Music Business UK Q2/Q3 2020

Q2/Q3 2020

ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS. FAIRNESS, TRANSPARENCY AND SERVICE. SINCE BEFORE IT WAS FASHIONABLE.

WELCOME

In this issue...

14

Richard Russell

22

Tim Blacksmith & Danny D

32

Austin Daboh

38

Selina Webb

Universal Music UK

42

Adele White

Island Records

48

Denis Ladegaillerie

58

Dan Owusu, Lunick Bourgess & Shane Derozario

68

Ant Hippsley

78

Bernadette Barrett

84

Charlie Pierce

92

Bob Workman

98

Roberto Neri

8

XL Recordings

Stellar Songs

Atlantic Records

Believe

Dream Life

Milk & Honey

Mondo Management

Neverno Management

Warner Music UK

Downtown

THE NEW ALBUM

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‘Reflective, joyous, hymnal, funny, political, contented...’

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‘The greatest, most adventurous music of his life’ THE INDEPENDENT

MOJO

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‘Warm, wise and still capable of surprise’

‘A joy to hear’

THE GUARDIAN

Q MAGAZINE

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‘A joyous, soulful sounding album’

‘His most adventurous album in years’ THE TIMES

RECORD COLLECTOR

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‘A true pop classic’

‘Magnificent’

GQ

UNCUT www.paulweller.com

EDITOR’S LETTER It’s been nearly three years since we launched Music Business UK magazine. When we did so, we adopted a very deliberate cadence of quarterly issues. The thinking behind that decision: there are two types of music industry to observe and analyse in the modern era.

There’s the second-by-second, right here, right now music industry – the one which operates in sync with social media and the limited-attention buzz it’s designed to propagate.

And then there’s the longer-lens, let’s-look-outfor-meaningful-trends music industry, which hankers after permanence of impact – and which refuses to be distracted by ephemeral occurrences or of-the-moment antics. We liked the sound of the second one.

The upside of a quarterly magazine is that it enables you to take a measured portrait of a sustained moment in time. The downside is that, from one issue to the next, things can change dramatically. And so it was that the previous issue of Music Business UK was packed off to the printers in mid-March, a good week before Prime Minister Boris Johnson locked us up in our own homes, for our own safety. You don’t need me to tell you that the world has shifted on its axis since then.

As I write this, that same Prime Minister’s government is urging caution and restraint from the British people over the weekend of July 4; a knowingly ludicrous suggestion, considering that: (a) The pubs are reopening for the first time in over three months; and (b) that same government is doing very little to dissuade people from promoting a booze-soaked ‘Super Saturday’ – an open invite for carnage.

The tawdry aftermath of ‘Super Saturday’ will undoubtedly have a familiar, uniquely British flavour to it. But even a raucous public return to the UK’s time-honoured traditions of piss-ups and smash-ups won’t be able to hide the fact that we are not the same country we were before.

© Music Business Worldwide Ltd 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AX ISSN 2632-5357

1

Tim Ingham

“As we’ve seen, from one issue of this magazine to the next, the world can change dramatically.”

In the previous issue of Music Business UK, perhaps reflecting the mood of a busy, commuting nation, coronavirus barely got a mention. This time around, it’s never far from the lips of our interviewees and the pens of our columnists. Despite the grim human toll taken by the virus, it has (as we are now duty-bound to remind one another) also forced us to adopt some positive changes to the way we work and live. I encourage you to read the thoughts of Peter Robinson (page 46) and Rhian Jones (page 56) on this topic – and how the manner in which we interact, not to mention our shared productivity, may never be the same again.

Coronavirus hasn’t been the only transformative topic on the global news agenda in recent weeks, of course. The sickening video of George Floyd’s death, combined with a run of disturbing US reports regarding the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and others has given us all reason for anger – as well as pause to consider our own, and our own industry’s, efforts to chase out prejudice.

There are some powerful thoughts on that topic in this magazine from, amongst others, Tim Blacksmith and Danny D (page 22), Adele White (page 42) and Bernadette Barrett (page 78). As a blueprint for the future, it is difficult to disagree with anything in Austin Daboh’s five-point Manifesto for change in the music industry (page 32). Focusing specifically on economic disparity, Daboh comments: “How do we ensure that talented young people who might be suffering financially are afforded the same opportunities as those people lucky enough to be born into situations where they can survive being paid pennies for the first few years of their professional journey?”

Quite. It’s important for any business to remember that in 2020, diversity of all kinds, at every level of corporate life, is a strong indication of – not an impediment to – true meritocracy.

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

Contributors CLIFF FLUET

EAMONN FORDE

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.

Cliff Fluet is a partner within Lewis Silkin’s Creators, Makers and Innovators Division and founded its media practice. He previously worked at Warner Music and Capital Radio plc. He is also Managing Director at Eleven, an advisory firm working with incumbents and insurgents in digital media and leading companies in the AI space.

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.

KIERON DONOGHUE

RHIAN JONES

PETER ROBINSON

Kieron Donoghue is the founder of Humble Angel Records, and the creator of Warner Music Group’s flagship playlist brand, Topsify. Donoghue became global streaming playlist strategy boss at Warner after the major acquired his Playlists.net in 2014. Donoghue led Topsify’s global strategy at Warner for the subsequent three years.

Rhian Jones is a respected freelance journalist who often focuses on the music industry. In addition to writing regularly for Music Business UK and Hits Daily Double, she is a Contributing Editor for Music Business Worldwide. In this issue, Rhian interviews the likes of Charlie Pierce and Bernadette Barrett, while penning a column on lockdown’s lasting effects.

Peter Robinson has been a music journalist for over 20 years, and keeps a keen eye on the global entertainment industry.

Robinson has written for the likes of The Guardian, The Times, TIME, Noisey, i-D, Smash Hits, Q Magazine, Time Out, Attitude, Notion and The Telegraph, and runs his own must-read online publication over on Popjustice.

ADRIAN SYKES

12

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THE MOST EFFECTIVE MUSIC INDUSTRY JOBS BOARD IN THE WORLD

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‘IT’S ALRIGHT TO FEEL FEAR – SO LONG AS YOU IGNORE IT’ Richard Russell has laid his life bare in a new memoir. He tells MBUK about independence, insecurity and identity...

L

oftus Road, home stadium to football team Queens Park Rangers, is perhaps an unlikely crucible within which to experience a life-changing epiphany. Yet for Richard Russell, co-founder and talisman of XL Recordings – the UK’s most successful, and probably its most influential, modern independent record label – that’s exactly where everything changed.

As Russell writes in his illuminating and often drily funny memoir, Liberation Through Hearing, it was while attending a QPR game with his son in 2005, that “inexplicably... I felt a great stillness, and became suddenly aware of my ego as a separate entity, like a half-brother who had been my constant companion until that point, controlling much of my behaviour, without my having been aware of his presence.”

The XL founder adds: “To become aware of this force was not to eliminate it but to suddenly understand the reasons for much of what was happening in my life, and be more able to moderate my own actions.” This was not an insignificant realisation for Russell, who by this point had already undergone several years of therapy to help vanquish his personal demons.

The QPR revelation in Liberation Through Hearing comes a few years, and six chapters, after we observe Russell, in his late twenties, lying on his bedroom floor at 4am, “hyperventilating and drenched in sweat, racked with an indescribable feeling of panic”. This is no old fashioned drugs’n’paranoia music biz yarn. It is actually the first sign of breaking point for Russell – a dawning appreciation that “seeing myself as the most important person in my life” was actually suffocating the best person he could be. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it also marked the onset of clinical depression.

By Russell’s late twenties, XL had already become a global

success story, largely thanks to The Prodigy, whose Fat Of The Land (1997) would go on to sell over 10 million copies worldwide. Yet despite this external triumph, internally, Russell was losing his grip. “I’d lost sight of my core values,” admits Russell in his memoir. “I may have been unconsciously imitating some of the wealthy and powerful executives I’d met in the US.” Sound familiar to anyone out there? If you’ve progressed to an unexpected level of achievement in the business of show, but still have howling doubts over your own talent and your worth, Richard Russell’s book, and especially this particular chapter, All Fall Down, will likely knock you for six. If you’re on the way up, it’s a valuable cautionary tale.

Russell says that, by the point of his bedroom floor breakdown, he’d become 30lbs heavier than he was before. He’d stopped wearing streetwear by Stüssy and started buying expensive clothes (“mostly black, from French boutique Agnès B”). It was all a complete charade, he notes, the accoutrements of how he imagined a flush, go-getting music executive should appear to the world. In his own words, everything was becoming “ridiculous”.

Russell’s searingly honest self-analysis of this stage in his life makes for captivating reading. But what’s perhaps even more fascinating is the professional and personal triumph that ensued at XL after he put his self-regard back in its box, and simultaneously began channeling his creative energies in new directions. As he puts it: “When I stopped wanting things for the wrong reasons, they became possible.”

In 2006, following a long hiatus from music-making going all the way back to his career beginnings in the UK rave scene, Russell approached his favourite artist, Gil Scott-Heron, about recording an album together. In the very same year, XL signed Adele (via 15

the A&R combo of Nick Huggett and Tic Zogson). For Russell, the two events were potent symbols of a new era, both creatively and professionally. In Liberation Through Hearing, Russell is full of praise for Adele’s talents (just as he is for a number of other brilliant XL signings, including Dizzee Rascal, Jack and Meg White, Giggs, M.I.A and his friend, Liam Howlett). He says that, with an idiosyncratic mix of “vulnerability coupled with complete certainty”, plus prodigious songwriting talent, Adele achieved a “holy grail”: “Music with genuine emotional resonance that transcended all modern commercial expectations.”

Russell was certainly there for important guidance and support during the A&R process – not least when Adele went back to the drawing board on producers for the record-shattering 21. But, ego firmly in check, he also knew when to get out of her way.

Russell says that, at one stage of his life, he would have likely obsessed over Adele’s escalating success (and how it reflected on his own status) but that accepting a different reality actually made him more effective as the head of XL. This was helped by the process of creating the Gil Scott-Heron album, eventually released in 2010 as the widely acclaimed I’m New Here – Scott-Heron’s last album as an artist and Russell’s first as a credited producer.

Since then, Russell has produced and/or co-produced the likes of Bobby Womack (The Bravest Man In The Universe, 2012), Damon Albarn (Everyday Robots, 2014) and XL signing Ibeyi (Ash, 2017).

He’s also created two albums of his own, working with a string of collaborators under the moniker Everything Is Recorded: 2018’s Mercury-nominated, self-titled LP, and 2020’s follow-up, FRIDAY FOREVER. Liberation Through Hearing is stuffed with hard-won wisdom, both for artists (sample quote: “The music industry will always contain insecure people who wish to make you conform because they fear the outcome otherwise. Ignore them!”) and for people who work with artists (“Dysfunctionality comes with gifts as a consolation prize”). It is dedicated to the memory of Keith Flint.

Music Business UK caught up with Richard Russell in early June.

He was freshly returned from the Black Lives Matter protest in Hyde Park, espousing the greatness of Gil Scott-Heron’s 1978, compilation The Mind Of Gil Scott-Heron and the sad current pertinence of one of its tracks, Jose Campos Torres, about an unarmed Mexican American murdered by the Houston police in 1977 (“The racist dogs that attack us... are in the street, alive, and the terror in our heart hasn’t diminished.”).

Russell openly talked about his career highlights so far, the music business’s impact on people’s self-judgment, and why he believes keeping the creative “tap on” is usually the best protection against a dangerous excess of inward regard...

was wrapped up in your life and success before you sought ‘detachment’ from it, something which particularly struck you during that QPR game in 2005. Why was that process so important to you as an individual?

People have varying levels of familiarity with their own ego, and people have varying sizes of ego. You could say there are lots of big egos in the music industry, but then there are lots of big egos everywhere. At least people in music are doing something interesting. You’ll find big egos in an insurance company’s office.

Look at Ricky Gervais’ characters; David Brent is just a big ego walking around.

Ego makes people act in a certain way that is not really them, and that they might be oblivious to. But once you become aware of it, you can say, ‘Okay, this entity wants stuff... but it’s not me.’ That [realisation] can be very powerful. [It can also be] confusing at first, when people start to see the power in doing things for the right reasons.

Some people think the ego is responsible for their success; I don’t believe in that idea, because you can still have drive and ambition, you can still want to achieve and do things in an excellent way, [without it]. The ego will be telling you that you are the most important thing in the world. If you separate yourself from that, it doesn’t mean you’re going to try any less hard, it’s just [you understand] there are things that are more important, which generally are to do with the other people in your life.

None of which is to say, and hopefully I make this clear in the book, that I’ve gained some sort of unusual enlightenment. It’s just a gradual process of dawning awareness and consciousness, you know, something to work on, to try and see things ever more clearly, which is a journey many people are on.

“Some people think the ego is responsible for their success; I don’t believe in that.”

You write in Liberation Through Hearing that your ego 16

Do you think you’re a better record company boss now that you see yourself in that way?

I don’t see myself as a record company boss, and I haven’t for a long time. I see Ben [Beardsworth] as the record company boss [at XL], because he’s the boss of the company. I have an involvement, but it’s not to be anyone’s boss.

You talk about the strength of direction you saw in Adele, how she knew her own mind, her own art, in a way that reminded you of Liam Howlett. But you also talk about not trying to force Adele into a more left-field sound, as might be expected of XL. Why did you resist?

That would have been madness, right? Because she clearly knew what she was doing, so it was the right course of action. It’s about going with your instincts. Sometimes doing the right thing is extremely hard, and then, once in a while, you get a gift.

As I explain, I was thinking something Joni Mitchell-esque [for

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Russell with Infinite Coles, who appears on both Everything Is Recorded albums

Adele’s sound], understandably, because that’s kind of what she presented on stage. And then she began talking about a different type of process, with co-writers and co-producers, none of whom I was familiar with. That was how she wanted to make her record, and that just made total sense.

That’s what she was like then, that’s what she’s like now: she’s super clear about things. She knew her taste and she knew what she loved. And as it happened, her taste was in tune with the taste of a very wide public.

There’s a fascinating screenshot of her old MySpace page in the book. She names her favourite artists, and they’re people like Jill Scott, Etta James, Karen Dalton, Ann Peebles, Billy Bragg.

There’s also Amy Winehouse, Destiny’s Child, The Beatles...

Yes, she was openly saying, ‘I’m into the Spice Girls’ early on [in XL meetings]. No one in our world would have said that! I thought, ‘That’s just punk rock. She doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks about that.’

It was the easiest thing in the world to back her. It’s not always that easy, you know, but that did remind me of Liam and The Prodigy. People might have been thinking [of Adele], it’s quite pop, but I was thinking, not really. When I think of pop, I think of something malleable. [Adele’s creative vision] was the least malleable thing you’d ever seen – same as The Prodigy. No one was

going to be telling these people what to do.

Another artist who gets a chapter in the book is Giggs, and your recollection of the police targeting him through Operation Trident. It made me wonder what your views are on what’s going on in the world right now with the anti-racist protests and societal unrest we’re seeing in multiple places.

I think you’ve got to begin by asking tough questions. Is society racist? You can see how racist the US is; that’s glaringly apparent at the moment.

I have always felt racism in the UK was just as just as prevalent but more insidious, a more British type of racism. In America, you kind of know where you stand. So is [UK] society racist? Yes. Is it sexist? Yes. Is it homophobic? Yes. The tougher question: is the music industry racist, sexist, homophobic? Which we also touch on in the book. I would say that it is all of those things. But is it more so than, say, the financial sector? I’d say probably not.

Having sort of identified [society’s] problems, which I think is only truly happening now, the bright side is you have the potential to start working on some solutions. You can’t heal what you don’t reveal.

There is kind of an ongoing conversation with yourself that I picked up from the latter half of the book as regards your 17

Russell and Damon Albarn working with soul legend Bobby Womack on 2012’s The Bravest Man In The Universe

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creative pursuits. You’re trying to accept the idea that nothing really matters in the long run – so there’s nothing to be scared of or feel anxious about – without falling into the trap of, ‘Ah, why bother?’

This is where this whole journey of self awareness comes in. I mean, I’ve always been blown away by how much wisdom young artists sometimes have. It’s an amazing thing.

If you’re an artist, the idea is that you’re free to do what you want. That doesn’t mean people won’t say, ‘It’s not going to work, it’s going to be a disaster.’ The whole job of being an artist is having the strength and the conviction to ignore that. It’s not easy.

I’ve worked with really young artists who just know exactly what they’re doing. I was not one of them; I did not know what I was doing, so my initial artist career in the rave scene fizzled out quick. I had to learn about direction and focus, through working with people who are really great. [But] some artists seem to come built with those instincts. Then it’s a question of, can you maintain them? Can you stay tuned into them for the long haul?

Well there weren’t many Gil Scott-Herons around.

You write about Martin Mills helping you find Ibeyi, and that prior to their signing you had expressed to Martin that “new artists I was seeing on YouTube... seemed to be inhabiting a spiritual void”. Do you worry about that, and worry about the track-led streaming world hurting the more patient demands of the album?

Well, I also say in the book that people have their golden age, when they are teenagers, and they think that was the best music ever made. And it was, to them, if they didn’t maintain the openness as a listener that they had as a teenager. It happens to most people, but that’s okay. People create a rose-tinted version of the past: the Beatles weren’t always No.1, Englebert Humperdinck was No.1!

Look at the charts any year, any time, music with magical transcendent power is a constant thread. It might not hit the mainstream, that’s going to come in and out, but it’s always there.

Sometimes there’s that holy grail thing – when something with genuine power also becomes the thing that most people listen to – but it’s quite rare.

If people are worried that it’s about tracks and streaming now, it’s alright, it’s all cyclical; it was about jukeboxes in the ‘50s, right? It wasn’t about albums. Then, as the latter half of the ‘60s progressed, it became about albums. Albums haven’t always been an art form; in the enormity of time that’s relatively recent. So if we’re in a phase now where it’s more about the single, then it’s more about the single.

It’s true that people have a lot of distractions now. There’s a lot of noise. But there’s always been a version of that going on.

And although I believe, you know, Gil’s words would be very comforting to people right now, so will Kendrick Lamar’s. And people might say, ‘There aren’t many Kendrick Lamars around.’

You have many different ventures going on today: There’s XL, obviously, but also your production work, your radio show on NTS, you still DJ... What are you still trying to achieve?

Well, I’ve written a whole book, but I’ve never thought about that!

It’s not easily answerable. I’d like to keep learning, and keep enjoying what I’m doing, which are tied together, I’m sure – because if you’re learning things, you don’t get bored.

I like the process of making music more than ever. And when anything comes up that I haven’t done before, I get interested. If it prompts a feeling of fear and anxiety, I’m even more interested because I’ve come to recognise that’s where the good stuff lies.

I wasn’t interested in writing a book when I was first approached to do one, but then I thought, Why? One of the reasons: I’m probably scared of getting it wrong, and not being able to do it. And the whole world of real writers going, ‘He’s not a writer.’ So I thought, Okay – I better do it then and see how it goes. Because what’s the worst that can happen?

I think in the world of A&R, people feel fear – a fear of failure and of judgment by your peers. It’s alright to feel that, as long as you ignore it. And as long as it doesn’t guide your actions.

That’s all linked to ego, because the ego is scared of failure.

But you don’t really care if you fail at something; it doesn’t mean anything. You’re probably going to learn the most from that experience. So in a way, the whole idea of success and failure is a completely misleading notion.

So yeah, I’m trying different things, but I don’t take it lightly. If I’m going to do something, I want to do well. That doesn’t mean it has to be a blockbuster commercial success; I just have to do it well. But I don’t take on things recklessly. ‘No’ is still the most

It’s interesting to think about young people today when you see the youth involvement in protests in America, the amount of education going on about Jim Crow laws, red-lining and other hugely important, often airbrushed things from our history.

But at the same time, teenagers are putting themselves at the centre of their own entertainment, via TikTok etc. which, as a promoted worldview, can seem quite self-centered.

I think you’re entitled to be self-centered as a teenager. I almost think you should be. That’s part of the beauty of that age. But then that might not be so pretty when someone’s in their forties.

I do think there is a kind of new spirituality in younger people. There’s a greater openness in a lot of ways now than there was before. On the one hand people talk about the internet, materialism, social media – and yes, that’s all going on. But I also see far more people meditating than there were; mindfulness is widely accepted. It’s not just Instagram.

“I’ve always been blown away by how much wisdom young artists sometimes have.”

19

In the studio with LIsaKaindé Diaz, Sampha and Fabiana Palladino

important answer to virtually everything. But the things you do take on? I like to take them seriously, so that it’s worthwhile. An old friend of mine who I grew up with said to me recently, ‘Couldn’t you just do something and, like, not take it really seriously?’ And I said, ‘Why bother? There’s enough stuff out there already.’

You once said, in reference, I’m sure, to the way things are in this business, that the music industry is not a sport, and that someone else doesn’t have to lose in order for you to win.

Well, of course, there’s a competitive aspect to [this industry]. And a bit of competition can bring out really good work in people. When artists feel competitive with another artist in the right amount, with some balance, that’s perfectly healthy and natural, and has given rise to people doing their best. That’s fine. It’s when it becomes more of an ego thing that it becomes a problem. If you get too caught up in it, people [start] really desiring someone else’s misfortune... and that ain’t a good vibe, is it?

I think the UK music industry, especially the A&R sector, has always been really impressive. Across the board, majors, indies, the lot, because there’s always been so much new stuff that’s come

from here, and new sounds from the UK. I don’t think I see it that way because it’s where I’m from; I just think the UK is the place.

I don’t think anywhere else has an audience with such a thirst for new things; we’re just up for it.

There’ll always be an American artist who can’t get accepted in America because it’s too progressive and they’ll come here and people will love it. That was Hendrix, Public Enemy, a lot of artists. The great American artists I’ve worked with – Bobby Womack, Gil Scott-Heron – they loved the UK, because they come here and people really dig it. That’s true of France to an extent as well.

People always knock the [UK] music industry and people always knock A&R, but there’s a lot of people in that world who know a lot and have a lot of passion for what they do. But too much competition and too much desire for the other guy to fail? I just doubt anyone benefits from that. Maybe it’s engendered by the higher-ups, I don’t know. I can’t imagine it’s necessary. Success is an infinite resource.

“All children are creative. Then they stop. That’s not a good idea.”

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If you could go back to around the time of The Prodigy’s Experience, 1992, when XL started to become a more serious

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Russell at his studio, The Copper House

indie label, what advice would you give yourself in terms of how to stay happy?

Don’t listen to your own insecurities. That’s very important. You will have fears and insecurities – that’s alright. But they’re not to be listened to.

The syndrome that I discuss in the book is that of a musician who stops being a musician after they see Prince, because his greatness brings out so much insecurity. Any musician seeing Prince is going to think, I’m not as good as him. You can’t have had any other reaction.

No one ever saw Prince and thought, Yeah, I’m better than that.

That range of abilities, as guitarist, as songwriter, as vocalist, as producer, as drummer, a dancer. But what would have happened if everyone who saw Prince, and then thought they weren’t as good as Prince, just stopped?

In [the early days of XL], working with Liam [Howlett], I thought, Well, I’m not as good a rave producer as he is. Liam was always very encouraging and supportive of my [music], and he suggested we might change together, but I was like, ‘No, this guy is better than me.’ And of course in some ways the result was the right thing, because I said [instead], ‘I’m going to provide a service to him, and do it with a deep understanding of what he does.’ And it worked out great, and we’re still close.

But I also think people’s creative outlet is incredibly important.

With people who work in the music industry, the creative outlet’s

being commodified – and that’s where the danger comes in. They start thinking it’s not of value, and that’s wrong.

You sit with a child, they’re creative. All children are creative.

Then, for a lot of people, they stop, because they want to be a sensible adult. That’s not a good idea.

I’m really big on encouraging people to maintain their creative outlet, whatever it is, keep the tap on, keep doing whatever the thing is you do. In the music industry, people always feel shame about [that]; you’ll see people saying, ‘Oh, you know, that guy, he’s just a frustrated musician.’ It’s like, well, you should be! If you’re not a musician, you should be a frustrated musician! Why would you not want to be a musician? Why would you not want to make stuff?

There’s massive therapeutic value in making things. And it leads to other things too; even if people are really focused on succeeding [in other areas], the same thing applies – if you’ve got your creative outlet engaged, if you’ve got the tap on, you’ll be better at doing wherever else it is you do.

I believe in that really deeply. I feel like I’ve seen first hand the effects of the shutting down of a person’s creative outlet – and it is disastrous. It really has a bad effect on people.

To remain open and not get cynical is extremely important.

And one of the best ways to do that is to keep the creative juices flowing. There’s real power, in the right sense of the word power, personal empowerment, in making things.

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INTERVIEW

A STELLAR PARTNERSHIP They’re two of the most successful British music execs in history – and they don’t do interviews. Tim Blacksmith and Danny D talk life, music and the state of the world...

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Tim Blacksmith and Danny D, Venice, Los Angeles, June 2020

t took quite a lot to get an interview with Tim Blacksmith and Danny D, the hugely respected (but not hugely available) USbased UK execs behind, amongst other things, Stellar Songs.

It took two years, for a start. It took some reassurances, it took some persistence and it took some patience.

