The Biggest Blunders In Music History

Make a mistake in business and everyone notices. Make a huge mistake and go down in history for it. Blender Magazine has proven that an error or a miscalculation taken nearly half a century ago can come back to haunt you, even after it’s long over.

Its authors have tracked what they call the 20 biggest mistakes ever made by the music industry, a business that often seems prone to angering its own customers. At the top of the list? The industry’s response to the original Napster, the file swapping service that allowed users to freely share MP3s of copyrighted songs.

The magazine suggests the efforts, while understandable, had the opposite effect, splintering the most popular file sharing site into hundreds of others and letting an unstoppable genie out of a very big bottle.

“The labels’ campaign to stop their music from being acquired for free across the Internet has been like trying to cork a hurricane — upward of a billion files are swapped every month on peer-to-peer networks,” the magazine suggests in its April issue.

But if technology occupies the top spot on this music chart, the runner-up is all too human. His name is Dick Rowe and he once toiled for Decca Records in England. He’s the executive who refused to sign the Beatles, after Brian Epstein brought the quartet for a disastrous audition in 1962. His remark that “groups with guitars are on their way out” has become one of the most widely quoted stories about the Fab Four, even though the exec denied ever uttering the phrase.

Rowe would later redeem himself, signing another new British band – the Rolling Stones.

Motown Records owner Berry Gordy selling his famous label in 1988 for just $60 million takes the bronze. A year later, A&M fetched $500 million for its famous name, while Geffen Records went for $700 million.

Fallout from the 50s payola scandals, the record industry suing a mom for downloading, the rise and stunning fall of Casablanca Records, a music publishing house’s blunder with Bob Dylan, the premature sale of a rap music label, a CD copy protection scheme that backfired and a record label’s loss of two artists who later became huge stars all make up the rest of the Top 10.

To see the entire list, click here.

Photo credit: AFP/Getty Images

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today