Music Business UK Q3 2019 (Preview Issue)

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Q3 2019

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EDITOR’S LETTER It was always bound to trigger some excitable consumer media headlines: the latest stats from the RIAA in the United States suggest that sales (technically, shipments) of vinyl – on a value basis – are on course to overtake those of the CD format within the next year or two.

According to the data, vinyl generated $224.1m in the first half of 2019, with CD only marginally ahead on $247.9m. Cue much nostalgic navelgazing, and the odd bit of yah-boo-sucks in the direction of the music business itself. (You know the kind of nonsense: ‘The format they tried to kill is outliving them all!’ Zzzzzzz.)

Digging a little further into the RIAA data shines a light on an arguably more interesting trend. Those $224.1m sales were created, says the trade body, by shipments of 8.6m pieces of vinyl – that’s an average per-unit retail price of $26.06. In turn, that average per-unit vinyl price was up, according to my calculator, by 6.3% on the $24.52 equivalent seen in the first half of 2018.

This pattern isn’t only happening in the vinyl realm – the CD is seeing a small uplift too. The RIAA stats show that 18.6m CDs were shipped in the first half of 2019, generating $247.9m in revenue – an average per-unit price of $13.33.

That was itself up slightly on the equivalent average in H1 2018 of $13.22.

These figures – especially that material rise in average per-unit vinyl spend – arrives against a backdrop of streaming’s increasing global domination of the record business. Streaming services like Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music accounted for 80% of all US industry retail revenues in the six months to end of June, according to the RIAA – mirroring the kind of stranglehold that the format first secured in the Nordics a few years ago.

And yet, in stark contrast to the world of vinyl, the average price paid for streaming subscriptions, per-user, continues to fall.

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Tim Ingham

“UK superfans spend £180m annually on vinyl and CD. That’s 13.5% of the industry’s total revenues.”

Spotify’s premium ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) famously tumbled by 30% on an annual basis between 2015 and 2018. In other words, the average Spotify subscriber, globally, is now paying around $27 less every 12 months than they were three years ago.

This downward trend has, of course, been brought about by Spotify (and other services) spreading into economically challenged markets around the world, as well as aggressive promotion and bundle deals, including Spotify’s own Family Plan and student discounts.

Yet, with the RIAA’s vinyl numbers in mind, I can’t help but be drawn back to one of the most compelling statistics to come out of the UK recorded music market in recent years.

According to the Entertainment Retailers Association, around 157,000 UK citizens continue to spend £400 or more on vinyl every year; another 292,000 spend the same figure on CDs. If, for the sake of argument, we propose that these are two entirely separate sets of people (which of course, in many cases, they won’t be), then that tots up to 449,000 humans – or about 0.7% of the UK population.

Across those two formats, estimates ERA, these people spend £180m annually. Which, according to ERA’s most recent stats (for 2018), equates to 13.5% of the domestic market’s total yearly spend (£1.33bn). Let me just run that by you again: 0.7% of the UK’s population contributes comfortably more than a tenth of the total spend on music out there, including streaming.

The point here is not to warn the industry against losing these super-fans forever by obsessing over the blockbuster numbers of global streaming – although that is an obvious danger. It is merely to remind you that hundreds of thousands of UK consumers still want to spend many multiples of £9.99-per-month on music. A smart industry would keep inventing new ways to help them do just that.

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WELCOME

In this issue...

12

Ted Cockle

26

Phil Christie

32

Merck Mercuriadis

36

Radha Medar

42

Sulinna Ong

48

Jon Barlow

58

Andy Musgrave

64

Mark Mitchell

68

Hannah Neaves

74

Mr Eazi

84

Toby Andrews

90

Steve Lewis

110

Simon King

8

Virgin EMI

Warner Bros

Hipgnosis Songs Fund

Metallic Inc

Spotify

3Beat

Supernature

Parlophone

Tap Management

Artist & Entrepreneur

Astralwerks

Various

Covert Talent

Contributors DAVE ROBERTS

Dave Roberts is the Associate Publisher of Music Business Worldwide and Music Business UK. Before joining MBW in 2017, Roberts was the publisher of Music Week from 2011, where he led its transformation. In this issue, Dave interviews the likes of Hipgnosis’ Merck Mercuriadis, 3Beat’s Jon Barlow and Parlophone’s Mark Mitchell.

PAT CARR

MURRAY STASSEN

Pat Carr is the founder of independent artist services company Remote Control.

She was previously Senior Vice President of Marketing at BMG UK, and a key figure at Infectious, the independent label that signed and broke the Mercurywinning alt-J. She began her music biz career at Simon Fuller’s 19 Entertainment in the mid-eighties.

Murray Stassen is the Deputy Editor of Music Business Worldwide and Music Business UK. Stassen is a former Deputy Editor of UK trade paper Music Week.