And it took Adrian Sykes. A good friend of all involved, Sykes’ regular enquiry of ‘Have you interviewed Tim and Danny yet?’ was met with so many tales of near misses and cancelled appointments that, in the end, it was decided the best thing for MBUK to do was take a step back and let Sykes himself pin down and then interview two men who he has known for more than three decades.

Perhaps most of all, though, it took the maelstrom of horrific events, groundswell movements and seismic shifts currently trading under the name ‘2020’. As D observes: “It’s often said that nothing happens before its time. Well, now it’s time.”

He and Blacksmith both enjoyed separate, distinguished careers as artists, remixers and producers before joining forces to become globally successful execs in publishing, management and beyond.

Their switch from behind-the-scenes music makers to behind-thescenes career makers came when Blacksmith was asked to work with an up-and-coming Norwegian writing and production duo called Stargate; Tor Erik Hermansen and Mikkel Storleer Eriksen then asked him to manage them.

Blacksmith recognised nascent talent, sensed international potential and jumped at the chance. Crucially, he decided to bring his old friend D in as partner in what would become Tim and Danny Music, a global group of companies made up of Delirious Blacksmith Management, Stellar Songs, 45th & 3rd Music, StarRoc and Tim & Danny Records.

Stellar is the small but powerful publishing company that is home to, amongst others, Charli XCX, Gorgon City, Emeli Sandé and Sam Smith. On the management side, they look after a hand-picked roster of writers, producers and artists including Grammy-winning production duo Mojam (co-managed with Riki Bleau), and, of course, Stargate, with whom they have now worked for over 20 years (and who have clocked up four Grammy wins from 17 nominations).

Theirs is a trajectory that took them from London to New York and L.A – via Trondheim, friendship, systemic racism, chance encounters, determination, huge hits and, every step of the way, a fierce passion for great music.

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Sykes, a label exec and manager who steered Emilé Sande to Platinum-lined, BRITs-hoarding success, has played some part in that story but, most importantly, has been, and remains, a friend and supporter, perfectly placed to ask the right questions and tease out the best stories.

So, two years and 193 emails, later, courtesy of MBUK’s newest (and yet, in a very real sense, oldest) team member, it’s time to tell the story of two black British execs who conquered the world on their own terms, and who now want to help the next generation follow in their footsteps...

Adrian Sykes: At last!

Tim Blacksmith: [Laughs] I know, thank you for your patience.

Danny D: And thank for you staying on our case for so long.

AS: Well, as you said Danny, it turns out this is probably the right time, so let’s start by asking you about race, about racism, about your personal experiences, whether or not things have improved, and what you think about this latest breakout of discussion and initiatives. Where do you think we’re at?

TB: I would like to say that there has been significant change in the UK industry – but I’ve yet to see it. By that I mean in the upper echelons of the business, because I’m just not seeing any brothers or sisters of colour playing significant roles at that level at these companies. Not in significant numbers, anyway.

In nearly 40 years of working in the record industry, I haven’t seen any significant change. We do not have a black managing director of any of these major companies, and I think we only have a couple of black-led labels: Since 93, led by Glyn [Aikins] and Riki [Bleau], within the Sony structure, and Dumi [Oburota]’s Disturbing London, which now goes through Warner. Maybe I’m missing one – but the point is I shouldn’t have to rack my brains and reach like this; this shouldn’t be a conversation.

Apart from Darcus [Beese], who is no longer in the UK, there hasn’t been anyone at this juncture who has headed up one of these major labels, which says to me that we still have a long, long way to go.

And kids now are growing up listening to everything, because that’s their listening environment, that’s the streaming environment. They have a very wide-reaching approach to music and to life, but, unfortunately, at the higher end, it feels like a one-dimensional thing.

I’m not pointing a finger at every white exec running every record company, because there are some very forward-thinking people in the game, which is great, but, in general, that’s how it feels.

AS: So the question is: Why? TB: It’s a very good question. Listen, I grew up in London, I grew up in a multi-cultural, multi-racial school. I heard everything.

When I was a teenager I listened to King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown and The Sex Pistols. I would listen to John Peel, who would play everything. And he was allowed to play everything, which was great. But I’m apparently only listening to one type of music? Nah. I didn’t know about the segregation of music until I started to do my first deals, and people were telling me, ‘This is a dance record’, or, ‘This is an R&B record’. What? Is it? Okay…

And the next thing was, ‘This isn’t going to be in the charts, because it’s gonna be weighted’. I’m like, ‘What do you mean it’s gonna be weighted?’ ‘Well, you’re selling more copies down south than you are in the rest of the country.’

I never understood that; aren’t sales sales? But to the people running the chart then, Gallup I think it was, those were the kind of rules they had in place, stopping some great records, indigenous, local records, coming up from the places I lived, from being hits – the likes of Light of the World, Caroll Thompson, Loose Ends, Matumbi. They were selling a lot of records, but they were being weighted – which effectively meant being held back – because they were a certain type of record.

That, for me, was the first experience of racism in the music industry. Because I understood straight-up censorship; I understood them fixing things so that God Save The Queen couldn’t be No. 1 when it [should have been] No. 1. But this racism was more subtle, and it was just accepted. I only understood it when it was explained to me that this record I had made, which clearly should have been a chart record, was not going to be allowed in the chart.

So, yeah, that was the first, but there have been some other experiences that I’m happy to recount.

“I would like to say there has been significant change – but I’ve yet to see it.”

DD: I 100 percent agree with what Tim’s said. It feels to me like the executives who are there are there to just fill the role they’re in, and that’s it. It doesn’t feel to me that they’re being brought in with a view to being advanced to the highest levels of the game. They will get to a certain level, but no further.

It makes me think that they feel we only listen to ‘black’ music.

But in our homes, growing up, we listened to everything. The first record I ever bought was Honky Tonk Women, by the Rolling Stones. I’m pretty sure that’s not a reggae tune.

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AS: Please do…

TB: One that sticks with me is when I got a call from an A&R guy.

He asks me to come and see him, says he’d love me to work on one of his records. His assistant sets the meeting up for 9am.

Anyway, I get there at 8:45 and I’m sat in the waiting room. His assistant comes out, sees me, and says, ‘Oh my goodness, you’re early!’ I say, ‘Yeah…’

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Stargate

This guy walks in around five minutes later, sees me, ‘Tim?’.

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Again: ‘Wow! You’re early!’

We sit in his office, we have a cup of tea, and he says, ‘Tim, I gotta tell you, I’m really surprised.’ I ask him why. He says, ‘Well, you’re here early.’ I don’t know what to make of this, so I just say, ‘And?’ He says, ‘No, no, let me explain. Yesterday we had a signing, it was for 1pm. 1:30pm came along and the artist was nowhere to be seen.’ I’m thinking, Okay… what has this got to do with me?

Although I knew where he was going, of course.

He carries on with his little story, tells me he told this artist, ‘Nah, you’re still in bed, you’re too late, we’re gonna forget this deal’ etc.

And then he says, ‘Tim, that’s what you have got to contend with, that’s what stops you from advancing, that type of behaviour.’

Wow. Many years later, 2006, Danny and I were at an ASCAP event; Stargate were receiving a number of awards, including Song of the Year and Songwriters of the Year. This same guy came up to me, he shook my hand, and he said, ‘Tim, congratulations, I’m really happy for you. You guys made it. And I knew you would, because when you showed up at my office at 8:45am I knew you were serious.’

It was fine, I said thank you and we shook hands, but that’s a story I tell the younger generation to let them know that these

are the perceptions that are fostered by people like this particular A&R guy, perceptions that stop us from moving forward.

That’s 25 years ago. And I’m still not seeing any black faces in upper management in the UK. It’s very disappointing.

AS: There was a very interesting quote from Clara Amfo the other day, she said, ‘They want our talent and they want our culture – they just don’t want us.’ How do we change that so that we fix the discrepancy between the number of black acts on the roster, making these record companies vast amounts of money, and the number of black execs in the boardroom?

DD: I feel that we have to educate ourselves, as well as everyone else. Unfortunately, in regard to the story that Tim recounted just now, there are still people living down to that stereotype.

We’ve got to become more professional. I’m not saying we’re not professional, I’m saying we can always do better and we have to do better. Our approach sometimes is wrong, even though it’s coming from a rightful place. Because if you think about the years of oppression, that leads to things festering inside. But we have to change our approach, we have to come together, we have to tell our fellow man and woman our likes and dislikes, our ambitions and our goals.

For me, those are really important pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, and it’s not just in the music industry, this is worldwide and in 25

They’ve won a few BMI awards...

any business; at the higher echelons, we’re not there and we’re not represented.

How on earth can you discuss me when I’m not in the room? And you’re not coming to ask me? You’re not asking my brother or my sister? You’re not seeking out our advice and our opinions? You’re just happy making decisions based on your thoughts and your perceptions? Well, how on earth are you ever gonna get that right?

TB: I think it’s definitely about education, but it needs to be conducted through outreach, we’ve got to have better outreach to our young people, to grass roots level and up.

I’m talking about the young people who are creating great music, and training to be the next wave of executives, at these colleges that have been established – that myself and Danny have never been invited to, by the way; never been invited to come and talk to these young people; never been invited to the BRIT School. And I’m from that area, I’m from Selhurst, I’m from Dulwich, but I’ve never been invited to the BRIT School.

DD: Sorry to cut in Tim, but it’s not just the BRIT School, and I find it baffling. Here we are, two men who have come from, I’m not going to say the bottom rung, but, trust me, we were not born with silver spoons in our mouths, and we have built a company generating tens of millions of dollars and never, not once, have we 26

been called on to do a talk at the BPI, PPL, PRS – and that’s just the beginning of the list.

TB: This is why outreach is important, because that way young people get to see people like myself, Danny, Kwame [Kwaten], Glyn, Riki, Twin A and Twin U [Alec and Alex Boateng] as I used to call them – although they’re both Twin U for Universal now – they get to see us, and it flicks a switch: ‘Ah! This is possible.’ The only event I’ve ever been invited to speak at was Kwame’s Ultimate Music Seminar, 19 years ago – and that fact is not wasted on me.

I think we also need to encourage young people and let them know that it is possible to do projects on their own.

DD: Well said.

TB: I learned to release music on my own, because that’s how I thought the music industry was. I come from a reggae background, and during the period when I was making reggae records, you go to a pressing plant, you press your vinyl and you sell your records from the boot of your car. I think we need to encourage a new wave of entrepreneurialism, because not everyone is cut out for the industry way of life.

I think there are clearly a lot of great young people out there, making their own records, with their own vision, and they just

INTERVIEW

need that extra bit of help so that they can continue to build – like that young manager by the name of Adex, who looks after Aitch.

He’s set up his own venture now, which I believe goes through Caroline in the UK – and look, he’s just had a Top 3 record.

We need more of that; I like that. I want people like Danny and myself to make sure young people know this is possible, and know that they can do it – I want us to help them do it. It’s part of our duty, all of us, to have better outreach to young people.

AS: Part of this ongoing conversation has been about the move to drop the term ‘Urban music’ and replace it with ‘Black music’. What do you think about that?

DD: I like the idea of it, but in changing it from ‘urban’ to ‘black’… I don’t know, I suppose it makes it more direct, but does it really change anything, at another level? Does it change the attitude behind it? Are we just solidifying the problem? I’m not saying this in a negative way, I’m just raising the question.

TB: We’ve seen a lot in our lifetimes, and I just despair that we’re still having this kind of conversation. I’m not a fan of Black music, I’m not a fan of R&B music, I’m not a fan of Top 40 music, I’m not a fan of Urban music. It’s music! It says Universal Music, it says Columbia Records, it says Stellar Songs. Why do we still have to have these segregated names? I’m just baffled.

DD: Here’s my question, Who are we segregating it for? Who is this all for? Who benefits and who suffers?

discovering you could sit there and license all your records in two days. I was 19/20 at the time, and these were pivotal ‘wake-up’ moments for me.

The third experience was when we were signed to London Records, by Pete Tong. With that money we were able to establish a complete recording studio on top of my dad’s shop in Brixton, right in the heart of Coldharbour Lane.

DD: I’m from Stonebridge [West London], and for me, it began with a record shop called All Ears Records, which was run by a guy called Andy Sojka.

I used to do the family shopping, so every week, I’d walk past, or try to walk past, with all these bags. And every time I’d be drawn in. My love and enthusiasm for music got me talking to Andy and the other staff.

One day they were playing tunes and I was just commenting on the records. Andy turned to me and said, ‘I think we’ve got a young A&R in the building’. I’m like, ‘A&R, what’s that?’

Andy’s mentorship eventually led me to make a couple of tracks with a couple of mates, and then we got the shock of our lives when he said he wanted to sign them – he had a label at the time, Elite Records, which went on to sign Atmosfear and Level 42.

I then met Erskine Thompson [legendary manager, promoter and DJ associated with acts including, amongst others, Maxi Priest, Loose Ends, General Levy and Sly and Robbie], who I suppose is one of the most important figures in my story. He nurtured me, from being a cocky kid – because I definitely was a cocky kid. He knocked a few things out of my system and began to teach me about the music industry at large.

He offered me a job at Hot Licks, doing club promotions, and it was through that I got to know the likes of Peter Edge, Pete Tong, and all the other cats who were around at the time.

It was Pete Edge who then offered me a job at Chrysalis Cooltempo. That was my entry point into the major label record system. I lasted a fair while, and I got a lot of mentorship from Pete, and protection, actually, which I didn’t realise until, there was one day at the Ivors…

Our artists had just received four Ivor Novello awards in the afternoon, and all of a sudden I see an old face from Chrysalis Records asking me to go over to the table where the [company’s] old Chairman was.

My first response was, ‘Why should I go over there’? And he says, ‘Oh, no, it’s fine, we’re all celebrating because he’s written this book.’

Well, the thing is, it had already been brought to my attention that I didn’t get a single mention in that book.

And what I’d also realised was that, for all the time I’d worked at Chrysalis Cooltempo, for all the success that myself and Pete had

“It put him in an awkward position, but it was really important that I let him know.”

TB: Good question. And, as I said, I grew up listening to everything, and later on I enjoyed remixing Homosapien for Pete Shelley as much as I enjoyed working with [Steel Pulse founder and frontman] David Hinds. It doesn’t get more diverse than that – and I loved them both and I love the music they both made.

AS: When did you realise you might be able to make your living at this, doing something you loved?

TB: When I signed my first deal with Island Records. Up until that point, I’d been putting out a lot of the records myself. Money wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t life-changing.

I created a record with my brother and a friend from school, and it got signed to Island Records by Julian Palmer. They paid us a really good advance, which we spent on equipment, so that we could record more. That experience lasted for one record.

My second experience of realising you could make money through music was when I pressed another record, 5,000 copies, and sold all 5,000 copies on the first day to one person. After which I started getting fax enquiries to license the record across Europe and around the world.

And then things like going to Popcom in Cologne and

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there, the chairman and I had never spoken. Not once. Not once was there a thank you, or a well done. As far as he was concerned, I didn’t exist. That really struck a chord with me. Here’s this guy who I’d made millions for…

TB: Multi-millions, Dan. DD: Yeah, multi-millions, and it really struck a chord: I’ve done all that, and this guy doesn’t recognise me. So, I actually went over and let him know: ‘I worked for a you for many a year, and this is the first time you’ve decided to say hello, now I’ve got four Ivors in my hands’.

And yeah, it put him in an awkward position, but for me it was really important that I let him know, because there’s no way I was the only one who felt like that.

AS: Who were your mentors during that period on the way up?

DD: My mum and dad for starters, they were the rocks for me, especially my mum. My dad was the music man, but my mum was the one who said, ‘No matter what you do, even if it’s sweeping the streets, I want you to be the best at sweeping the streets.’ That really stayed with me.

TB: Wow, there are so many, in my journey through music, but Adrian I would have to say you are one of them.

During my time working as a session musician, definitely David Hinds from Steel Pulse. I was a fan more than anything, but then when I got to know him, he was a great mentor who inspired me to create mixes and call them after the community and area that I came from – hence the Brixton Bass mixes.

He told me the story of [landmark UK reggae album] Handsworth Revolution and how, with that song, he put Handsworth on the map. He taught me about how important it was to represent your community, where you’re from.

Guy Moot, definitely. Even though I never did a pub deal with him, he was one of the first people to reach out to me and talk to us about what we were doing.

Carl Palmer at Jetstar Phonographic was definitely an influence because he was distributing and promoting a lot of independent music at that time.

I mean, I could go on all day: Caroll Thompson, Karen Wheeler…

DD: Don’t worry, that’s what everyone said.

TB: We arranged to meet, it was going well, he liked the music, and then Danny looked at me and said, ‘The only problem is, you’ve got a real attitude.’

I’m, like, ‘Please, do not mistake my confidence for arrogance.’

He laughed, and forever after that…

Actually, our paths probably didn’t cross again properly until maybe four years later when, with my brother and a friend, we signed to London Records as Blacksmith. Danny was at the label at the same time and Pete Tong said, ‘Listen, we’ve got this D-Mob record, would you guys like to mix it?’ I was like, sure, so we did a Brixton Bass remix of Put Your Hands Together, but at the time I didn’t know Danny was D-Mob. So we re-connected through London Records and took it from there.

AS: Given your backgrounds, and the fact that you’re now on the exec side of the fence, do you ever get the itch to make another record yourselves?

DD: For me, I satisfy that side of me when I give someone my advice on work that they’ve done, whether that’s re-arranging a song or just changing a drum sound.

TB: I’ll put it this way, when you get to work with people who I’ve looked up to and never thought I’d meet, let alone work with, like Babyface, like L.A Reid, like Whitney Houston, like Sam Smith, like Charli XCX, like Khalid, like Saint Jhn & Fallen, I think my cup runneth over!

I’m just so enthused that I’m still here working with incredible talent. It fills me up no end, I don’t feel like I’m missing out. I think there’s so much more from myself and Danny to give to the young producers, writers and artists who are coming forward now.

We all learn from our experiences, and I think it helps that Danny and myself have been the artist, we’ve been the producer, we’ve been the songwriter, we’ve been the remixer. So, when these young people walk through our door, it gives us a better understanding and puts us in a position where we understand the structure of the song better.

I think our journey now is more of an advisory role, a mentorship role, an investment role, and also one where we play a more strategic role in helping these young people realise their dream. So, in answer to your question… I don’t know!

“I just despair that we’re still having this kind of conversation.”

AS: How did you two meet?

TB: My first encounter with Danny was 1983. He was at Chrysalis Records. I’d had a minor hit and I was looking for a deal, and Steve Nichol from Loose Ends said, ‘You guys should be with Danny D, he’s really good.’ I’m like, ‘Who?’ 28

AS: At what point did you take the decision to transition more to business than producing and remixing? And what was behind the big decision to head to New York?

TB: I met Tor [Hermansen, half of Stargate] when he was Head of A&R at Warner in Norway, and his passion was R&B music, all the hot music coming from America at that time. He

INTERVIEW

Sam Smith

the guys over to meet the group. And that was the beginning. S Club 7 was the group, the first hit was S Club Party [UK No. 2 in 1999], and we never really looked back.

We had a tremendous run of hits in the UK, and then late 2004 we started to hit this glass ceiling. There were certain people at radio who didn’t want to play Stargate records. In fact the phrase was, ‘If I hear another Stargate tag…’

DD: And that was to our faces, by the way.

asked me to remix a track called Need You, by an artist of his called Noora Noor.

Tor came to Brixton to hear the mix, and then he asked me to come to Norway to work on the album with them. While I was there, they asked me if I’d listen to some of the material they’d been working on themselves, and I thought it was really good.

And then they asked me to manage them.

Myself and Danny had been friends for a very, very long time, but we had never found anything to work on together. So, when I came back from Norway, I called and said, ‘You need to come out to Norway to listen to what these guys called Stargate are making.’

The first thing he says, of course, is ‘Norway?!’, but, thankfully, he came down to my studio, I played him the music and his response was exactly the same as mine: ‘Wow, this is great, we need to go to Norway – now.’

So we went there together and we started managing them. One of the first things that happened was that Danny had the good sense to say that he thought the guys should produce a project he was working on, rather than himself. At the time Danny was managed by Simon Fuller.

DD: Who I was introduced to by…. Adrian Sykes.

TB: So, long story short, Danny tells us that Simon wants to fly

TB: Yeah, and I wasn’t up for that. I mentioned to the guys about us making the trek to New York, because by that time we’d had success everywhere except America. We were 80m-plus combined sales around Europe, but we’d never been able to crack the American market.

So, we made the decision to go to New York for two weeks. We booked the Sony studio on 54th and 10th. We had a tiny room, but after just two days there, it felt so vibrant and fresh, it felt like it could work.

In that first week we met quite a few well-established writers who came in and wrote some good songs. But I think the tipping point came in the second week.

Myself and Danny were taking meetings, going to see people we knew, and we went to one meeting where the person kept us waiting for two hours. But we hung on, and that was where we first heard this young man called Ne-Yo. And he was just incredible. I just thought, Whoever’s written this is a genius, and this is who we need back in that room with Stargate.

Myself and Danny went back to the studio, buzzing to tell the guys about this kid called Ne-Yo. Believe it or not, we walk into the studio foyer and there’s a friend of ours waiting for us, with Ne-Yo and his manager.

That was when everything changed again. I invited him in to meet the guys and the rest is history. Ne-Yo wrote two songs that night, both of which were fantastic and ended up on the album, and this is all less than 24 hours after hearing his name for the first time.

And then when we came back for our second round of sessions, things really started to tick, and within eight months of coming to America, we had our first Billboard No. 1 [So Sick, Ne-Yo] and we never looked back.

I think it’s a real example of, with music, you can’t be afraid to take risks. We used our own money to make that trek out to New York, and people were constantly saying, ‘Do you know how hard it is to make it in America?’ But I think that only made us more determined.

We ended up having 10 incredible years working in New York.

AS: Do you think there’s a particular quality that sets you guys apart as publishers?

TB: [without hesitation] Yeah! I’ll tell you: we’ve been where these young people are, where you know your music is the shit, but no one’s listening to you. Where you’re the artist, but no one’s 29

investing in you. I’ve been the producer, I’ve been all these things.

So it’s not wasted on me when these young people come and sit with us; we hear their music, we love it and we invest in them.

Once you’ve been that musician, that writer, that artist, you know intimately what it’s like to be not accepted, to be the underdog.

And to be thought of as something less than talented.

Charli XCX

DD: One of our big things is helping others, just like ourselves, and bringing a better understanding of who they are. Listen, we had some amazing managers, like Simon Fuller, but there were certain nuances where we would clash because they just didn’t understand where I was coming from.

A lot of that is simply based on our backgrounds. We want to give our experience and advice to kids who were just like us, coming out of Stonebridge, coming out of South London, coming out of Brixton, coming from where we come from; that’s a big, big thing for us.

That was a big, big part of why we started what we started and why we’re still doing what we’re doing.

TB: Youthful exuberance – maybe arrogance, as some people call it, or confidence as I have always called it [laughs] – that’s key, that’s what’s gonna get you through this business, that inner belief in yourself, knowing that you’ll go through trials and tribulations, but you love what you do so much that you’re willing to sacrifice everything to get to this part of the journey, to see this thing through. I think that’s a core part of our DNA that separates us from a lot of publishers out there: the background we come from, and a background of complete music.

DD: I will also add to that, we play a role that is way over and above being a publisher. We are entrenched in our writers’ lives.

We’re their managers, we’re their best mates, we’re their confidants, we’re their advisers: it’s everything. And because of that, I think we get way more out of our writers than other publishers would, because our relationships are very different.

We’re giving them advice that we wish someone had given us, because we were never educated in many areas, we had to find out for ourselves, we had to educate ourselves. And these kids will listen, because you’re giving them your life’s lessons.

And sometimes, yeah, it’s as simple as, You know what mate, you need to go fix up. And they’ll take it from you, because they respect you, and they understand that it’s coming from the right place.

We’ll support someone, when they have a problem, whether that’s a mental health problem, or emotional problems, or financial problems, we’ll support you, we’re not gonna just dash you out, you know. If you’re ill, if something is wrong, we’re there for you.

And that goes a long way.

TB: 100% Danny, because for me music is always karma-related.

And if your karma ain’t good, yes, you might have some success, you might have success for a year, maybe two, but it won’t have the same level of longevity – and we’ve all seen that happen, brother.

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AS: In terms of personality, how do you guys complement each other?

DD: I’m known as the Kofi Annan of the partnership. I’m not going to say what the other one is known as [laughs].

TB: I’m more the James Baldwin of the partnership. I will tell it like it is, and those who don’t like it are free to not like it. I think that makes for a fantastic relationship.

AS: What’s been the proudest moment of your career?

TB: 2008 at the Grammy Awards, when the guys [Stargate] won their first Grammy. Being in that auditorium and hearing their names get read out for R&B song of the year was a pinnacle for me. It had been a journey from London, to Norway, to New York, and all the way to the Grammys.

That was amazing, and we were actually nominated twice in that category, once for Miss Independent [by Ne-Yo, which won the category], once for Spotlight by Jennifer Hudson.

It was just a real moment for me, because I know the Grammys are a very challenging and challenged awards programme, but as Jimmy Jam said to me once, ‘Tim, once you’ve won a Grammy, you will always be a Grammy winner, and people will always describe you as a Grammy winner, right up to when you pass on, and beyond.’ So, yeah, that was incredible.

