Music Business UK - Q2 2021 (Preview Issue) by musicbizworldwide

PR EV IE

Q2 2021

IF YOU LOVE MUSIC SHOW LOVE TO MUSICIANS. FAIRNESS, TRANSPARENCY AND SERVICE SINCE 2008.

In association with

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9 AT THE DE VERE GRAND CONNAUGHT ROOMS, LONDON WC2

IT’S BACK.

TheAandRawards.com

In this issue... 14

Alec & Alex Boateng

The BRIT Awards 2021

Joe Kentish

Dipesh Parmar

Sandy Dworniak

Mike Smith

Rudimental

Keith Harris

Adam Barker

Jess Kinn

0207 Def Jam

Warner Records

Ministry Of Sound

This Much Talent

Downtown Music Services

Major Toms

Did Ya Know

Universal Music UK

One Fiinix Live

In service of YOU.

downtownmusic.com

Contributors ADRIAN SYKES

Adrian Sykes is a widely-respected UK music industry veteran, having made key contributions to the history of Island and MCA over the past four decades. He is also a successful entrepreneur and manager, having founded Decisive Management – which looked after Emeli Sandé before, and throughout, her multiplatinum debut album campaign.

ALEX ROBBINS

Alex Robbins is an illustrator whose work has previously appeared on the likes of the New Yorker, Time Out, Wired, TIME and i-D. Oh, and Music Business UK. He has once again created our cover image based on a quote from our lead feature. This time, those words come from Alex Boateng, the Co-President of 0207 Def Jam, in our exclusive interview.

EAMONN FORDE

Eamonn Forde has been writing about all areas of the music business since 2001. He is Reports Editor at Music Ally and regularly writes for IQ, The Guardian, The Big Issue, Q and The Quietus among other titles. He completed his PhD at University of Westminster in 2001. His book, The Final Days of EMI: Selling The Pig, is out now via Omnibus Press.

MURRAY STASSEN

SAMMY ANDREWS

RHIAN JONES

Murray Stassen is the Editor of Music Business Worldwide and the Deputy Editor of Music Business UK. Stassen, a former Deputy Editor of British trade paper Music Week, has written for the likes of VICE, Line Of Best Fit, and Long Live Vinyl, and was last year shortlisted for the #Merky Books New Writers’ Prize. In this issue, he interviews Jess Kinn.

Sammy Andrews is the founder and CEO of London-headquartered creative agency, Deviate Digital. Based in Tileyard, Deviate provides services to artist and industry clients including high-level digital strategies through to marketing, training, media buying and data insights/analysis. Andrews is also a board member of the Music Managers’ Forum (MMF).

Rhian Jones is a respected freelance journalist who often focuses on the music industry. In addition to writing regularly for MBUK and Hits Daily Double, she is a Contributing Editor for Music Business Worldwide. In this issue, Jones interviews Rudimental – all about their business successes and plans with Major Toms – as well as Sandy Dworniak.

WELCOME

EDITOR’S LETTER There are a few viewpoints put forth on the role of record labels in this issue of Music Business UK that are worth your time and consideration. Alex Boateng, for example, the new coPresident of 0207 Def Jam at Universal, talks of establishing a company where artists know and appreciate exactly what each member of staff has contributed to their projects. His twin brother and co-President at the label, Alec, discusses how things can get twisted when this delineation becomes blurred. “I’ve literally seen artists arguing with executives on the phone about what role they’ve each played in that artist’s own career,” he says. “That is mad.” Alec stipulates that 0207 Def Jam’s leaders will work hard to avoid the kind of environments within record companies that “create paranoia or anxiety in staff members who feel they have to present their value, all the time, to whoever their boss is”. Such uncomfortable job-justifying is ultimately rooted in uncertainty over the precise value that label employees believe they are delivering to artists. Now, there is a new narrative in the music industry that suggests the Boatengs’ vision (of label staff members being certain of, and confident in, their individual contributions) is only going to become more important in the years ahead. Mention the concept of fan-funding – of audiences directly financing artists – to many execs in this business, and they’ll tell you it has never worked, and will never work. They’re wrong. Naysayers might nod to German fanfunding startup Sellaband, which was founded in 2006 and raised $5m before going bankrupt in 2010. But modern fan-funding platforms look very different, and are starting to pose a real threat to record company financing models. Ditto Music CEO, Lee Parsons, has just raised $6.5 million for his blockchain-based service Opulous, which enables artists to sell fractional

Tim Ingham

“Mention fanfunding to many execs in this business, and they’ll tell you it will never work. They’re wrong.”

pieces of their copyrights to fans via NFTs. Those fans are subsequently financially motivated, via the royalties they’re earning, to promote the artist they’ve invested in on social media and beyond. (Opulous also enables artists to sell non-copyright goodies and VIP experiences as NFTs.) Some contemporary record labels are running towards, rather than away from, fanfunding models. Another startup, Swedishborn Corite, recently attracted a significant investment from L.A Reid and Charles Goldstuck’s HitCo – the Los Angeles-based label that last year broke the worldwide smash Roses by Saint Jhn. Corite enables fans to make monetary investments in artists, before getting a royalty return for an agreed (but limited) number of years. Reid believes the company is simply “revolutionary”. Pie in the sky? Nope. The fundamentals of the fan-funding model are actually already massive in the music industry – albeit via the back door. When BTS’s home Big Hit (now HYBE) went public in South Korea in October last year, swathes of BTS’s online ARMY fanbase bought shares in the company. That same company saw its market cap soar to $9 billion in June 2021 – up 10% on HYBE’s equivalent valuation when it floated on the stock exchange. The reason for this share price rally? The global chart success of BTS’s new single Butter, a US No.1. Butter’s chart performance drove significant market confidence, both in HYBE and in the enduring commercial appeal of its star act. But who was behind the wheel of Butter’s enviable achievements? Yep: the same BTS ARMY members who invested in HYBE themselves last year. This is the fan-funding model in action. With Butter, BTS’s ARMY skilfully gamed streaming platforms around the globe. It got their idols to the top of the charts – while also proving a nice return on investment.

Contact: Enquiries@musicbizworldwide.com Advertise: Rebecca@musicbizworldwide.com Subscribe: MusicBizStore.com

Brothers

GONNA WORK IT OUT

Photo: Olivia Rose

There’s a new UK major label in town. Not a sub-label; not an imprint. A fullyfledged, frontline, priority record company at Universal Music Group. 0207 Def Jam is being run by co-Presidents Alec and Alex Boateng – who happen to be twin siblings. Its first signing was some guy called Stormzy. Its philosophy, as decreed by Rick Rubin, is to “make things that have never worked, work”. The Boatengs tell Music Business UK about their roots, their industry experiences – and about the kind of record label they want to build, and definitely don’t want to build...

