Julie Gordon, Founder of the ‘Velvet Rope’ and A&R Exec, Dies at 65
variety.comJem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Julie Gordon, a longtime music executive who is perhaps best known as the founder of the Velvet Rope, an influential mid-’90s online forum that was the first widely read online music-biz gossip site, has died.
She had been undergoing treatment for cancer for several years, chronicling her struggle on social media with frustration and emotion but a moving combination of realism and cheer, even as her prognosis grew negative.
She was 65. A friend tells Variety that she passed Wednesday evening, “listening to Joni Mitchell.” Over the course of her music industry career, Gordon held roles at Famous Music Publishing, BMI, and The Enclave, an EMI-distributed label, where she worked closely with the then-new Scottish act Belle and Sebastian.
Yet she is probably best known as the founder and moderator of the Velvet Rope, which she launched in 1995 after taking over a music folder called “Record Industry Dirt” on AOL.
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