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DD: Yep, that was the moment of moments, to the point where I was rooted to my seat. I was supposed to go up with them, but the shock of it all just got to me and I ended up staying in my seat. But yeah, it was the moment. Damn, from Stonebridge to The Grammys.

people into play? We’re talking about people who have signed and developed some of the most iconic artists to ever emerge from the UK. These are clearly people who have an innate understanding of hits – where are they? To me, someone like Lincoln should be running a label.

AS: What have been the biggest challenges in your careers?

DD: Do you know what, there’s been a few. One for me, going back to my days at Chrysalis, was when I didn’t get the support that I thought I should have got from my Head of A&R. I brought a record in and he didn’t understand the record, he didn’t get it, and he said, ‘No, we’re not signing this tune.’

So, I stood up and I made my point: ‘Why have you hired me?

You’ve hired me to bring in these tunes. And this record is going off right now. I’m telling you, it’s going off right now and it’s going to be a huge record. I can’t give you any data, I can’t tell you how I know, but I do know, and that’s why you hired me.’

And instead of going with my thought process, the answer I got was, ‘You’re never going to make it in this industry.’ I was like, Whoa! But rather than just taking it, my retort was, ‘Okay, this is what we’re going to do: I’m going to sign this record, and if it fails, you won’t have to come and look for me to fire me, because I’ll quit.’

So we signed the record, it was Nitro Deluxe, Brutal House, and we ended up selling 750,000 copies. That for me was one of those moments where it’s like, Hang on, you should be supporting, nurturing and mentoring me – but no, what I got was, ‘You’re not gonna make it in this game.’

AS: What’s been your biggest regret?

TB: I don’t my spend my time thinking about those sort of moments, to be honest with you, because if I did, then we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing now.

There have been times when I felt things could have been different for me as a producer, had I been given certain access that other people got, but other than that, I don’t really dwell on what could have been.

And I think one of the reasons why we’ve done well and are still doing well is that we have that positive mindset; just keep on believing in the talent. The talent will always be the king.

DD: I’ve got no regrets, because even my worst moments have led to my best moments; I’ve learned from all of those experiences and made them good. I’ve used them the right way, they fuelled me – like, right, I’ve got to do better, not just for me, but for other people, the people I’m working with and the people I’m representing.

“We play a role over and above being a publisher, we are entrenched in our writers’ lives.”

AS: Did you get an apology?

DD: Do you know what, I did. At that very same Ivor Novellos that I mentioned earlier. But I have to also admit, in that happening [in the first place], it gave me this fire inside, to show the fucker, ‘I’m going to prove you wrong.’

TB: For me, it’s seeing talented young people not being given a chance. It’s as simple as that: talent not being realised. And there are countless examples, I’m afraid.

And also, really instinctive leaders no longer being involved in the business in any way, shape or form. Really talented A&R people who have had significant success, who know how to develop artists, nowhere to be seen.

AS: Who are you thinking of?

DD: Lincoln Elias TB: Mickey D. We could go on all day. There are so many great people who have played pivotal roles in this industry who we now simply do not hear from. Why is that? Maybe that’s a good question for the heads of record companies. Why aren’t they bringing these

TB: It’s just been a great journey.

DD: And we’re not done yet.

AS: Which brings me to my next question, what ambitions do you have left?

TB: I wanna do more, I wanna have more hits and I wanna bring more young people through in executive roles. I want to empower them to feel that they have the room to do deals. Myself and Danny are going to bring more and more young executives through, because I think that’s the key for us now, to give back. You’ve got an idea? Let’s hear it. Yeah, I love it, let’s invest, let’s do it.

AS: It’s 2030, what do you see Tim & Danny doing?

TB: I would hope to see more young writers coming through, more female executives running companies, I would like to see a real community spirit in music, that I first saw in New York in 2005, that sort of camaraderie and friendship. I would hope and love to see that kind of unity going forward.

DD: The only other thing I’d like to add is that I’d like to spend more time on a beach somewhere, while a group of young executives are running our company. That’s me.

TB: [Laughs] Not me, I love it, I’m going out with my boots on.

DD: I’m going out with my flip-flops on.

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Photo: Ashley Verse

FEATURE

MY MANIFESTO Don’t be surprised if Austin Daboh is running this town in a few years. His career rise so far – from the BBC to Spotify and Apple – has been no less than extraordinary. Now, as EVP at Atlantic UK, he tells us what he wants to fix...

F

or most of us, the first week of a new job is all about settling into a hitherto unfamiliar office environment.

The bonuses, backbiting and corporate ladder-climbing can wait; we’re talking about that blissfully gentle few days when the only professional expectations hanging over you are (a) to get comfortable at your desk, (b) to figure out how the company lifts work and (c) to appraise yourself of the canteen’s sausage, chips and beans.

Not so for Austin Daboh. Music Business UK catches up with the London-based exec on day six of his new tenure as Executive Vice President of Atlantic Records UK – a senior role in which he reports, dually, into both Atlantic Records UK Presidents Ed Howard and Briony Turner, as well as Warner Music UK Chairman and CEO, Tony Harlow.

Thanks to lockdown, so far there’s been no gentle office introduction (and, tragically, no sausage, chips and beans) for Daboh at Warner Music UK HQ. He went from WFH in his old job (Head of Editorial, Apple Music UK & Ireland) straight to WFH in his new job.

The signs are there, though, that Daboh’s life, not to mention that of his record company employer, has taken an exciting new step forward. It’s also fair to say that Daboh’s first week in his new gig has a more intense global backdrop than most. Daboh’s career to date is deeply intertwined with the rise of British black music, and he joins Atlantic/Warner during a period of intense contemplation, nay reckoning, for the music business in terms of its treatment (and advancement) of people of colour.

That’s a topic, as you might expect, that looms large in Daboh’s Manifesto here; the five things, more than any other, he would opt to change about the music business as we stand today.

Daboh is determined not only to highlight these changes, but also make a material personal difference using the weight of his new corporate position.

Said corporate position sees Daboh working in a fully fledged record company role for the first time. After stints elevating artists at the BBC, Spotify and Apple, now Daboh gets to invest in artists

directly – and join the ultra-competitive rough’n’tumble of the record business. “It’s been a dope start,” Daboh says of his first few days at Atlantic, which he’s been using to “get up to speed on the inner-workings of a record label”.

He adds: “I’ve always sat in an agnostic position before, a partner to labels, offering my advice and support [to artists] from that neutral perspective. That’s something I want to carry on at Atlantic: I want to build us to a place where everybody wants to see us win, because we’re helping out the entirety of youth culture, rather than just our own roster.

“Think about when Roc Nation first came around, or Def Jam, or what Tinie [Tempah] and Dumi [Oburota] created at Disturbing London; everybody wanted them to win, even if you were signed to a different label, because they had established a place in the community that supported everyone around them.”

That’s Daboh’s goal for his own professional output, then. As for the rest of us? Allow Daboh, in his own words, to explain what he’d put at the top of our collective agenda...

“I can count on one hand the amount of black females working at executive level.”

1) More black female executives During my time in the industry, there’s never been a black female label President in the UK, which is scandalous. Quite often, when you look at the DNA of a hit record or artist, it’s littered with black women, from songwriters and backing vocalists through to managers and assistants etc. Yet I can count on one hand the amount of black females currently working at executive level in the UK business.

That’s why point one on my Manifesto is ensuring that we have a real commitment to promoting black females to head of department and President level within companies. There’s been some really good moves made in the last few years by companies such as Warner Chappell – big up Amber Davis – and you’ve got people like Fay Hoyte doing great things over at Universal (EMI Records), but we need to see way more than there is at the moment.

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Photo: Ashley Verse

FEATURE

There needs to be a level playing field across the structures of these companies that allows black women to succeed. For example, how do we ensure that a black woman’s passion is interpreted correctly, and not as ‘aggression’? How do we ensure that the same safeguards we put in place to ensure people from different cultures have their rights and beliefs respected, are also afforded to young black women?

And yes, for a minority group who has faced systemic injustices over decades, you do sometimes have to use some affirmative action and say to yourself, ‘Okay, well, both candidates tick nine out of 10 boxes but, on this occasion, we’re going to choose this person to help us start to redress that balance.’

Interestingly, I find that from primary school age through to maybe college age, black men and black women seem to be at about the same level when it comes to confidence, networking, being out there in the music industry. etc.

But, for me, something happens between the age of early twenties through to late twenties, where these black women seem to drop off that corporate ladder. We need to investigate why that is; why is there this drop off in black females climbing up the industry at a rate that we just don’t see with white females? Ultimately though, we can talk about long-term plans and I can sit here and say ‘affirmative action’, but the ultimate solution is to just do it. Just hire more black women. That’s the answer.

One factor in all of this comes down to assumptions. If you are a black music exec, male or female, who looks after rappers, then it’s often assumed that you can’t necessarily take the step up into being a head of a department. You’re pigeonholed as a specialist, an expert in black music culture and that’s that – dance and pop are assumed to be above your remit. But the music industry is littered with heads of departments that have no knowledge whatsoever in black music culture, who are giving opinions on whether or not black artists are signed.

suddenly have £100,000 put into their bank account, with no financial training whatsoever. It’s no wonder so many artists, after being given this amazing amount of money, find themselves in financial difficulty within a year or two.

What can we do about that as an industry? How can we ensure we’re not just throwing an accountant their way, but also giving them practical advice as to how to save their money, grow their money and invest their money?

This applies from a mental health point of view too. If you go from having a pound in your bank account to having £100,000 in your bank account, that puts pressure on an artist. That pressure is usually three-fold: (1) The internal pressure of the artist wanting to succeed; (2) The pressure that comes from suddenly being the breadwinner of your family, with family members coming out of nowhere to get in touch; (3) The pressure from the label you sign to and the music industry itself – that up-and-down rollercoaster of emotions.

On top of all of that, you’ve got the public judging you, and over social media it’s all too easy to hear the negative stuff people are saying.

20 years ago, before social media was a thing, if an artist didn’t read the newspapers, you really had to go out of your way to find members of the general public who didn’t like you. Now, within three or four seconds of typing your name into Google or a search bar on social media, you can find thousands of people expressing an opinion about you and your music. As EVP at Atlantic, I want us to really ensure we are giving artists the tools they need to cope, financially and mentally, with both the heightened income and heightened emotional states they might find themselves in.

Part of that is obviously about transparency. One of the things we’re trying to do as Atlantic is ensure that when we’re having conversations with artists at the point of signing, we’re making it clear that if we’re giving you this amount as an advance, this is the business you will have to do, in real terms, to make that money back for us as a company. People can take bad news; what they don’t like are surprises.

Quite often an artist gets a nice chunky advance, then they spend it, then in a year’s time they’re like, ‘Hold on a sec, why does my bank account only have this amount in it?!’ If you’re honest with artists, it leads to much less resentment and a better situation for everyone.

“If you’re honest with artists, it leads to less resentment and a better situation for everyone.”

2) Financial and mental health support for artists Record labels should be providing cradle to grave services to artists, and that means offering support when it comes to personal finance and mental health. Quite often when an artist signs to a label, they’re introduced to an accountant... and that’s it. We should be offering full financial mentoring, especially to those from low income backgrounds. And, while adhering to data protection regulations, we should also make sure that, for those artists who maybe come from more chaotic backgrounds, particular mental health support is made available.

Young artists who sign to a major label – whether it’s an indie artist from the north of England, or a rapper from down south – can go from being on the welfare state their entire life, watching, mum and dad struggling, maybe a single parent household, to

3) A truly global education for artists – and executives When we talk about breaking UK acts globally, we often really mean America. And while we love our cousins across the Pond, there’s also another five billion or so people to consider around the world when working out how to magnify an artist.

I was shocked when I first joined Spotify to see just how much British music was being consumed outside of the UK, not only 35

Burna Boy

in the States, but also in Germany, France, the Nordics, Asia and South America. I remember [ex-Spotify economics chief ] Will Page saying that four out of every five streams for the average UK artist happens abroad [Page announced this via MBW in December 2018], and also that 80% of UK artists see the majority of their streams happening outside of their home market.

That’s incredible.

There’s a reason why, historically, the UK is so culturally associated with the US, and language is no small part of that. But if you look at what’s going on in UK youth music at the moment, especially the rise of black music culture, [we’re] actually far more aligned with Germany, Spain, Italy and Russia – countries that are seeing black music culture come to the mainstream for the first time in recent years, just as we have in the UK. America is 25 years ahead – they had Run DMC and Public Enemy, and black people winning Grammys at a consistent level, over two decades ago.

So, with that in mind, when we’re talking about breaking an act, we should be looking at Europe, and understanding the nuances of countries within Europe. What is the MTV equivalent in Italy? What is the GRM Daily and Link Up TV of these different countries? We need to find the equivalent of those, not just in black music culture but also in indie music culture, pop culture, rock culture and dance culture. One of the things we’re 36

looking to do at Atlantic is say, ‘How can we have closer ties to our European brothers and sisters?’ alongside making sure that we’re strengthening the bond across the Atlantic [ocean] too.

Making that mission even more exciting is this cross pollination happening with the African diaspora now, and the fact that you’re getting big Nigerian communities in places like Italy.

Plus, as we know from records like Despacito, if you have the right record today, language doesn’t mean anything. Look at Afrobeats, look at Burna Boy; language isn’t a barrier to that global success. It’s all about melody, production and vibe – and, again, that goes across all genres.

4) Apprenticeships for low-income young people How do we ensure that talented young people who might be suffering financially are afforded the same opportunities as those people lucky enough to be born into situations where they can survive being paid pennies for the first few years of their professional journey?

This is personally very important to me. When I first arrived in the music industry, I came from a low income background. I was broke, I was on a council estate, but I was lucky enough to meet a mentor who paid me £50 a week, which meant I could

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I grew up in a low-income family, but I was lucky: we struggled, like lots of people, but there was always food on the table and clothes on our back. I’ve got friends who grew up destitute, in the depths of poverty. They didn’t have a laptop in their house, they didn’t have an email address, sometimes people may be dealing with abuse in the household. We have to all be mindful that there are issues beyond a young candidate’s control that mean that they don’t always present themselves as [other people might]. A big part of this is that we are an informal industry, so we can probably do a much better job of teaching and accepting people that are lacking soft skills, and then supplementing that where needed.

Bugzy Malone

just about afford my Travelcard and a sandwiche for lunch. Not everyone is lucky enough to have those mentors or opportunities granted to them.

For some kids out there, the stakes are very high. Every time I went for a job interview, when I was trying to break into the music industry, it was like, if I don’t get this, then I’m back on the ends; I’m back doing things that teenage boys shouldn’t be doing to make money. I remember coming into the industry and seeing people who were roughly the same age as me, 19 or 20, and being like, ‘What? You’ve got flatmates and your parents helped you?’ Or, ‘Your parents gave you a deposit for a house?’ That was just mindblowing to me.

Some of the thinking that I’m keen to bring into the wider Warner Music Group is, ‘What can we do to support people from low income backgrounds, of all colours?’ This is as much a poor white boy or girl problem as it is a poor black boy or girl problem.

How do we ensure that, for the first couple of years of their career, they’ve got the opportunity to experiment?

5) More research outside the M25 Please, let’s look beyond our noses when it comes to how people are thinking and feeling about music. There are so few meaningful initiatives in the industry that look at what’s going on past Watford.

How do we ensure that we understand how people are thinking and feeling in Middlesbrough and Bolton and Glasgow? Because, quite often, the reason why someone like Gerry Cinnamon can get to Brixton level without the London industry noticing is because we weren’t doing research on what was going on outside the M25.

It’s the same reason why Bugzy Malone was able to drop single after single and then end up with a top five EP without major label involvement – the labels weren’t looking at what was happening in Manchester.

It’s my intention coming into Atlantic to ensure that we’re looking the length and breadth of the UK to find out what’s going on out there, whether it be the punk scene in Kent, or the revival of baseline in West Yorkshire. Where’s the next Gerry Cinnamon, the next Stormzy or the next Bugzy Malone coming from?

The ‘forgotten’ people are often the most creative. I’ll give you an example: in Dublin at the moment, there is an amazing amount of world class, street level talent that’s coming out of the black culture scene. Yet for years, nobody took black music culture from Ireland seriously. So these Irish artists sat there, forgotten about, watching and learning from their cousins across the narrow sea to the UK. And out of that forgotten culture you’ve now got artists like Jafaris, who is making incredible music.

Every single record label is based within a three mile square radius in London. It’s either Kensington or Kings Cross. So if you are a kid from Bristol – no matter how much money your family has, by the way – you have to question how feasible it is for you to get down and around those areas in London. As an industry, we have to ensure that we’re casting the net wide, not just on repertoire, but on our staff inside the building as well. How much talent is being missed out on if we don’t?

“As an industry, we have to ensure that we’re casting the net wide.”

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Selina Webb – and Sparkle – London, June, 2020

KEY SONGS IN THE LIFE OF…

Selina Webb A former editor of Music Week, and now a key member of the Universal UK management team, Selina Webb’s life in music starts with long afternoons in pubs (not what you think) and ends (or very nearly ends) on the M4 to Exeter...

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N

o one, obviously, has enjoyed the lockdown. But most of us, hopefully, have stumbled upon the odd bright spot or created our own upside.

Maybe an online cookery course, a DIY project, a fitness regime, or the odd (really fucking odd) trip to a pretty Teesdale market town dominated by a 12th Century castle. We have taken our pleasures where we can find them – eyesight permitting.

Selina Webb, Exec VP at Universal Music UK, latches on to her particular glimmer of light during an interview with Music Business UK: “Oooh, does this mean no photos?!”

Ultimately, her hope will be extinguished as, despite the protestations of “lockdown hair”, she will be coerced into having her picture taken by her husband on an iPhone in their back garden (he has some form in visual arts, having a creative connection to one of Webb’s Key Song choices).

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2.

3.

1.

The point is, she’s not keen on publicity (despite spending the first chunk of her career either being the media or working with the media) and is pathologically averse to talking about herself, doubly so in positive terms.

So, we’ll get things going on her behalf. Webb started out on the local newspaper in her hometown of Aylesbury, her beat included a weekly music column which was fuelled by gigs at a small local venue by surprisingly big bands.

She then joined the staff of UK trade magazine Music Week, where she would eventually become editor, before being poached

by Sir Lucian Grainge as he assembled a team to build “a new Polydor” in the late ‘90s.

Webb recalls: “I had no interest in being a PR at the time, but as many people in the industry will know, there is no one more persuasive than Sir Lucian. And of course it turned out to be exactly the right move – and much more than ‘just’ PR. “It was an incredible time and an amazing team, such a huge amount of characters. Peter [Loraine] joined a month before me, David [Joseph] soon after. There were just an awful lot of good people – Colin Barlow, Paul Adam, Sundraj [Sreenivasan] – and a lot of women in key roles – Claire [Haffenden], Karen [Simmonds], Orla [Lee-Fisher], myself, Ruth Parrish, Sam Wright.

It never felt like the traditional record company boys’ club.”

Having been promoted first to Director of Comms at Universal Music UK in 2010, she became a member of David Joseph’s senior management team as EVP in 2016. She now works across all parts of the company and in the last few years headed up the move from the wrong end of Kensington High Street to purpose built offices in St Pancras, as well as being part of the leadership group behind a recent neurodiversity initiative.

Webb tells a story about that 2016 promotion that illustrates Joseph’s leadership style, Universal UK’s culture – as well as her own understated strengths (and underplayed importance). “The day after he told me, the next morning, he put a copy of Quiet: The Power of Introverts on my desk. It was just there, he didn’t say anything.

“I think he was trying to tell me, Don’t think you have to

become someone you’re not, or change how you are in meetings or whatever; you’ve got this because of who you already are.”

She continues: “That’s the very human side of David, he really sees people – and as people, not as employees or colleagues.

He’s always had an incredibly sharp mind, that almost goes without saying, but on top of that he encourages an incredibly collaborative culture, where everyone is valued and anyone can make a difference.

“It really is a very warm, human and caring environment, which is the complete opposite of how our competitors like to paint us.

It sounds a bit cringe, but there is a family vibe here. And that has shown through incredibly during this period.

“I have heard from a lot of people that they are really, really thankful for David being here through this time, thankful for having someone who genuinely cares about the team, is open and who values people’s life/work balance. People have felt very wellsupported and they’ve felt listened to.”

Cruelly, Webb’s five tracks begin in a place called a ‘pub’ (implied, wistful misery correct at time of press), then wend their way towards a brush with death and, more disturbingly, with Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Exeter…

1. Abba, The Winner Takes It All (1980) Until I was about 10, we lived in a pub, The Royal Oak on the London Road in Great Missenden in Bucks. The best thing about growing up in a pub was the jukebox, and these were the days when pubs weren’t open all day, so every afternoon I had it to myself. I spent many a happy hour dancing round on my own to Abba – would do now given half the chance.

And then my dad, to save a bit of money, got one of those soundalike things; they were basically muzak versions of current hits, including Abba. I remember vividly, instantly being able to tell it wasn’t the real thing, and him explaining to me that you had to pay this licence to play the real thing.

I was an amenable little girl, but I did stamp my foot about this, and so proper Abba were restored. I even remember the little PRS sticker on the door that meant we could have actual Abba again.

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4.

All of which meant I understood performance rights at way too young an age. I refuse to pick Dancing Queen, and actually I love the sad ones most, so I’ll go with The Winner Takes It All, the classic break-up song. I remember being quite traumatised seeing that video for the first time.

Since then Abba have been there kind of all along. When I went to Polydor, one of the attractions was that this was Abba’s company. One highlight involved taking Dan Cairns from The Sunday Times out to Benny’s studio, when Benny had one of his wonderful folk albums coming out. He was there on his grand piano, explaining to me and Dan how a lot of Abba tracks kind of evolved from folk songs.

He started to play some traditional song and then tweaked it until it morphed into Thank You For The Music – at which point Dan and I found ourselves singing along!

And now, right up to date, the only artist I’ve spoken to on Zoom on lockdown has been Bjorn. So, again, Abba, somehow, always there.

I could certainly never pick five songs without having an Abba one.

2. New Order, Blue Monday (1983) I didn’t realise at the time that, as market towns go, I was really lucky with the music scene in Aylesbury where I lived as a teenager – thanks very much to this one guy, a teacher at the Grammar school, called Robin Pike.

Along with David Stopps, he was behind the [legendary] Friars club. I was just too young for Friars. I was aware that there were these incredibly cool gigs happening, and you’d think it wouldn’t matter about being just slightly underage – I was quite tall, I could just breeze in, right?

Unfortunately, because of this connection with the school, everyone on the door knew how old everyone in the queue was.

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5.

And one of the people on the door, one of the ones who barred the way to anyone underage, was Rob Stringer.

Thankfully there was a great soul night at the Civic Centre and a spin-off club, Division One, run by Robin at the Wellhead Inn in Wendover.

It was just brilliant. Pop Will Eat Itself one week, The Wonder Stuff the next, Primal Scream the next, The Proclaimers the next.

And my favourite at the time, The Housemartins – I think they did their first gig outside Hull there. They played there many times, and I was well known for always being down the front dancing – something that will become something of a theme.

After the band, this brilliant DJ would come on and he would play Blue Monday pretty much every week. I just loved the sound of that record. It became a bit tainted through all the ads it was in later, but back then I loved it. And it got me into Factory, made me go and check out Joy Division, etc.

I also got to know Tony [Wilson] quite well, when I was at Music Week, and he was just an extraordinary man. I still can’t quite believe he’s not around.

And then I ended up marrying the person who made a lot of the early Factory videos – Graham, who worked there back in the day.

Soon after I left Aylesbury, someone got in touch and wanted me to go to court and make a sort of deposition on behalf of the pub, the Wellhead Inn, to help it keep its licence, explain what a good community asset it was etc. Thankfully, in the nick of time, I discovered it had morphed into a strip club.

3. Prince, If I was Your Girlfriend (1987) Where to start with Prince? He’s far and away The One. I remember the first time I saw him, I walked into the living

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room and the When Doves Cry video was on the telly. I literally stopped in my tracks.

First of all there was the guitar. I just thought, How is he doing that?! And then I saw him – and thought, Who – or what – is that?

I was completely smitten from that moment on.

I didn’t realise at the time what a big deal it was that he had the women in the band, and I was as much in awe of Wendy and Lisa, they were inspirational. I played guitar, so of course I was Wendy, and my friend Fiona played keyboards, so she was Lisa. We spent hours trying to write songs – and failing miserably.

When I was at Music Week, I got a call to say Prince wanted me to come to his hotel the next day to interview him. I cannot tell you the mixture of emotions I went through at that prospect – but terror was right up there. Of course, in the end, it got cancelled, which was a relief in all honesty.

Then, when he was briefly signed to Universal, there was a rumour he was going to turn up at our BRITs party. On the night, I’m sat at a table with Sir Lucian [Grainge] and Claire [Haffenden], just chatting away.

I went to the loo, there was quite a long queue, and when I got back, Lucian and Claire were staring at me in a really strange way. I’m like, What?! And, inevitably, in the time I’d been away, he’d popped in, sat in the seat I was in, had a really nice chat with them and went out the door just before I returned!

It’s obviously hard to pick one track, but I’ll go with If I Was Your Girlfriend, because like many of his best songs, the first time you hear it, you think, What the fuck is this?! And then the genius hits you.

I’ve been in the industry a long time, and the labels are way more diverse than they used to be, but things have not changed nearly enough at senior exec level. We have to take this opportunity, look at every department, think about recruitment, mentoring – all the stuff we’re doing already, but even more. And it needs to speed up, nothing will fundamentally change until there are more black role models in the labels. Heaven knows there have been so many in music.