‘IT’S GOT TO BE REAL, BECAUSE ARTISTS ARE COMING IN YOUR BUILDINGS AND SEEING IT’ In the first of two interviews with the UK music industry’s most influential twins, we meet Alex Boateng – a live-wire, independently-minded leader who’s ready to establish a very different kind of major record company at 0207 Def Jam… In a different world, Alex Boateng could still be working in the office furniture industry. Actually, scratch that; it doesn’t sufficiently convey the mundanity. He could still be inputting data into spreadsheets in the office furniture industry. This was just one of a handful of pursuits Boateng tended to during a “mad period” in his late teens, as he wrestled with the vast unlikelihood that he could ever earn a living wage from working in music. After being “kicked out of college for misbehaving” in South London, Boateng finished his A Levels in a girls’ school nearer to his native Bethnal Green and Bow. At the same time, he was DJ’ing at local house parties with his brother, while moving in circles connected to MCs (from Wiley to Dizzee, Pay As U Go Cartel and more) who were taking their first steps towards mainstream recognition. “Maybe it’s because I’m a twin, and you always feel like you need to do something unique,” he says. ”But when everyone was [DJ’ing] garage and grime, me and Alec decided to play hip-hop and R&B. We got bookings because the whole party would be grime – but when you wanted the girls to get up and dance, it’s the R&B dude you call!” Agitated about and unsure of his future, Boateng eventually signed up to help out at an orphanage in India through the charity HOPE worldwide (“the first time I ever got on a plane”), but not before a pivotal moment in his relationship with the commerce of entertainment. “Someone gave me £20 to DJ, and I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “That was my first ever money from the music business. It was surreal.” “That period was so tied up in my

identity,” he adds. “It was frustrating not being able to see a route into the business side of music. It’s that thing of what you see, you can be.” Then two momentous things changed. The first saw Boateng enrol at Middlesex University to study marketing, where he found he had a natural talent for the discipline (one that would soon prove especially helpful for some of the East London MCs he grew up with). The second came via his twin brother, Alec, who raised money via the Prince’s Trust for he and Alex to create a mixtape, Split Mic (2004), featuring the cream of the aboutto-explode UK scene at the time – from

Stryder, Drake, The Weeknd and Nicki Minaj, while A&R’ing music for artists including JP Cooper, Sean Paul, Jack Steadman of Bombay Bicycle Club, Jessie J, Dizzee Rascal, Donae’o and Big Shaq. Before going full-time at Island, there were stints as a producer at BBC Radio 1Xtra, and running his own marketing agency, Angles, with 1Xtra DJ, G Money, which worked on projects for Dizzee Rascal (at XL), Ms. Dynamite and more. Alex, just like his brother, is taking the responsibility of 0207 Def Jam – and what it means to a new generation of British music executives – seriously. As the GhanaianBrit tells Music Business UK: “Our mum worked in clothes-making, and our dad worked in security, even though he was a qualified accountant. After they came over [to the UK] it was needs-must, rather than following a dream. “I guess what Alec and I are doing now, and what we achieve from here, is a manifestation of why they came over in the first place…”

“All that matters is that when the person presses play, it’s good.” Kano to Ty, Estelle and Lethal Bizzle. Split Mic was an underground smash, and, as you’re about to learn, many doors flew open as a result. Today, Alec and Alex Boateng have just become co-Presidents of 0207 Def Jam at Universal Music, where they’ve already hired a staff of more than 20 people, with a roster that includes Stormzy plus emerging talent like Potter Payper and singer songwriter Debbie. For Alex, his path to running 0207 Def Jam included 10 years at Island Records UK, which he joined in 2010, and where he became President of the label’s Urban Division in 2018. At Island, he handled marketing campaign launches for Tinchy

Other than being paid £20 to DJ, what was your first experience of the business side of music? I was DJ’ing for my friend, Tor/Isatta Sheriff, and then she got signed by Ferdy [Unger-Hamilton] at Go! Beat. I remember going to the Go! Beat office and thinking: ‘Whoa!’ She got signed for what at the time felt like an insane amount of money. That was when I met Ferdy and I’ll always rate him because he remembered me from then on. I was talking to my brother about this the other day: The obvious thing to do there, with Ferdy, would have been to ask for work experience. But where we

Photo: Olivia Rose

The 0207 Def Jam launch team: (L-R): Back: Jackie Eyewe, Amy Tettey, Heidi Jacob, Alex Boateng. Front: Wretch 32, Alec Boateng, Char Grant

were from, unless you’re getting paid, or you’re hustling in some way, you can’t do that. Whereas if you’re someone from a different background, with parents who can afford to pay your rent, it opens up different options. It was when I went to uni that things started exploding in terms of MCs getting signed, especially in our corner of East. It was Dizzee, Wiley, Lethal Bizzle, Kano, pirate radio was poppin’. And we’d grown up around all these people. How transformational was the Split Mic project around this time? We, a team including Tim from Tim & Barry, DJ Hains and others, had no beats, no instrumentals – we didn’t even know what A&R was. But we thought let’s just get all these MCs on a project. This was a time where people are shottin’, making

thousands off white label vinyl. So we made the mixtape, and then it proper kicked off – we sold out in all the shops. Alec was getting a lot of emails, and one of them was from Ministry of Sound, offering him an A&R job. So he dropped out of uni for that. Then 1Xtra called us up to do an interview [about Split Mic]. They love how my brother sounds; he gets a show there, and I get a job as a producer. Around that period was the first time I went into Universal. When I came out I was a bit like, ‘Nah labels aren’t for us, man; it’s too different. I’m gonna go back to the street thing.’ But that was probably masking a lot of insecurity. I’d gone into this building, big American acts on the walls, really high ceilings; I was intimidated, to be honest. I was talking to people, there’s no eye contact, they’re not really taking me seriously.

PREVIEW ENDS

But I also knew that where I’d grown up was where the real excitement was coming from; that’s the music industry to me – being in a rave and Dizzee picking up the mic, everyone goes mad, hip-hop and dancehall playing. And then I go to where I’m told the money is, and it’s a completely different world. I just didn’t feel like I would fit in. So I made an early decision: ‘I’m never going to end up here. I’m going to be on the outside and work out my own thing.’ That wasn’t to be your destiny... The company thing [Angles] was getting tough – we’d done some great things with Dizzee and XL and others, but there came a point I couldn’t just rely on that plus DJ’ing for an income. So I was in fullon hustle mode. I’d grown in confidence and [the music scene] was really poppin’

This is a preview edition of the latest Music Business UK – a premium quarterly coffee table magazine from the team behind Music Business Worldwide. Subscribe today to MBW’s annual physical bundle to receive great publications like Music Business UK, Music Business USA and The MBW Yearbook.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR ANNUAL PREMIUM MAGAZINE BUNDLE:

MUSICBIZSTORE.COM

‘MUSIC IS SUPERNATURAL. THAT’S WHY I TAKE MY JOB SO SERIOUSLY’ For a minute there, Alec Boateng kept the whole music industry guessing on where he would be committing his future. He explains why he chose 0207 Def Jam and Universal Music UK – and why his entire life has been preparing him for this moment…

lec Boateng believes deeply in the power of music. A man of faith, he tells Music Business UK that “there isn’t much more important” in life than songs – and that, for him, they’re even somehow “tied into a deeper purpose”. Clearly, this is not an individual who got into A&R just for the points. The (literal) level of reverence Boateng has for music helps explain the startling level of success the 30-something has already racked up in his career in the British music industry. Prior to launching 0207 Def Jam with brother Alex Boateng earlier this year, Alec spent over seven years at Atlantic Records UK, working closely with stars such as Jess Glynne, Burna Boy and Rita Ora. It was during his tenure at Atlantic that Boateng befriended Stormzy, and became the superstar British MC’s trusted A&R wingman – on both the landmark independentlyreleased 2017 debut album, Gang Signs & Prayer, and its 2019 follow-up, Heavy Is The Head. Both comfortably went Platinum. Boateng won an A&R Award in 2019 for his work with contemporary black British music, an achievement voted for by his peers. (Alec’s tenure at Atlantic also pulled him into the controversy surrounding the exit of his boss, Ben Cook, that same year – something we get into below.) Prior to joining Atlantic in 2013, Boateng ran a successful independent – Levels Ent – with his now sadly departed friend, Richard Antwi. The duo developed talent including Wretch 32 (in a JV with Ministry of Sound) while working with acts including Popcaan and Gyptian. Boateng began his career in-house at Ministry Of Sound, having made his name

