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Morita was appointed president of CBS/Sony Records and responsibility for the day to day management of the company was placed on Ohga who was then Director in charge of Manufacturing Planning at Sony. In addition to Ohga, nearly ten Sony staff were transferred to CBS/Sony, including Toshio Ozawa, Shugo Matsuo, Yoshikatsu Inoue and Hiroshi Kanai. Ohga offered the four a real career challenge, while demanding hard work and total commitment. Ozawa had joined Sony from Furukawa Mining Co., Ltd. because he wanted just such a challenge. At the time Sony was virtually unknown, having recently changed its name from Totsuko. Deeply affected by the strong and unique leadership of Ibuka and Morita, he thrived on the freedom, flexibility, and spirit of independence championed by the Sony philosophy. His personality was up to the challenge of CBS/Sony.
Ohga emphasized to other employees that CBS/Sony was a totally independent company, neither a part of CBS nor of Sony. He also said that while they should not do anything to damage the brand image of CBS or Sony, they had the authority and freedom to build the new company as they wished. These first employees actually transferred their employment status from Sony to the new company. Although the US side owned 50% of the company, no director was transferred from CBS and the management of CBS/Sony was entrusted entirely to the Japanese side.
To make CBS/Sony Records a success, Ohga was convinced that he needed enthusiastic people with no previous experience in the recording industry. Owning only ten LPs and being totally inexperienced in the industry, Ozawa was the perfect choice for Ohga. Most Japanese record companies had been in business since before World War II. To succeed in the business, CBS/Sony Records needed to distinguish itself from its long established competitors. When the new company placed a recruiting advertisement in a newspaper asking for inexperienced and energetic people with fresh ideas, it received seven-thousand responses. CBS/Sony Records selected eighty music-loving candidates to join the company, including one who was seventy years old. As Ohga had hoped, the new staff disregarded the traditions and practices of the Japanese recording industry as they strove to develop CBS/Sony Records into a formidable competitor.
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An employment advertisement in the Asahi Shimbun from March, 1968 |
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CBS/Sony Records was determined to discover and develop new artists on its own. They were the lifeblood of the music business, but this challenged the traditional practice that production companies developed artists and record companies only produced records. Like the electronics industry, the music industry required a constant flow of new talent. In order to find these artists, CBS/Sony Records established its own auditioning system.
At first, inexperience resulted in many mistakes. But once thorough market research had been conducted, the company was able to gradually introduce a number of successful new artists. Breaking from the traditional core business of other companies, CBS/Sony Records focused on pop idols and created a new music genre in Japan that would become a runaway success.
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