5. Chase and Status, Blind Faith (2011) I was taking my daughter and her friend to Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Exeter, where Chase and Status were headlining. I know Will [Kennard] because we [Universal Music UK] are a founding partner of ELAM, a fantastic music/film/games school which caters largely to youngsters who wouldn’t normally get these opportunities, which he set up with his brother Charlie.

We were actually going because Twenty One Pilots were playing – and that’s a whole other story, of my daughter and I finding a band we both love and can sort of share, which is a wonderful thing.

I never thought I’d go back to being a proper fangirl, and I’m also thankful she’s got a band like that to obsess over, I think that’s entirely healthy and positive, and I’m just glad that they’re so good I can love them nearly as much as she does.

So, it’s the crack of dawn, we’re on the M4, and, out of the blue, this car runs into the back of me, gets impaled on the tow-bar of the car and, thank God, or whoever was looking down on me that day, a quick-thinking woman from Thames Valley Police managed to flag down the oncoming traffic and divert it away from me while I wrestled my car, with another car hooked on the back, from the fast lane to the hard shoulder.

Turns out the guy had fallen asleep at the wheel and, as you can imagine, it was quite a traumatic experience. The AA said it was okay to keep going down to Exeter – although the car was subsequently written off, and I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t have been driving.

I had two teenagers who were a bit shaken up, but mostly distraught at the idea of missing Twenty One Pilots. So, on we pressed, with me literally shaking.

We get there, I’m still shaking, I also have a splitting headache, and then comes Chase and Status’s set. And, despite everything, and not having done it for a while, I got myself right to the very front and, it sounds completely naff, but I was down there with a bunch of kids doing one of those circle pit things. It was pretty lively. Perhaps I should have extricated myself – but, miraculously, dancing to Blind Faith, it just made me feel better.

I’ve never got around to asking Will if he spotted me, but he probably wasn’t expecting to see me down the front with all these teenagers. He knows me as a governor of ELAM, not as part of the moshpit. It was definitely a great reminder of the power of music – in an unexpected place and from an unexpected source.

“I cannot tell you the mix of emotions I went through – but terror was right up there.”

4. Gregory Porter, 1960 What (2010) Gilles [Peterson] and Craig [Charles] have got me through the lockdown and they’re both big fans of Gregory, as am I. That voice! It seems so effortless when you see him live but the power and impact of it, it just gets right into you.

I’ve now seen him so many times, but I won’t forget the first time, when he played a showcase at Shepherds Bush Empire, seven years ago. I don’t think many had come across him before and I’d only heard about him because David [Joseph] told me to check him out.

The performance was awesome of course, and then afterwards he went and sat in the audience and stayed there to watch every one of our new acts. He’s a legend.

Last week Gilles played 1960 What and I have to pick this track, which seems so poignant and important to listen to again with everything that’s going on.

I know the industry was questioned in some quarters for #TheShowMustBePaused, but it was incredible how quickly everyone got behind that one day, and the sentiment was authentic judging by the response and strength of feeling at our place.

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COMMENT

‘SOMETIMES GREAT BLACK PEOPLE LEAVE THE ARTS BECAUSE THEY ARE CONSTANTLY BEING JUDGED AND MISUNDERSTOOD’ Adele White started her career at BBC Radio 1Xtra before going on to work in A&R at Relentless Records, where her success stories included Nadia Rose and Not3s. Today, she’s Senior A&R Manager for Island Records’ urban division, where she’s signed M Huncho, Unknown T and Lost Girl. Here she talks about the Black Lives Matter movement and the changes she’d like to see in the music industry as a result...

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think the Black Lives Matter movement and Black Out Tuesday have had a really positive impact on the music industry already.

It’s allowed people to have a voice and air their grievances. As a result, I see employers changing their attitude. It’s probably the biggest thing I’ve seen in my working career.

We’ll only know in maybe a year where these initiatives lead to, but there does seem to be a real drive to improve.

Clara Amfo did a great speech on BBC Radio 1 after the death of George Floyd where she said that “people want our culture, but they do not want us”. The majority of people love black music and black culture, but then, when you look in the boardroom, there are not many black people. So there’s definitely a lot of work to do.

One of the barriers to success that I see for black people in the music industry lies in stereotypes. People perceive that you’re only going to like one type of music.

The creative industries as a whole are quite upper to middle class and hard to get into as a result. That means that some of those who are working in them have never grown up with a black person or a black friend. So, work might be their first experience of interacting with or having a black person around them, and I guess a lot of the stereotypes they have are from what they see on television and media. That’s not always negative, but it can be.

There can be little understanding for any other race of person and the fact they all have different personalities, tastes, viewpoints and ideologies.

If you’re surrounded by people from different cultures, it can help you with the people in the office.

It can help you with the artist who has an amazing voice, hasn’t made that record yet, but can make that record, given the development.

The development of black artists and execs is super important, because we’re a minority. Most of the time, we have to come forward in an environment that’s not our culture or our way of communicating. That can be draining after a while. I feel like sometimes great black people leave the arts because they are constantly being judged and misunderstood: ‘You’re too loud, you speak too aggressively, you do this, you do that.’ It can become soul-destroying.

It’s also harder for black women both in front of and behind the scenes. If anyone believes in you at a record label, they are always willing to spend money on you and want you to do well, but there does seem to be more support in society for black males.

I do notice that the boys can progress a bit quicker once they get to certain places.

Being a woman, we get paid less and our progression is different.

It’s a lot harder for us to navigate the landscape of culture. We know we’re wanted, we know we’re there, but sometimes qualities are taken from us and put on someone more appealing to white

people. Whether it’s the way we dress, the way we talk or our slang. How many dark actresses do I know? There are only a few that come to mind. Because there’s not many of us in the arena, there’s a lot of pressure to be perfect on those few who do make it.

Female black artists get compared to Beyoncé or Rihanna, and that’s a really high level if you’re just trying to be a creative and make your first entry point. Ray BLK was saying in a recent interview, if she’s going to sing she feels that she can’t mess up one note. But art is not perfect, and it’s subjective. Sometimes it works brilliantly and everyone loves it, and sometimes it doesn’t. I’d like to see more opportunities for black culture to be in front and behind, and not be judged and scrutinised, be allowed to make a few mistakes.

The advice that I’d give to a young black woman starting her career in the music industry today would be to speak to people who are older than you. If you know someone who is in the field of work that you’re passionate about, try and get a meeting with them.

When I graduated, I tried to talk to lots of people. Sometimes I wouldn’t get anywhere, but then sometimes they were like, ‘Come in for a week,’ or, ‘Let’s have a coffee or meet up for lunch.’

As black people, we’re always told that we have to work 10 times harder. So be very knowledgeable about what you’re doing and don’t stop. Don’t give up on the first hurdle, keep going, keep applying for jobs, because the door will open and you will get into the place where you’re celebrated and needed. It’s about perseverance and tenacity and remaining ambitious and passionate about your belief in the creative.

Also, you don’t always have to chase the big companies. When I first started in radio, I did an internet training scheme in the middle of East London and I chased that for six months. I rang the woman who was in charge every week to see if a slot had come up and that led me to work at the BBC. You’ve got to be willing to get experience and don’t give up if you don’t get the biggest thing first, because it’s usually the small things where you learn the most about what you’re doing.

When I was at the BBC, I had a great mentor who made sure I worked across different genres. I had to work on the drum and bass show, and I wasn’t a big fan of the music, but I had to do it because everyone moved around to different genres for our development.

We travelled a lot, so we’d go to different cities like Bristol and Leeds to see what art was there and put on shows with the talent.

By the time I finished at the BBC, I could work with different types of music – and even grew to love certain areas of drum and bass1 But I also think it’s good to go somewhere where you’re celebrated. If you’re into pop, you need to go somewhere

“One of the barriers to success that I see for black people in the music industry lies in stereotypes.”

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COMMENT

Rihanna is one of the world’s most sought after superstars – but White says comparisons to huge global acts can heap unfair pressure on young UK artists

where everything is about pop music. If you want to put a girl band or a boy band together, you need to be around people who have done that as well.

Finding mentors is so important. It’s a tough industry so you need some people to give you direction and support. I had mentors of all different races, which I feel very fortunate for because it makes such a difference.

Having people who are really good at their job talking to you about their experiences adds to your understanding of what you’re doing because they’ve lived through it before.

Mentorship is a powerful thing and I think we can really utilise that for black female creatives moving forward.

Adele White was speaking to Rhian Jones.

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IN DEFENCE OF POINTLESS ZOOM CALLS We’re all, by now, getting a little sick of video chats. But, says Peter Robinson, don’t overlook the benefits they’re bringing to your professional life...

Christ knows what will have happened in the world in the time between me writing these words and you reading them, but I’m guessing that if you’re still in work you’re not properly back in the office yet and are increasingly resigned to a fact many freelancers knew long before lockdown: working from home actually means living at work. But back in March, when many office-based industry types were still getting to grips with working in their pants, there was a lot of excitement about one small upside to an unprecedented pandemic: the sudden end of the pointless meeting.

Strangely, with the exception of live music, it’s the pointless meetings I’ve missed most about my work. It’s been an unexpected realisation. As a freelancer, I’d usually find myself going to meetings rather than hosting them myself, meaning a half-hour commitment from whoever’s hosting would mean half a day from me. What I’d give now, though, for a 90-minute traipse across London to Kensington High Street for an interview that ends up being delayed or cancelled, or a multi-day odyssey to the furthest reaches of north-east London for a forty minute catch-up. Though I’m generally socially awkward and invariably find the best approach to meetings is to do some breathing exercises and hope for the best, I miss the human contact. By April, I’d have given anything for an excruciating handshake vs hug dilemma, or the messy aftermath of someone else’s botched attempt at a single or double air kiss. I missed the friendly faces, the idle chitchat and the feeling of being part of something.

But I didn’t miss it completely. In the place of those meetings, we’ve now landed on what’s been described widely on social media as something approaching Zoomageddon. The theory goes that meetings that could have been phone calls that should have been emails have been replaced by Zooms that would have been meetings that could have been phone calls that should have been emails. The thing is, emails are a nightmare and in 2020 phone calls are for parents and psychopaths, so right now we’re left with Zoom.

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“Mid-ranking label A&Rs stand to save an absolute fortune on limited edition sneakers.”

I’ve seen people complaining of Zoom fatigue and I’m sure daily team meetings have taken their toll on many, but on the whole this shift has been an enjoyably frictionless move.

It’s blown the notion that You Have To Be In London To Do Anything In Music out of the water, meetings last precisely as long as they need to, you get to see inside people’s houses or meet their parents, and it’s about 90% as ‘real’ as face-to-face interaction. Which is pretty good, considering a sizeable portion of the remaining 10% is the ability to assess footwear. (Another happy upside of the Zoom revolution is that mid-ranking major label A&Rs stand to save an absolute fortune on limited edition sneakers.)

Looking back now, one of my favourite workrelated moments during lockdown involved a last-minute decision to throw open my Zoom one Thursday afternoon to anyone who had a single out the following day. With my blogging hat on I thought meeting artists face to face in fifteen-minute chunks would be a good way to find some clarity in the hundreds of new release emails I’d received that week. Technically the whole thing was a failure due to some participants having released their music earlier

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‘Zoomageddon’ strikes again

in the week, in direct contravention of New Music Friday’s most sacred law. (New music on a Friday — it’s not hard.) But on another level this music journalism version of speed dating was unexpectedly rewarding and, in the chaos of lockdown, very moving. I spoke to 12 people in three hours. It was fun that a couple of platinum-sellers dialled in, but the best part was meeting new artists I’d never otherwise have had face time with. I spoke to singers in Australia, The Netherlands, New York and LA; I met one who, strangely, was a mile from my home, who said he’d spent most of lockdown trespassing on a golf course. I met CMAT, a ludicrously charismatic Irish singer who was releasing a song about KFC (and has since released another song about the actor Rodney Dangerfield). While none of the artists were exactly going The Full Charli XCX, they were each finding new ways to work, negotiating a path through a difficult time, making the best of it all.

I resisted doing it again the following week in case the second attempt didn’t quite recapture the magic of that impulsive first outing. That

“Emails are a nightmare and in 2020 phone calls are for parents and psychopaths.”

said, I’ve been suggesting ‘pointless’ Zoom calls (that could have been phone calls that should have been emails) ever since. Possibly, to be fair, to widespread dismay from the other parties. But during a chaotic and emotional time, it’s left me feeling connected to my work, and connected to more artists and their teams than ever before.

It’s strange how March onwards seems to have simultaneously gone on forever and whizzed by in the blink of an eye. Some things came and went and feel like they happened in a different lifetime: the barrage of quizzes, the awkwardlyphrased emails opening with an earnest reference to This Difficult Time followed immediately by a paragraph beginning “Anyway…”, the weekly view of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s kitchen. But the power of that Zoom speed-dating exercise has stayed with me and I hope the pointless Zoom meeting stays, even when things begin to approach some sense of normality. However the future looks, I’m committed to being more available to meet more people, even if it’s just briefly on Zoom, and even if out of shot I’m wearing clown shoes.

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INTERVIEW

‘AS SOON AS YOU ENTER THE STUPID DEAL BUSINESS, YOU RISK ALL OF YOUR DEALS BECOMING STUPID’ Believe’s Denis Ladegaillerie envisions a bright, bold future for the UK market. Trigger warning: major record labels might not completely love it...

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t’s an intriguingly American phenomenon that the mainstream media of the United States welcomes a plethora of foreigners to criticise its country on a nightly basis. From South Africa’s Trevor Noah to the UK’s own John Oliver and (to a cuddlier extent) James Corden, people who grew up outside the USA are being handed prized mainstream platforms to tell Uncle Sam exactly what he’s messing up. And, you know what? God bless the States for doing it. (Also, on a related note, for booting Piers Morgan off his pedestal.)

Imagine the UK emulating such a thing. Allowing an erudite Frenchman, for example, to smartly point out the flaws and foibles of our great country, with scalpel-like precision, in our very own media. It wouldn’t wash, right? You’d be on the phone to OFCOM and God-Save-The-Queening before they’d finished their first pithy observation. So we here at Music Business UK are hoping, that, in text form at least, you’ll entertain such a concept all the way to the end of this feature.

Denis Ladegaillerie is our erudite Frenchman; the flaws and foibles he points out belong to the UK music industry. Whether or not you’re already leaning towards jingoistic defensiveness, you can’t deny that Ladegaillerie has the kind of global credentials that make him worth listening to.

A former lawyer who passed the New York bar in 1997, Ladegaillerie went on to run new media for Vivendi – yes, the Universal Music owner – in the United States, where as Chief Strategy and Financial Officer he managed the restructuring and development of the first digital music service (eMusic) and the first music social networking site (MP3.com). In 2005, having returned to Paris, he founded distribution and label/artist services provider Believe which is, with no hyperbole required, simply one of the biggest companies operating in recorded music today.

With over 1,200 employees, last year Believe – the owner of TuneCore, plus home to labels like All Points, Naïve and Nuclear 49

La Roux

INTERVIEW

Blast – realized around $700m in digital revenues, putting it firmly in the ‘mini major’ set of companies alongside BMG (FY2019 revenues: $674m) and Kobalt (FY2019 collections: $616m). Considering that Believe’s average annual growth in the past three years has been 40%, you’d have expected its turnover to hit somewhere near $1 billion in 2020... before you-know-what kept us all indoors.

Still, with operations in 45 countries, Believe – and Ladegaillerie – has a unique viewpoint of the independent music market across the globe. And it’s from that viewpoint, with no little affection for the UK industry and its artists, that Ladegaillerie has some gentle suggestions to make.

He notes that the UK currently contributes less than 10% of Believe’s global revenues, adding that “to be totally transparent we’ve been less successful in the UK than in other markets in building up market share”.

Don’t expect that to be the case for long: having already worked successful campaigns with domestic artists like Feeder, La Roux, Novo Amor and Gavin James (co-signed with Good Soldier), and with key new signings such as The Plug, Vistas and Nadia Rose, Believe UK is now looking for a new head of operations, to lead it into a fresh era of progress.

For Believe – and the entirety of the UK independent industry – to reach its optimum level, suggests Ladegaillerie, the British market should take a leaf out of its European neighbours’ book, and stop rushing to break global superstars. Concentrate on your own market first, suggests the exec, before cranking up your ambitions. Oh, and he kindly asks for a reduction in “stupid deals”...

Believe’s target goal in the UK is to continue investing significantly and to build our team. We’re exploring M&A as well.

But [in terms of acquisitions] in the UK, there’s simply no big targets available, unlike in Germany, where you have a Groove Attack [acquired by Believe in 2018], or a Nuclear Blast [also acquired by Believe in 2018], both turning over tens of millions of Euros. In the UK, besides Beggars/XL, which has built to some scale, not a lot of [independent companies] are creating a challenge [to the majors].

Behind the scenes, some major label execs speak of their concerns about overspending on artist deals. Do you anticipate that level of spend at majors in the UK will come down?

Yes, absolutely. I call that the ‘stupid deal’ part of the music business. In most territories, we tend to be in the last round of discussions [to sign] top artists. I’ve asked my team to keep track of the level of deals and advances, and then keep track of the [subsequent] performance of those deals. Last year, across Europe, including the UK, we passed on €70 million of advances in those deals. And when we analyzed the performance of those deals afterwards, we believe 99% of them lost money. Is that part of the business taking a financial toll on the major record labels?

Absolutely. And are they starting to understand that? Yes.

“Is that taking a toll on the major labels?

Yes. Are they starting to understand? Yes.”

How important is the UK to Believe, generally speaking?

Our team in the UK is about slightly under 40 people, and the UK weighs between five and 10% of our global [revenues]. To be fully transparent, I would say we’ve been less successful in the UK than in other markets in terms of building up market share. In France and Germany now, at least on the digital side, our market share in both territories is higher than at least one of the major record labels. But in the UK, we are less of a heavyweight.

The UK is a market where major record labels have been able to retain more power than in other markets, and, to some extent, the indie scene is a little bit less powerful than it is in some other countries. In France and Germany, for example, you have a very powerful indie scene in hip-hop, which has led to the build up of a few large management companies and other large local players, all growing artists independently while [avoiding] the major record label system. In the UK, you have a system that still favours the development of artists through major record companies. UK major record labels are also very aggressive in terms of cash, leveraging advances to maintain their market share.

What do you mean?

The majors are regaining profitability on their back catalogues through streaming – they don’t have to manufacture [physical on that catalogue], and they’re still paying the same level of royalties [to catalogue artists as they did in the past].

That is then generating more cash flow, which is generating more profitability – which they are re-investing [in A&R]. Because they are private companies, their shareholders are not yet giving full attention to, ‘How are we actually doing on frontline A&R versus back catalogue?’

Warner going public is a good development for that, because it means you are going to have investors that start paying attention, and asking the difficult question: ‘What are the economics of frontline deals – and what are the long term margins of these deals as they evolve?’ The fact that Tencent has invested in Universal [will create] the same situation; a new shareholder really paying attention. I wish there had been some private equity in that [Universal/Tencent] round to bring even more rational [thinking] to how Universal approaches the market.

The management at these major companies must be starting to realize that this [level of frontline A&R spend] is not something that is sustainable in the long term. We’ve had these conversations on the board of Believe: Do we go into the ‘stupid deal’ business?

And my view has always been no, because as soon as you enter the stupid deal business, you risk all of your deals becoming stupid.

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At the end of the day, you then don’t have the right economics to build shareholder value. So when you want to raise money, you can’t, because investors [are looking for you] to demonstrate that shareholder value.

That’s interesting when you look at Kobalt (AWAL), and how that company says it’s now prioritising profitability. Tied up in that, you’d imagine, will be a stepping away from deals that offer a slimmer chance of a return.

Yes, and at major record labels, it’s happening on an even larger scale. Ultimately, these things always go back to normal. I tell my teams, look at what happened in the [YouTube] Multi-Channel Network, space. Five or six years ago, when YouTube started building up, a lot of people in that world were doing minimum guarantee deals, paying big advances to secure YouTube creators.

Five years later, all of those companies have disappeared.

I’m hoping that major record labels are going to realise this sooner rather than later. Because if Believe was competing [for artist deals] on quality of service only – versus quality of service plus stupid cash – we would probably not just be growing by 40% a year, we would be growing by 60% or 70%. I’m hopeful, because [artists will soon start] wanting the right balance of service, with the right level of deal: ‘I’m accepting this comes with a higher rev share to my partner [than a standard distribution deal], but I want more services, and I want more investment.’

It’s probably going to take another 12/18/24 months for the situation to become normalized, because major record labels will not be able to sustain their current valuations on their current economics. It doesn’t make sense.

As an indie body in the UK, I would be thinking about how I can best leverage Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Deezer etc. plus traditional radio, traditional media, so that we get more exposure of UK artists on local platforms, helping to build more middle class artists in the market. If you want to support the buildup of local indie labels, [the UK government] must orient funding or tax credits towards that ecosystem. I would advise the [UK industry] to lobby the Ministry Of Culture for a minimum quota of UK artists [on streaming and broadcast media], and for [the government] to financially support the production of UK artists.

The rebuilding of the UK industry is about creating a very strong local market. That’s going to come from a buildup of powerful local indie labels and powerful local management companies. And when those labels and managers are ready to take an artist global, we know they can achieve that with Believe because we have the resources and expertise, across the world, they will need.

One of the difficulties of the UK market today is that it has had the extraordinary benefits of giving birth to The Beatles, Ed Sheeran, Adele and other top artists who have found huge success internationally. But we are now in a world where those successes are harder to replicate, and you certainly cannot rely on them to keep a market strong. The world is changing.

“The UK government must orient funding or tax credits towards indie labels.”

Major label spending is obviously a challenge to the independent sector, but is the global ambition of the average UK artist, that mentality, also a challenge?

In France, Germany and Italy, most of the large continental European countries, 70% to 75% of the market in terms of value is local artists. In the UK right now, 60% to 70% of the market is international artists, particularly from the US. This means that the opportunity for UK artists in the UK market is limited.

My best advice to the UK indie sector would be pull all the levers you can to transform your market into a local-first market.

That’s one of the weaknesses of the UK market today.

In order to have a powerful music industry anywhere, it’s always easier for local artists to start building their careers in their own country because it’s less expensive, and you’re likely to resonate more culturally. And then, when you are big in your own market, generating a lot of [domestic] money, you can start thinking about expanding globally and reinvesting your cash flow [into marketing and touring more abroad].

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You mentioned before you were looking into M&A...

From a distribution standpoint in the UK, there are unfortunately not that many attractive targets. Our focus right now is really on companies that have successfully built services for UK artists with similar values to our own – fairness, transparency and expertise. Not many companies have achieved that. Obviously I’ve always been a great admirer of Beggars and XL; Martin Mills has always been very focused. Domino is a great company as well. I’m not sure that [either company] is looking for partners yet, but they are conversations we’d love to have.

A senior record industry executive recently suggested to me that he thought the UK industry didn’t move fast enough in terms of its artist signing frequency. And that, in the wake of Adele’s success, there’s this mentality of channelling all of a label’s resources towards a ‘priority’ new signing... and then often seeing them fail to match up to those expectations.

This is why having a service model that can adapt to every tier of artists is super important, because the new music industry is about amateur artists building up slowly, then becoming middle class artists, and then, over a 12/18/24 month period, moving into that [realm] of top local artists, and then – only then! – over the following 12 months, one in a million artists will become a global star.

TuneCore is a great pipeline of sourcing artists for us. When I hear [major labels] saying, ‘We don’t want to be a company that

INTERVIEW

Novo Amor

signs a lot of artists – we just want to sign the right ones,’ to me that’s a huge red flag, because you need to be in both models. You need to have the haute couture, super high-quality team to work with a [superstar] artist across creative, marketing, promo etc. – and that is super difficult to do. But not every artist is Ed Sheeran.

So you also need to have a model where you source many more artists, and provide them with the level of service that they need.

Then, if at some point, the opportunity arises for you to build that artist globally, you have the team to take a shot at it. This is precisely what we have built at Believe.

In the old world, [labels] didn’t have much choice – putting out CDs was expensive, you had to make bets on a limited number of artists. But now technology allows you to nurture and build relationships with many more artists at the proper level, and that’s something you must leverage in your A&R. Sony and Universal have perfectly understood this; Sony with The Orchard, and then Universal with Spinnup and with the acquisition and rebuilding of Ingrooves. I’m not sure Warner has fully understood it yet. But you need to have both approaches.

Focusing on the UK, the local trade body, the BPI, has been one of the most vocal opponents to YouTube and its so-called ‘value gap’. What are your thoughts?

Our position on YouTube has not changed one bit: there is no ‘value gap’. Period.

Nadia Rose

You can only believe there’s a value gap if you also think that YouTube is cannibalising paid subscription. But we have plenty of countries now that are moving into maturity on paid subscriptions, the UK being one of them, plus Australia and Scandinavia – and they’re all countries where YouTube exists.

We’ve done pretty significant analysis around Scandinavia, where [paid streaming] has close to 45% penetration across the markets. It’s getting to maturity. Yet [simultaneously] YouTube has kept growing in both viewership and in monetization in a way that’s very consistent with what we’re seeing in other markets.