by compiling and releasing the Split Mic EP in 2004, featuring a wealth of premier British MCs. (That mixtape not only landed Alec his first label job, but also led to him being hired as a presenter on BBC Radio 1Xtra, where he would continue to work for the next 16 years.) Today, at 0207 Def Jam, Boateng is assembling a roster that already includes Stormzy (for that much-anticipated third album) alongside other up-and-coming talent. The label’s A&R philosophy, Boateng insists, will be built on “timeless music [and] artists that matter”. And just

be in it to serve other people – to serve artists, mainly. There isn’t much in life that’s more important than music. People hearing artists’ art is essential, and carrying that in the best possible condition to the audience’s ears... that’s an amazing job, a real responsibility, and it’s something we have to do well. I’ve always had an emotional connection to the value and power of music. Some of it is tied into a deeper purpose thing. As life changes and you lose people, sometimes when you look at what remains, it’s just a song or a lyric that pushes a special emotional button only music can.

“There isn’t much in life that’s more important than music.” like his brother, he’s feeling confident that success will follow. As he explains in our interview below, however, Alec’s rise through the UK industry wasn’t always a fairytale. In trying to get black British music prioritised within commercial organisations, he says, he faced barrier after barrier. The exact kind of barrier, in fact, that 0207 Def Jam is tailor-made to destroy... Let’s go back to the start: What do you think are the defining things from your childhood that still define how you treat people, and approach business? Faith is the big thing, and how that gives me a moral code. If you’re lucky enough to work in the music business, then in my humble opinion you should only

Sometimes music can actually trigger memories that you weren’t even aware existed. It’s supernatural. That’s why I take my job so seriously – something I might contribute, being even a small part of a song, it lives forever. That blows my mind.

What were you going to be if none of this ever happened? I was freakishly good at maths at school. So I thought I’d do accounting, maybe business, something in that area. I took a year out before uni, and started a job working for EMAP, which was the home of Kiss [FM]. I thought that in some way, that would bring me closer to a proper radio station, but I was in the accounts department. I lasted two weeks before I fell asleep and got escorted out the building [laughs]. Then I went to uni, and had this idea of putting together a compilation. My older brother went to college with Wiley and Target. And in my area, a boy I grew up with, Dizzee Rascal, was blowing up.

Photo: Olivia Rose

Photo: Misan Harriman

Stormzy signs to 0207 Def Jam. (L-R): Tobe Onwuka, Alec Boateng, Sir Lucian Grainge & Stormzy, Alex Boateng, David Joseph

Major Ace, RIP, was really the first garage-into-grime superstar from our area. I used to go round his house, ask him loads of questions about bookings and MC culture. He was the first MC I asked to be on the [Split Mic] mixtape. Then I went to the local council and gave it: ‘Ah, all us kids are bored and need somewhere to go. Can I have some funding for a studio?’ And via a Prince’s Trust scheme I got £1,800 for studio and CD costs. We then got all these [MCs] in and out for recording sessions, and then went round London collecting more freestyles from people who knew people. Split Mic blew up after it was released in 2004, during your first year of university. How did you get from there to A&R? We did a piece [on Split Mic] in ID Magazine. I left my email in the article, and five or six A&Rs contacted me. Two people who helped me at the time were

these photographers who documented grime culture, Tim and Barry. Tim was good friends with a guy called Richard Antwi, and said: ‘This guy’s a lawyer, you should go and see what advice he has for you.’ I went to meet Rich and we clicked right away. And from that moment on, he was always available, always consistent, always supportive. Rich explained there was a guy at Ministry who was very interested in the culture of garage and grime, and that was Ben Cook. Rich also introduced me to Glyn [Aikins], Darcus [Beese], Dan Stacey and others. I went to all these meetings and got asked 100 questions and asked a few of my own back, and then I went to meet Ben. And he was like: If you want a job, I’ll give you a job, but you’ve got to drop out of uni because this isn’t a part-time thing. You take that job and begin moonlighting as a 1Xtra presenter a month later. How

PREVIEW ENDS

do things end up for you at Ministry? In 2006/2007, I got called into a room at Ministry and told: ‘We have to change your job.’ It was explained to me that the world I existed in no longer had value at the company. My role was changed to this consultancy thing; it was only a couple of months later I realised that was all actually a redundancy process. That’s a tough break for someone who quit university to dive into that job a year before. It was, but it taught me a lot of things. One of them being that who and what I am comes with conditional love on this side of the music industry. I realised: ‘Being black, being from this world, has a certain type of value only when there’s an economy around it. I’m going to have to ride that train, because there’s no consistency here. There’s no safety net.’ I was 23 and had only seen a handful of

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR ANNUAL PREMIUM MAGAZINE BUNDLE:

MUSICBIZSTORE.COM

Get to know…

Photo: Billal Taright

JOE KENTISH

FEATURE As restaurants open up (and, please, for all that is good and holy, stay open), there’s one individual who might just find himself invited to more power-player lunches than anyone else in the UK music industry this summer: Joe Kentish. That’s because, as of 1 June, he has been the President of Warner Records UK, taking over the reins from his friend, Phil Christie (who has decided to step away from the record company later this year following half a decade of hits). Here, Music Business UK presents seven key facts about Kentish’s life, career, and A&R philosophy... 1) His industry break came via Gorillaz

2) Jamie Nelson saw the potential in him early on

Out of University, Kentish was a co-founder of the London-based indie label, Middlerow Records. A tastemaker in UK garage, Middlerow’s Ladbroke Grove studio just-so-happened to be adjacent to something life-changing. “Damon Albarn’s studio was next door and he was doing this strange side project with animated characters,” Kentish told Music Business UK in 2019. “[Damon] said, ‘I’ve just finished this record by a sort of concept band that we’re going to call Gorillaz, do you guys want to remix any of these tracks?’” One of Middlerow’s producers, Ed Case, picked Clint Eastwood, and remixed it with Sweetie Irie. Middlerow put out the white label of the record, and it exploded. From there, Kentish got a consultancy A&R gig with Parlophone, and he was on his way.

These days, Jamie Nelson is VP of A&R for BMG’s frontline record business. But, back in the noughties, he was at Parlophone, heading up its Innocent imprint. Nelson decided to hire Kentish full-time at Parlophone, and Kentish fully credits him for the foundations of what came next. “Jamie was an incredible mentor,” Kentish told MBUK in 2019. “He was always empowering me and he had such a great understanding of the A&R process. He would always encourage me to make decisions, and that was invaluable. “Jamie knew that at the heart of being a really good A&R person is the ability – and willingness – to make creative decisions, to trust your judgment. To learn by sometimes making wrong decisions, but to take responsibility for the choices you make.”

Gorillaz

who some are now tipping for a big future over the Pond. But when Music Business Worldwide recently asked Kentish if there was a specific way to tailor British music to give it the best chance of success in the US, he wasn’t having it. “I think all of that is an absolute red herring,” he said. “Every time I hear an A&R person talk about making a record for America I roll my eyes. I can’t think of a recipe to make a worse record than to approach [A&R] like that.” Added Kentish: “It’s like, don’t make records that other people might like – make records that you think are great.”

