Jay Boberg

Jay Robert Boberg (born in 1958) is an American music, entertainment and viticulture executive.

Attending the Who’s Quadrophenia tour in 1974 was a watershed music moment after which Boberg's musical orientation changed.

Always listening to and creating music, Boberg played guitar in local bands in his youth but he soon embarked into the business side of music, producing two major talent concerts at Miraleste High School: one with seminal surf band, HONK, and another with ’70s folk artists Kenny Rankin and Tim Weisberg.

He attended Miraleste High School in Rancho Palos Verdes, graduating in 1976 and was an avid classical guitar musician starting at age 7.

After he enrolled at UCLA in 1976, he continued his concert promotion efforts running UCLA's Campus Events concerts booking Peter Gabriel’s first solo show, Talking Heads first tour in LA, Bob Marley and many other such artists.

In 1978 he began working as a college representative for A&M Records.

While working on the marketing and promotion of the first U.S. tour of the British band The Police, Boberg met the band's manager, Miles Axe Copeland III.

He co-founded the independent record label I.R.S. Records in 1979, and later served as the president of Universal/MCA Music Publishing and the president of MCA Records.

He is the founder of the entertainment company Liberation Entertainment and is chairman of the Isolation Entertainment board of directors.

In early 1979, Copeland recruited Boberg, who was still just a junior at UCLA, to join him in creating a new record label, focused on the emerging punk and new wave music scenes, particularly up-and-coming UK bands that were not getting much attention in the U.S. That label was I.R.S. Records, founded in September 1979 in Los Angeles.

Boberg and Copeland soon built up the label, which had a distribution deal with the Police's label, A&M Records, into a successful independent.

Once they demonstrated the appeal of the UK bands that launched the label, I.R.S. started signing American bands, including Dead Kennedys, Oingo Boingo, Wall of Voodoo and, notably, soon-to-be superstars The Go-Go's and Boberg's discovery, R.E.M. The label continued to have success, with Concrete Blonde, Fine Young Cannibals, The Alarm and others.

Contributing to the label's success was maintaining a roster of fewer than 20 artists when major labels typically had upwards of 100 or more acts signed.

I.R.S. also stuck to its mantra of fiscal responsibility.

Originally hired as executive vice president of I.R.S. in 1979, Boberg was named president of the label five years later, with Copeland saying “Jay has functionally been running the record label for some time.

This formalizes it.”

Launching around the same time MTV was emerging, I.R.S. expanded its brand with the television show I.R.S. Records Presents The Cutting Edge, which aired from 1983 to 1987 on MTV.

Boberg executive produced the show with producer and I.R.S. Records' creative director Carl Grasso and directors Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris.

The show was known for introducing new acts to the channel, and for its left-field tastes that helped launch careers.

Although the Go-Go's were the first breakout stars for the label, I.R.S. enjoyed its greatest success with college radio-bred R.E.M. Even as its success grew, the band stayed with the label, in part because of the encouragement and support it received from the label, especially Boberg.

For his part, Boberg felt the respect was mutual.

In 1989, I.R.S. signed a five-year distribution deal with MCA Records.

In 1993, Boberg and Copeland sold I.R.S. Records to EMI, and Boberg headed off to Cambridge, Mass.

to get his MBA at Harvard Business School at the behest of EMI Chairman Jim Fifield.

Late in 1993 Boberg was named president of MCA Music Publishing, overseeing all music publishing operations worldwide.

In late 1995, Boberg was named President of MCA Records.

Long considered one of the music business’ underachievers, MCA Records under Boberg's leadership, ”has transformed... from the last stop to the first stop for many dealmakers”.

Using the artist-friendly approach mixed with a fiscal prudence management style he developed while at the far smaller I.R.S. Records, Boberg had success with releases by artists Sublime, Mary J. Blige, Blink-182, Live, The Roots, New Radicals and others.

Under his guidance, the rejuvenated MCA Records label was able to survive intact after a major restructuring when its parent Universal Music Group merged with PolyGram and other labels, which resulted in hundreds of employees losing their jobs at other labels, with very few at MCA Records.

The 2000 album Hot Shot from reggae artist Shaggy hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 music charts, to the surprise of the music industry, finding massive crossover success.

Boberg's low-cost strategy made MCA Records a key contributor to UMG's bottom tier of labels.

The 2001 release of Blige's album No More Drama did well on its initial release, and after the label rejiggered it six months later, then re-released it, the album reconnected with a broader audience.

Major upheavals were happening all over the music business when strategies that had worked previously ran up against a rapidly shrinking record label business.

MCA would release their last album, Twisted Method's Escape from Cape Coma, on July 15, 2003.

The album was a commercial disaster and the lack of promotion was blamed on MCA's shuttering status.

Furthermore, in 2003, after eight years running MCA Records, Boberg left.

In his farewell message to MCA Records employees, Boberg said that when he started at MCA, the label's roster “was anemic; the artistic reputation in tatters” and that “the MCA that I leave behind is an artistic and musical gold mine.” Most of the current artist roster and staff from MCA were moved over to Geffen during the merge later that year.

After taking some time off, Boberg re-entered the entertainment business in 2006 by purchasing Liberty Int.

In 2013, he co-founded the winery Domaine Nicolas-Jay in Oregon with Méo Camuzet owner and winemaker, Jean-Nicolas Méo.

Boberg is a 4th generation Californian, born in San Francisco to Richard and Shirley Boberg.