So there’s absolutely zero evidence that YouTube is cannibalizing paid streaming.

YouTube monetizes two things. The first is official music video.

No one else has demonstrated that they can monetize official music videos better than YouTube – and they’ve tried.

Official music video revenues from Spotify and from Apple Music remain fairly minimal. And everyone who’s tried to build a subscription-based music video service has failed [Vessel, one much-vaunted attempt, is now shuttered, while Vevo backed out of subscription plans years ago]. My own conclusion is that ad-supported is the best way to monetize music video at this point; people just are not willing to pay for an ‘online MTV’ like they did on cable.

So that’s 50% of the revenues coming from YouTube for the music industry. The other 50% are from UGC, using music, 53

Gavin James

The Plug

like TikTok is now doing. And that business – essentially, techpowered sync licensing at scale – was not only not monetized by YouTube, it didn’t exist before YouTube. So rather than a ‘value gap’, YouTube has actually created sources of revenues that the music industry was not capturing before.

You have chosen to stay outside Merlin and negotiate with digital services directly. Why? Because Merlin has exceeded what should have been its normal lifetime. This is my view: Did Merlin bring value to the music industry in the UK, and globally, in the early stages? Absolutely. Five to ten years ago, indie music distribution was not structured enough and was not powerful enough to sit at the top table with YouTube, with Spotify, and extract optimum value. As demonstrated by its Spotify equity, Merlin has made a huge contribution to making sure that indies can obtain certain economic terms.

But, as a distributor, the value we bring to our clients, whether artists or labels, is providing them access to the platforms at the best terms and conditions we can obtain. It’s not just about making the content available, but also ensuring that we maximize promotional opportunities, and that we maximize financial reward.

So I simply don’t see how, as a distributor, you can justify giving away one of the key elements of the value you’re bringing to the ecosystem, by getting disassociated from [negotiating with] the technology platforms. YouTube is one good example where several

years ago we achieved a significant increase on the rev share, which is of huge benefit to our clients. The specific difficulty with YouTube for Merlin is that the only way you can achieve higher rev share [from that platform] is if you have a supply chain that allows you to hit certain milestones in terms of quality of content.

You have to deliver your content in a certain format and do a number of other things with regards to copyright infringement.

So if you’re just negotiating [like Merlin] and you aren’t also the distributor actually providing the content, it’s very difficult for you to achieve the same results. That’s a good example of where us having [direct] control of deals creates a big benefit to our partners. And why, long term, deal-making must be reunited with distribution.

Merlin has played a great role in the past, but today I would argue Merlin actually contributes to weakening the distribution ecosystem, because the labels going through Merlin [are not also] going through a distributor like us for our services.

I believe it is super important to have independent distributors serving independent artists and independent labels. I have had similar discussions with Jeremy [Sirota, Merlin CEO] on this; I have always been very transparent on this subject.

“There is no YouTube ‘value gap’. Period.

YouTube has created revenue sources.”

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IS FORCED FLEXIBILITY A ONE-TIME ONLY OPPORTUNITY? Between Zoom meetings, Rhian Jones ponders whether the current pandemic might bring about a shift in working patterns that will benefit physical and mental health...

The coronavirus crisis has, undoubtedly, had a crushing impact on many of those working within the music industry. Managers, musicians and other freelance workers have been left without a paycheque for the best part of this year thanks to the collapse of touring, while lots of those who had a secure job in January are stuck at home, furloughed, without much certainty about when their lives might return to normality.

For parents who are still employed and able to work from home, regular interruptions from kids who want a sandwich/to be entertained/decide to crash the Zoom chat, a return to the office is probably looking like a holiday right now. This is all, of course, hugely challenging. But without diluting that fact, there’s also a silver lining to be found in this particularly grey cloud.

It’s widely acknowledged that a career in the music industry tends to be 24/7 thanks to the global nature of the world we live in; it’s high pressure, and doesn’t offer much in the way of a work/life balance. The reason why so many people flock towards it despite this is because it’s also an industry driven by the passion of those that work within it, and when things are going well, it’s creative, fulfilling and fun.

That combination of pressure and passion can result in exploitation and unhealthy working practices: unpaid internships, very low paid entry (and sometimes mid) level jobs, a pretty large gender pay gap, and an expectation to work long hours. The idea that you could be just one step away from success dangles like a carrot on a stick to keep everyone motivated and coming back for more. But at what cost?

Well, on an individual level, multiple studies suggest that working long hours increases the likelihood of developing a host of health problems. Amongst those cited include cardiovascular diseases, chronic fatigue, stress, depression and anxiety. Excessive amounts of stress left unmanaged can cause inflammation, sleep disturbances and mental health illness.

It’s not hard to see how a business that 56

“Could some of the more positive elements become normality for the music business?”

employs people who are experiencing any of the above isn’t going to benefit positively as a result of more sick days, and less productivity and motivation from tired and stressed employees.

At the same time, other research has pointed towards the health and productivity benefits of maintaining autonomy over your work life. In Lost Connections, author Johann Hari points to an extensive study by health inequality researcher Michael Marmot, which was conducted to find out how work affects our health.

After years of interviewing 18,000 British civil service workers, Marmot and his team found that the people at the top of the civil service were four times less likely to have a heart attack than the people at the bottom of the ladder. In addition, as someone’s position in the civil service rose, their chances of developing depression fell.

Further research looked into the reason behind this trend, which was found to be a lack of control. “Disempowerment,” as Marmot tells Hari, “is at the heart of poor health” — physical, mental, and emotional. As well as hierarchies, this also makes sense in the context of daily

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If the music industry slept – and worked – different hours, would it become more creative?

schedules — we all have different needs and responsibilities, which makes a one-size-fits-all work day challenging to adhere to.

Sleep is a prime case in point. As pointed out in a recent Guardian article, there’s a growing body of evidence to suggest that individuals are driven by an internal clock that decides when it’s time to sleep, and when they are most creative and productive. It’s set by genetics, not willpower or society-imposed waking and working patterns.

The article continues: “These preferences have a huge influence on health and wellbeing.

Experiments show that teens with later school start times achieve better grades, while adults tend to be healthier and more productive when they are allowed to sleep when they want and to work flexibly.” In addition, other research suggests that positive influences on creativity — arguably pretty important in the music business — include freedom, autonomy, and resources (including time). Obstacles, on the other hand, are said to span constraint, lack of autonomy and resources, time pressure, competition and unrealistic expectations. Sound familiar?

So, here’s the silver lining. At the moment, people have been forced to work from home, and many of them have greater autonomy over their working day thanks to no commute and fewer meetings about meetings. For others who don’t have a lot of work to do and have some sort of financial cushion, they’ve got more time to

“My prediction is that productivity hasn’t reduced.”

spend pursuing creative endeavours and doing whatever work-related tasks they can on their own terms. The music industry has, essentially, been forced to adopt a flexible working practice.

My prediction is that productivity hasn’t reduced as a result. As some agents have told me, despite all shows being cancelled this year, they are busier than ever, working hard to reschedule everything for next year, on top of managing dates that have already been booked. Separately, I’ve heard from two managers who have finally been able to take a breath and use some longawaited downtime to get their businesses in order and pursue creative work-related projects.

I’m loath to use the term ‘the new normal’ because the situation we’re in is not normal, and will pass, but could some of the more positive elements of it become normality for the music business? If working environments become less pressured, and people are able to have greater autonomy over when and where they work, the result will be a happier and more diverse workforce.

Parents, night owls, those with particular needs in order to feel safe, happy, productive and fulfilled day-to-day — there would be a place for them all. A wealth of research has proven that happy employees and greater diversity = greater profits. There’s an opportunity for the industry to emerge out of this crisis and work to build towards a stronger position than ever before.

Will it take it?

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Lunick Bourgess, Shane Derozario and Dan Owusu

‘DREAM LIFE IS NOT JUST A NAME FOR US. IT’S A CULTURE WE ADVOCATE’ Dream Life Records launched under Sony Music UK in April 2020, with Dan Owusu, Lunick Bourgess and Shane Derozario at the helm. The trio of fast-rising executives recount to MBUK how their professional experiences led to the launch of the label and explain how they’re setting themselves up for long-term success…

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or a new record label’s opening pitch, Dream Life’s is unreservedly altruistic: “Every single person we work with,” proposes Co-MD Shane Derozario, “we just want to make their dreams a reality.”

The Sony Music UK imprint launched in April, led by Derozario and Co-MDs Dan Owusu and Lunick Bourgess. The three highly regarded execs’ professional experiences range from management to publishing and record label A&R: a triple-combo of expertise they tell MBUK is “imperative” to them being able to add value to 58

a Dream Life signing’s career.

“What the three of us do is basically what the music industry is about,” continues 33-year-old Derozario. “Records, management, and publishing. It excited [Sony Music UK & Ireland Chairman and CEO] Jason Iley to see three youthful, innovative guys coming together to take on the industry. I can say that confidently.”

Derozario’s sureness is backed by his and his colleagues’ track records. As an artist manager, he’s guided the success of British rap stars like MoStack and K-Trap, in addition to Dancehall sensation

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The Rara, amongst others. His work with MoStack resulted in a UK Album Chart Top 20 mixtape with High Street Kid (No.16) and a No.3 album with 2019’s Stacko.

The latter album campaign was also the project that saw Bourgess, Derozario and Owusu form a close professional bond prior to teaming up to launch Dream Life.

On the publishing side, 29-year-old Owusu started his music career at the Notting Hill Academy of Music, followed by BMG Publishing where he worked as A&R Manager. At BMG, he signed artists including Chip, AJ Tracey, Lotto Boyzz, Hardy Caprio and MoStack.

“Lunick and I already had an existing relationship, but it was through Mo’s album process where we all felt a strong brotherhood between us, and a desire to see each of us win,” Owusu explains.

“We complement each other well through our strengths, weaknesses, experience and work backgrounds,” he continues.

“Dream Life is not just a name for us. It’s a culture we advocate.

We are dreamers who have worked extremely hard to make those dreams a reality.”

Twenty eight-year-old Bourgess – who won the A&R Trailblazer Award at the 2018 A&R Awards – got his major label start as an A&R Scout at Virgin EMI and was promoted to A&R Manager after just eight months. At Virgin, he signed the likes of Hardy Caprio, Tion Wayne and was involved in signing and A&Ring one of Drill’s first Platinum-selling artists, Russ.

He also signed Derozario’s management client MoStack, helping to deliver the rapper’s No.16 and No.3 album chart places in 2017 and 2019, respectively. Not to mention, two Top 10 singles with Russ’s Gun Lean and Kiesha & Becky, plus three other Top 20s, six Top 40s and over four million single sales.

Commenting on Dream Life’s unique three-pronged leadership structure, Bourgess says: “A record company in 2020 is not a record company in the 1990s. This landscape [requires] a very hybrid approach. That’s what we like to do, we like to make things happen; it’s our ethos.”

Dream Life’s first signing is North London artist Eric IV, whose single True Colours was released on the label in April. “We felt like [Eric IV] would be a good starting point for us to get the ball rolling,” explains Bourgess. “We’re not just trying to sign everything; we’re trying to sign the right things.”

Here, the Dream Life dream team tell Music Business UK what they look for in an artist, how their combined expertise across publishing, records and artist management is the label's USP, and why they decided to join Sony Music…

very early. When I was 14, I dropped my first mixtape. And then I took a step back from it for a while.

I was trying to figure out what I was passionate about and what I wanted to give my energy to. I was trying to get into A&R, but I knew I wasn’t going to get into it just like that. I felt like management would be a steppingstone towards doing that, so I started to look for artists. When I developed relationships with A&Rs in the industry, that’s when I started to feel like there was a possibility that I would be getting into the music industry properly.

Shane Derozario: I wasn’t an artist like Lunick. I was a bedroom DJ. I was not letting anyone hear my mixes, but just trying to record on tapes. I just loved listening to music.

I admired how people put words together to tell a story. But, my background just comes from a business aspect. When I was younger, I started my own businesses in different fields, from fashion and clothing lines.

I was approached by a young producer who knew that I had connections with a lot of music artists due to the fact that I had clothing lines. Music and fashion definitely go hand-in-hand. He asked me to take him on. That was just my insight into music. Being a businessperson, I was like, ‘Okay. If I use the same business instruments that I’ve learnt over here, and bring it into music, it can work.’ So, I fell into becoming a manager.

“We are dreamers who have worked extremely hard to make those dreams a reality.”

When did careers in the music business become viable options for all of you?

Lunick Bourgess: I’m a failed grime artist. I had my attempt at it

Dan Owusu: I was an artist as well. From the age of nine, my older brother was a garage MC, and he put together a music group and had me be a part of it. I was traveling around the UK, going to different cities, doing tours, performing in plenty of venues across Europe as well. Then I started to break away and do my own solo thing when I was about 14, 15, releasing two independent projects. As I got older I realized that I didn’t really want to be an artist anymore, but still [wanted to] be a part of a creative process, but without actually being the main person in the spotlight.

I started researching A&Rs in the country. One of the A&Rs that I was studying was Glyn [Aikins], and just learning about him, and seeing, ‘Okay, there’s a trend of hits that he’s having, so he must have an ear for something.’ Then I looked at things in terms of, ‘How do you identify talent? How do you take the talent to market?’ I saw there’s a way into this, and there’s a way to be successful in this thing as well.

Dan, you mentioned Glyn Aikins - who were some of the other mentors or people you all looked up to in your respective fields in the music business?

SD: Similar to Dan, I saw Glyn and Benny Scarrs at the time.

Those were the two that stood out for me, but obviously, there were loads.

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"We went through some struggles and that’s what gave us the brotherhood.”

LB: I was heavily influenced by American music. So, very early on [it was] Damon Dash, Jay-Z, and Kareem (Biggs) Burke and P Diddy. I looked at what they did; I was studying a lot. I didn’t even know that there was something called the Big Four: EMI, Warner, Sony and Universal. Finding out how those big corporate companies worked, and the subsidiaries that they had was interesting.

It was inspiring to see people like Benny Scarrs and Glyn, who signed some of the records that I used to play at home. That gave me a battery pack, because I was like, ‘Wow, there’s people out here who are A&R people that…’ I had a certain stigma about people in the music business, but it was great to see people like Glyn doing their thing.

How has the UK music industry changed compared to when you first started working in music?

SD: We’re being seen more. It was more underground when I first started. Now, it’s more commercialised. A lot of people look at the UK now, for example, international acts like Drake will see what we’re doing and try and take on our culture.

DO: Streaming has also opened up the game; it’s allowed more artists to come through. Right now, you get artists like Simba who has a No.3 record in the country. Back in the day, that wouldn’t’ve happened quite like that. I remember, when I first came in, trying to get a UK hip-hop song on Radio 1 was challenging in comparison to where it is now. Now it’s like, ‘Okay, which [songs] are the ones that are going to make the playlist?’ Streaming has definitely played a key role in that.

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LB: Taking songs to radio is becoming a lot easier than it was before. You [previously] had to have a Radio 1 record for it to go Top 40. Now, a song that comes out, it’s got 200,000 views in a day or so. All of a sudden, it’s got over a million streams in less than a week and it’s in the Top 40. Everyone else is then having to play catch up.

How did the concept for Dream Life come together?

DO: It started through the relationship we cultivated together. I was one of the A&R managers at BMG. The first artist I had signed was MoStack, who Shane manages. And then, I met Lunick before I’d even started at BMG. He was at Virgin. We just got on really well and became friends. His first artist was MoStack at Virgin.

The relationship [developed] between us whilst we were creating the album [Stacko], which thankfully went No.3. We saw a real brotherhood and a real connection between us.

We started to [come up with] ideas in terms of different things we can do together. Me and Lunick were talking one day, and we just thought, ‘You know what? We’ve got to take a shot on ourselves. We’re getting a lot of attention and labels are trying to poach us. But, what if we came together and made a go of this?’

Me and Lunick had that conversation, we spoke with Shane, and we just thought, ‘Yo, let’s go for it.’

SD: I had been managing Mo from the start of his career, and we’d been fully independent. It got to the stage where a lot of labels started showing interest. You hear a lot of negatives about labels, but you don’t necessarily know about it. You just hear it,

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SD: Coming into it, I studied a lot of the label bosses, the Presidents, the CEOs. I saw that Jason gives a lot of young executives opportunities. That was one of the main reasons, for myself. I felt like Jason Iley could give us a shot. I am inexperienced as an MD. This is my ambition. I want to be an MD. I want to be the President of a major record label.

As a manager, you’re effectively an A&R, a marketing person, you’ve got to do absolutely everything. My ambition was always to take it to the next step. Sony definitely had an ethos of bringing through young, hungry [executives]. They took on Since ‘93, Black Butter and Relentless. I just saw that there was something over there that was fresh and youthful.

Eric IV

LB: We were all individually getting offers from different labels, but we felt like Sony was the [right choice]. It’s also very important to highlight my background as a records A&R person, Shane’s background as a manager and Dan’s background as a publishing A&R. You’ve got three core elements of the recording business joining together. That’s what makes us strong as a label. We’ve all been trained very differently. We all have different perspectives. Other companies didn’t really understand this vision, but Jason was on it. It was refreshing to know that people want you to be a part of their team and they want you to grow. right? We were avoiding [working with a label] based on hearsay.

We thought labels will try and change what we wanted to do. That [perception] is literally from a lack of knowledge.

We got an email from [Bourgess], and he was expressing his passion for how much he thought Mo was an extremely talented artist. That got our attention. From the first day I met Lunick, we just hit it off straight away. Sometimes in life, when you meet someone, you automatically know that you’re going to get along with them. Lunick has a massive personality; it stands out. When you’re in the game, everybody just asks you the same questions, like, ‘What’s your plans? What are you trying to do?’

Lunick came from a different angle; we just connected straight away. From there, we worked on MoStack’s first official album, through the ups and downs. We weren’t an instant success. We went through some struggles and that’s what gave us the brotherhood, because we were all in it together.

DO: The environment at Sony is one that feels very collaborative as opposed to every label trying to kill each other. Jason just wants us to win, and he will do what he can in order to mentor us and to help us achieve what we need to achieve. It was a no-brainer to try and do something [with Sony].

What genres specifically will you guys be focusing on?

DO: We’re quite broad in terms of our taste in music, and we want that to be reflected in the roster that we develop and create.

Obviously, our taste and what we’ve been able to do within the UK hip-hop and R&B scene is something that we definitely want to continue within the label. But, also, we want to be able to find, sign and develop pop acts.

We want to get involved with dance. We want to try our hand at different things. If there’s something that we like and we know how to make it work, regardless of genre or whatever, we’ll go for it. It’s not going to be pigeonholed. We’re going to let the label reflect what our tastes are, and our taste is broad.

“We want to be creating massive hits, developing acts from the grass roots.”

LB: Outside of making albums, we just have a lot of [shared] interests. We think alike in our own different ways. We always spoke about how we might unify and come together.

Tell us about the decision to join Sony, and what’s it been like working within the Sony structure and with Jason Iley?

When the announcement about the new label was made, the press release said that you would be developing artists and their management teams, ‘bridging the gap between youth and the mainstream’. What will you look for in an artist?

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DO: Talent, for obvious reasons, and also work ethic. I always say, ‘100% talent, 200% work ethic.’ Your work rate is going to be the thing that will not only take you there, but keep you there.

SD: Talent will always grab your attention. I feel like, being in the game for so long, I can vouch that all music people will understand when I say, you just know a star in the making. Also, what I feel like we’re good at is spotting who has the potential. We’re not going to find a finished artist. Everybody’s always learning, and there’s always development.

LB: Anything that’s exciting, anything that makes you feel something. I know this is kind of a clichéd thing to say, but going back to my thing with MoStack, when I heard him, I just felt like he was different. The more you do this, the more experience you get in your field. Things become a bit like muscle memory.

The press release also mentioned developing management teams, why? And, what do you look for in a young manager or a management team?

SD: It’s to help guide the managers as well. A lot of managers that I now see are more or less the artist’s friend. They don’t really have much of an understanding of how the music [business] works, and they can get thrown in the deep end sometimes.

At the end of the day, an artist proposition is a full package. It’s the artist and the manager. And the more the manager understands how the game works, the more you can get them to help develop the artist.

At the same time, when the guys and I are A&Ring the artist, the manager’s taking care of the business. So, being able to make sure the manager has a better understanding of how the game works makes life easier for all of us.

artists and where they’re trying to take their career. Sometimes, labels may not understand that vision. We’re not trying to sign everything and anything. We want to sign things that we can actually put our resources and our energy into.

SD: We’re creating an environment to make everybody who works with us feel like family. It’s just a different mindset that we have in terms of coming together and encouraging everyone who we work with to be ambitious. When you come over to Dream Life, with the buzz and the energy that you get, you’ll feel inspired.

How much of a global focus do you guys have, in terms both of artists that you want to work with, but also breaking artists?

Is breaking artists in the US a priority for you, for example?

SD: I wouldn’t just limit it to the US. Dan has taken trips over in Europe and Lunick’s been setting up sessions in different territories.

I’m seeing French hip-hop rappers with 80 million views and streams, and I’ve never heard of them. I’m just like, ‘Wow, there’s a whole other world out there.’ So, collaborating with these different acts, getting them on our remixes and stuff is definitely something that we want to do. We want to help artists to become internationally known, because there’s a world outside of the UK.

“When you come over to Dream Life, with the buzz and the energy, you’ll feel inspired.”

LB: Being a manager is something that, if you’re willing to give effort and attention to, you can become great at. You meet managers that may not have a lot of experience, but [they are] willing to learn and willing to take advice. You can have a nightmare of a campaign without having good managers on board. But, when you have new managers that are willing to learn, that usually contributes to the artist’s success.

Why would an artist want to sign with Dream Life?

DO: Why wouldn’t they want to sign here? That’s the real question [Laughs]. I would say our hunger to make this work, along with our experience, our resources and the different relationships that we’ve cultivated along this journey. There are a lot of things that we can bring to our artists; we can add value to their careers.

Most labels can do the same thing, but it’s understanding the 62

LB: We shouldn’t ignore Europe.

We get too focused on America, because it’s the number one market. But, Germany is still in the top five biggest markets, the UK is in the top five biggest markets. So, our neighbouring countries are a priority for us. But, yeah, the US will also definitely be a priority.

What would you love to change about the music business in the UK or globally right now, and why?

LB: I would say transparency.

DO: Opportunities given to people that deserve it. And, a way to create even more opportunities outside of the four walls of the music building. [Also], giving help to young people who need advice on their finances. If there’s an infrastructure that could be implemented where there’s help for that, that’s something that I’d love to see.

SD: Being [in a position] to offer artists a substantial amount of money, [I want to] help them understand what it is they’re doing and how they’re trying to achieve things. I don’t want them to get too excited with the money, because as a young individual coming into a lot of money, they don’t necessarily have a financial education. I’ve seen a lot of artists fall into

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depression because of the problems that come with having a large amount of money.

LB: That point really sums it up [about] transparency. It sounds a bit vague, but being transparent with artists, i.e. ‘You have this money, but what does it actually mean? Can you afford to spend this much money? Does your deal mean that you have to pay for everything?’

It would be remiss for us to not ask you about recent events, the protests against racial injustice, and the response from the music industry. MBW published a letter on June 8, [signed by a raft of senior British music executives on behalf of #TheShowMustBePausedUK and the Black Music Coalition], setting out specific immediate calls to action that the music business should address. It was a powerful statement. How have you been feeling about everything that’s been going on at the moment?

SD: This is something that’s been going on before our time. Us, being the new generation, may not have felt it as much as some of our peers before us. I do feel like there’s been a positive effect.

People are now aware of the situation, whereas, before, it might have just got brushed under the carpet.

I can’t speak for everyone else, I can just speak of what I’ve experienced during this time. It’s made me more awake, and it’s made me understand things more. This is a positive thing. People are trying to change things that have happened before us and things moving forward.

It’s good to be a part of the discussions behind the scenes, and at the forefront of it. It’s good to see companies making statements. I’m reading these things and I’m learning, and it’s making me feel good that companies are starting to take action.

What are your hopes for Dream Life for 2020, 2021 and beyond?

SD: We want to build an exciting roster. We want to build a family.

We want to be creating massive hits, developing acts from the grass roots. We take pride in taking on the underdogs, people that wouldn’t naturally be seen as having a clear-cut chance.

At Dream Life, we’re here to make dreams into a reality. It sounds cliché, but that’s what it is. We’re living the dream, but this industry is a marathon, it’s not a sprint. We want to be talking to you in the next three to four years, saying, ‘Remember when we first met, and we only had one act? Well now we’ve got 10 acts who are selling out multiple arenas.’ This is what we want to do. Every single person we work with, we want to make their dreams a reality.

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FEATURE

WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN Ellie Giles started her career in the north of England as an A&R scout for Island Records and then Fiction, before moving down to London as A&R Manager for Fiction/Polydor. She has spent the last eight years as a manager, working with producers and artists. Today, her clients include Bill RyderJones, Warmduscher, Erland Cooper, Adam Noble and Charlie Russell.

Here’s what she learned along the way...

Valuing myself is a really big thing that I wish I’d known before starting my career, and knowing when I was right and not second guessing myself. When I first started working at Polydor, I was the only female in major label A&R, apart from Jo Charrington, who I didn’t know at the time as she was more on the pop side. When I joined there were people who had been doing it for years and of course all of them were men – I didn’t know how to deal with that.