5) But he does believe in the power of doubt

3) His father was a Mangrove Nine hero – alongside Darcus Beese’s parents The Mangrove was an all-night restaurant in Notting Hill that opened in 1968, and was well-known for its Caribbean cooking. So much so, it was visited by sixties icons like Jimi Hendrix, Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye. But in December 1969, Kensington & Chelsea council told the restaurant’s owner, Frank Crichlow, he had to shut at 11pm each night, removing his licence to do otherwise. The restaurant was then regularly targeted by police, amid a reported upsurge in police harassment of Black people in the area. A subsequent organised protest in August 1970, which began outside the Mangrove, led to clashes between protesters and the police, and the arrest of the ‘Mangrove Nine’ – who included both Darcus Beese’s parents (Barbara Beese and Darcus Howe) and Joe Kentish’s father (Rothwell ‘Roddy’ Kentish). The Mangrove Nine went on trial at the Old Bailey in 1971, and were all famously acquitted of the main charges of incitement to riot. Roddy Kentish faced a retrial on a specific charge relating to the protest, however, and was subsequently sentenced to 36 months in prison. Question marks remain over whether Kentish – a respected community leader who died in 2019 – even attended the 1970 protest in the first place.

4) He doesn’t believe in ‘making records for America’ Joe Kentish knows what it is to have hits in the USA. Six years ago at Warner Records, he signed (and has since developed) Dua Lipa, who’s won three Grammys and released two Platinum-selling albums in the States. Kentish also signed BRIT winner Griff,

Kentish admits his A&R process, even on Dua Lipa’s megasuccessful Future Nostalgia album, involved more than a little second guessing. “You should doubt yourself now and again when you’re helping great people make records, because if you don’t question yourself, you’re going to make serious mistakes and lead people down the wrong path,” he says. “At the same time, your job is to keep as much of that [doubt] as possible away from the artists, shelter them from it, so they are on a forward trajectory and feel free to create.”

6) He wasn’t supposed to sign Dua Lipa - but he did anyway In his 2019 MBUK interview, Kentish recalled signing Dua Lipa following a fateful meeting with Ben Mawson at Tap Management. Thing is, Kentish wasn’t at that meeting to sign anyone… initially. He explained: “I was there for a general meeting, the conversation got onto Dua and [Mawson] played me a song. I was like, ‘She’s great, I’d love to meet her.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but she’s not doing any label meetings; we’re not quite ready to show her to labels yet.’ “Then, just by chance, [Mawson] took a phone call and when he finished he said, ‘You’re in luck, she needs to come here and sign something, so you are going to meet her.’ “She walked into the room and had an incredible energy to her. I just thought that she was exactly the type of artist that we wanted to work with at the label. The offer went straight in and we were able to wrap it up relatively quickly.”

7) He’s a big fan of the man he’s succeeding at Warner Records Kentish joined Warner Records (then Warner Bros Records) in 2014 as Senior A&R Manager, working under the then-Head of A&R, Phil Christie. Christie was subsequently named President of Warner Bros, and has led the label to impressive levels of success via acts like

FEATURE

Photo: Markus Pritzi

Dua Lipa signed to Warner Records via Joe Kentish in summer 2015

Dua Lipa, Liam Gallagher, Royal Blood, Griff, and Pa Salieu. Kentish first worked with Christie all the way back at the start of his major label career at Innocent/Parlophone, where Christie was a TV plugger. “Actually, when I left, I recommended him for my old job,” Kentish recalled in 2019. “We’ve remained friends ever since.” That much was clear in the official Warner press release that recently announced Kentish’s promotion to Warner Bros UK President, and Christie’s decision to step down from the label (he will depart towards the end of this year). Said Kentish in the PR: “I want to thank Tony [Harlow] for this opportunity and Phil for his ongoing support and guidance; we’ve had an unbelievable journey together. I feel very lucky to have worked with such an incredible boss and true friend.” n

Joe Kentish: CV ● President, Warner Records UK: 2021-onwards ● Head of A&R, Warner Records: 2018 – 2021 ● Senior A&R Manager/Director of A&R, Warner Records: 2014 - 2018 ● A&R Manager/Senior A&R Manager , Mercury / Virgin EMI: 2006 - 2014 ● Junior A&R, Innocent/Virgin 2004 - 2006 ● A&R Consultant Parlophone 2004 ● Director, Middlerow Records: 1999 - 2003

KEY SONGS IN THE LIFE OF…

Dipesh Parmar It’s the turn of Ministry of Sound’s President to go through the pleasure and pain of picking five tracks that have shaped his life and career…

PLAYLIST

s a kid, Dipesh Parmar used music both to fit in and to define himself. He says: “I grew up in the North East, in a little town called Newton Aycliffe, with very few ethnic minorities around me, and I think that had a part to play in the music I listened to, just in terms of my peer group. I went through everything: dance music, pop, rock, indie, R&B, hip-hop. “But what that meant was that I genuinely loved – and still love – a huge range of music, and that’s definitely something that’s helped me in my career and shaped who I am. It also meant that narrowing this down to five tracks was pretty much impossible!” Parmar has certainly delivered a more eclectic selection than you might expect from an exec who has spent two decades at the UK’s most famous dance music label, Ministry of Sound. He started pretty much straight out of university, on the frontline, DJing, re-mixing and helping to pull together the company’s juggernaut compilation series. A move into A&R saw him part of the signing and development process behind artists such as Example, Wretch 32 and

London Grammar. The latter group were a passion project for Parmar and one of the success stories to catch the attention of Sony, which bought the label in 2016. Last year, he was promoted to President of the MoS label. “It’s been quite mad,” he reflects, “because it was announced pretty much at the start of the lockdown. I went around to every single person, at every level, spoke to them, and said, ‘We’ve got this; we’ve got some key releases coming, let’s make sure we work together.’

Jhn, Roses, the Imanbek Remix, and that came off the back of Sigala, Wish You Well; Regard, Ride It, which was a big global hit; and Riton, Turn Me On. “So we had a bit of momentum, which was great, especially in that very uncertain phase of lockdown, no one knowing what was going to happen. That really motivated the team, and we went on to have 10 Top 10 hits in the last 18 months. “We had at least one track in the Top 10 singles chart for 39 weeks in 2020. We were recently Sony’s No.1 [UK] airplay label, and the third biggest behind Atlantic and Polydor. We’re definitely punching!” Even now, five years since being absorbed into the major label system, you sense Parmar likes to foster an underdog spirit and independent attitude at a company whose DNA he doesn’t just understand, but pretty much shares. It is, perhaps, why he says: “Since we got bought by Sony, I’ve wanted to prove a point, to vindicate the fact that they bought us for the right reasons. We were coming off the back of nine No. 1 singles at the time, and then when we got bought, streaming was already flipping the industry,

