No. 85
Mike Dungan
President/CEO
Capitol Records Nashville
Twitter: @CapitolNash
Flame Thrower...
Mike Dungan has Capitol Nashville on a hot streak. "In an incredibly tough environment, and dragging a totally dysfunctional parent company behind him, he still finds and breaks acts," one Nashville veteran says. Dungan hit pay dirt with Lady Antebellum's Need You Now, which won five statuettes at the 2011 Grammy Awards and has sold 3.8 million units in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Most recently, he took Eric Church's "Drink in My Hand" to No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. His roster also boasts Dierks Bentley, Darius Rucker and Keith Urban, among others. "Mike has a sage view of the business and a wonderful ability to combine that reality with the artist's needs and career-often to his disadvantage, if that's what the circumstances call for," says Gary Borman, manager of Lady Antebellum and Urban. Capitol Nashville was country's top imprint in 2011, with a 1.6% share of track-equivalent albums, and brought home four of 2011's top 10 albums, according to SoundScan. Dungan also helped Lady A hold its own in a pop-heavy landscape: Third set Own the Night was the 10th-best-selling U.S. album of 2011 with 1.2 million units sold.
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