At the beginning, I was clear about what was good and what I liked. However, over time when I found an artist, I would start second guessing myself quite quickly. I guess that’s down to the way A&R is — you find things and take it to your boss and if your boss says no, nothing happens.

Being resilient is a key quality and as I was young and naive and not comfortable with myself, it was hard to be resilient. With A&R, unless you are running a label you are always counting on others to make the decisions for you, and there is nothing you can be proud about because if you do end up finding something, the plaudits will always be passed onto people up the chain.

So I just gave in. I started giving in to other people’s opinions and losing my voice. There was one time that I did fight, which was for the Arctic Monkeys. I chased them for about six months at a time when they were very small and only playing to a few people. But my boss didn’t want to sign them, he just said to me, ‘They sound like the Sultans of Ping’ — a Belfast band they don’t sound anything like.

So I rang every single A&R in Polydor at the time asking them to sign them! But I wasn’t listened to and the band signed to Domino instead. It really took it out of me, because once you’ve fought so hard for something, and then you don’t get it, you’re like, ‘Am I going to be listened to for anything else?’

When the Arctic Monkeys got big, I got asked what I wanted financially as the band had been offered a deal at Interscope. I was caught off guard and just said the first thing that came into my head. They said yes to everything I asked for.

If I’d been smarter, I would have told them I’d come back to them and engaged a lawyer. I never saw that I needed to see my value because I didn’t have anyone telling me or advising me and saying, ‘You should get a lawyer.’ I just didn’t know.

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“If you do end up finding something, the plaudits will always be passed up the chain.”

I remember bringing in Ellie Goulding, and I was asked if I wanted to be involved in the process as the head of the label was about to sign her. However, I felt it wasn’t wise as I knew it wouldn’t work politically. In hindsight I should have just allowed myself to take that value and push to make sure that I was looked after. So many times I thought I needed to think about others and not about myself.

I say to people now that have a lack of belief, if you need a therapist, or a lawyer, go and see one, or if you feel like you need support, ask for it. Make sure that you’re looking after you, make sure that your voice is always heard, and if you don’t feel comfortable in a negotiation, give yourself time and space to really think about it.

Also, make sure that your manager is a good wing-person, and that they are looking after you and have your best interests at heart. I always check in with the people who work around me: ‘Are you okay? Is there anything you need?

Feedback to me if you’re pissed off, if there’s anything I need to change.’ Because, at the end of the day, I’m more knowledgeable than they are, and therefore I should be the one that’s the better human; that’s the way I see it.

I got made redundant from Polydor and by the time I left I was a totally broken woman.

I’d put all my eggs into this work basket, I’d not had a holiday for years because I was scared of losing my job.

When I left, for a good three months I was a bit like… I don’t know what I want to do, and then I started managing producers. What was great about management is that it gave me the ability to make decisions myself and fall in love with music again, because I’d lost my love for it.

It was only really when I got made redundant that I started looking at my time in A&R and going, ‘Oh wow, this crushed my self-esteem.’

When I first started A&Ring it was like, ‘I love this, I love that,’ I was really passionate. By the end I was just like, ‘I don’t know or care anymore.’ Having therapy helped. With the first act I managed I still second-guessed myself, but after two years of managing I was like, ‘I know what I’m talking about.’

At that point, I’d built my self-confidence because I was achieving and finishing things on a regular basis, and going, ‘Yep, that’s something I should be proud of.’

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Bill Ryder-Jones

I also learned how to be kind to myself.

Drinking and being out every night was a big part of A&R, and it got to the point where I was just exhausted all the time. Towards the end of working in A&R, I more or less stopped drinking and that made me feel a lot better in myself.

Now I don’t really drink, I exercise, and make sure I have a life outside of work. Work was my life, it was me, so when anything bad happened, I would feel the downs as well as the highs really intensely.

I had to learn to go, ‘Okay, this is my job, and this is my life.’ A lot of my close friends are not in music, and that helps because it means if something bad happens in my job, it’s not everything.

I tell people now, just stop burning the candle at both ends, you’ll be so much better at your job. Listen to people who say, ‘Look after yourself ’ – and do it. See your value and if you need a therapist to find that value, do it.

Ellie Giles was speaking to Rhian Jones 67

Ant Hippsley

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FEATURE

‘MANAGERS, AT THE HEART OF IT, ARE ENTREPRENEURIAL. WE MAKE OUR OWN SUCCESS’ Milk & Honey, one of the USA’s leading songwriter/producer management companies, expanded into London this year with a very impressive new office – right next to Universal Music and Google. Ant Hippsley, who heads up the firm’s UK operation, discusses his own time in music, plus the ambitions of Milk & Honey in Britain and beyond...

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ilk & Honey views the management of songwriters “differently than many folks do”. So said the company’s Los Angeles-based President Lucas Keller back in January, when the California-born management firm officially revealed its expansion into the UK. “A great writer in London,” explained Keller at the time, “can also have hits in places like Los Angeles and Nashville and the opposite as well – it’s a major priority [for us] to work our writers on a global level”.

In just six years since Keller launched Milk & Honey, the firm’s global ambition has manifested itself in additional regional HQs operating in New York, Nashville and London... not to mention a songwriter/producer client base estimated to have collectively sold in excess of 400 million records worldwide.

British exec Ant Hippsley was named Head of Milk & Honey UK in January and is tasked with representing the company’s 55-plus client roster in the UK and Europe, as well as helping discover and export exceptional British talent back Stateside.

Commenting on Milk & Honey’s rapid growth (and numerous hits) to date, Hippsley tells Music Business UK, without hesitation: “[Keller] does not mess around.”

Further evidence of this suggestion can be found in Milk & Honey’s London address: 7 Pancras Square in King’s Cross, just around the corner from both Google UK and Universal Music’s London HQ. “It’s an intentional move,” says Hippsley of the impressive postcode. “We want to be in the mix.”

Hippsley’s career in management started as an intern for the legendary Jazz Summers at Big Life, before he went on to work at the likes of Bucks Music Group and Spilt Milk Management.

Joining Hippsley in Milk & Honey’s UK office is Harry Knyt, whose roster includes Grammy-nominated producer iO and fellow

producer Show N Prove, who between them have collaborated with artists such as J Hus, Dave, Ed Sheeran, Anne Marie, Lily Allen, NSK, Skepta, Burna Boy and others.

Milk & Honey’s physical presence in the UK may still be relatively new, but its clients have been making a dent in the UK charts for a number of years.

Hits worked on by Milk & Honey’s roster include songs like Rag N Bone Man’s Human, co-written by the firm’s long-term British client, Jamie Hartman. Other smashes linked to Milk & Honey writers/producers include James Arthur’s Say You Won’t Let Go, Calvin Harris and Rag N Bone Man’s Giant, Lewis Capaldi’s Hold Me While You Wait and Rita Ora’s Anywhere.

Among the company’s first UK signings are the multi-Grammywinning Stuart Price, plus Andrew Jackson (The Chainsmokers, Ty Dolla $ign, Kygo and others) and Gez O’Connell (Dua Lipa and Kylie Minogue ).

“They were significant first signings for us as a company, because they really complement the existing roster,” says Hippsley.

“I love working with writers who are good, driven people, are grafters and are incredibly talented.”

Here, Hippsley tells MBUK about challenges faced by songwriters in 2020, how his own management career developed – and his objectives at Milk & Honey UK...

“I love working with writers who are driven people, grafters – and incredibly talented.”

How did you get into working in music and management?

I was a session musician and played and taught for a living for seven years. I woke up one day and thought, I’m going to manage. I was on a road trip in LA. I don’t know what it was, but it clicked for me. I just saw my future was in management, more so than in playing.

At the time, I was seeing a lot of music [making] geared towards [using] Ableton. That wasn’t really my skill set. I was a guy that 69

could pick up any instrument and play it, but I really wasn’t technically minded.

I wasn’t a producer, or a songwriter, which is why I ended up working with them, because I really admire how they do what they do. So, I ended up just sending out emails, and Jazz Summers and Tim Parry took me on as an intern at Big Life Management.

Tell us about those early days of working at Big Life…

It’s honestly the foundation of everything I still know now. I was just a team assistant, trying to make the best cups of tea I could, for a long time.

I ended up taking care of a couple of producers that were already on the roster. I also ended up playing in the studio, because that was my point of connection. I was still gigging to make ends meet. I ended up playing for a brilliant producer called Bless Beats who I [became] a day-to-day manager for and that was how [Hippsley’s career] all kicked off.

We went through a really great spell of working with Tinie Tempah and Wretch 32. We did a session with Little Mix, and Lily Allen. It was quite exciting, because I was always used to being in the studio, but then I was managing this guy at the same time.

He was amazing. He had a successful career already including a massive hit with Wiley and he was moving more into pop at that point in his career.

We had a single called Not Letting Go by Tinie Tempah and Jess Glynne, which he co-wrote and produced and I played a bit on. It was a No.1.

It’s been nothing short of brilliant. He’s a leader and a go getter.

He’s incredibly driven and highly intelligent. He’s also a really good guy. He’s got a good way with people and of course with his wider network of friends within the industry.

I’ve said this to him, but I really enjoyed [reading] his interviews previous to knowing him and previous to working with Milk & Honey, because I saw in him something fully formed that I was striving for myself.

His vision for Milk & Honey, from the way the company is set up, through to the way it thinks internationally rather than just in its own territory, fits with how I see the world. And Milk & Honey has had such success with its roster in just six years. That’s a short amount of time to have such a high-achieving roster, with so many big cuts.

Plus, to have grown an electronic division with some serious names on there. He does not mess around.

How important is it to have offices in multiple cities – particularly in London and Los Angeles – for a company like Milk & Honey to succeed globally?

I’ve experienced what it’s like to be a manager without a specific US setup. It means spending a lot of time trying to go over to Los Angeles, meeting people, trying to work together and expand a network there.

I did a couple of writing trips just before COVID hit under Milk & Honey, and could see the difference that it made having people who are established [in Los Angeles] and who are clearly respected over there, like Lucas, Nic [Warner, Milk & Honey’s GM] and Peter [Coquillard, Head of International] and everyone else.

I’ve been able to tap into their networks and their community and the force of nature that Milk & Honey is over there. It was incredible.

With that perspective in mind, now, if a UK writer really wants to break in LA, I would say it’s essential that [their management] has a setup there, because even if they have a hit that happens to cross into the US, following that up, you’ve got to spend six months in the States.

In any territory, especially in LA, you’re out of sight, out of mind. If you’re not able to be there, either as a manager or writer, and you [don’t] have a team of people promoting you over there, then how do you keep up momentum?

“I hadn’t broken a writer, a producer or an artist. All I had to offer was pure enthusiasm.”

How important has that experience as a musician been for what you now do as a manager?

Initially it was the best point of connection because I had no real management experience. I hadn’t broken a writer, a producer or an artist. I can relate to [musicians]; I can talk music; I can talk theory. And more than I could talk, I could play.

Bless was a good example. Bless and I would vibe not just over what kind of deal we may have been cutting for him at the time, whether it be a production deal or a record deal or whatever. We would vibe musically, in the studio. He could throw a beat out and I would play over it.

That for me, certainly isn’t the main point of connection [with clients] now, but back then, it helped, because I was able to talk the same language.

What I quickly realised was that I always thought inherently musically. But looking at a song as a whole and how it can be delivered to market is a completely different concept. I had a lot to learn quite quickly how to adapt my mindset.

What has it been like working with Lucas Keller?

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The choice of location for Milk & Honey’s London office seems like a serious statement of intent…

You literally just underlined it completely. It’s an intentional move; we want to be in the mix. I would spend most of my week, pre-COVID, either in King’s Cross or High Street Kensington and occasionally Soho.

First of all, we thought it was important to have a [physical]

FEATURE

L-R: Lucas Keller, Peter Coquillard, Harry Knyt and Ant Hippsley celebrating Milk & Honey’s (pre-lockdown) UK launch by smoking cigars at The Lanesborough Hotel, London

office in London. Where Milk & Honey’s Los Angeles HQ is based, you’re completely central and it’s a really lovely office. I really enjoyed going there and meeting with the guys before I was speaking about working with them.

I loved the statement it made and of course where it was geographically. Now, the same goes for the London office.

If we’re going to have an office anywhere, we may as well have it in King’s Cross, because it makes the most sense to be in the mix, where Universal Music UK is. It’s also a real thrill to us that it’s next to Google. King’s Cross has also got great places to eat and entertain, whether it be a restaurant or a pub, so when your writers are in town from the US, they feel comfortable.

Having worked in various companies, sometimes it’s tough to get an office that looks more than just an office, because it is just tables and desks and chairs.

Our approach to this one, at this early stage, is to make it really vibey and comfortable, rather than it be the classic stale office.

In music especially, when people are coming to you, walking out of the studio environment to come to a stale office, that’s not what you want, is it?

How does Milk & Honey want to be perceived in the UK, in terms of you versus your competition in the market?

I’m not sure I see it as competition in the marketplace. I see it as being best positioned to champion our writers and producers that give us the privilege of working with them across major territories.

That’s it.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a position where I’ve been able to offer that [to songwriters] before. I’m excited and thrilled to be part of a team of people that can offer that, to help our writers across various major territories.

In terms of how we like to be seen, what I have loved so far is being able to be like a funnel for publishers that we work with, managers that we work with, and record label A&Rs that are 71

sending their artist, writer or producer across to LA for two or three weeks to write. I can now be that middleman that takes them over, speaks to the LA team, instigates sessions.

And for the guys coming over here, similarly, I can play that role [in the UK]. It’s just a brilliant, fluid flow of work that we’re able to help out with.

You mentioned your passion for championing songwriters.

What do you feel are the biggest challenges for songwriters currently, what solutions would you like to see implemented to improve things for songwriters and what is Milk & Honey doing to improve those things?

We are all aware of songwriting royalty revenue being down in the current period of time.

To remedy that, we are doing everything we can. We are working closely with the PROs, we are looking for different avenues of fees for our writers and [securing] points for our writers, if we can, on master recordings.

In a nutshell we’re looking at laying out other routes of income alongside the traditional way they have earned, which is of course their royalties from writing songs.

That for us is a never-ending mission that we are obviously thrilled to be handling and want to be moving forward with.

The more fresh ideas we get and implement, the more they become normal. Like, for example, asking for points on masters for some of our writers – especially if it’s a nonfeature that they’ve ended up singing on, for example.

Then it becomes more [of a precedent] that writers can get master revenue as [well as] royalty revenue.

We just have to keep on expanding that [thinking], but that is music, full stop. Everyone has found ways around master income and royalty income going down in the last decade or so.

We also keep pushing the boat for our writers and producers, specifically to find new ways of cutting the right production deals and mix deals.

terms of the amount of different opportunities you have, in ways you can monetize.

What’s the key to being a successful manager?

That’s a tough question to answer because I don’t feel like I’m a successful manager yet. I’ve got a long way to go. I require of myself constant hard work, good communication with your roster.

I speak to my guys pretty much every day and I can’t see how it would work if I didn’t. You really have to ensure that you are rallying together and you are championing them constantly.

Things have never just happened in this business. Hard work is, at some point, what ends up with a result.

That’s what I saw in Harry [Knyt], where he has got to in his career and how that would really benefit us all at Milk & Honey.

It was that same work ethic.

You also need a willingness to be flexible and to move with the times, and an intelligence that goes with that, coupled with a willingness to learn.

I never want to be someone who thinks they know what they’re doing and just sticks to that for the rest of their career.

I want to be someone who is confident about what they have learned so far, and can then learn more from others as I go on.

“Everyone has found ways round master income and royalty income going down.”

How have publishing deals evolved of late? How much more competitive are they getting, in the UK specifically?

We are living in a time where people can sell that catalogues a lot more freely than they have done before. They can sell their writers’ share. They can include pay-through of their royalty income into a publishing deal.

Basically, there’s a lot of different ways of cutting a publishing deal outside of just new works for the next three years.

Terms have changed. Now there’s a lot more publishers that are looking at fixed terms or rolling advances etc.

Publishing has had to evolve with the music industry more generally and with where the business has gone. The deals I’ve cut in the last sort of five, six years, I’ve definitely seen a difference in 72

From your experience in the British market in your career to days, what have been your biggest frustrations in terms of established structures, or ways of doing things that you wish you could change?

Every company I’ve either worked within, or worked for, operates differently. So everything always comes with its pros and cons.

The only thing across the board that I can comment on is I’ve often seen politics within a company – the structure or the way it’s set up – will either benefit the staff and its roster or it can sometimes work against it if there are too many people or levels you have to go through to achieve something.

Managers, at the heart of it, are quite entrepreneurial. We make our own success. You go out, you decide to be [a manager], you work out how to do it, you find a roster. You work out how to do everything.

I was very privileged to have been taught a lot of foundational knowledge when I was at Big Life. That was a real blessing, because I could have just tried to wing it myself, but it would have taken me 10 times longer to learn without that [guidance].

When you want to run with something, usually it’s that passion combined with insight and that entrepreneurial gut [feeling] that gets something achieved.

The problem I have often seen is that when you then have to go through multiple channels, just to get your idea [approved], it can often dampen your momentum. You also have to be okay with your own failures, and to make sure you learn from them.

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IS LIVE MUSIC ABOUT TO MOVE OUT OF LONDON? Eamonn Forde considers one largely unforeseen potential impact of the coronavirus lockdown on the world of British live music events...

“London is dead, London is dead!” honked Morrissey on ‘Glamorous Glue’ back in 1992.

Like so many things we were to discover all too painfully later on in his career, Morrissey saying something and it being right were often far from synonymous.

Yet, post-lockdown, the ornery old goat’s words might have inadvertently been shunted into a new relevance. We are all deprived of live music, with streams on YouTube or even – Lord save us – “drive-in” concerts trying their best to fill in the crater where concerts once stood armed only with a teaspoon. So there is a lot of wistful thinking about what will happen when we can all go and be part of the crowd once again.

The gigs may feel slightly odd and the audience cloaked in a certain nervousness to begin with, which is to be expected from people having been forced to quickly adapt to a life of isolation and social distancing. Yet the issue is perhaps going to be less about how gigs take place and more about where gigs take place.

For better or worse, London is the centre of the UK music industry and it is the centre of UK live music. Despite rampant gentrification pricing out grassroots operators and the closure of all but a handful of venues in the city centre, London still had 94 grassroots live music venues as of 2017, according to the Mayor of London’s Music Venues Taskforce. They are where the A&Rs set their nets and where acts, no matter what part of the UK they are based in, have to cut their teeth and prove their worth.

But two other factors – one relatively recent and one brand new – look set to combine in an imperfect storm that could see the London live music scene lose at least some of its haughty centrality. And that, before we all get too horrified about boarded up and cobwebbed venues across the capital, might not necessarily be a bad thing.

The first factor is a socio-economic one.

Grassroots venues are the sticky floored playgrounds of the young, despite what the

“An imperfect storm could see London’s live music scene lose some of its haughty centrality.”

more “mature” members of the music business cluttering up the back of the room may claim.

Young people are being priced out of the capital – or simply unable to afford to move there in the first place – like never before. Landlords, with a straight face but dead eyes, charge £800+ a month for a “studio flat” that is basically a corridor with a microwave tossed on a mattress.

It is as unsustainable as it is unconscionable.

In 2000, the average student borrowing (i.e. debt) in the UK, according to the governmentowned Student Loans Company, was £2,690.

In 2019, it was £35,950. If that wasn’t already bad enough, anyone leaving school or university this summer is going to walk into the worst job market in living history.

A study from the Office for National Statistics in March this year found that the number of workers in their 20s leaving London since 2017 increased by 26%. In 2018, 100,000 of them left. Over half (54%) blamed the inability to get on the London housing ladder for their departure and 30% said living costs in the 73

Picture: Shayne Friessner-Day / Shutterstock

The Rolling Stones played regional venues – like The Flamingo Ballroom, Ballymena – in their youth

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capital were too high. If you are a new graduate, unless your family already lives in London, you are extremely well off or you are walking into an obscenely high-paid job, chances are you won’t, or simply can’t, move to London.

This leads to the next point – which, being pretentious, we can classify as a geo-psychological one. Everyone, where possible, has been forced to work from home. Or worse, they’ve been furloughed. Or worse still, laid off. Major companies in London that were lucky enough to keep going relatively normally have been seriously reviewing not just their office culture of the near future but also the very idea of their having an office. Workers from those offices have adapted to their kitchen table workstations and realised very quickly that life might not have to involve battling through rush hour twice a day, five days a week. Spotify, Facebook and Google have all already told staff that, should they wish, they may work from home until at least the end of the year. Many other companies are thinking along similar lines.

If people are not going into central London for work every day, the chances of them going into London midweek on a whim to see a new act in a pub’s back room decreases exponentially.

Young people might, finally, be able to get a “London job” that does not require them to relocate to London (or very close to London).

Suddenly there’s a thinning of the herd for attendees at venues within Zone 2. But a demand for live music will still be there. What could happen is a de-prioritisation of London on the touring circuit and a re-prioritisation of satellite towns and provincial cities that fell off the touring itinerary decades ago.

When I was old enough to go to gigs in the 1980s, I lived just outside Ballymena (population then: circa 25,000) in Northern Ireland. As I had no car, Belfast was an impossible 40 miles away.

Oh, and we had the small matter of The Troubles going on. So hardly anyone – or anyone good – played in the country. When my parents were teenagers in the 1960s, Ballymena (population then: circa 15,000) was home to The Flamingo Ballroom and acts who played there included Roy Orbison, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Small Faces and Dusty Springfield.

Ballymena was just one of many small towns around the UK that made up the gigging circuit for acts of all sizes. Between September and December 1963, The Beatles were number 1

Will the UK’s top new acts be visiting seaside towns more regularly in the years ahead?

“Maybe, this is the ultimate Boomer revenge.”

in the UK twice (with She Loves You and then I Want To Hold Your Hand) and the country was firmly in the grip of Beatlemania. The touring itinerary of the most famous people in Britain in that period saw them play shows in places as far flung as Luton, Croydon, Preston, Kirkcaldy, Trentham (which is a suburb of Stoke-on-Trent), Southend-on-Sea and Doncaster. Places, you will note, barely anyone plays today.

Streaming has brought about a situation for recorded music where, as far as consumers are concerned, the single is everything and the song far overshadows the album. Which is exactly how things were in the early 1960s. Perhaps – just perhaps – the post-lockdown touring world in the UK will also have to look back to how things were six decades ago.

Maybe, like a legacy of mounting student debt and the unattainability of mortgages, this is the ultimate Boomer revenge as each subsequent generation is forced to relive a different aspect of the Sixties. If you want a vision of the future, imagine a Beatle boot stamping on a stage – forever.

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IF IT AIN’T BROKE, YOU DON’T FIX IT. BUT WHAT IF IT IS BROKEN? Cliff Fluet has been monitoring the latest calls for a fairer streaming payouts amid lockdown – and suggests that big thinking is needed from the wider industry…

In 2008, the world found itself plunged into a global financial crisis, the worst since the Great Depression. In response, banks, financial institutions and governments acted quickly to protect the cornerstones of capitalism.

For those who didn’t cause the crisis, but felt the brunt of its impact, the ensuing years meant more austerity and increasing resentment over the perceived protection of the status quo and the ‘elites’. In the eyes of many, this sense of injustice consequently led to the rise of populism and nationalism that we now find ourselves in right now.

Even before the financial crisis, the music industry was already undergoing a fundamental and painful change. Online piracy was rife, and the legal download market could not keep up with a decline in physical sales. Many referred to recorded music as “over” – or, at least, something to be given away, only monetised via brand or marketing partnerships. Profits and valuations of record companies were shrinking.

Around that time, the music industry started placing huge bets on new service offerings from the likes of Spotify, hedging those bets by taking equity shares – on the basis that, whilst a brandnew business model might cannibalise a slowly dying CD business, it might also create whole new opportunities for a subscription-based model going forward.

In 2020 we can all agree that those bets paid off handsomely. Valuations in relation to music rights have soared based on significant investments and acquisitions and Spotify has seen its market valuation double in the last three months. So why isn’t everything in the garden now rosy for artists?

Since COVID-19 lockdown, the complete halt of live events has revealed a fundamental underlying condition of the music industry: most working performing artists make the majority of their ‘real’ money from live. As well as the cessation of tours, festivals and live gigs, it’s anticipated that the monies from Performing 76

“Spotify’s valuation has doubled in three months.

So why is everything not now rosy for artists?”

Right Organisations is likely to be hit badly, as so much of their revenues are dependent on live shows and revenues from advertisingbased broadcasters. This has all led to the #BrokenRecord campaign launching in response to a significant and painful correction for artists and songwriters, now closely examining their royalty statements from their PROs, their labels and their publishers.

Whilst some may feel “now’s not the time to discuss this”, my sense is we should at least consider and debate if now is actually the just moment to seize this opportunity; to try and reach a new settlement that deals with historical inequities and disparities before they lead to long-lasting and sclerotic resentment. At the same time, we need to flip both the record and the narrative and have a more nuanced debate than the current news media tends to present.

I am pleased that, to date, the Broken Record debate has not indulged in lazy forms of “Spotifybashing” that were popular some years ago, nor blamed wholly reasonable confidentiality

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When Spotify went public, the subsequent payouts to major music companies were then shared with artists

clauses or remuneration models. We need to move the conversation on from looking at easy answers: calls for an increase to the “per stream rate” to artists and/or songwriters are somewhat hampered by the fact that it doesn’t really reflect how artists are accounted to. User-centric payouts may not adequately deal with the ability to cache, store and share music offline. And some kind of internet “blanket licence” may feel warm and comforting, but it throws up many more questions than it seeks to solve.