He has also written for the likes of VICE Media, The Line Of Best Fit and Long Live Vinyl. In this issue, he interviews the likes of Spotify’s Sulinna Ong, Mr Eazi, and Astralwerks’ Toby Andrews.

BEN WARDLE

RHIAN JONES

PETER ROBINSON

Ben Wardle is a writer and a lecturer in music business at the University of Gloucestershire. In a previous life, Wardle was an A&R at the likes of Warner, RCA and V2 – working with artists including Sleeper, Lethal Bizzle, Stephen Duffy, Aimee Mann, Ride and many more. He has been hired by Damien Hirst – and fired by Joe Strummer.

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 tackles the expectations placed on artists in an Instagrammable world, and interviews Tap’s Hannah Neaves.

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.

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LEAD FEATURE

TED TALKS

He runs the UK’s biggest record label, and works with the year’s biggest British breakthrough star. His singular objective: to stay No.1. But you shouldn’t mistake Ted Cockle for a careerist major label head because, as he’s happy to explain, his life in music began simply by wanting to find the most happening party...

T

ed Cockle was an ‘80s teenager, a home counties kid, and a huge music fan.

Such a combination may conjure a well-worn showreel in your internal idiot-box – that of the insular small town boy, studiously piping The Queen Is Dead into his ears in bedroomdwelling solitude. The truth, in this case, is the polar opposite.

From a young age, Cockle liked going out. Out out. His thirst for spaces where culture meets noise was forged in his hometown of Aylesbury (more accurately, close-by Wendover), where, on the cusp of his teens, his head was turned by the world of breakdancing. It might seem anomalous in hindsight, but there was a definite period in British culture where, for a few years in the mid-eighties, ‘B-Boys’ would descend on their local provinces – resplendent in day-glo skiwear, cranking up prototypical hiphop records on ghetto blasters, perhaps even showing off a spot of body-popping.

Speaking to Cockle at his office today – amid his sixth year as President of the UK’s No.1 record label, Virgin EMI – it’s not always easy to visualise his role in Buckinghamshire’s take on the street culture of Brooklyn and the Bronx. But it happened, and he remembers it fondly.

“When I was about 11, in the early eighties, life was all about breakdancing, watching films like Wild Style and Beat Street; it was about dancing, amazing clothes, sportswear – and all the music associated with that,” he says.

From there, Cockle’s love of getting out the house – and closer to the nearest booming speaker – evolved throughout his teenage years just as you might expect.

“There was nothing remotely cerebral to my listening to music,” he admits. “It was about being in places where people dressed up, where people were dancing, and where people were having fun and getting messy.”

This carefree, follow-his-nose relationship with music led 13

Island life: Celebrating the success of Florence + The Machine's debut album, released ten years ago, with ex-label buddies Ben Mortimer, Darcus Beese and Tom March

Cockle to plenty of interesting places, not least running the Reaction Club at the Wellhead Arms in Wendover which, for a brief moment in the early nineties, became something of a hotspot in a fast-evolving house scene.

Jeff Barrett, glorious indie hellraiser and legendary founder of Heavenly Records, held his 29th birthday at the venue, while the likes of Primal Scream, Paul Oakenfold and Andrew Weatherall all turned in DJ sets under Cockle’s watch.

Cockle and Barrett formed a friendship, with the latter welcoming the former at a run of early Heavenly Social club nights at the Albany in Great Portland Street in 1994, where Cockle brushed shoulders with the likes of Paul Weller, Oasis (“Liam wouldn’t go downstairs in case he got his trainers dirty”), Tricky, Terry Hall and the Dust Brothers – later renamed as the Chemical Brothers.

How did Cockle get from this nineties social circle (developed around people and places who said yes to “football, drugs and house music”) to his Presidential status today – on the 7th floor of Universal Music UK’s super-sharp Kings Cross HQ? We’ll let him 14

explain in a bit; fair to say, it wasn’t meticulously planned.

What is better documented is the impressive professional run Cockle’s been on ever since he broke into the industry. His first music biz gig was a central sales role at Sony Music, before he was hired by Rob Stringer in marketing at Epic Records UK, where he played a key role in breaking Macy Gray and her smash hit I Try in 1999.

In 2005, Cockle was poached by Universal Music to join Island Records in London, which he would run during a purple patch for the label alongside Darcus Beese, taking the likes of Amy Winehouse, Mumford & Sons, Jessie J and Keane to a million-plus sales each. Cockle was then named President of Virgin EMI in 2013, following UMG’s £1.2bn acquisition of EMI Music (and its then-Virgin Records subsidiary).

At Virgin today, Cockle and his team work with international megastars including Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Shawn Mendes and Justin Bieber, as well as UK-signed successes like Bastille, Emeli Sandé, Hardy Caprio and Lewis Capaldi. The latter, inarguably the biggest breakthrough British artist of the year, has now seen

LEAD FEATURE

his debut LP, Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent, sell over a million equivalent units worldwide; Capaldi’s smash single, Someone You Loved, has done over six million.