“I wanted to prove to Sony, to everyone, that we’re a great label in the major system.” “Amy [Wheatley] and Negla [Abdela] really stepped up, they got their promotions into senior positions during the lockdown [to Managing Director and General Manager respectively] and they have been hugely influential on the team. “We had the first No.1 single of lockdown, for two weeks, with Saint

and it was really hard to navigate; it was quite disruptive at the start. We lost a lot of the team and we had to figure out how we could take flight again. “We came in, we had a few hits, London Grammar had a number No. 1 with their second album, but it was sporadic, and I just wanted to get back to that consistent level of success. I wanted to prove to Sony, to myself, and to everyone, that we’re a great label within the major system. I think we’re now doing that.” 1. The Prodigy, Everybody in the Place (1991) This was probably my introduction to the world of electronic music. I was 13 and I first heard it on a cassette called Rave Generation, which then became like my Bible. It opened up a whole new world of rave – Altern8, SL2, Utah Saints... I think The Prodigy had two tracks on there, Charlie and Everybody in the Place, which was track one. I was just hooked from the first note. It starts with a distorted raw synth sound. It’s quite industrial, almost quite punk in a way. I’d never heard anything like it. And then the vocal just says, ‘Let’s go’, and it erupts into this wall of sound and this huge party. I think it’s rave personified in a song and it’s one of the most important tracks in rave culture. It’s an absolute anthem in every sense of the word. It was a gateway to listening to more Prodigy, realising what a genius Liam Howlett is, and beyond that a whole world of dance and electronic music and all the different nuances within that, whether it was rave, breakbeat or drum and bass and whatever that led onto. What I could never have imagined was, fast-forward 10 years or so, and one of my first jobs in the music industry was to work with Nick Halkes, who signed Prodigy to XL and gave me my first job at Incentive Records, which was a JV label [with Ministry of Sound] at the time. And for The Prodigy to go on to have a career of that lifespan, to become so

important to UK club culture – to culture in general, in fact – for people still to be discovering it and for it to still be resonating with young people, that’s a legendary act right there.

really propelled his music. The partnership between him and them was so powerful and really set them apart. He will continue to be a legend for all eternity.

2. Bob Marley and the Wailers, Trenchtown Rock (Live at the Lyceum) (1975)

3. Come As You Are, Nirvana (1992)

It was really difficult to pinpoint just one song, because they all mean so much to me, but I went with Trenchtown Rock, the live version. There’s that roar of the crowd, the organ builds, the guitar comes in and sets the tone; it’s a feelgood classic. It just spoke to me, especially the opening line: ‘One good thing about music: when it hits you feel no pain.’ That’s so fitting even now, especially now, in these times. Some of my friends were listening to him when I was growing up, and it’s like with The Prodigy, I heard one track and wanted to discover more and more. Exodus became such a massive album for me.

“It’s about accepting misfits, and I think I was a bit of a misfit where I grew up.” And then I was just a huge, huge Bob Marley fan. I was so obsessed with him, I may or may not have ended up having dreadlocks in my teen years; it’s probably best not to dwell on that. I painted Bob Marley pictures for my GCSE art exam. And my bedroom wall was covered in pictures of him smoking spliffs – goodness knows what my mum thought. He’s probably the artist I’m most gutted I didn’t see live. You can see from the footage and hear on the live albums that he was a truly captivating and mesmerising performer. I think the make-up of Bob Marley’s vocals, with the I-Threes, the trio of female vocalists that were on stage with him,

PREVIEW ENDS

Again, it was really difficult to choose a particular track, but Come As You Are was one that really spoke to me. It’s kind of a timeless record. This album [Nevermind] was very big during my latter years of school, and I really got into grunge/indie rock, things like Green Day, Metallica, Sepultura, Rage Against The Machine. But Come As You Are struck a chord, I think, because it’s about how people are expected to act, about how people expect you to act. It’s about accepting misfits, and I think I was probably a bit of a misfit where I grew up. There was a lot of trying to belong in a largely white area, and this song was a case of, Fuck it, come as you are, be different. I liked the punk attitude and it gave me confidence in certain situations, it definitely helped me and shaped me. A lot of people think, Oh, you’re a dance A&R, you probably only like dance music, but my palette is so broad. With Come As You Are, the guitar solo is incredible and Kurt’s vocal is just insane. I think having a grounding in all types of music has enabled me to think about things a bit more holistically rather than just see – or hear – what’s in front of me. 4. Music Sounds Better With You, Stardust (1998) Anyone who knows me knows how much this song means to me. I was a fan of Daft Punk’s through Homework, but probably not as much of a fan as I went on to become. They weren’t at legendary status back then, they were more of a big dance act. Then came Discovery, which changed everything.

PLAYLIST

Later on I saw them live at Wireless in 2007, which is still one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. What I love about this is that it’s the only track that [Thomas] Bangalter made under the Stardust moniker; I think that’s part of what makes it special. He obviously made it with Alan Braxe, and Benjamin Diamond, who’s the vocalist on the record. I first heard it in my friend’s mum’s car when she was driving us to the train station in Darlington to go to Gatecrasher in Sheffield for the first time ever. We were very giddy, very excited, we had Radio One on, Pete Tong was playing, and he dropped this track for the first time. It was a lightbulb moment. The sun was shining, that song came on and me and my friend were about to embark on this amazing journey together; it was just out of this world. I think what I like about it is that it doesn’t follow a typical song structure. It’s built from a simple loop that just keeps going, the vocals come in, the guitar filters in, there’s a big breakdown in the middle, the music comes back in, and then it just fades out. It doesn’t sound like it should have been a hit. I was a real trainspotter about things like that. I recorded Pete Tong and Judge Jules, studied the songs, the labels, it was a good grounding – but back then I was doing it because I was a DJ more than anything. I was probably over-analytical on the music side of things, but I knew when something just felt good as well, when a song just leaves you wanting more, like this does.

Although, in this case, it’s actually nice that there was never a follow-up, so it remains, for me anyway, that perfect moment in time. You won’t believe this, but as I say, we heard it in the car and it was one of those things where you think to yourself, I would love to hear this in a club, through a big system. I kid you not, we walked into Gatecrasher a few hours later and the first song we heard was Stardust, Music Sounds Better With You. We literally ran to the dance floor and we didn’t leave it until 6am the next day. 5. If You Wait, London Grammar (2013) This was probably one of the first demos where I heard Hannah [Reid]’s voice for the first time and it just completely blew me away; it was stunning. Initially I didn’t think I’d be able to work with them, being primarily a dance A&R working for a dance label, but I just fell in love with the music. I heard three demos at the very start: If You Wait, Flickers and Darling Are You Gonna Leave Me?, and I just knew I had to do everything in my power to try and sign them. They didn’t have any management at that time, and then Jazz Summers came on board and touted them around to every single label under the sun, much to my annoyance, because I’d been in since the start; we were the first label they talked to.

I’m pretty sure they were thinking, Hmmm, is Ministry right for us? But they could see that I was so passionate about what they did, and I think that really resonated with them. In the end, they went and did the rounds for everyone and luckily they came back to me. It was probably the first time in my career that I’d dealt with a slightly wider sonic palette, really pushed myself as an A&R. And then that first album went on to sell millions, win an Ivor Novello, get a BRITs nomination – they’re definitely one of the acts I’m very proud to have signed and worked with. They were hugely important to Ministry as a label. London Grammar enabled us to show the industry that we could do more than just dance singles, that we could develop artists. We’d developed and had a lot of success with Example, Wretch 32, DJ Fresh and Sigala, but London Grammar were something different again. And I think they were probably one of the many reasons why Sony bought us. I heard something special straight away, in this track particularly. Hannah’s vocal was other-worldly, what Dan and Dot created around it was beautiful and fragile and soul-bearing. The songwriting was very different, it wasn’t a typical pop song. And actually we ended up going with that vocal, the version I first heard and was blown away by. We did re-record it, but we made the decision in the mixing room, right at the end, to just pull Hannah’s original demo; there was a magic you just couldn’t recreate. n