What we really need to do is get into the detail, looking at a multitude of issues, including frankly arcane accounting practices more suited to physical product (and their related costs), to see if they are fit for purpose in a digital world.

Rather than solely focusing on the amounts that a Digital Service Provider might pay, perhaps rightsholders should be freeing DSPs to trial further innovations in relation to pricing and service offerings in order to diversify, de-risk and return even greater value.

When digital music platforms (like Spotify) have had a change of control and/or IPO’d, equity pay-outs have gone to the rights holders which have, in a welcome move, shared some of the spoils with artists. Will the same happen in relation to labels, publishers and catalogues now undergoing similar liquidity events?

Perhaps a concerted effort to look at the royalty payment processes globally – adopting technology to speed up accounting to all parties – could provide welcome relief to artists who need money far more quickly than they get it today. And could record labels look to relax their control over their artists’ audio-visual recordings of live performances?

What of publishers in relation to sync rights for livestreams – and PROs enabling faster licensing for online performances in a world where touring has been significantly constrained and will remain so for the foreseeable future?

In the face of unprecedented times, governments and financial institutions have taken unprecedented measures; the UK government has essentially created a form of Universal Basic Income in order to ensure there is enough of an economy left during the slow reversion to normality.

Can or, more importantly, will the music industry look at some of these issues and address the need to ensure ongoing goodwill with artists at the time they need it most?

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INTERVIEW

‘THERE IS A HUGE ELEMENT OF FUR COAT, NO KNICKERS AROUND THE WHOLE BUSINESS’ Veteran manager Bernadette Barrett worked with David Gray and Damien Rice at the height of their success, and is now applying her experience and skills to the burgeoning career of, amongst others, Mahalia...

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ernadette Barrett, who manages Mahalia and Lisa Hannigan, credits a fairly rare training ground for her learning some of the most important skills in management: understanding and diplomacy. Her education started 25 years ago as a food-loving trainee chef in a hotel in Dublin.

“The most valuable exercise was probably having to work as a waitress as well as being a chef, because you learn that everybody has their own pressures,” she explains. “If you’re a waitress and some customer is giving you grief out front, you are going to bring that grief into the kitchen and shout at them for your order, then the kitchen is going to shout back at you, so you’re getting it from all sides. I think it’s helpful to know how to mediate those conversations and understand that the other person is probably under a different sort of pressure than you are.

“To this day, I carry the same philosophy with me: if you have empathy for people on the other side of the table, or [those working] the hotplate, then it’s a lot easier to understand people’s positions in their jobs. So, never ask anybody to do something you wouldn’t do yourself, and try to have empathy with what’s happening within the other dynamics of the ecosystem.”

While working as a chef at night, by day Barrett pursued her other love on a music course, which helped land her a job as a receptionist in a recording studio. She then moved on to working at a live music venue, before venturing off alone to help her then boyfriend’s band, The Frames, by hand-posting CDs and 7-inch singles to radio stations and building their career up from a grassroots level. Eventually, she had to get a “proper job” and went to work as a promoter for Mean Fiddler, when founder Vince Power was setting up shop in Dublin.

While booking regional tours, Barrett met and befriended David Gray and Damien Rice (who was with his band Juniper at the time) and their manager Rob Holden. She stayed in touch with them after moving to London to help Power realise his international ambitions for Mean Fiddler’s Fleadh Festival, and later joined Holden’s management team.

Barrett started her career in management at an exciting time — it was just ahead of Gray signing a licensing deal with Christian Tattersfield’s 14th Floor Records to license what became one of the best-selling albums of all time in the UK, White Ladder.

Barrett worked as Gray’s day-to-day manager, getting a baptism of

fire in the publishing, label and PRO world as the album hit radio and went onto become a major success globally. After five years, she brought Rice into the company around the release of his debut album, O. She went on to manage him for 12 years.

That’s also when she met singer/songwriter Hannigan, who was part of Rice’s band, and with whom Barrett has now been working for nearly 20 years. Barrett and Rice have since parted ways, but “very amicably,” she says. “I think it got to a point where I wanted his career more than he did, which is completely fine,” she says.

“The last record was so difficult for both of us that I just didn’t want to be in a relationship that wasn’t working anymore. But we finished what we started, which I’m very proud of, and whenever I see him next it will be really nice. He’s an amazing artist and I learnt a lot from that process.”

Since then, Barrett has launched her own company, Big Bear Management. She attributes her varied background to the ability to adapt to the multi-faceted role of management today. “There is no job you could throw me into that I wouldn’t have some sort of understanding of,” she says. “The great thing about having worked for small companies, and then doing it all myself, is you have a really good understanding of all aspects of the business. Like with Lisa and with Damien, we were the record label initially, and we were also publishing. So from label, publisher, tour manager, accountant, lawyer… I’ve done it all to some extent.”

Mahalia, who has been signed to Atlantic since the age of 13, arrived on the scene after Barrett saw her play on Irish TV show Other Voices on a recommendation from a friend. “She was 16 and I was like, ‘Absolutely not, see ya, thanks.’ I remember saying to Mahalia, ‘When you can set up your own bank account, give me a call.’ I was in the middle of Damien Land and Lisa, and we had a couple of other projects on at the same time, so I wasn’t really interested in taking any other artists on. But then I saw her playing [live] and I was like, ‘Ah, fuck’s sake.’

“It was at The Great Escape and my jaw just dropped when she said she was 17, because she has such an unbelievable maturity.

Whilst being a giddy teenager as well, she has this sensitivity and maturity about her. She’s the most musical person I’ve ever met, she is absolutely extraordinary and she’s developed hugely as an artist over the years.”

Mahalia’s debut album, Love and Compromise, received rave 79

Lisa Hannigan

INTERVIEW

reviews and hit No. 28 on the UK’s Official Albums Chart last year whilst earning her a BRIT nomination for British Female Solo Artist. Here, Barrett tells us what’s next for both Mahalia and Hannigan, shares her wisdom gained, mountains climbed, as well as what she’d change about the music industry and why...

What were your biggest lessons learned while working with Rob Holden?

On a practical level, the lessons were navigating deals by watching what Rob was doing. Damien [Rice] had made the record himself, so he had all the rights, and at the time Rob was like, ‘Let’s just try and do what we did with David [Gray].’ So he managed to get a licensing deal with the UK and US label. Navigating those systems and knowing when the right time is to spend money, when to go to radio, was a huge learning curve.

The biggest lesson I took away from that, which I’ll always carry, is the importance of being aligned with your artist. Obviously, as things progress, people change anyway, but having similar goals, values and strategies as your artists is super important to me. Because if you set out on a different path, that is likely to get fragmented somewhere along the way and will keep being so.

Understanding what your artist wants takes time because there are often inconsistencies and people think they want something until it happens, and sometimes you can’t control these things because they develop a life of their own. But having a synergetic relationship with an artist to me is now key, where you both feel like you want to have the same trajectory. If success comes and it’s not expected or wanted, that can be problematic, as can failure.

With Damien, I learned the importance of that through navigating things like commercial radio with a very uncompromising artist.

The difficulty was that because we had signed a licensing deal, and the record was made, the label needed to do their job which was get singles to radio. That involved some level of compromise and there were varying arguments about what level of compromise was acceptable from the artist or not. But, without it we wouldn’t have had the career that Damien went on to have – and we wouldn’t have sold three million records.

It’s a difficult thing to marry art and commerce if you have a true artist. And all of the people I tend to work with are artists rather than pop stars.

people want a two minute thirty edit of a five minute song. So the flexibility and understanding of the artist to various situations is really important. Nobody is trying to sabotage your art, we are trying to fit it into a format that works for the commercial world.

Ultimately, Damien’s priorities were a little different to mine. I wanted to go and do the biggest TV show in Italy and he didn’t, for example. There are two sides to every story and I’m sure he felt like we were constantly trying to change him, and there was an aspect of that. If you sign an agreement with a major record label, there is a lot of compromise along the way and if you don’t know that going in, it can be a surprise and quite challenging.

That reminds me of a podcast interview I was listening to with Mahalia, where she was talking about the disappointment of the fact that she wanted her EP, Diary of Me, to be her first album, but the label didn’t think it was the right thing to do.

How do you manage those sort of situations whilst still trying to keep the artist happy?

It’s really hard. I think it boils down to one thing which is trust, and if your artist knows that you always have their back, then it’s a little bit easier for them to learn and accept and understand.

It wasn’t the label saying that the EP isn’t good. My interpretation was that the label was saying, ‘You are not ready yet to release a record’, and they were absolutely right.

Musically, the album she went on to produce was so much better.

She went a bit off the rails for a little while and then came back and we were like, ‘Okay, this is shit or bust, you are either going to do this or forget about the whole thing, so let’s give it a go.’ Bear in mind she’d been signed when she was 13 and when I met her she was 17, so it’s very young to know what you want to do with your life. It’s such a weird thing when you give a 13-year-old kid a bunch of money and no direction and plan. Whilst you can offer all the support available to make music, it’s a huge ask for a young person finding their way in the world, not to mention finding their musical voice.

All I could do at that time was sit back, apply some sense and a bit of pressure wherever I could, try to be encouraging, but accept where she was at and hope it would pass. I spent the first year working together trying to figure out if she wanted a career or not.

It relates to what I was saying earlier about being aligned with somebody — if you’re not then you are constantly going to feel like you’re pushing a boulder up a hill and I wasn’t interested in doing that. We had some very honest conversations during that time.

“All the people I tend to work with are artists rather than pop stars.”

In the case of Damien, I guess that means that the label was pushing for more radio-friendly versions of songs?

That’s exactly right. I understand they have a job to do, they can’t fit a square peg into a round hole, and we all knew that the record was connecting naturally with people. We couldn’t work with the tempo that the tracks were at radio, so they needed some tweaks.

That was always a conversation. It’s the same if you do TVs —

How did those conversations go?

You can only have those conversations looking at somebody in the eye and saying, ‘I need you to be honest and tell me what’s happened, and you don’t have to do any of this. We are not saving lives, you need to just take stock. I’m not going to push you to go 81

Mahalia

should have played a sold out Brixton show at the beginning of May, which was the start of the wind up of this album campaign.

We had some great festival slots with the full band planned, and she was going to go back to America to continue the story that’s unravelling there, and then move onto the next record.

What’s going on with Lisa Hannigan at the moment?

Lisa is currently working remotely with some people that she has worked with before — she’s found her little community between The National, Bon Iver, Big Red Machine and Joe Henry, all those guys she’s collaborated with before really successfully.

She’s scheduled to do this Our Planet show [a live concert version of the Netflix documentary series, which Hannigan provided vocals for, is set to take place across arenas in October]. So with Lisa, it’s writing, writing with others, doing vocal and album collaborations, and film soundtracks. Lisa is a really interesting one — I love working with both her and Mahalia because they are so different and yet fundamentally, unbelievably talented. It keeps two parts of my brain working.

somewhere you don’t want to go, but the more you lead your own career, the less the label or anybody else is going to have influence over it. If this is directed by you, then you are going to be in a much better place than you are if you let other people drive the bus.’

I think she was quite happy to be a backseat driver for a little while, in fact she probably got off the bus completely. After the EP disappointment and with all the social media stuff going on, it’s very hard for young teenage women to be in that world. You’re looking at your peers, everybody is popping, or so you think, everybody is at all the amazing parties and you don’t have the bus fare to go to the studio.

But it had to start with the music and there just really wasn’t any – and there is very little we can do without the music. At that time, it was just about a couple of people getting the right sessions in, and then you write the one song that becomes the thing that becomes the anchor. That was Sober. I’ll never forget her sitting with [now Atlantic co-President] Ed Howard in his office when she said casually, ‘I wrote this thing to a beat’, played it, and Ed was just grinning from ear to ear. That was a moment. I think Ed knew that was the start of the real next phase of Mahalia’s development.

What are your ambitions for her now?

Well, this global pandemic is not conducive to our plans! For the last 18 months we’ve been mostly tour supporting ourselves with the view to having a pay day this summer. So that has all gone to shit now. Between CAA global, ourselves and all the work Atlantic UK, US and Europe have done in setting her up the way she is, we had a brilliant and very strategic summer outlined. She 82

You’ve talked about some of your management principles – do you have any others?

Duty of care to me is a big one. During the time when Damien was making his third album, it was around the transition from physical to online music, and I was thinking, ‘Fuck, I can’t see a way to make this business work for me anymore’. That transition was very painful for a few years, so I went and did a psychology degree at the Open University while I was working full time, with the idea of pursuing a career as a psychologist.

I really enjoyed that and feel like it is quite an important feature in my management style, where you really listen to what the person is saying, try to distinguish what they are actually saying, and accept the person but not the behaviour sometimes. It’s just about creating boundaries. I think all of that is really important, as well as the transparency of a relationship. I would much rather have a conversation directly with somebody rather than with somebody else behind their back. Fairness, kindness, honesty and duty of care are all important to me.

What would you change about the music industry and why?

I can’t get my head around US touring and how it’s gone over the last couple of years. Just the very process of applying for US visas, all of the admin, paperwork and expense — it’s so expensive to go and tour in America these days. If you don’t have a manager who has some resources or a label who will fund some of this…

America is going to become a cultural desert because nobody will be able to afford to go and tour there.

The initial expense of getting the visas and tour support and then having to fill in a tax return for every state, and pay 30% of your fee every night to the IRS, it seems extraordinarily complicated. Whereas US artists coming to the UK, they just fill in a CoS [Certificate of Sponsorship form], it’s so much easier and they don’t have to pay anything.

INTERVIEW

Another bugbear of mine is data ownership. I think the music industry has done a phenomenal job of generating non-music businesses for years and handing huge corporations swathes of data.

When we try to market to our own audience, we are in a position where we can’t, where we have to buy back all of the data. If you were building somebody else’s business, at least you could own that data and be able to do with it what you want and use all the protective measures. I find the idea that we’ve so bought into everybody else’s dream incredibly frustrating. I want every artist to be able to own their own data as well as rights, in my ideal world.

I’d also love to see artists supporting younger artists on a touring level. I’m still seeing sold out arena artists paying support artists £250, which I think is wrong and has to change. Agents and managers could come together more on that.

On the subject of artists owning their own rights, do you see that changing or is that still really difficult to try and get?

It depends on where you’re at. I inherited a deal [for Mahalia] that was signed in 2013, so there are a lot of things about that deal that probably should have changed or could have changed but haven’t.

That is going to be very slow progress — with all due respect to the label, who are heftily invested, nobody really likes to change things that work in their favour, to an extent. If everybody is doing really well out of it then there’s room for negotiation, but otherwise you need to wait your time and then go in and renegotiate.

But artists now have a choice and I think that is really exciting. There are so many companies setting up really interesting models, like Platoon or AWAL, that I think have worked and will continue to work for people. It’s a very different ballgame, and there are plusses and minuses to each model. Not everybody fits into either sector, but it’s exciting that there are different ways of doing things now.

In the same interview I listened to with Mahalia, she said she wasn’t where she wanted to be financially.

Nowhere near it. We’ve put our hands in our own pockets for the last 18 months to get to a point where our payday was going to be this summer and we would actually come out winning. Now we have to go back to the drawing board. But that’s okay, if you strike lucky and everybody continues to work really hard and is as motivated as they are between our team, then hopefully the payday will come. But this business is definitely not for the faint-hearted, or anyone who needs job security!

How do you think the coronavirus crisis will impact the music industry long-term?

There are bound to be winners and losers and a lot of the DSPs are going to be the immediate winners. I’m absolutely loving the innovation around ideas like [Instagram Live battle series] VERZUZ, which is the most simple, genius and positive thing I’ve watched for years — as a music fan, and a nod to the depth of the culture.

As for live, who knows — that’s the bit that is really giving me a pain in my heart right now, because it’s such a huge part of my personal life, of the business and of Mahalia’s career.

Doing very small scale shows locally to start with might make sense, but I can’t imagine anything happening for a year right now.

The idea of playing in big rooms to smaller capacities… nobody is going to want to do that and it’s not financially viable. I think everyone is probably just going to keep their powder dry, keep their head down and wait until there is vaccine or a test that would help.

[Recently] the world has had another wave of acknowledgment about systemic racism, police brutality, social and racial injustices built on fear, hatred, economics that work for a few, and a lack of history taught well at grassroots level in education.

People had a lot more time to reflect and respond whilst watching in real time the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and read about Breonna Taylor and so many other dreadful incidents — many of which remain unresolved.

I’m immensely proud of Jamila and Brianna for The Show Must Be Paused campaign, tasking the music industry to reflect on their gains from black culture and what the industry subsequently returns to the culture.

If we are going to create a more equal, fair, anti-racist society that only we can create from within, it requires a root and branch reform of global corporate practices, recruiting people of every race, gender, colour, creed and not box-ticking, but carefully including a diverse range of people to create multicultural companies that reflect and celebrate the rich multicultural music world that we inhabit.

We cannot un-know all that we have learned in the past month.

Black Lives Matter and until they really do, the show must be stopped to shake up some poor long-standing practices.

“This business is not for the faint-hearted, or anyone who needs job security.”

As a self-employed manager who has missed out on the payday you were expecting from Mahalia’s summer of touring, how do you make it work financially?

Well, the financial burden is not only due to the coronavirus, it’s doing everything ourselves whilst being signed to a major label.

There is a huge element of ‘fur coat, no knickers’ around the whole business from what I can see. Artists are out there doing these amazing shows and selling out every night, it’s all gorgeous and the artist is doing amazing promo, making fancy videos, looking glam on the red carpet, but often that’s not the reality.

If you have a deal as long as Mahalia has had a deal, and from my perspective that deal was commissioned on many years ago, it’s hard to make this work. But spirits are willing and I’m three years into this journey with her now. We’ll be scouting for the right longerterm branding deals, private shows and other opportunities for her now, alongside the great teams at Atlantic and CAA.

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Photographed by Jeffrey Correa

Charlie Pierce

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FEATURE

AWAY FROM THE NUMBERS Having left a career in finance for the nice, safe, 9-5 environment of artist management, Charlie Pierce is starting to enjoy significant success with her clients, including Yola, and attract attention and praise from the highest quarters...

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n April, a Music Business Worldwide interview with mega US manager Ty Stiklorius went what might be considered ‘viral’ (within the relatively small microcosm of the music industry).

The interview, which included some illuminating and frank quotes on subjects like greed in the music business and sexism, has racked up 5.2k shares so far and enticed a host of attention on social media (if you haven’t already checked it out, it’s a must-read).

It ended with the advice Stiklorius would offer to a manager starting out their career in music today, which centred on just getting out there and doing it. “To become a manager, you have to feel so moved by an artist that you absolutely need to manage them,” she said. “The best managers I know found an artist they loved and dedicated themselves to them.”

The answer ended with an example of a manager who was doing just that — UK based Charlie Pierce, who left her job in finance at Goldman Sachs after 11 years in 2015 to follow a decidedly less lucrative and stable career path as a manager. Naturally, we were keen to track her down and find out what it is she’s doing that attracted the attention of a veteran manager like Stiklorius.

Today, under her own Neverno Management firm, Pierce looks after four-time Grammy nominee Yola and US country artist Angaleena Presley. Here, we chat to her about her non-traditional route into the industry, lessons learned across her career in music to date, and how she’s being impacted by the coronavirus crisis.

Why did you decide to leave finance and pursue a career in the music business?

When I was growing up, I wanted to be in music and in my late teens, going into university, I wanted to be a music journalist. I did work experience at NME and absolutely loved it, and then went to university and studied English Literature, but didn’t really pursue writing whilst I was studying.

I actually joined the Territorial Army, because I needed to have a job whilst I was at university to pay for some of my living costs and books. When I graduated, that year print journalism was going through a tough time and lots of people were cutting their graduate schemes. I looked at it and thought, One, I haven’t really done the groundwork that I should have been doing whilst I was studying because I needed to work, and, Two, I just am not sure that [music journalism] is going to be a career that is sustainable.

So I did what any sensible graduate did and went travelling for six months, and when I came home I just needed a job. I grew up very close to the operations division of a big financial company and they were looking for temp staff. So I kind of landed in finance accidentally — it was not something I studied or ever thought, Hey, I want to go and work for an asset management or investment bank. I just stayed because I met some nice people and got a job with a pension plan and healthcare and all of those things that sound quite sensible.

11 years later, I was like, What am I doing? This is never what I set out in life to do. I was just bubbling along and living a lifestyle that I wasn’t quite sure was making me happy or not. A few years prior to that, in 2012, I had quite a big health-scare and that really altered the way that I looked at the world.

So I got out. although I wasn’t really sure what in music I wanted to do. For the first year, I just tried to meet as many people as I could and did an internship at a distribution company for three months, which gave me a good overview of what happens in the industry. So I guess it was a calling back to what I originally thought I wanted to do, it was just a fairly long road to get there.

After a series of chance meetings, you started working with Angaleena in 2016, to tour manage her UK dates, later becoming her manager. Was she the first artist you started working with from a management perspective?

No, I had worked with someone else mostly on an informal basis and some of it was whilst I was still in finance. I would definitely describe that as a baptism of fire – and that artist and I are no longer in contact. It was quite a difficult relationship breakdown for me and as a new manager, it really shook me. I met Angaleena just as that whole situation was coming to an end. She gave me the first real opportunity that I had in terms of who she knew and her network in Nashville.

Regarding the artist you’re no longer working with — what did you learn during that process?

I learnt a huge amount — trusting my gut was a big thing. There were some red flags about that person’s behaviour that I should have been more willing to take notice of than I was. But I was so keen to try and help someone that I could see so much talent in.

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Knowing that sometimes artists have to go through something personal before they can accept that help was a big learning point.

Also, anything that you do as a manager, or the artist does, is a reflection on the both of you. It’s like being in a relationship and you have to trust that that person is not going to do something to damage both of your reputations, and unfortunately, that wasn’t always the case. Having that fundamental foundation to your relationship with your artist is probably the biggest thing that I learnt out of that experience.

So you learned about the music industry when you were doing work for the distribution company, but how did you learn about the other skills that are required for management?

I joined the Music Managers Forum fairly early on and did some courses with them. I also did an evening class at the Institute of Contemporary Music. So, in terms of theory, I’ve gone to the classroom for the nuts and bolts of it.

I think there is definitely a place for that, but I also think that the industry is changing so quickly, especially at the moment, and you have to talk to your peers and be willing to pick up the phone and say, ‘We’ve got this request, have you done anything similar? How did you handle it?’ I’m very fortunate that we’ve got access to significant resources within the wider team of agents, lawyers and accountants, so if there’s not someone within my network who I can call upon, I can call someone in our team and say, ‘Do you know any artist who is doing x y and z and would you be willing to put me in contact with someone on their team to talk about it?’

I do think that some people are unwilling to stick their hand up and say, ‘What is everyone else doing?’ and they are just muddling their way through. I hope that the situation we are in at the moment and the change that it will bring about in the industry will force that collaboration. Organisations like the MMF really help that.

How does your background in finance influence your approach to management?

I think I view things differently to how other managers might because I look at it with a business background. So, whilst we have a business manager in the US and accountants in the UK, and they all have their place, I do a lot of that work. We’ve got a lawyer but I review all of our legal contracts, because I had to do that for eleven years just with slightly different terminology. A lot of the skills are transferable and the way that you manage relationships is really similar as well, and the importance of doing that.

Also, if you take away the creative side of managing an artist, if we just look at the business, you have to look at an artist the way that you would a start-up company. You are going through that development stage and it’s going to take you three to five years to turn a profit, unless you are very lucky and are somewhat of an anomaly in that.

I think I’m a better manager for having spent that time in a different industry. What we are going through now is turning the world upside down, but I went through the financial crisis in 2008.

That turned finance upside down and it’s come out the other side the better for it — it’s more regulated and I think that will happen to many industries now. There will be change and people will adapt and I feel like all of that knowledge and insight has prepared me in some ways.

“Some people are unwilling to stick their hand up and say, What is everyone else doing?”

Management isn’t usually the most lucrative or stable of career paths to choose in the music industry, especially at the beginning of an artist’s career. Why did you decide to go down that route in particular?

Well, I knew I wanted to work for myself — I didn’t want to go and work for a label or an agency. It is all of those things, and especially at the moment it’s a real struggle. I’ve got to the point where this year I was going to start to see my investment pay off, that’s not going to happen now and that’s a really difficult thing to come to terms with.

But management can also be the most rewarding [role]. In terms of relationships with artists, it’s arguably the closest relationship you can have, and it’s also so diverse. It’s arguably more of a rollercoaster, but the ups are way up – you’ve just got to be able to handle the lows as well.

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When it comes to working with artists today, do you have any management principles that you’ve defined along your music industry career so far?

It’s a partnership, it’s our business, its not my management company or my business and their career is not their business.

When we are talking, we talk about our future, and we talk about what benefit this will bring us, and I think that is really important.

You have to be able to see a long-term future and everything that you are doing needs to build towards that. Both with Angaleena and Yola, when we are talking about strategic things relating to my business, we are talking about what it will do for all three of us. That is my overriding philosophy — we are building something together.