Here, Cockle explains why he believes Virgin EMI offers more than your typical UK major record company, and expounds his argument on what a label can bring to an artist’s career in 2019. But not before he informs us how a breakdancing kid from Wendover climbed to the top of the British record industry, without an ambitious bone in his body...

In the early nineties, you became attached to the British ‘big beat’ scene at the Heavenly Social and other venues. Around the same time you were at University in Bristol, where you put on club nights that helped forge more industry relationships.

How did you get from there to major label land?

I started in telesales at Sony. My mum saw an advert in the paper, and I applied for it. And then, how things really started happening for me was that I went to a gig at the St Moritz Club on Wardour Street, where I bumped into [then-Epic Records UK boss] Rob Stringer and we got on. He was talking about records, I was buying the same records; he was talking about club nights, I was going to those club nights; he was talking about DJs and I knew those DJs, socially, just through going out.

Rob ended up saying, ‘You should come and see me.’ So I went and had a chat with him and thankfully an opening turned up at Epic in marketing. That was ‘98 or thereabouts.

They were having a bit of a moment at that time: George Michael, B*Witched and the Manic Street Preachers had all done a million domestically.

What was Epic Records and Sony like back then? And what was Rob like as a boss?

Listen, you can never fault Rob. There’s a balance and there’s an energy there; I think the main learning [for me] from him is you just felt a part of a team. And when he moved [to the US], people were happy for him and wanted him to do well.

What was your career trajectory at Epic?

I was there for a few months and then somebody left, so I took over on the product/artist side. And the first thing I did was look after Macy Gray. America hadn’t connected with her, because she had a bit of a hybrid sound. And me and her just got on, partly because she liked a night out; she liked a night out more than anything! We did one song, Do Something, and then we did I Try and it became enormous. From there we sold 1.6 million albums. Then you’d get other international acts, like Jennifer Lopez and Shakira turn up, and they’re like, ‘Oh, he's alright, he did Macy's first album.’

You get good fortune in this business or you don’t, and I was lucky enough to get some at Epic. Then Rob became the [Sony Music UK] Chairman and Nick Raphael came in is as the [Epic] MD. Thankfully, I got on just as great with Nick who, as you will obviously be aware, is a high grade lunatic.

What was that change in personnel like?

Nick was very different to Rob. 50% of the time I still disagree with Nick to this day. But even when he’s wrong, what he prompts you to think about and discuss is always of value, and I love him.

Nick’s got the biggest heart out there for a very competitive animal. He's happy for other people to be successful; he never tries to stop anybody being successful.

How long did that run at Sony last for you?

I was there for 10 years. [Sony] then merged with BMG, who were down in Putney. I liked the West End and Putney wasn't quite where I wanted to be.

Then a combination of Lucian [Grainge] and Mr [Nick] Gatfield approached me to come over here [Universal]. I joined Island as General Manager.

Again, it was one of those good fortune things; there was an artist that nobody really knew what to do with, Mika, and I had a little go with one song, Grace Kelly. I pulled Iain Watt in as manager – he’s a pal of mine who had been head of press at Epic. And then all of a sudden we did 1.4 million on [Mika’s] project. We also had Sugababes, McFly, Busted, etc. And then Amy exploded [with second album, Back To Black].

Do you remember how and when Amy Winehouse first came across your radar? And when you first heard the records that would make her a star?

Yeah, Raye [Cosbert, live agent] is an old friend of mine, and he’d invited me to come and see her early. So I’d been to shows through the [first album] Frank days, just as a punter.

And then, you just remember these demos arriving. But the thing is, nobody knows. I'm really fed up with hearing people go, ‘I just knew [it was a hit], as soon as I heard it.’

As a UK MD – and I’m going to sound cocky, but I mean exactly the opposite – I’ve been around as many things that have gone to a million [sales] as anyone. That’s just factual. And I’m telling you, on every one of those projects, nobody ‘knew’. I certainly didn’t fucking know.

You have a hunch, you have a feeling, but you don’t know. And after Frank, it was like, that was quite a lot of money spent, and it did alright, but only alright. And then these [Back To Black] demos are coming in and, like I say, there was just this little feeling. And that’s as much as you ever get.

When that happens, when there’s that first sign of growing confidence, what you do is, you make a few more calls; when somebody says no, you make them say no three or four times before you drop it.

You don’t say, ‘Are you sure? Because I think this is going to do a million.’ You say, ‘Listen; I don't know, but I saw the gig the other week, and I've heard Love is a Losing Game… so are you sure you’re sure?’

And then we were there [Back To Black went on to sell over 12 million units worldwide].

And then Gatfield went and Darcus and I took over Island.

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Was Nick not there for Back To Black?

He was there at the start, but then it turned into a two and a half year record, and he wasn’t there by the end. And then, you know, we had that run: Mika did a million, Florence did a million, Jessie J did a million, Mumford did a million, Keane did a million.

