Michael Caplan

Michael Caplan, President and co-founder of Or Music, brings nearly two decades of A&R experience to the company. Formerly the Senior Vice President of A&R for Sony Music's Epic label, Caplan has signed and nurtured a host of well-known artists who have built the kind of long-term, consistent success which is an Or Music founding principle. After joining the Epic A&R staff in 1985, Caplan worked with the Allman Brothers, G. Love and Special Sauce, Keb' Mo', Tower of Power, Stevie Ray Vaughan and many others.

Caplan's career in music began during his high school years, when a summer job at Cutler's Record Store in New Haven, CT, gave him his first taste of the industry. He would go on to work for the Strawberries retail chain after a brief stint in law school, and then for Polygram Records, where he worked in merchandising and sales. After Polygram, Caplan returned to Strawberries as the chain's operations manager, until joining the Southern New England promotions staff of Epic Records until 1981. He moved to New York the next year to take the reins of the company's national rock promotion department before making the move to A&R where he rose to Senior Vice President. During his long tenure at Epic, Caplan signed Living Colour, Ginuwine, the October Project and others. His signings have earned 14 Gold records, 7 Platinum Records, 3 Multi-Platinum Records and 7 Grammy Awards.

Inspired to effect a change in the industry's major-label paradigm and eager to build a company from the ground up, Caplan co-founded Or Music with Larry Miller in 2002. He remains a prominent figure in the music community, having served on the Board of Governors and as Trustee of the National Academy of the Recording Arts and Sciences.