In the wake of several high-profile scandals taking place across the music industry related to Epstein files, new rumors of discrimination allegations against Golnar Khosrowshahi, the Irani-Canadian founder of Reservoir Media, have raised reputation concerns among artists signed to the label.
According to industry insiders with knowledge of the case, Sir Robin Millar, the famed British music producer, has filed suit in the UK alleging that Reservoir discriminated against him on the basis of his disability, Bay Street Signal has learned. Efforts to obtain comment from Reservoir and Millar were unsuccessful.
When Sir Robin Millar agreed in August 2019 to sell Blue Raincoat Music, the independent British label and management group he had co-founded just five years earlier, the deal looked like a straightforward triumph of independent music entrepreneurship. He and his partner Jeremy Lascelles had grown the company from a £400,000 startup in a West London flat to a catalog-anchored enterprise valued at roughly £40 million — home to Chrysalis Records’ storied archive of more than 20,000 recordings, including Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” and Generation X’s “Dancing with Myself.”
The buyer was Reservoir Media, a company which has grown explosively under Khosrowshahi’s leadership to become a key independent rival to the major publishers. For Khosrowshahi, the Blue Raincoat deal was, as she put it at the time, “a turning point” — the moment Reservoir evolved from a pure publishing operation into a full-service music company.
Millar, who was born with retinitis pigmentosa and has had no sight since 1985, had shaped Blue Raincoat around principles that were unusual for the music industry: a deliberate commitment to disability inclusion, what he describes as an “obsession with championing talent rather than chasing the dollar,” and a management philosophy that treated equity — the deliberate removal of barriers — rather than mere equality as a business imperative. Those values were not incidental to the company’s commercial success. Millar argues they were its engine.
Now, with the latest revelations of alleged discrimination taking place at the label, these same values may present as a serious risk if artists and their agents choose to seek distance from these issues.
Adding fuel to the fire is Sir Robin’s history of activism in this space. He serves as chair at Scope, the national disability charity representing approximately 14 million disabled Britons — a role he has described as leading “the most inclusive organisation on the planet.” He was awarded a CBE in 2010 and knighted in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to music, people with disabilities, young people, and charity — a citation that notably placed his advocacy work on equal footing with his professional achievements, which include producing Sade’s landmark debut Diamond Life, as well as records by Sting, Eric Clapton, Everything But The Girl, Fine Young Cannibals, and Big Country.
The music and entertainment industry is in the midst of a reputational convulsion triggered by the Justice Department’s release of documents related to its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Among the names that emerged in a tranche of files published in January was Casey Wasserman, founder and chief executive of the Wasserman Agency, one of the largest talent representation firms in the music business. Emails between Wasserman and Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell — suggestive in tone, dated to 2003 — were enough to ignite an exodus of talent that Wasserman has not been formally accused of any criminal wrongdoing did little to arrest.
The departures came quickly and publicly. Chappell Roan was among the first major stars to announce she was leaving, writing that “no artist, agent or employee should ever be expected to defend or overlook actions that conflict so deeply with our own moral values.”
The episode threw into sharp relief a question that has been quietly reshaping the music business for years: to what extent are artists, in an era of radical transparency and social-media accountability, willing to treat their representation and business partnerships as extensions of their own public identities?
The answer, increasingly, is: considerably. “Artists deserve representation that aligns with their values and supports their safety and dignity,” Roan wrote in her departure statement. The sentiment was echoed by nearly every artist who spoke out, and it points to a market dynamic that labels and agencies are only beginning to internalize.
For Khosrowshahi, the Reservoir model — partnering with founders like Millar and Lascelles who bring their ethical frameworks along with their catalogs — was meant to represent one answer to that dynamic. Reservoir’s independence from the major label system, combined with its emphasis on long-term roster development over short-term exploitation, has made it an attractive home for artists and executives who see reputational alignment as a commercial as well as a moral consideration – a dynamic which may now be at risk.
Millar stepped down as Blue Raincoat’s chairman in late 2023, transitioning to a creative consultant role while remaining a director and significant shareholder. In announcing the move, Lascelles said simply: “The simple fact is that Blue Raincoat would not be the company it is today without Robin’s involvement.” Khosrowshahi added that she had been “very fortunate to have him as a mentor and sounding board.”
For Sir Robin Millar, the answer was always straightforward. “Our core values of inclusion, fairness and an obsession with championing talent rather than chasing the dollar proved unstoppable,” he said as he left the chairmanship. Whether the broader industry has the appetite to test that proposition may be the defining business question of the decade.