Many labels have particular highs, but – like Polydor had for a period with Lucian and David – we then had a great run with multiple successes; we had quite an amazing run all within our own four walls.

Why did your partnership with Darcus work so well?

Our MO was actually diametrically opposed; we are complete opposites. If an email came in, there would never be any confusion about who answered it. Basically, I answered 90% of them and Darcus may or may not have answered the rest [laughs]!

And, once again, it’s good fortune. [Darcus] didn't like to do any of the shit that I did. And he had an energy and a different thing that I didn’t have. It was a thrown together partnership that just worked.

What, roughly speaking, was the line of demarcation between you?

I mean, I do a lot of strategic, administrative, organizational stuff, and I'm 100% fine with that. And Darcus likes to be more vocal, visual, front-and-centre. He’s that person who injects energy into the room, and I bring the detail of the plan to the project.

It was easy, it wasn’t something that needed to be worked out between us, or discussed in any way; it existed already. But I suppose if you wanted to boil it down, when an artist or a manager walked into the room, it would be: ‘Oh, okay – there’s the dude who brings the vibes, and there’s the bloke who fills in the forms.’

to be 100% sure – otherwise you go with their idea, every time.

Interestingly, at the moment, a lot of artists in that British urban lane have been incredibly active and successful at creating and defining themselves. So when they come in [to sign a major record deal], you’ve just got to go, ‘What are you planning to do? Tell us your plan, because we want to amplify and magnify what you do.’

Where record companies go wrong sometimes is when they try and create that thing; that doesn't work very well.

What do you mean, exactly?

You know, we keep coming back these days to people being critical about labels; ‘What the fuck do labels do?’ and all that. At a fundamental level: we amplify and magnify the best bits of what artists are already doing. We offer sweat and infrastructure to help them achieve their goals. And – I wish I could find another word for boring here, but it is what it is – we do a lot of the boring stuff.

The magic is with the artists, the magic is with the music, and so much of that comes from the performers and writers themselves.

But go through the big acts out there now [and you see a pattern]: Stormzy was doing a load of stuff on his own; Ed Sheeran was doing a load of stuff on his own; Lewis Capaldi was 300 gigs in, and had 500 people coming to his Glasgow [shows]. The skill of the label is to spot that talent as early as possible and provide the framework and support structures that enable it to prosper.

The important thing is that [those artists had] defined themselves. If you arrive at a major record company having defined yourself as an artist, then major record companies can be amazing places as they, in the sporting tradition, tone and build the necessary muscles and help provide the laser focus.

“Record labels amplify and magnify the best bits of what artists are already doing.”

When you look back on the end of the Amy story, how do you reflect on it? And how do you think the industry should reflect on it?

Amy was a troubled soul in a number of ways: she experienced a range of issues that often made life tough for her. Issues with self esteem, with relationships, with drugs and alcohol. You know, it’s incredibly difficult to save people from themselves. It was such a waste of such a phenomenal talent. We were aware of just how sensitive an individual she was and so we really took the foot off any pressure for her to support her records from 2009, in order that she could focus more on her health.

On a less personal and broader business angle, what are some of the key lessons you learned in the Island days about working with artists?

If you’re going to challenge an artist, or suggest a change, you have 16

How did your switch to Virgin EMI come about?

Going back to the Darcus thing, what we were doing [at Island] was working; this world of Jessie J and Ben Howard and Mumford and Amy. People were saying our partnership had run its course – it hadn’t! I was very comfortable and very happy there.

But I work for a company [Universal Music Group], and that company had bought EMI, and if you’ve shown you can do something [in one place], then maybe they’d like you to try and do it [in another place].

What persuaded you that it was the right move in the end?

[Laughs] It was presented as a fait accompli! Pleasingly, I get on very well with Mr. Joseph, he’s very persuasive and very inspirational and so it was never an issue; there was no chucking toys around, but, yes, it was very clear that this would be the right direction of travel for me.

The thing is, and this always comes across wrongly, but I don't have ambition, not like some people do. I really just want and

LEAD FEATURE

With Richard Branson celebrating the 40th anniversary of Virgin Records in 2013

need to be amongst stuff that I like in life. I don’t mind a pound note, but I’m not obsessed with a pound note, you know?

What sort of shape was Virgin EMI / Virgin Records in when you took over?

Emeli Sandé and Bastille were in their prime; both were doing great here and great internationally. And then, six months down the line, we took over the Mercury [label] and merged that [into Virgin EMI], so we had the Grange Hill/Rodney Bennet thing of putting the two [labels] together.

I’d seen Sony merge with BMG, and there were a few aspects of that I thought were good, and a few things that were a bit hurried.

The thing is [at a merged companies], nobody likes each other to begin with, but if you let everybody go down the park, let them

fight a few battles with each other, you’ll be okay.

