Originally published in Foundations magazine · March 1993
Steve Kleinberg interview (excerpts)
Interview2 min read
“The consolidation made us a much stronger label, no question,” Steve Kleinberg, Vice President of Marketing at the newly merged EastWest Records, stresses. Under the umbrella of the mighty Atlantic Recording Group, Atco merged with EastWest last year, creating not only a unified label, but a major force in the music business, bringing acts like AC/DC, Pantera and Dream Theater to new levels of success.
-----
Carol Anne Szel: How has your marketing strategy changed moving from a large company like Polygram to a smaller label like EastWest?
Steve Kleinberg: Generally speaking, since we’re a smaller label, we tend to hang in with a band for quite a long time rather than throwing it against the wall. It’s not our creedo. We don’t have that clutter problem here. Having worked for a major label, we’re much more focused here than in my experience at PolyGram. We also spend a greater amount of time setting records up because we’re able to work well in advance, again the clutter effect that causes large labels to rush things out. We don’t rush things here at East West, we’re able to spend a greater amount of time in advance, and then when they’re out we’re able to work them for a very long time.
CAS: What artists on EastWest are good examples of this?
SK: Dream Theater, and Snow are two perfect examples. With Snow we put out a single some time last fall, and now the second single is exploding in the first quarter this year, and the album hit in January. So there was a lot of build up, which really led to a successful campaign. And with Dream Theater, we put the album out last July, and we basically this week just ran our course on the first single. And we’re at 300,000, we’re very, very pleased. We think we’ve developed an artist with a career instead of just a hit single. We’re very happy with the success with Pantera.
-----
CAS: What’s your greatest achievement so far at East West?
SK: Having a successful first year, having made money in our first year! I would say that every artist that we break that will deliver a second record is quite a success. And we’ve had several of those, from Pantera to Dream Theater to Snow and more, all in the last year.