It’s also really important that as I develop my career, and the artists I manage grow in their influence, that we shine a light on issues important to us, as well as use the skills and platform that we have to make a difference. So far, that has included helping to establish a benefit concert and fund called To Nashville With Love for the devastating tornadoes in the first week of March in Tennessee. We raised over $500,000, in the seven days after the tornadoes hit.

Somewhat closer to home, we have just launched a unique merchandise item where all of the net proceeds go to Yola’s band and road crew. Finding a way to try and help support them, even in a small way, whilst we are not on the road was important to us.

FEATURE

Yola

What makes you want to work with artists and what was it that attracted you to those you’re working with now?

Outside of talent, my personal view is you have to really believe in the creative endeavours that your artists are undertaking. That was a big reason why I wanted to do something on my own and didn’t necessarily want to go and work for a larger organisation where I might have been asked to manage artists that I wasn’t a fan of.

Both the artists I manage I’m a fan of, which I think is the number one thing. All three of us are willing to take risks, stand out from the crowd and do something differently. It’s not about being a rebel for being a rebel’s sake, it’s about questioning things.

now, the good news is that there are no rules anymore, and people who have been in the industry for 20 years arguably have the same amount of knowledge that you do, because everything from 20 years ago is no longer relevant.’ I think that, little by little, we just have to keep picking that apart.

There is a big debate going on at the moment about streaming and how we review that and I think there is definitely a conversation to be had. It needs to be strategic and well thought out, but this time that we’re in is certainly showing that it’s not sustainable for the music industry to have double the amount of revenue in live music as there is in recorded music. It doesn’t really make much sense.

When you say ‘question things’, what do you mean?

If we are being asked to do something and someone says, ‘You can’t turn this down,’ it’s like… ‘Okay, but can we?’ If it’s not something that really fits with what we’re doing, and it doesn’t feel genuine, and the artist is not going to connect with it, that comes across. We don’t want to be in the habit of just filling space with content that people don’t really feel connected to.

What would you like to see from the streaming debate — do you have any ideas as to how you would like the current system and royalty rates to change?

I don’t — my view is just that it needs looking at, especially for songwriters. I’ve got two artists who are writers as well as performers and that situation definitely needs some review. I don’t hold the philosophy that streaming is killing the industry, I think that there are some huge benefits to it, I’ve got some great relationships with some of the streaming platforms and it’s a real point of discovery.

But if we think about the sustainability of the industry as a whole and the ability for artists to make even a modest living from music, there are lots of people who can’t do that right now, and that needs to be looked at.

How do you see the management and artist development process evolving?

I remember going to a Music Managers Forum event pretty early on in my career — it was probably four or five years ago — and one of the speakers said, ‘If anyone is starting out in management

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Angaleena Presley

I do think that we will see a different kind of online live experience imminently. It felt to me that for the first couple of weeks of lockdown, there was a little bit of panic about what do we do and how long is this going to last, everyone was online trying to create content or go live.

The set ups and microphones were sketchy, there was a time lag, the internet didn’t work properly, the sound was not good, and there have been two schools of thought since then. One is that there are artists who want to keep doing that regularly, and then there is the stance that we’ve taken, which is that we are going to take a step back — we don’t really want to put content out there that is challenged with technology and sound. But there is going to be a block of time between now and when we can go back out on the road to play to full rooms of people, where maybe we could get into a studio and produce something that is ticketed but has the sound and vision of a really good fan experience.

What is your book about?

It’s going to be called From Goldman to the Grammys and it’s about the experience that I’ve had. It will include hopefully helpful and useful information about what I did at different points to transition, and some anecdotal stories of the ups and downs of what’s happened along the way.

While touring is down, are you exploring any other opportunities for your artists to make income this year?

It’s really tough, there is no denying that, and we essentially have the rest of this year in this situation and the majority of our touring as planned has gone away.

I’m in two slightly different situations with Angaleena and Yola, but I do feel that with both artists, we’re in the best possible point in cycle with both of them. Angaleena took last year off because she had a baby last January, so has effectively been on maternity leave and has just started working on a new project. So we now have the benefit of time to work out what we want to do with that and how we pitch it.

Yola was due to go back in the studio around this time and we should have had an album recorded by now, but we haven’t been able to have people in a studio setting. We are going to have plenty of time to get that done though, and still work towards the rough original timeline that we had.

I’ve been saying for about two years that I’m writing a book and I’ve actually now started it, so this time has given me an opportunity to be creative. We are not going to have huge costs because none of us can travel anywhere, and that is a huge outgoing. So I don’t think it’s about what revenue we can bring in for this year, it’s about battening down the hatches and using the time for creative endeavours, which then puts us in the best possible position when everything starts coming back again.

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When everything returns to normality, what are your ambitions for Yola and Angaleena?

Depending on when things start to lift, we will have new music from both of them and, as I said earlier, Angaleena is working on a multi-faceted project which will run alongside an album release.

So we will be back out on the road and promoting those projects in 2021.

When it comes to what I want for both of them, I think it’s what I want for all three of us really which is managing a successful career on our own terms, so we don’t feel like we have to compromise on either the creative side, or philosophically when it comes to how we want to run our businesses or our lives. When you work in music, your life and your business is so intertwined and it’s very difficult to separate the two. Also to be able to keep creating.

They are both artists who have so much more in them, they are lifetime artists, and that’s what we’re building — careers rather than moments.

What are your personal professional ambitions beyond that?

Do you have any desire to build out a bigger management company and team?

It’s interesting because before Grammy week, I hadn’t had any conversations about going in with any other organisations. Then, when I was in LA, three different conversations were started. It’s definitely something that I do think about, but I’m not pursuing at the moment. The timing of what has happened in the last couple of months probably doesn’t lend itself to that, and this time is proving the benefit of being nimble, entrepreneurial and the master of your own universe somewhat.

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THE SPOTIFY PAYOUT PILE-ON IS MISGUIDED Humble Angel Records founder Kieron Donoghue says streaming services deserve to have fewer guns pointed their way over payouts to the artist community...

“What artists are paid by streaming services for their music, it’s disgusting.” This is a quote from singer/songwriter Nadine Shah in a recent interview – and she isn’t alone. Take a quick look on Twitter at the #BrokenRecord or #FixStreaming hashtags and you will see plenty of artists, labels, managers and so forth piling on Spotify and other streaming services, accusing them of low payouts, not giving artists a living wage and so on.

And while I understand their protestations, streaming platforms are not the ones at fault; this is what really frustrates me about the music industry currently.

Instead, artists must look closely at their record label contracts – as that’s where the issue lies in most cases. Major labels, especially, are still (in 2020!) giving artists contracts where the label takes 80% to 90% of earnings. This is the biggest issue at hand and needs addressing.

While the #BrokenRecord campaigners do acknowledge this to some extent, it’s buried beneath all of the vitriol and misguided anger towards streaming services which, of course, grabs all of the headlines and soundbites.

A record label taking 90% of earnings for a song in 2020 is perhaps a debate for another day (short version: it’s wrong, and that’s a fact).

My main point, however, is that artists and rightsholders really need to research, and take the time to understand, their contracts and the economics of the modern music industry instead of just jumping on the anti-Spotify bandwagon. I’d really like to see some pushback and questioning of the labels that are still taking such large percentages of revenue from artists.

What about the legacy artists who signed deals before streaming existed and are now tied into bad contracts for life? Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s when music could only be purchased on a physical product, these kind of deals arguably made sense because there were huge production and distribution costs for vinyl and CDs etc.

But in 2020, thanks to streaming, that barrier 90

“Streaming platforms are not the ones at fault; this is what really frustrates me about the industry.”

to entry has been removed; modern deals should reflect that fact. Moreover, some older contracts should be renegotiated to reflect the completely different landscape we are in now.

I also worry that artists have a very short memory. It was a mere 20 years ago when a CD cost £12 to £15 for 10 tracks, of which three or four, if you were lucky, were any good. Please don’t tell me that was good for music fans; it was terrible. Then Napster (and other pirate music services) came along and completely decimated the music industry. The record business lost billions of dollars in value over those dark years and thousands of good, hard working people lost their jobs and livelihoods. It was incredibly hard, if not impossible, as an independent artist to make a living and generate fans of your music.

We’re now not only back to growth but we’re booming – and there has never been as much investment or opportunity for artists in recorded music as there is now. Never in history has the barrier to entry been lower than it is today.

An artist can get their music on every streaming platform in the world for a few dollars

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The Daydream Club

or even for free; that is staggering, whichever way you look at it.

There are lots of case studies of artists who have made a success entirely due to streaming platforms. For example, The Daydream Club from North East England have no record label, no team and yet so far have amassed over 100 million streams on Spotify alone. They now make a full time living from their recorded music income and have the luxury of only touring and playing live when they want to – not because they have to. Without streaming platforms it’s hard to envisage acts like this having the same level of success.

During the recent Black Lives Matter protests and subsequent Blackout Tuesday movement, we saw record companies ban the term “urban”, as well as promising to represent black culture better in their workplaces and other positive initiatives. This all happened within the space of a week or two and is a testament to how the industry can pull together and move quickly when motivated. Wouldn’t it be incredible if we saw a major label stand up and say they will offer better and fairer contracts to their artists to reflect the streaming economy? I guarantee the first one to do it will win the hearts and minds of artists everywhere.

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Picture: Caroline Workman

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INTERVIEW

‘WE HAVE TO UNDERSTAND AS MUCH ABOUT BRANDS WE WORK WITH AS WE DO OUR OWN ARTISTS’ Bob Workman’s job is not just to make connections between artists and brands, but help ensure that something more than the sum of those parts is created in the process...

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ou work at Warner. In brand partnerships. You notice that Ed Sheeran has a tattoo of a Heinz tomato ketchup bottle on his arm. These are dots that don’t take much joining.

The tricky part might be persuading Sheeran – an artist that doesn’t chase (or need) many brand deals. Oh, hang on, he’s actually been in touch saying, very specifically, that he would like to like to do a TV advert for Heinz tomato ketchup.

Great! Now all that’s needed is a concept. Nope, wait, Ed’s got one. In fact he’s send over a pretty detailed outline based on something that actually happened to him when he dared to ask for his favourite tommy sauce in a rather posh restaurant.

So, let’s turn that concept into… no, okay, sure, just record Ed reading out his idea pretty much verbatim and shoot a mini-film that plays out the story as he tells it.

Done! A global campaign that Sheeran himself, via Instagram, described as “pretty much what I was aiming for in life” and “> than a stadium tour”, plus a new range of Edchup on the shelves and a very limited run of Heinz bottles in the style of his tattoo – one of which is now in the V&A museum.

To borrow from another rather successful TV spot: ‘If Carlsberg did brand partnerships…’

Bob Workman, SVP Music Partnerships at Warner UK is well aware that things don’t always align quite so perfectly, but the story does illustrate a credo that he holds dear: partnerships work best when there is some truth to them, and when something inherently interesting/fun/funny is created as a result.

Workman has worked in the sector for 12 years, arriving at Warner via the divestment of Parlophone when EMI was acquired

by Universal in 2011.

In that time, the importance, acceptance and definition of music/brand partnerships has changed entirely – and Workman’s team has had to grow and evolve to reflect that, becoming part of the answer to the very modern and very persistent question of ‘What does a record company actually do?’ in the process.

Well, 12 years ago, social media was only just getting going, I mean in meaningful numbers. So that’s undoubtedly the major revolution, the emergence of artists as channels, if you like, or artists having channels, having a platform through which to communicate and express themselves.

The emergence of social has seen the establishment of channels that, on invitation, brands can be part of, and benefit from stepping inside that slipstream of passionate engagement that exists between a music fan and their favourite artists.

Not only that, but it’s given marketing and communication a dynamism and an immediacy that wasn’t there before. That kind of real time engagement has been a dramatic revolution in the relationship between brands and music and brands and artists.

Has there also been a shift in how artists view brands, in terms of their willingness to work with them, and in terms of how important they can be to them?

Yeah, there’s been a substantial shift, driven probably initially out of the US, 10-15 years ago, when there was a perception that hip-hop and R&B artists were more open to working with brands as it allowed them to do bigger and better things than they would otherwise.

And that’s, I suppose, the same motivation that exists today, albeit, you know, lifestyle and culture that can exist around brands is now far more developed and sophisticated than it was. In fact, we recognise a good number of brands as ‘culture brands’, brands that have a hand in creating culture at some level, which means it’s a more appropriate environment for artists to operate in.

And then I guess there’s the emergence of collaboration culture.

And by that I mean creative collaborations of all kinds. That has been a massive theme of the last couple of years, and continues to be; the idea that, as an artist, you can collaborate not just with other artists, songwriters and producers, but with a fashion brand, a technology brand or what have you, is still a relatively new phenomenon.

And, linking it all up, those collaborations are enabled and enhanced by the ability to communicate and tell stories on social

“That’s undoubtedly the major revolution, the emergence of artists as channels.”

What have been the main areas of change within the brand partnership sector during your time?

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media platforms, because of the prevalence and relatively low cost, and the ability to distribute those stories and those films in a way that wasn’t previously possible.

want to work with. And sometimes those things can work really well. But I do think the best work is arrived at when two parties originate something together.

On the other side, has there also been a shift in what brands want and expect from artists – and, indeed, for their money?

Has that got more complex?

It has got more complex, but rightly so. Certainly we feel a much, much bigger duty of care to the partners that we work with.

If I was to try and put it in a nutshell, I’d say it’s our firm belief that the most powerful collaborations tend to be built by connecting artists’ insights with brand narratives. We have to understand as much about a brand that we want to work with as we do about our own artists. It’s essentially our job to ensure that a connection between those two entities occurs and that we power it up.

Also, in terms of how things have changed, when you started in this particular sector, CD sales were still strong. So, with that in mind, how much bigger is the sector, both in terms of its actual size, but also in terms of its relevance and importance to artists, managers and labels?

Oh it’s exponentially bigger. Because yes, there’s a greater accessibility to artists and greater enthusiasm amongst fans for their favourite artist to be working with a brand. In fact, there’s a whole generation of artists who want to be seen to be working with the right partners, no question.

The reality of working within the right type of collaboration is that it can create a story, it can create original content, it can create huge added value for the fan experience, that the artist wouldn’t otherwise be able to deliver.

And of course some of that is related to investment – investment in creating films and creating events and creating products. And some of that is about creating a greater digital footprint by distributing that content and making more noise.

Sometimes artists are attracted to certain relationships because of the positional advantages that they can bring. There’s all sorts of reasons that artists are potentially motivated to work with brands.

And so yes, in terms of scale, it’s definitely grown exponentially and is still growing.

“It’s essentially our job to ensure a connection occurs and that we power it up.”

What are the big changes in terms of actual execution, is it more about activities and real events rather than sponsorship and name association?

That’s true. There are far more cases of genuine collaboration going on, and that is about an artist leaning into a process, and to a relationship with a brand, whereby something original is created between those two parties. I believe that’s where the best work happens.

Listen, there’s still plenty of cases of out-and-out endorsements, if you like, where brands come to us with a pre-determined creative, a pre-determined strategy and a real idea of who they 94

INTERVIEW

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How early might you and your team get involved in an artist’s career at Warner and what sort of role can brands play in helping kickstart careers?

It’s become increasingly possible to get early momentum, and in fact an increasingly rich vein of emerging artist opportunities are available now.

I think that’s partly because there are a lot of dynamic emerging artists that explode very quickly. That creates a wave that certain brands want to ride.

And, increasingly, there are savvy brands out there that have good cultural antenna and who want to be attached to artists as they emerge, as people discover them and as that circle of discovery grows.

Also, because there’s far more data and analytics at our disposal, at our fingertips, it’s possible for brands to have measurable reasons why working with a younger or newer artist makes sense for them. Not least because the engagement level as a percentage of their audience is far higher than it is potentially with bigger, more established artists; so there’s a dynamism and an excitement and a sort of zeitgeist reason for artists to be working in the brand space quite early on.

What is the balance in your day-to-day working life between brands looking for artists and artists looking for brands?

It’s both, it really is. We’ve shifted quite substantially over the last two years from a business that was largely talent first, actively looking for opportunities for a roster of talent. And the shift we’ve made is putting creativity on an equal footing.

We will obviously still do talent deals, we still represent our talent and look for opportunities, but it’s now always through a creative lens.

The result of that is that we’ve set up a creative arm of our business, so we are proactively going to market with campaign ideas built around our artists. And we’ve found that to be a really successful way to open doors and get interest from brands that, maybe, if you just presented your roster to them, they wouldn’t be so willing to engage. It’s amazing how substantial the appetite for ideas is out there.

So, the evolution of your department means there are skill-sets and job roles within Warner that wouldn’t have been inside the building previously?

Correct. These skills and this approach wasn’t within our setup going back only a few years. Essentially we were largely brokering talent deals with brands and agencies. We were negotiating, facilitating, and, yes, informing those campaigns, with what we knew of our artists, what we knew to be right, and using our taste to ensure that those campaigns went well.

But it wasn’t enough, for us, we felt, or for the market, and so we very much up-skilled.

And we brought in top talent from the world of advertising and creative agencies, so that we can meaningfully have a conversation about campaigns, with some authority. And it also means getting in the conversation earlier.

Rather than being the talent solution that comes once everyone’s decided what they want to do, and the creative and the campaign ideas are already in place, we’re there at the ideation stage now, which means we can do better work for our artists and the brands they collaborate with.

And it is our belief that what’s right for our artists is invariably what’s right for their fans, and therefore, by association the brand, and it doesn’t always work when things happen the other way.

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Starring Ed Sheeran, written

by Ed Sheeran, based on a concept by Ed Sheeran...

How does your role work operationally in terms of your relationships with the labels and with managers? With a new artist, do you sit down, have a meeting work out what their brand is what they might be suited to. Similarly, if an established artist is coming back into cycle do you get a long heads up on that and start talking through opportunities?

It’s a combination of all of those things. We have developed an active philosophy and a way of working with new talent where we’re in the business of helping them build their brand.

Establishing a relationship with the artist and the manager from the outset is critical, because we thrive off what we know about the artists and the insights that we gain from getting to know them, their passion, their personality, as well as obviously their music and their creativity.

But by having close proximity to all of that, that is the fuel for the conversations that we have with brands, and the ideas that we can generate. Building an artist brand is critical, and not all of that makes money.

Some of that is work that we do where, you know, no one’s really making money, but we are absolutely generating value, in terms of establishing the profile and the personality of the artist in the public domain and helping contribute to their growth, and, obviously, where possible, eventually, moving the dial for recorded music.

Are there any deals you can highlight that show how you work these days - and what the results can be?

Sure. There are various projects that I’m proud of, and pleased that we were involved with, but I would definitely highlight, Levi’s Music Project, because it’s very special for us to be trusted to run a pan-European platform, a proposition that is deeply rooted in the 96

mission of Levi’s, and the purpose of Levi’s in relation to music, which is about them being close to culture.

In the case of Levi’s Music Project itself, it’s about music education, fundamentally; it’s about bringing opportunity to cities and neighbourhoods around Europe, where the access to learning and development in music and performance is either absent or not easily available – that’s what Levi’s Music Project does. We effectively run their campaign strategy around that.

On the ground, we help put in the right mechanics and the right sort of activities and the right people in order to deliver access for learning and development. And then, it’s about how to capture the stories of that in action, and be able to communicate about Levi’s Music Project to the degree that we not only entertain people, but we also educate and inform them at some level.

It’s absolutely not about selling jeans. It’s a positional piece for Levi’s, one that they feel is fundamental to their purpose as a brand. We’ve been working on that for two years now, it’s ongoing, it currently runs across five markets, soon to be six, or even seven.

We’re super proud of that work.

Can you tell us about the Ed/Heinz partnership?

Whilst it’s clearly not indicative of all of the work we do, because it’s a bit of a one-off in many ways, it’s still a relationship that we’re deeply, deeply proud of, partly because of the way it emerged, from a truth, from an absolute reality, of Ed’s passion for red sauce.

I mean we’re talking about an artist who has the label from a Heinz tomato ketchup bottle tattooed on his on the inside of his left arm. That is commitment! There are not many of our partnerships that involve talent putting ink to skin. And also, because it’s Ed, who doesn’t particularly indulge regularly in working with brands.

It was Heinz’s 150-year anniversary, which made it a special

INTERVIEW

One of three limited edition bottle designs by Kojey Radical as part of a brand partnership with 1800 Tequilla

moment for them. But then, fundamentally, what this partnership was all about was Ed having an idea for a TV commercial that he fancied making for Heinz. It was partially based on a true story, something that actually happened to Ed; he thought it would be fun to tell that story.

So it was literally Ed reaching out, going, ‘How do you fancy making a TV commercial with me?’ And then Heinz reacting in a brilliant way to that.

What followed was a great creative campaign, with an amazing artist, and an incredible creative agency called David, out of Miami, who did the right thing and didn’t try and take over, but very much helped Ed make the best of his idea.

And then ultimately Heinz themselves, having the humility and the self-awareness to take a step back and allow Ed to be the channel, essentially, and make it a fan-first campaign. There was no press release for this campaign, and that in and of itself tells you everything you need to know about the tone and nature of the relationship.

So yeah, it’s probably a benchmark for me in terms of an artist partnership and a true creative collaboration. Also – and this is not me blowing our trumpet, because this is really Heinz and their agency network – it was brilliant use of IP, I mean, just brilliant. We made tattoo bottles, based on Ed’s arm, which were eventually auctioned at Christies and one of them is now in the V&A. So, you know, when you talk about creating culture, it’s sort of all there really.

If I’m a brand and I want to work with Stormzy, say, why would I approach you and not management?

The reality is that if you’re a brand wanting to work with Stormzy, you can absolutely go to management, and his management are a highly qualified, brilliant group of people who are really capable of fielding those kinds of enquiries.

Knowing that means we have to work harder to come up with ideas and add value to those conversations, if we want to work with one of the most interesting and potent cultural figures of our time.

So, we don’t rest on our laurels at all, when it comes to an artist; we have to lean in, demonstrate value, bring ideas to the table, show that we’ve got cultural awareness and passion – and that we understand how to find that sweet spot between a particular brand and Stormzy’s story.

You know, he’s a very purpose-driven artist, so there are lots of approaches for an artist like Stormzy that get turned down because, fundamentally, they’ve not come at it with enough purpose and meaning, or cultural importance, to make it the right thing for him. I imagine Stormzy will probably turn more things down than he says yes to, because he wants to do the right thing.

We’re very aware of that, and that is about us having a very close working relationship with him and his team, and using the artist insights and the privileged access that we have to those insights to form the basis of an idea.

On the occasions when a brand comes to us with an idea, again, we use what we know and our experience and our relationship with the artist team to either say, Sorry, we can’t do this, or to shape and inform an idea to make sure it does work – or maybe tear it up and suggest something completely different.

But yes, the reality is, as I say, if you wanted to work with Stormzy , you could go either directly to the artist, or to us. What I can promise is if someone comes to us, we will bring to the table all of our sills in order to arrive at the right propositions.

You know, it’s by investing in creatives, in people who really understand culture and influence, people who really understand how to make the most out of creating content campaigns, how to maximise the levels of reach and engagement around the content of the campaigns that we do, that we’ve increasingly put ourselves in a position where we are, I believe, a really, really good destination for doing great work. And I am convinced that we have a proposition that significantly augments what most management teams can offer.

That said, it’s a highly collaborative environment that we work in; we’re not territorial. Maybe we were more so a few years back, but I would say we’re now much more confident in what we do, and we believe we have a right to operate, because we’re offering substantial value.

“There are savvy brands out there who want to be attached to artists as they emerge.”

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Every Picture Tells A Story

Date: September 2018 Location: Black Park Country Park, Buckinghamshire This is taken from my role as a featured extra in the celebration scene in Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker. This is Rey’s victorious return, hence the jubilation on my face. Not the most flattering expression, but it’s my acting skills at their best! And who wouldn’t be this excited about the Resistance winning the war against the Dark Side?

How did it happen? Through a mutual friend I met Anthony Daniels, who plays C3PO and has now become a good friend of mine. He said, ‘Do you want to spend some time on set?’ I jumped at the chance and spent 21 days filming.

Prior to that, I got into being an extra through a director friend.

I have done five movies now, all filmed in London: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald; Justice League, where I’m in a scene with Wonder Woman (played by Gal Gadot); Holmes & Watson with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly; Star Wars; and a movie which is hopefully coming out later this year, Black Widow, with Scarlett Johansson. I’m in an incredible scene in that film and it’s my first 98

‘proper’ acting role, providing they don’t cut it at the last minute.

You never know about that: Lin Manuel Miranda recorded a great scene for Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, but it got cut. (Though if you look up his Twitter profile right now you’ll see a snapshot of it, my face included!)

I don’t pretend to be a front line actor, but I enjoy the experience and I love film. Part of this, as you’d expect, is about posterity, something to show my kids and their kids – I even managed to get my daughter in a scene as one of the school pupils being taught by Jude Law in Fantastic Beasts.

Star Wars has meant a great deal to me throughout my life; when I was younger I had all of the toys. In fact, music and Star Wars were pretty much my childhood, so with my day job combined with this, I feel like I’ve had a pretty good ride so far. That said, music always comes first!

Roberto Neri is EVP of Downtown Music Publishing UK, and the Head of European Business Development for its parent company, Downtown Music Holdings. In addition, he’s Chair of the MPA Board and a Board Director at PRS for Music and PPL PRS Ltd.

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