Two framed certificates hang on the wall of Josh Gruss’s midtown Manhattan office, one from Columbia Business School and the other from London Business School, above a case of medals and a large number of guitars and amplifiers.
The chairman, chief executive and founder of Round Hill Music got interested in the business of music publishing – managing royalty collection for songwriters and seeking new commercial outlets for their songs – as a member of a hard rock band called Rubikon, which earned comparisons with Incubus and Rob Zombie.
It was not until after jobs at Sony Music and Atlantic Records, in investment banking at Bear Stearns, six years in the US Coast Guard after the September 11 attacks and a decade as a partner in his family’s hedge fund that he decided to go to business school to work out how to turn his passion for music into a business.