I put a few learnings from Sony/BMG into Mercury/Virgin.

And we’ve had a process whereby, somehow, we’ve ended up being the [UK’s] No.1 company for seven years.

Your brief was very clear at the time, wasn’t it? Be the No.1 label; stay the No.1 label.

That’s right, and in that sense we [as major record label heads] are like football managers: you’re given a very small window in which to deliver. And if I look around at the people that have run the competitor companies in the time that I’ve been doing it, there’s quite a list of names, do you know what I mean? The fact that we’ve survived, and that I’ve survived, I sort of go, ‘Bloody hell, that’s alright.’

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Plus, we’re a broad-based label, so we’re going to be busy anyway.

Nothing’s a bed of roses, there will always be some frustration, but, more often than not, I'd like to think all of our [artists] are given an excellent level of service.

We achieved whatever we did in the singles chart [Virgin recently became the first label to have nine tracks from multiple artists in the Top 20 of the Official Singles Chart at the same time], and then Lewis still manages to come through. That tells you something.

Is Lewis Capaldi the ultimate proof of your point about ‘nobody really knows’?

There’s this Scottish bloke who, by his own admission, doesn't tick every conventional box. We heard the record, and I’d done a number of acts with Daniel Lieberberg [then head of Universal domestic labels in Germany, now with Sony, who’d signed Capaldi to Universal’s system] through Germany – that I'd been completely unsuccessful with, unfortunately! And then Daniel said, ‘I've got this dude.’ Lewis came in, and we were like, ‘Right, this is worth some serious time…’

It fits into that category you mentioned earlier. Not, ‘Here’s our next million seller,’ but, ‘Let’s make those extra calls, let’s push that bit harder’…

Yeah, there was just this little feeling, y’know? And as you were around him more and more, you learnt he was always fascinating, and always a great conversation.

With Emeli Sandé

What have been some of the contributing factors to that survival? Hit records and market share, of course, but has anything else played a role?

Hopefully we are a company that recognises the role of the record label. We’re about service, energy, activity, sweat and infrastructure. You don’t know what’s going to sell, no-one does – even those who say they do. But you know if something has value, and hopefully you have a network of managers [representing acts signed to you] who have some confidence that you are going to do the best for their artists.

You know, we live in a world whereby the easiest thing to have a pop at Virgin [EMI] with, and people do, is, ‘They’re so busy.' However, what I very much hope that you do not hear is: ‘I've heard everybody has a really shit time with Virgin.' It’s just, ‘They’re so busy.’

If you sign here, I will say, ‘You have as much time as you need.’

But if you’re the only artist on a label [roster], everyone just keeps saying, ‘When’s your record coming?’ That’s a shit situation to be in. Lewis was given two and a half years [to deliver an album], because we’ve got other stuff going on.

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Is this another one of those ‘British artists embraced by German media and fans first’ stories?

No – this didn’t happen in Germany. There was a little bit of personnel change there [as Daniel Lieberberg left UMG] but, thankfully, we [in the UK] just kept pushing.

As an example, I was with another label head, in October [2018], waiting for the BRITs Critics Choice to be announced, and I said, ‘I think it should probably be Sam Fender, Freya Ridings and Lewis.’ And this person goes, ‘What the fuck are you saying it should be Lewis for? You're the only one who thinks it should be Lewis.’ Well I did and I still do!

Aside from a few bits, the album was done, helped by the time [Virgin gave Capaldi to write and record], and that meant we could really plan some steps. It takes a lot to get started, [but once] the energy’s there, the excitement’s there, if [an artist] is doing the album on the move, with all the expectation around them, things can get a bit shit. Much better to get the album done, and let them grow.

Managers, sometimes, when they turn up [to labels], they’re just like, ‘I’m gonna take the highest bidder.’ And you understand that – ‘I’m fucking skint, my partner’s shouting at me about the mortgage payments, I can get 125 grand here or 250 grand there.’

But, empirically, for the success of an artist, you go where the passion is, and where you know people will give you time. And that’s what happened here.

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What's the plan now with Lewis?

Well, pleasingly, he’s got global momentum now. Nobody's getting carried away, but there are the obvious places where you'd like somebody to be successful that seem quite poised and ready for him.

I admit I had some concerns [ahead of the US push], in terms of how his vibe might work, a bit of a culture clash. But at the New York Irving Plaza show things were going down very well. And with Lewis, there’s always the songs at the heart of it.

Can I ask you about Universal’s famously intense competition culture. Tom March, for example, worked with you for a long time at Island, and now you fight each other every day. Is there more rivalry with, say, Polydor, than there might be with Atlantic or another label outside the building?

There is, yeah. I've become acclimatised to it. That's the life you’re in here.

That culture of internal competition, say some, all comes from Sir Lucian Grainge – that it’s a deliberate tactic to keep Universal winning.

The greatest attribute about Lucian, that David also fully backs, is that he knows a fair amount of stuff won't work, regardless of best endeavours.