Numbers

you need to know The second quarter of 2021 brought with it two things that many of us hadn’t felt in a while: sunshine and the genuine feeling that things really were on their way back to some kind of ‘normal’. Pubs and restaurants became a thing again, as did festivals (going on sale, at least). As for nightclubs and large concerts, Boris Johnson’s notoriously scientific strategum delayed their grand re-opening into July. The period also brought with it a whole lot of eye-popping statistics for the music industry that are worth keeping in your noggin. Here’s the best of them…

ANALYSIS

$4 billion:

YouTube sets out its challenge to Spotify Remember when YouTube was the undisputed enemy of the music business? When barely a week would go by without a label head or industry body raining down criticism on the ‘value gap’ and the pittance paid per-stream on user-generated content? Everything seems far friendlier these days, which might be to do with the fact that YouTube paid out over $4 billion to music rightsholders in the year to May 2021. That’s according to YouTube’s Global Head of Music, Lyor Cohen, who claims YouTube Music is the “fastest growing subscription service out there”. He also says that YouTube wants to “become the leading revenue generator for the music industry”. That will take some doing. According to Daniel Ek, Spotify paid out $5 billion to the music industry in 2020. But Cohen is confident, not only thanks to that fast-growing subscriptions business, but also because of ad revenue: YouTube claims that 30% of the $4 billion (around $1.2 billion) it paid rightsholders in the past year came from ads on usergenerated videos, not including ads on ‘premium’ music video content. Spotify’s advertising business was worth ‘just’ €745 million ($842 million) in 2020, of which rightsholders would have received around 65%, or $547 million. In other words, YouTube’s UGC ads business is now worth more than double Spotify’s entire advertising business for the music industry.

Total YouTube ad revenues in calendar year and Q1 ($m) n Q1 n FY

19,772

15,149

11,155

6,005 4,038

3,025

2018*

2019

2020

Source: Alphabet SEC filings. *2018 Q1 figure not provided

2021

$7 billion:

Rob Stringer reveals the wild size of music M&A Music Business UK’s sister site, Music Business Worldwide, is forever writing headlines with dollar signs in them. But the cumulative worth of those dollar signs knocked even us for six. Sony Music Group Chairman, Rob Stringer, revealed in a presentation to Sony investors in May that, according to his company’s calculations, over $7 billion was spent on music industry M&A (mergers and acquisitions) in just the first four months of the 2021 calendar year. Putting the mammoth size of this number further into context, Stringer noted that it was almost as large as the entire amount spent on music M&A in the whole of 2020 – a year that saw huge deals cemented, including the $300 million-plus acquisition of Bob Dylan’s song catalogue by Universal Music Group. Sony’s been no slouch itself in the M&A stakes, of course. Stringer confirmed in May that, in the prior six months, Sony’s music acquisition expenditure had topped a whopping $1.4 billion – a figure which included its $430 million buyout of Kobalt’s AWAL.

$1 million (per hour):

Billie Eilish

Photo: Kelia Anne Maccluskey / press

The sheer global scale of Universal Music Group becomes apparent Universal Music Group isn’t just the biggest recorded music company in the world – it obviously also runs a major music publisher with a $1 billion-plus turnover (Universal Music Publishing Group), as well as an international merch arm (Bravado), plus other business lines. When all of these are combined, things go gangbusters. As Music Business Worldwide reported in April, Universal Music Group’s total company-wide revenues hit €1.81 billion ($2.20 billion) in Q1 2021, up 9.4% year-on-year. That $2.20 billion quarterly turnover was, in turn, equivalent to $24.5 million a day, or – oh yes – just over $1 million an hour. It’s stats like these that make current UMG majority-parent Vivendi so confident in its plan to spin-out 60% of Universal onto the Amsterdam stock exchange later this year. Experts are expecting a $40 billion-plus valuation for UMG ahead of that move, meaning that this public listing (again, with 60% of the firm hitting the market) should raise anywhere upwards of $24 billion.

ANALYSIS

$2.21 billion:

The number that reveals Merck’s sitting on a goldmine

Andrew Watt and Merck Mercuriadis (with Scooter Braun in the background)

Hipgnosis Songs Fund recently revealed its preliminary results for the 12 months to end of March 2021. The filing confirmed that Merck Mercuriadis’ company had spent over a billion dollars ($1.06 billion) on 84 catalogues in the period. These deals took Hipgnosis’ portfolio, as of the end of March, to 64,555 Songs across 138 catalogues, including 3,738 Songs that have held No. 1 positions in global charts, and 151 Grammy award-winning songs. This portfolio, said Hipgnosis, has recently been independently valued at $2.21 billion, reflecting a multiple of 17.96x historical annual net publisher share income. The company says it’s spent an average/blended acquisition multiple of 15.32x on the portfolio so far. Approximately $2.0 billion has been spent by Hipgnosis on catalogue buyouts so far, revealed the document. In Q2 alone, Hipgnosis acquired catalogs from Grammy winners like Andrew Watt, Joel Little, and Andy Wallace.

1 million:

Here’s one you might have missed: In May, DIY distribution platform Distrokid revealed that it was now ingesting and processing more than 35,000 new tracks every day – a number it suggested was “significantly more than any other distributor”. Playing around with that figure, it works out to around 24 tracks per minute… or more than a million new tracks every month. This came after Daniel Ek confirmed in February that Spotify was now seeing more than 60,000 tracks uploaded to its service every day. The sheer volume of tracks pouring out of the DIY artist sector is clearly shifting the dynamics of the music industry. Spotify reported in its most recent annual report that the market share of streams from music controlled/distributed by the three major record companies plus Merlin fell to 78% in 2020, down from 82% in 2019, and 85% in 2018. As well as reminding us that successful indie acts keep emerging in this business, these statistics also speak to another, less celebrated fact: There are a lot of mums and best friends out there, each sympathetically listening to their mate’s / offspring’s amateur efforts a couple of times a week – and transforming the shape of the business while they’re at it.

Distrokid has worked with artists such as Ludacris

Photo: Jamie Lamor Thompson / Shutterstock

The DIY revolution keeps on throwing up mind-boggling stats

'WE'RE THE NEW MOTOWN, NO LESS!' New music is coming, but the industry story from Rudimental is about expanding their label and publishing company...

hart-topping dance quartet Rudimental have had an impressively productive lockdown. Firstly, they’ve finished their fourth album, which is due out on Atlantic in September. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly for the purposes of a trade publication such as MBUK, they’ve been busy readying the start of a big expansion plan for their record label, publisher (administered by UMPG) and now creative agency, all of which sit under the Major Toms brand. That expansion includes moving from their studio in Hackney to a new complex that will house multiple studios across several floors and a multimedia recording space. At the same time, the label has a busy year of releases ahead with Anne-Marie — who started the year with No.2 hit Don’t Play, alongside KSI and Digital Farm Animals — set to release her second album via Major Toms/Atlantic, while Ella Henderson (also signed in a JV with Atlantic) is also working on an album following her top 20 track Let’s Go Home Together with Tom Grennan. Developing artist Morgan (who is signed solely to Major Toms) is working on an EP after guesting on Rudimental’s Be the One alongside rapper/songwriter Tike, who is published by Major Toms. Other acts published by the company include composer, songwriter and producer Renell Shaw, who won an Ivor last year for his jazz EP, The Windrush Suite, and has new music coming under duo 2fox; production duo Slim Typical; and songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Beanie Bhebhe. There’s also an expansion of their team on the cards (which currently includes Rudimental members Piers Aggett, Amir Amor, Kesi Dryden and DJ Locksmith as well as GM Gabby Endacott), and they are working on building an app that aims to help support artists’ wellbeing and mental health alongside a dedicated programme called The People’s Mantra. Here, we chat

FEATURE

Ella Henderson

Tike

to Aggett, Amor, Dryden and Locksmith about their ambitions, their approach to artist development, and what they think about some of the major music industry issues of the day. Morgan is an artist you’ve developed yourselves without signing to a major label — would you like to do more of that under Major Toms as you expand the company? Amir Amor: We’re exploring that idea. I think it’s about being able to hire the people that we want to hire, to create a team that we want to create, and find the best people for the right project. It can feel a little bit restrictive being connected to just one entity. We’re exploring the idea of nonmusic industry funding and we’re funding it ourselves. But ultimately, it’s going to be a mixture — some artists we might find and think this should be a joint venture with a label or, like with Morgan, we decide to do all of that development ourselves. The idea of taking an artist, whether it’s Morgan or someone else, to major levels of success entirely independently is definitely something we want to explore and I’m sure that will come with time.

