Rising Stars in...Radio & Recording

Denise McGovern
Digital Sales Manager, Universal Music

“I’ve never bought co-op. Ever,” laughs Denise McGovern, 38. By “co-op” she means ads or product placement in book or record stores, a seemingly strange situation for someone with the word “sales” in her job title. In her nine years as digital sales manager at Universal Music, McGovern has served the albums she represents more as a publicist would than as a marketer. Her current accounts include iTunes, Spotify, eMusic, Rhapsody, and HD Tracks (24-bit downloads).

McGovern first gained online experience from what she now calls “the wonderful experiment” of Andante.com, a French-run web site that combined arts news with streaming and a record label. She started at Universal as marketing coordinator, and soon moved into the newly created online marketing department, which predominately sent email newsletters and updated the label’s web site. In 2004, Apple’s iTunes was set up for business, “but no one considered it a proper account. It was ‘a marketing outlet,’ but ‘let’s focus on venues that actually affect our market share,’ was the thinking,” she says. McGovern notes that SoundScan wasn’t even counting digital sales as sales at that time. The only people buying from iTunes were early tech adopters. It is now the No. 1 music retailer in the country.

McGovern began working with iTunes on a project basis; early on she scored a home run with Janine Jansen’s Four Seasons album—a chamber version of the work by an artist who didn’t yet have a presence in the U.S. Curious digital listeners spiked that album into the iTunes overall chart with a digital share of close to 75%. Govern also looked after the DG Concerts digital-only series, which launched with recordings from the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Today, labels not only consider digital sales a top priority, but oftentimes issue digital-only recordings.

“One of the things that all of us in our 30s do is straddle traditional listening and new listening.” McGovern says. “We weren’t brought up with the iPod, but we weren’t set in our ways, either. I remember buying physical records and I remember downloading digital records.”

What of Spotify—a free streaming site that requires only a Facebook login, that makes artists shake and casual listeners rejoice? “We can all coexist—it’s all fine.” says McGovern. “There are lots of different consumers out there, and they all consume in different ways.”

Based in Dallas, Texas, McGovern is extremely aware of America’s car culture. “As the integration of the phone with the car gets even better and more widespread, we’ll be able to access everything anywhere, even during the commute.”

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