Investment Banker Becomes Music Entrepreneur

The Tennessean has a profile of Alison Brown, who traded a career as an investment banker for one as a bluegrass music entrepreneur.

“I worked with the kind of people who just wake up in the morning thinking about structures for bond refundings,” said Brown, a Harvard University alumna and UCLA business school grad. “I’d wake up and think about when I was going to get to play the banjo again. And the two things were just mutually exclusive.”

Rather than take the traditional path of trying to make it with one of the big labels in town, she decided to make her own path.

“If you have the money and the clout of a major label, you’re in a better position to shove things down people’s throats,” she said, speaking as someone who had worked briefly at a major pop label. “Our approach is to find art that we think is great and then try to draw people to it.”

This niche approach to the industry is gaining traction. She is one of many who are quietly changing the music industry right under the feet of the big three companies that now dominate.