DJ Locksmith: In terms of the record label, we’re relatively new to this game, even though we’ve had so much success for our artists in a short period of time, and we’ve got to get out and get that experience for ourselves before we start jumping in 100% and investing our own money into our artists because that can be a deep dark hole. Sometimes it can be a fun dark hole but it still burns your pocket. So, in order to acquire the team we want for our artists, we’re going to have to sometimes look at doing joint ventures. The model at the minute is starting off our artists and trying to invest our own money at the very initial stage, help with the creative side as much as we can, teaming up as Rudimental when we go on tour and then start looking to team up [with partners]. The fact we’ve had so much success with Anne-Marie and Morgan makes us want to jump into the deep end straight away but we’re still learning and need some more experience. We’ll get there.

“We’ve had the potholes, the dodgy A&Rs and battles with various labels.”

How does the fact that you are creators, first and foremost, have an impact on how your label operates or any point of difference that it offers? Amir: I think that’s our main point of difference. We are artists

FEATURE

Morgan

and we’ve been independent, we’ve signed to majors, and we’ve all done different things individually as well. So we’ve got this wealth of experience on the creative side of the industry and, as Locky said, we’ve been developing our experience on the business side as well over the years. We’ve had the potholes, the dodgy A&Rs and battles with various labels, whether it’s for features or for our own projects, and we take all of that experience into our ethos and understanding of how to work with artists. That goes across everything that we do. When you walk into a room with us, you don’t feel like you’re sitting in front of someone who’s a failed musician or who’s never really experienced that side of it, at least to the extent that we have and are continuing to do so.

Kesi Dryden: As artists, when we want to release music, sometimes the label might be like, ‘No, we’re not ready, we haven’t got this plan, we haven’t got this or that’. But it can be important to get your music out there. An example of that was at the beginning of the pandemic, Morgan was about to release an EP and we all decided, ‘Okay, maybe we should move it back a little bit’, but there was a song that Morgan really wanted to put out. We believe in our artists and if an artist feels so strongly about a song, we push them to put it out. So she released it and it’s actually been one of her biggest songs so far. So coming from that place where we’re artists ourselves, and we have a talent that wants to release something so bad and feels so strongly about something, I think it’s very important that we give them that opportunity to put the piece of music out.

FEATURE

Locksmith: Also, when we come to that decision making process with an artist, we sometimes ask ourselves as artists, ‘Would we like it if the record label did that to us?’, and that allows us to look at it through our artist’s eyes and be compassionate to their thoughts and creativity. I think that’s so important, because it allows the artist to feel more confident in themselves and have the belief that they can go on and produce some of their best work. With that said, we have been around the block a few times in the last 10 years, we’ve had the experience of not only playing in front of thousands of people but selling millions of records around the world, so we’ve got an idea of how to go about that and we can share that experience. Amir: At major labels, people have limited timescales in their jobs, they’re in and out really quickly. There are huge teams, there isn’t that much invested responsibility in things, projects get spread out over people, and it kind of gets lost. You also get this terrible overthinking… these are all things we’ve experienced first-hand working with different labels and these are things that we actively avoid. We make sure that it’s creative-led. If someone really believes in something, then we trust their belief, and allow them to explore that belief without putting too many stoppers in the way and without getting too many people involved.

them as if our older selves would be advising our younger selves. Kesi: One last point to add is that labels tend to sign artists who’ve already got some kind of success nowadays, who are already on a million TikTok views, already doing this or that. They sign them, they’ll put out a couple of singles and then they’ll go, ‘Oh, now you want to change direction? You want to try something different? Nah, stick with what works’. They get into these battles simply because they haven’t grown with the artist and understood them. So another major thing in our ethos is to grow with the artist. You have to gain trust both ways — the artist has to trust you and you have to trust the artist. That’s what I mean by being creative first, because you have to trust each other and I think that’s a pitfall of the major labels, this whole new ethos of just waiting until artists are already kicking off and offering some services, being like a service provider. We’re not just a service provider, we are an incubator, we incubate and we develop. Locksmith: We want to grow, we want to become a big label and we understand that we may have some of these issues that the bigger labels are having now in the next five to 10 years. But it comes down to what Amir was saying earlier in terms of the projects that we’re trying to build, and building a team around us that share the same values that can grow in numbers, where everyone’s thinking on the same wavelength. It may take us a lot longer, but that’s something we want to stick with. Look at Rudimental, we don’t stay in a box, we’re not one specific genre music band, we’re able to mould with the times, and that’s what we like our artists to do. We’re not looking for the next TikTok arsehole, we’re looking for someone who has talent and wants to grow.

“We're not looking for the next TikTok arsehole, we're looking for someone who has talent.”

Kesi: You have to listen to the artist. It happened to ourselves a few years back — our label wanted to put out a different song for Rudimental and we were fighting for Waiting All Night because we’d been playing it live during our shows and felt that the reaction we got from the song was so big. We really had to battle with the label to make it our next single but we won that battle, we got to No.1 and it’s one of our biggest songs.

Piers Aggett: It’s happening all the time — that’s happening right now! We’re handing in our next single tomorrow and the label are unsure, but we’re sure. It’s part of the game and, most of the time, labels mean really well, they want the best for their artists and that’s why they signed them. But not everything that they want is always the best for the artist, I think artists have to listen to themselves. Locksmith: At the end of the day, it comes down to music, and music is a very personal, emotional thing for an artist. They have to feel like they’re heard and they have to feel like they have a connection with ears that they trust. And sometimes, with bigger labels, who have a lot more responsibility and a lot more people on their roster, that connection can sometimes feel like it’s further away. Whereas with us, we’ve got that instant connection through our creativity, we’ve got our artists in the studio with us, we’re coproducing on their records at the same time, and we’re advising

