Lia Vollack is running late. Jonathan Palmer, a licensing executive for Columbia Records, sits in the waiting area outside her corner office on the top floor of a converted soundstage on the Sony lot in Culver City, California. He has been there for 40 minutes.
Vollack is the president of worldwide music for Sony Pictures Entertainment; she oversees all music in all Sony films: Screen Gems, Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Animation, and Sony Classics. In the past five years, in the face of a little glitch called the Failure of the Music Industry -- you know, the near-40% drop in CD sales since 2000 -- Vollack's power has grown immensely. Why? Because soundtracks -- often purchased as a keepsake of a movie -- reliably sell CDs.
Finally, she appears, a youthful 43-year-old in tight jeans, a low-cut blouse, purple nail polish, and purple Prada heels, who, in that Los Angeles way, looks more like she's about to go clubbing than negotiate licensing deals. She tells Palmer, "I'm sorry I'm so difficult," then turns her back on him and waves for him to follow.
Palmer sits across from her and plays three new songs from the upcoming AC/DC album that he hopes Vollack will use in a future movie. "We're talking to ESPN about featuring a song, and we're seeking other promotional opportunities," he says.
Vollack is pleasant but unmoved. She ends the meeting by telling Palmer that she likes one of the new songs. "It sounds like their classic stuff, without the hefty licensing fees," she says. She agrees to keep her eyes open for a good trailer. Basically, the booby prize.
Why does Vollack toy with record executives like that? Because she can. "People like Lia have become more important to labels," says Paul Kremen, a former marketing executive at two major recording companies. "A movie company is going to spend infinitely more money on marketing than a label will on a new album, so labels try to toe their artists onto the movie and also sell the soundtrack." The labels would certainly suffer if Vollack follows through with a plan that she's been flirting with: Cut out the middleman and be the first studio to self-release a major soundtrack.
"She's in the middle of this vortex," says Raúl Pérez, Vollack's colleague for the last decade and Sony's senior VP of music administration. "You have the filmmaker and producer and composer who want their dreams to happen. Then you have the labels and artists who have their own priorities. And you have the studio and the budget, which she needs to serve." What better way to alleviate some of that "hurricane of mixed interests" than to go it alone?
Vollack's business motivation is quite simple: She wants soundtracks that will generate hype and draw audiences into a movie. That means that she skips song soundtracks on approximately 80% of the 30 movies that Sony releases annually (she releases far more film-score soundtracks). "It's impossible to judge exactly how much one single affects a movie," Kremen says, "but when you're reaching an audience of 100 million, it's got to have an effect." For example, a mediocre movie such as A Knight's Tale, the medieval flick starring a very young Heath Ledger and a '70s-rock soundtrack, grossed more than $117 million worldwide -- and sold 1 million CDs. That might sound like a lot, but Sony's profit on CD sales is a pittance compared with a blockbuster movie's take. If a Vollack soundtrack sells 2 million copies, then after licensing, royalties to producers and artists, and marketing fees, Sony might clear between $6 million and $9 million.
"We actually have two divergent agendas," Vollack says. "Labels sometimes spend money on things that don't reach our audience or encourage people to see the film." Her complaint is that record labels ride the movie studio's coattails (they usually view the whole movie -- and the studio's marketing plan -- before committing to distribute the soundtrack). Vollack points, with a hint of contempt, to two recent soundtrack hits from rival Fox: Juno and Garden State. Juno sold 250,000 digital albums and 500,000 hard copies, all in the months following the studio's significant advertising expenditure, including its Oscar campaign, to promote the movie. The implication is that the label got the better of the movie studio.
Vollack doesn't let anyone get the jump on her. She graduated high school at 15, and at 16 became a roadie for Johnny Thunders (of New York Dolls fame) and the Ramones. She moved to Manhattan at age 19 to work in theater-sound design on Broadway shows such as On the Waterfront and The Heidi Chronicles. She later worked in sound effects and freelanced in music editing until 1997, when Sony hired her as its point person for studios, directors, composers, and artists.
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