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Hey! Today’s memo is one that’s been on the list for a while. Motown Records has always been fascinating. It’s influential heyday, its struggles regain that influence, and its impact on culture. That’s the topic for this week’s Trapital podcast too. I was joined by friend of the pod, Zack O'Malley Greenburg, who wrote Michael Jackson, Inc and shared a bunch of insights about The Jackson 5's time on Motown.

Let’s dive in.

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the glory days of Motown

At its peak, Motown Records was America’s most successful Black business. It was a bold vision from a visionary with access to legendary talent. Many record labels have their sound, but few created a distinct genre of music. That’s Motown. The record label was the definition of product-market fit.

Berry Gordy‘s failed jazz record store, 3-D Record Mart, set the tone for Motown to have broader appeal. Gordy’s brief stint on the Lincoln-Mercury assembly line shaped Motown’s process.

From Gordy’s 1994 autobiography, To Be Loved:

Motown was a well-oiled, self-sufficient machine. The songwriters and producers were all in-house. The recording studio on West Grand Blvd in Detroit was open 24/7 and stocked with whatever items were needed. Hitsville USA was open if creativity sparked at 3 pm or 3 am.

The etiquette coaches and stylists trained Motown artists to appeal to all audiences. The white salespeople Gordy hired had promoted Motown songs to white radio stations, sometimes hiding that the music came from Black artists. I doubt that would fly today, but that is what Gordy was willing to do to reach the masses.

Then there was the song formula. Each hit song had its beginning, chorus with a grand arc, and a shoutout of the song’s name at the end. There were multiple “record labels” in-house to bypass radio station restrictions on how many songs they played from each record label. And at Motown’s weekly “quality control” meetings, multiple artists recorded versions of the same song, and the best version was the one that often won out. Much like Bad Boy Records, Motown was the originator of derivative work.

It was a process, sometimes to a fault, but it produced legends like Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, The Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye, Martha and the Vandellas, and many more.

Motown dominated the 1960s. It was smooth sailing until the early 1970s. Gordy set his sights on Hollywood, and the vision expanded beyond the Motor City.

why the glory days didn’t last

There are two eras of Motown’s post-glory days: Gordy’s Hollywood years (1972 – 1988) and the years after Gordy’s retirement (1989 – present).

Berry’s expansion to Hollywood made sense. Motown Productions was growing. Several Motown artists were in TV specials, Diana Ross was Oscar-nominated in Gordy’s first feature film, and The Jackson 5 had their TV show. Motown’s LA presence could unlock more opportunities and amplify its stars further.

But Hitsville USA’s operation wasn’t built for that. The self-sufficient, total control, complete ownership model of Motown Records needed hands-on leadership that treated music as the main thing. Plus, the move away from Detroit—away from the culture and formula that made Motown Motown—diminished the label’s unique edge. It became tougher to maintain that rigid quality control process.

Motown’s 1970s expansion struggles are similar to BuzzFeed’s rise and fall in the 2010s. The once-beloved website shaped internet culture in social media’s growth phase. But once the VC money poured in, so did the reliance on Facebook for growth, its pivot to video, and the billion-dollar expectations. It was impossible to maintain. BuzzFeed soon came back down to earth yet found itself in a mashup with other internet media companies in the same boat.

By the early 80s, Motown was trying to “recapture its glory,” a phrase that has stuck with the company. Lionel Richie and Stevie Wonder had success, but the DeBarge family never quite became the next Jackson 5. The post-disco era was challenging for Black musicians, and Motown felt that.

In 1988, Gordy sold Motown Records to MCA and Boston Ventures for $61 million. He cashed out, deservedly so, but Gordy’s successors weren’t set up for success.

Under MCA, Motown was structured to rely on its parent company for distribution, administration, and promotion. The intent was to keep costs low so the label could focus on music. The impact was a loss of control and autonomy that has stuck with the label for decades.

From Jheryl Busby to Andre Harrell, from Kedar Massenburg to Ethiopia Habtemariam, each Motown CEO entered the role as a rising entertainment exec. They understood Black music. They came into the position with plenty of career wins under their belt. But their challenges were far too similar.

