Julie (Greifer) Swidler ’79 was named one of the top 20 women executives in the music industry by Billboard magazine in October 2006. Swidler is the executive vice president of business and legal affairs for the BMG U.S. Label Group and heads up legal and business affairs for the company.
The company’s record labels work with well-known artists like Alicia Keys and Avril Lavigne and rock bands like Pearl Jam, My Morning Jacket and a new band called Say Anything. The Billboard list included MTV President Christina Norman and Atlantic Music Group President Julie Greenwald.
In the mid 1990s Swidler, while at Polygram Records, helped coordinate the Woodstock ’94 festival in Saugerties, N.Y. The event marked the 20th anniversary of the original Woodstock music festival. Since 1994 Swidler has shifted jobs and witnessed a sea change in the music industry.
“The sale of physical CDs has gone down dramatically,” Swidler said. “I don’t think we are decreasing the amount of money that we invest in new bands. The scary part is that we can’t spend as much time allowing them to start selling records. But we still try.” Digital music players like iPods can store thousands of songs and have diminished the need for CDs. That means artists like Avril Lavigne have turned to Web sites like iTunes to sell both albums and single songs. But sites like iTunes face competition from illegal file-sharing sites that allow users to download music for free.
“When I went back to my law school, the students thought it was their inalienable right to download music for free,” Swidler said. “Suddenly there was this idea that the record companies were ripping you off because of the price of music. The sad part is that these music fans don’t understand that they are hurting the music they love. They are hurting their ability to get new music.”
Swidler is a graduate of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and still lives in New York City with her husband and three children. At Union, Swidler hosted an eclectic music program on the College radio station, WRUC. She also organized weekly live shows featuring local artists at Hale House. The Friday night series was called The Coffee House.
“The funny part about The Coffee House was that I basically wrote the contracts between the college and the artists,” Swidler said.