The Orchard’s Richard Gottehrer on His Years as a Hit Songwriter — And Why He Never Should Have Stopped
Categoria: Musica
"When it succeeds, the success is in doing it," Gottehrer says about making music. "When other people buy it, that's the byproduct that pays you the dividend."
Por Billboard | 15/05/2026
Richard Gottehrer co-founded The Orchard with then-partner Scott Cohen in 1997 — or five years before iTunes opened its first digital storefront. It was a time when physical music was the dominant format, and the only conversations happening around digital were theoretical arguments over what form the economic model would take. Related Billboard’s 2026 Indie Power Players Revealed Backline Launches Mental Health Toolkit for Dance Music Community: 'Seeking Help Is Not Something to Be Ashamed Of' Fugees' Pras Michel Surrenders to Authorities to Begin 14-Year Prison Sentence, Vows to Appeal While still in its infancy, the company was lucky — but also shrewd enough to be named as the sole distributor of DIY indie artists and their labels for Valley Media, which led to them supplying music to early purveyors like CDNow and Music Boulevard, online stores at the dawn of the digital age. And they had the foresight to include digital distribution rights in all contracts with artists and labels, even when the main form of distribution The Orchard trafficked in at the time was in CDs. So began the evolution of The Orchard, which today is the largest distributor of independent music in the world. While the Sony Music Group-owned company doesn’t reveal such figures, Billboard estimates the company is closing in on $2 billion in annual revenue, with a current U.S. market share that has hovered around 10.75% for the year so far through early May, according to Luminate data. Gottehrer, 86, says that of all of his music industry accomplishments — many of which he discussed at length here — he is most proud of co-founding The Orchard. (You can read all about his involvement with The Orchard in part one of this interview.) But as it turns out, Gottehrer had a few other accomplishments before the founding of The Orchard — including being part of the songwriting/production trio FGG (for Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Gottehrer); performing as a member of the British invasion band The Strangeloves; co-founding Sire Records; and producing albums for the likes of Blondie, Climax Blues Band and Richard Hell, among many, many other accomplishments. Here, he spoke to Billboard about those musical feats in this second part of his career-spanning conversation. “Music styles all change,” he says. “But when it comes to earnings in our business, the song is the thing that has the most value.” Related The Orchard Co-Founder Richard Gottehrer On His Long, Winding, Legendary Indie Music Business Career You had a little bit of history in the music business prior to co-founding The Orchard, where you might have written a hit song or two, and then you helped launch Sire Records with Seymour Stein. Let’s go backwards in your history. How did you become involved in Sire? We were doing great, but within FGG, Jerry wanted to move to Los Angeles, and Bob was doing different things. So while we stayed partners in publishing — Grand C