Jheryl Busby, the first to replace Gordy in 1988, lost internal support once then-MCA chairman Irving Azoff left the company. Busby butt heads with new leadership and struggled to execute the same success he had as the former head of Black music at MCA.

Andre Harrell also struggled to bring his Uptown Records energy to Motown in the mid 1990s. He was criticized for inefficiency, lasted less than two years, and his career as a leading music exec was never the same. Years later, Massenburg might have kept it a little too honest about Motown’s challenges but lasted longer than most.

And most recently, Ethiopia Habtemariam had a direct line reporting to Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge for less than two years. But even after her success with the Quality Control Music joint venture, the label still relied on Capitol Music Group for radio and promotion services. The glowing profiles didn’t quite match the level of control she was actually given. She, too, was critiqued for overspending and has since left the label. In 2023, Motown doesn’t have a CEO. It has been rolled back under the Capitol Music umbrella.

High leadership turnover often says more about ownership than it does about the hired leader. The Brooklyn Nets have had eight head coaches from 2012 to 2022. All those coaches weren’t bad; several have had success elsewhere! But great coaching can’t overcome instability.

The same is true at Motown. Its fate as a standalone entity is uncertain. Can future leaders succeed under these circumstances? As Jheryl Busby feared over 30 years ago, he never wanted Motown to become a “cash cow for a huge corporation, trafficking only in nostalgia.” And today, when music back catalogs are more valuable than ever, the “cash cow” label sounds about right.

“…and that was personal.”

Despite Motown’s current status, two “sliding doors” moments could have transformed its business to this day.

The first was in 1975. The Jackson 5 wanted to leave Motown. The siblings wanted more. More control. More freedom. And higher royalty payouts. That paved the way for Michael Jackson to sign with Epic as a solo artist and release his debut album, Off The Wall (1979). He teamed up with Quincy Jones and the rest is history.

Sure, there’s a case to make that 1976 Michael was as sure of a bet as 1979 Michael, and Jermaine Jackson was the next one up, but still. Everyone would have eaten if Motown gave Michael and The Jacksons their desired royalties.

Taylor Swift and Drake’s current record label deals show that being in business with superstars—even for artist-friendly licensing deals— is good business.

But would Michael Jackson have had the same success in the 1980s under Berry Gordy? As Zack O’Malley Greenburg said on Trapital’s podcast episode about Motown, Thriller was a daring, risk-taking album that would not have lined up with Motown’s quality control process. Would Gordy have been down for an out-of-this-world concept like the “Thriller” music video? It’s hard to say, but Motown still had a chance to see that through.

The second sliding doors moment is in the late 2000s. In 2007, Drake reportedly met with then-CEO of Motown, Sylvia Rhone, hoping to get signed. Drake claims that Sylvia passed on him because she didn’t think he had the potential to be a superstar.

That dynamic was complicated once Drake linked up with Young Money, where Motown claimed it had a first right of refusal on new Cash Money Records talent. But Republic Records also had its relationship with Cash Money, and Drake eventually signed with Republic Records, where he’s still signed today.

Drake has called out Sylvia on several occasions (here, here, and here). We’ve never publicly heard Sylvia’s side of it and likely won’t. But if Drake ever has a The Last Dance-style documentary about his career, I can see him sitting on the couch like Michael Jordan, saying, “Motown passed on me… and that was personal.”

These two sliding doors moments make Motown the Portland Trailblazers of music. Letting Michael Jackson go was like the Blazers drafting Sam Bowie over Jordan with the #2 pick in the 1984 NBA Draft. Not signing Drake was like the Blazers drafting Greg Oden with the #1 pick in 2007 instead of Kevin Durant.

I would love to see Motown have another sliding doors moment, but more needs to change for the opportunity to present itself again. It’s a tough asset to spin off to a more interested buyer since the back catalog is so valuable to sell, but the current operations are too stripped down to stand alone. It’s not impossible. Let’s hope its fate can change someday.

FYI – This was our longest podcast episode yet. So if you loved this essay, you’ll love to episode. We also covered:

• Boyz II Men and their success on Motown
• Success of Quality Control Music’s joint venture with Motown
• The Wiz, 98 Degrees, Dreamgirls, NBA YoungBoy, and more

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