So an absence of fear of failure remains the biggest driver at the heart of this company.

I've worked for two companies in my career and I can tell you that, here, you are just left to get on with something. People win a deal, and then they are allowed to make a pure record. Mumford & Sons [at Island] was a very modest deal, and they were allowed to make whatever record they wanted to make. That [process] is not mucked up by a load of other voices, or interrupted by a load of questions. If you had 10 good reasons at the time you signed an artist, Lucian’s in. There’s never a witch hunt. Plus, it means nobody else has got it – and he likes that!

That said, if I do 10 things completely wrong, in a row, I'm not here anymore. That’s super clear. But, so far, [at Virgin EMI] we have an enormous number to hit [and] a certain market share to get, and for some strange reason we've been able to do it; we've been No.1 and the most profitable or whatever for quite some time.

[Virgin wasn’t involved in]. But I could also name a few deals I’ve done that are stupid; it’s a fair cop, we can all get caught up in it.

How would you describe David Joseph’s leadership style here at Universal Music UK? David is the master of relationship management and has a fantastic intuitive read on people and records. However, alongside that he always has far wider agendas going on. He understands corporate responsibility better than most. His mission is for Universal to be as progressive as we can be, with the greatest amount of corporate responsibility, while embracing every role in the community and wider society that a company should. And he is also very, acutely aware of the cultural value of music.

We [label heads] sink or swim ourselves. I'm sure it will come again, and I'll be an embarrassment at some point, but, after a decade or so of somehow working things out, I think there’s trust there [between Joseph and Cockle]. Particularly because [Virgin EMI] has had years when there have been good front of house glories, and other years where we didn’t have any front of house glories, but we were business efficient and made it work anyway.

“If you had 10 good reasons at the time you signed an artist, Lucian’s in...”

Talking of big numbers, are some UK deals getting a bit silly at a time when UK music, at a blockbuster level, is increasingly struggling to sell globally?

Yeah, but I mean, you know, nothing changes. We've been through dance music taking a million quid for a one-off song, and, thankfully, that’s had its moment. Currently the British urban lane is the one where that kind of thing is going on more than in any other [genre]. I could tell you about one £1.6 million deal, or one £700,000 deal – which was for two tracks – which I’m thankful 20

Was last year one of those to some extent? Because there was a lot of Queen, there was groundwork for Lewis, but there wasn't much ‘front of house’?

Yeah, that was a business efficient year. When you’re a non-A&R person running a [record] company, like me, I always say, ‘I don’t mind getting a bar job to make ends meet.’ [This, if it wasn’t clear, is an analogy: Cockle is saying he doesn’t mind doing the dirty jobs to get his label to hit its numbers.] With A&R people running labels, they feel everything [their label] does is a reflection of themselves and their dynamics, and they won’t do that. Whereas I’m like, ‘I know what my responsibility is, I’ll take the bar job and pay the bills.’

How do major labels go about discovering and developing talent these days? And what role do managers – and good relationships with managers – play in that?

For a label of this size, it's the broadest range of criteria: there’s somebody [signed after playing] in the corner of a pub; there’s somebody on ridiculous streaming metrics; and there's somebody managed by someone that you're doing three other acts with. We use every single device for finding and accessing talent.

Going back to that sort of ‘label-bashing’ that you spoke about earlier, managers now say they do more artist development than ever, and that labels want finished packages...

It’s interesting: who does the development in those cases? Do the managers do the development? Do the artists do the development themselves? And, actually, doesn’t development then continue

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over a very long period of time?

I’ll de-personalise it, but there are plenty of high profile examples out there, where the artist is saying, ‘I want to be independent, I want us to do the development, to do everything,’ and the manager’s going, ‘For fuck’s sake. I could really do with plugging into a [label] system,’ – because they’re having to sort out a radio plugger in France today and a press person in Holland tomorrow, with America looming in the background.

Everything in this business happens because of a combination of characters – everything. [John] Lydon and [Malcolm] McClaren are the ultimate example, arguing about who ‘created’ the Sex Pistols. It’s like, don’t worry about the percentages, you’re always going to disagree on that, but the fact is, you both needed to be in the room; that, no matter what fallout follows, should be remembered. When it comes to success, it’s always a combination of people, and a combination of factors.

But what about artists doing things independent of a frontline major label, or even secretly partnering with a major label in an arm’s length-type deal?

Sometimes it’s about the narrative. [Some deals sought by

With now-Island Records US boss, Darcus Beese

managers] are literally, ‘Hang on, you want us to fund everything, you pretend you’re doing it yourself, but with no financial responsibility at all?’

It’s like: ‘You want to set up an independent coffee shop that looks really tasteful and distinctive, and which has a sign on the door about supporting local businesses – but you also want to be funded by Starbucks?’

