Tom Silverman Honored With A2IM Libera Lifetime Achievement Award
The American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) has awarded its second annual Libera Awards Lifetime Achievement Award to Tom Silverman. The industry veteran is the Founder and CEO of Tommy Boy Records and co-founder of he New Music Seminar. Silverman will be presented
with the award by Island Records Founder Chris Blackwell on June
20 at NYC's Highline Ballroom.
A founding Board Member of A2IM, Silverman has a leader in the independent music community throughout his career. Tommy Boy pioneered
the early days of hip-hop with such artists as De La Soul, Digital Underground,
Queen Latifah, Naughty by Nature, House of Pain and Coolio.
Siverman's New Music
Seminar launched in 1980 and is the pre-cursor most major music conferences. NMS continues this
year, running June 9-11 in NYC.
Martin Mills received the first annual Libera Awards Lifetime
Achievement Award in 2012.
All of the above initially good things that Silverman did earlier in his career notwithstanding, he became incredibly naive and complacent by the end of the 90s and nearly lost it all. Tommy Boy Records went from being valued at 100m to being sold to Warners for around 10m for no other reason than bad management.
Silverman himself is a difficult guy to deal with. I remember being constantly being introduced to him then ignored afterwards. Trying to clear a sample with him (for a big record that eventually got signed worldwide with the sample replayed).
Tommy Boy now is not even active today, says everything.