BusinessTN

Meet Alison Brown. She's talented, having been deemed one of the best banjo players in the world. She's smart. Brown has a Harvard degree, an MBA from UCLA, and experience as an investment banker. And she's successful, celebrating the 15th anniversary of Compass Records--the label founded by her and husband Garry West.

Brown's rare combination of talent and business savvy may be the key to her label's longevity. As other labels have fallen victim to the digital era, Brown says her knack for business has enabled Compass to succeed and thrive in the flighty music industry.

"Garry and I established our label in the early 1990s when a lot of people were starting artist-run and do-it-yourself labels," she recalls. "It was easy to get carried away by the fun of being in the music [industry] and forget that first and foremost, it's business. Whether you're selling music or refrigerators, you have to know at any given moment who owes you what, what is due, [and so on]."

Brown's focus on fundamentals has served her label well. Fifteen years after its founding, Compass Records Group has been called "one of the greatest independent labels of the last decade" by Billboard Magazine. It also has a catalog of over 600 roots music releases, and has affiliated Green Linnet, Mulligan Records and Xenophile catalogs.

Nonetheless, Brown acknowledges that the music industry is drastically different from when she and her husband first started, and that the climate is continually changing.

"The landscape today is completely different than when we started in 1995," Brown says. "When people started saying digital sales of music would replace CDs, retailers panicked. But in my opinion, the problem isn't that people don't want to buy CDs anymore; it's that retailers have stopped being a conduit [out of fear]." The solution? "To be able to go directly to the consumer," Brown claims. "Compass has an active database of 50,000 customers, [enabling us to do just that]. Our digital business is strong and growing, but it's still a challenge."

So what does the future hold for Compass? For Brown, it's about remaining focused on the basics. "This is still a very viable business, although the current transition period is challenging," she says. "We are determined to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem."

One thing is certain: As long her industry of choice is rife with change and uncertainty, Brown's MBA will continue to be as valuable to Compass Records as her musical talent.