Listen, I’m not being critical, I’m arriving here along the path of, ‘We’re all insecure [about this trend].’ But I just look at the facts; take the biggest examples of [independent artists], and none of [their commercial performance globally], I think, is par excellence.

Plus, never mind record companies, some artists are tied to the most terrible management deals ever.

And I go back to it – do you know what dullards like us do?

The boring label bit, the sweat and infrastructure: ‘Are you alright Spotify?’ ‘Are you alright HMV?’ ‘Are you alright Apple?’ ‘Are you alright Deezer?’ ‘Are you alright Amazon?’

Can we keep you all happy – so that we can not just come to you with an album this year, but we can come back next year, and in five years, and in 10, and you’ll still be looking to support us?

Excellent, job done; here’s another great record for you... n 21

XXXXXXXX COMMENT

ARE YOU PREPARED FOR THE POST-DATA STREAMING AGE? Instagram is considering binning Likes. Should Spotify kill off stream counts?

When you think about it, it’s a lot like chocolate Rolos, says Peter Robinson...

You know how parrots can talk but we’ve all grown so accustomed to the idea of one specific bird chattering away that we don’t ever really stop to think about how strange the whole thing is? Well, think about how we spend so much of our working lives inside the Spotify app, and now consider how blind we are to the absolute batshitness of song play counts being totally public. These are people’s careers, right there on our screens, down to the most minute detail!

People have listened to the new Grimes & i_o song 1,395,792 times.

Haven’t we always had charts? Well, kind of.

But this isn’t like the days of having the notion that a one-week-at-No.1 song was generally more successful than a 10-weeks-in-the-Top-10 song; or that a Platinum album had obviously sold more than something that’d dragged itself to Silver (even if we never really knew how many times a CD was ever played once it had been bought — some went straight on the shelf then down the charity shop, while others are still rattling around in glove compartment CD wallets). The figures were once opaque, and it was left to us as fans to imagine what filled the space between chart position and reality. Now, everything’s hanging out. People have listened to the most popular single off Robyn’s last album 26,835,290 times.

There are other metrics for success, of course: some genres over-perform on Apple Music, which doesn’t show play counts publicly; certain artists get their numbers (if not their revenue) on YouTube, which does; and you can add on another eight to 12 listens once you factor in Tidal. Some artists’ value — to brands, at least — is measured in Instagram engagement, while elsewhere there are heritage and even modern artists who can sell out arenas without troubling Spotify’s global Top 200 artists. But, if you’re looking for an all-about-the-music hint at what people are actually listening to, there it is, pixel

“We are now blind to the absolute batshitness of song play counts being totally public.”

perfect in the green and black streaming app. It’s harsh. 494,754,064 people listened to The Jonas Brothers’ comeback single; 8,241,990 bothered with one of their new album tracks.

Speaking of green and black, let’s talk chocolate.

When perusing the confectionery aisle we all, I suppose, have an inkling that the selection we see is based on how the industry is set up. We know Cadbury and Nestlé, for instance, are the Sony and Universal of the chocolate world, while something like Green & Black’s trumpets its independent roots, despite long since having sold to Cadbury, which I suppose makes it Ministry.

But beyond that, we don’t see a Bounty as any different to a packet of Rolos, despite the former being Britain’s third most popular chocolate snack and Rolos somehow coming in 27th.

At this point you might be thinking: ‘Fuck right off, Bounties are revolting and there’s no way Rolos are only the 27th most popular chocolate, they’re everywhere and everyone likes them.’ You think differently about Rolos now don’t you? Perhaps you 23

like them more: they’re the underdog and must be protected at all costs. But perhaps you now think of the Rolo as slightly pathetic. A has-been. A relic trading on former glories and name recognition, undeserving of its omnipresence. Does a Rolo taste as good now? Yet, here we are. Now, what if I were to tell you that The 1975 — that globe-straddling, Reading-and-Leeds-headlining, voice-of-ageneration pop behemoth — ranked on Spotify as the 361st most popular act in the world? An odd fact but, again, here we are.

In theory I should just stream what I stream and if anyone else likes it that’s a bonus, but it’s hard not to be swayed. Particularly, I expect, if one happens to be working in the illustrious field of A&R. An unsigned act whose last three tracks topped 4m streams a piece will look more attractive, at least in terms of a shortterm win, than an unsigned act whose songs are still in the <1000 bracket. Success is contagious.

It makes Rolos taste different and it makes music sound different.

I’m aware you can’t move in this industry for people who insist that good old-fashioned instinct (luck) is what holds the music industry together, while managers half their age book artists into sold-out shows in Wrexham based purely on a keen interest in data. And I’m not saying data isn’t important, but I wonder how much data needs to be visible to everyone. Or, in fact, anyone. There’s a reason Instagram has been experimenting with removing Like counts from posts. And, yes, that reason is almost certainly, somehow, money, but there are other reasons too. It’ll be better for everyone. Anyone who’s used social media knows how much better they feel about a post that gets good numbers, and how bad they’d feel about the exact same post if it got bad numbers. In music, what does an artist do with bad numbers on a good song, or good numbers on a bad song?