Are there any cons to having a relationship with your artists that is so close creatively, as well as looking after the business side of their career for them? Amir: I don’t think there are any cons other than things take a bit longer. You have to invest more time and more money, but it’s worth it. Piers: And you can still disagree on things, we still disagree with Morgan on stuff, but I feel like we disagree in a different way than we disagree with our label, Atlantic, as a band because maybe we understand a bit more what they are going through. It definitely feels like a different type of relationship. You still have the, ‘What single should we put out?’ dilemma and you’ve still got to navigate through that. Especially in Morgan’s case, she’s making lots of different songs and using different sonics and

different producers, creating different sounds, so for her, especially early in her career, what type of sound and what type of artist she wants to be is really important. Locksmith: I think the cons are outside perception. Yes, things may take a little bit longer and there may not be instant success, but at the same time, I believe that if you stay true to your goals and true to your ethos and what you’re about, then you start to bring people into your world and cons over time start to feel like positives. Like Piers said, there will be disagreements but I have disagreements with my brother daily and I still love him. I feel like that’s what this label is, it’s like a family, the way we work with talent is through them coming on tour with us and that whole tour cycle is a family-oriented tour. Amir: It’s about that close relationship, so if we’re in the room with Morgan and she’s playing all of her music, management is there and we’re all together, we can discuss our ideas and opinions. And what we’ve found with the label world sometimes is there’s a separation — discussions happen, you’re not involved, you hear about them through this channel, it turns into Chinese whispers and then you get into a battle, where, really, you’re both on the same side. With that close relationship, with that trust, and spending time together, you avoid those pitfalls, because we all want the same thing, you discuss them, and you come to a conclusion. Here’s a big picture question: the economics of streaming have been under close scrutiny in the UK thanks to the Government inquiry. On which side of the debate do you sit? Piers: If you’re signed to a major record label, streaming really isn’t going to pay much and I think that is an issue. If you’re an independent artist in the streaming world, it can be pretty good. Kesi: I wouldn’t say it’s pretty good. Piers: Well, no but I’m saying it’s better because the major label’s not taking a massive chunk. Locksmith: It’s a difficult one. You’ve got the labels, who are going to put you in front of the world and help your music reach the heights that you want it to reach. If you’re independent, there’s only so far you can go. So then if you are streaming reasonably well as an independent person, you’re still not going to break through those massive barriers without the label. I would like to see the statistics on it before I make a

proper call on it, but for us, a band that’s been going for 10 years, we’ve made a living out of this. So I feel like it would be pretty patronising if we were to say that streaming doesn’t do well at the minute, because it’s got us to where we are now. Kesi: But I think we could all definitely say that the streaming platforms could pay the artists more. Amir: Yes, I fully agree, but I think it comes down to transparency. There isn’t really any clarity of how the money flows from the Spotifys and the Apples, although some are clearer than others, and then you’ve got the labels who blur the picture even more. We know, as artists who 10 years ago were selling CDs, now it’s entirely streams and vinyl, and we can see that there are more people consuming the music, but the money you get from royalties on the mechanical side is relatively less to the [consumption] numbers; it doesn’t quite add up. There’s tech companies who seem to be at the forefront of pushing this dynamic and it feels like the labels are following behind. We’re not quite at that stage yet where we’re innovating how music is consumed. This lack of clarity on how the money is trickling down is creating distrust between artists and labels — you don’t trust labels because you feel like they’re taking a big cut and passing it on to Spotify. There’s no distribution anymore, it’s all done digitally, so it doesn’t really cost anything, and all these questions are not fully answered. That’s why people are getting really excited about NFTs, because they offer a glimpse of hope that you can distribute directly and not have to go through the gatekeepers. Right now, the gatekeepers are kind of keeping this veil and making it look really complicated and complex and saying, ‘You don’t know what’s going on here, don’t worry about it.’ Piers: All the different companies pay differently, too. But who is representing the artists? PRS represents the songwriters and do a really good job, but between the labels and the Spotifys, no-one is representing the artist. Amir: That’s a really good point. There was a time when The Musicians’ Union represented especially classical musicians and set a standard of how much they should get paid and then you wouldn’t be a broke musician if you were Renell Shaw

FEATURE

Anne-Marie

Slim Typical

performing at a certain level. That is gone, there is no representation for the creatives against the tech giants, we’ve got the labels in the middle who have their own interests, and a lot of them have vested interests in the tech giants. Aside from more transparency in streaming, are there any other big changes that you’d like to see in the music industry? Amir: Representation for songwriters, for artists. We’re the creators but it feels like we’re at the bottom of the food chain. The tech is at the top, the labels are somewhere below that and it kind of trickles down. Also, I’d like to see an overhaul in the way [streaming] is done, because it all stemmed from that era of piracy that went into iTunes and the labels are sort of catching up. We’re still working from a mentality that has stemmed from that era. It doesn’t feel like the creative and music side has innovated on how we reach our audience, we’re still really reliant on these huge gatekeepers, and we’re becoming more and more reliant. So I’d like to see representation, some kind of union, The Musicians’ Union, perhaps, and I’d like to see some innovation from labels around the fact that music fans want to go directly to artists.

Locksmith: It’s something we have to think about as the Major Toms label. Amir: Yeah, definitely. We have to be more tech savvy, we have to get that side of things down. I can’t give you the answer right now, but we definitely need to innovate and be creative in how we’re reaching artists, because those traditional gatekeepers are doing what they’ve always traditionally done, which is take our money and close the gate.

“A lack of clarity on how the money is trickling down is creating distrust.”

What are your ultimate ambitions for Major Toms as a brand of companies? Amir: We’re the new Motown, no less! We bring the ethos of family, growth, development and we are a creative, artist-led label – and that goes across our creative agency side as well. We want to use our unique position with artists to create more natural brand engagements and natural and better content. Locksmith: To be the biggest that we can be, carry on finding and nurturing talent as much as we possibly can and see where that takes us. n

Every Picture Tells A Story

Date: June, 1989 Location: Wembley Arena, London Bob was playing Wembley, and we decided to have a small affair backstage, 20 or so people, major retailers, the big people from radio, Champagne, nice things on sticks and everyone gets to meet Bob. I said to Bob’s people, we just want to give him a Gold record, and then if he could spend 10 minutes with us, that would be great. Of course word came back: Bob does not do meet and greets. Undeterred, I thought, I’ll get there early, I’ll find him and explain the situation, persuade him that this is something he should do. I go to Bob’s dressing room, there’s no one there, I ask a security guy where he is and he says, ‘Oh, he’s down there, second door on the left.’ I knock, no answer, so I open the door and it’s basically a storage cupboard. Sitting on a fold-up chair was Bob, to his left was George Harrison, and to his left, sat on a huge keg of beer, was Ringo. I said, ‘Sorry to interrupt, my name is Paul Russell, I run the record company here and Bob I was wondering…’ Before I’d even got half of it out: ‘I don’t do meet and greets, I don’t do album presentations.’ I tried again, I said the radio people have been very, very good to us, so have retail, it’s only about 20 people, no one’s going to jostle you, if you could just come by, we’ll give you the album, you could say a few words, it would mean so much to everyone… Still no.

I’m about to launch into my third request, when suddenly Ringo says, ‘For fuck sake Bob, do as the fucking geezer asks, come on, don’t be a c**t.’ Bob looks at Ringo, and I sense my chance. I said, ‘Bob, I’ll tell you how we’re gonna do this. The room has two doors, you come in one door, I’ll be standing with the album, we’ll take a photograph, you go out the other door. You don’t even have to take the album with you, just smile at 20 people.’ At which point Ringo chimes in again: ‘For fuck sake Bob, do the guy a fucking favour.’ Bob looks at Ringo, looks back at me, ‘You promise I don’t even have to take the album?’ After the show, there we are, in our room, someone gives me the signal, Bob comes through the door, he won’t take the album, as you can see, but he puts his hand on my shoulder and manages as much of a smile as we were ever going to get. The photographer fires off two or three shots and Bob’s out the other door. So, thanks to Ringo, we got him! As part of a storied career, Paul Russell was the Chairman of Sony Music UK during much of the eighties and nineties.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR ANNUAL PREMIUM MAGAZINE BUNDLE:

MUSICBIZSTORE.COM