music out on their own terms in the digital space. What we do at Caroline is to market that music with our key partners ... Spotify, Apple, Amazon, SoundCloud, etc., and take it to a higher level. That's what we're focusing on, and I'm enthusiastic about where it goes from here. It's a great privilege to be able to work in this business for more than 25 years now. When I first started, it was a great time to be in the music business, but we've reached the point where things are finally turning around. And to be in a position where I can help people discover music and artists have a career making music has been driving me every day since I decided to get into this.