Simon Cowell: The Major Behind the Scenes Mogul

Simon Cowell is a British music executive and television producer. After a smattering of odd jobs in his youth, Simon went to work for his father, Eric Philip Cowell, who was an executive at EMI Music Publishing. Initially starting out in the mail room, Simon worked his way up at the company before leaving to form his own label, E&S Music. He then went work at a company called Fanfare Records for eight years until its parent company was sold to BMG. Cowell then formed another label of his own called S-Records.

Interestingly, Simon Cowel and S-Records first major success did not come from music artists, but from novelty releases based on popular television series such as The Wiggles and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. In 2001, Cowell became a judge on the British television reality show Pop Idol, which in turn spawned a worldwide franchise now seen in over 100 countries. As we all know, Cowell eventually moved on to judge Pop Idol spin-off American Idol where he earned a peak salary at $33 million per season.