I wonder if this all, in some way, has some connection to The Chainsmokers.

One day, of course, Spotify will remove its play counts. I say this based on no inside knowledge and instead on the fact that everything I find interesting or useful is usually dicked around with in the name of progress. But, if public numbers go the way of the headphone jack, maybe that’s no bad thing.

In fact, I say we don’t stop there. Here’s what I’m proposing. Firstly, Spotify removes all public play counts, follower counts, or indications of success. Every social network follows suit. When 24

No, it actually is a popularity contest – but should it be?

“Everyone is in the dark.

Absolute blackout. We go postdata.”

artists announce tours, they list dates by town/ city, rather than by venue: London, for instance, could mean the O2 or the Camden Assembly, with the venue only being revealed 24 hours before stagetime. The other option is to cancel all live performances. Actually, let’s do that, it’ll be good for the environment.

Royalties are withheld for even longer than they already are, to obfuscate individual songs’ success.

Radio? Without any feedback on how popular songs are, it will have to revert to total instinct mode. All listener feedback is banned, of course.

Shut the whole thing down. All data is hidden.

From everybody. Everyone is in the dark. Absolute blackout. We go post-data. This will be a pop Ice Age – and let’s throw in some scorched earth while we’re at it. Nothing will be the same. Leave it like that for five years, allow music to reset itself. Then, and only then, can touring start again.

Or, we could just go the other way and be done with it: heatmaps showing precisely when people give up on listening to an album; a Top 50 of the most-skipped new releases; a chart of artists whose latest singles bombed. I prefer my first idea, though. Who’s in? n

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FEATURE

WHAT’S THE VALUE OF A MAJOR UK RECORD LABEL IN 2019?

I

Record companies have arguably never had to prove themselves to artists like they do today. But according to Warner Records UK boss Phil Christie, the best in the field are now demonstrating their value in an assortment of ways...

t’s been three years since Phil Christie stepped up to the position of President of Warner Records in the UK. Since then, the London-based exec and his team have racked up some sparkling achievements – not least the global success of domestic signing Dua Lipa, who has won Grammy and BRIT Awards, while accumulating multiple billions of streams worldwide. Warner Records is also the record label partner of Liam Gallagher, whose head-turning comeback with 2017's No.1 album, As You Were, was recently crystallised in the WMG-backed biopic, As It Was. These are optimistic times at Warner Records. Following a recent rebrand from the company's former name (Warner Bros.

Records), the label is being led in the US by two heavyweights of the Stateside industry, Chairman/ COO Tom Corson and Chairman/ CEO Aaron Bay-Schuck.

Christie and his UK team are focusing on breaking developing domestic prospects like Griff, J Rick and JC Stewart, in addition to being the best partner possible for established talent like Foals, Michael Bublé, MIST and Royal Blood. Meanwhile, Liam Gallagher is back with a new album (Why Me? Why Not.), while Dua Lipa is understood to be busy in the studio working on new material.

Alongside the global successes which have taken place under his watch as President, Christie tells MBUK he’s learned a lot about the contribution that a UK-based major label can make to an artist’s career – especially in an ever-changing global marketplace in which US artists seem to be expanding their domination daily.

Christie came into the world of major labels with his eyes open to evolution. Before initially joining Warner Bros Records / Parlophone as Head of A&R in 2014, he was UK A&R Manager at Warner Chappell Music, where he signed the likes of London Grammar, Michael Kiwanuka and Royal Blood. (To this day, Christie is obviously drawn to artists whose idiosyncrasies are

apparent in their songwriting.) Here, Christie outlines the factors which he believes makes a major label the most valuable partner possible for artists in 2019 – and how Warner Records UK is meeting the challenge of making its mark in a hugely competitive, streaming-dominated global landscape...

1) International muscle The UK population is a fifth of the size of that in the United States, and less than 5% of the 1.4bn-plus populous found in both China and India. For Christie, British artists won’t get a better chance to break through globally than with a major label – so long as, he says, that label is plugged in to a collaborative global system.

“The basic logistics of what a major label can provide globally are obvious, but nothing new,” he comments. “However, what has become essential more recently, particularly for UK artists, is that if you are just reliant on [your local market’s] streaming consumption, you’re only going to punch as hard as the size of your territory – which, in the UK’s case, is around 65m people.

“Previously there was cultural cachet for an artist in breaking first in the UK, which you could then export elsewhere. A touch of that still exists, but you’re now in a streaming marketplace, where you’re immediately benchmarked by 'gatekeepers' in terms of sheer body mass – how many streams has this artist got vs. that artist. And to achieve the kind of numbers we have on Dua, you have to attract international success.

“So for a new artist, how do you get simultaneous international success and a co-ordinated international campaign? The only place I see that happening today is at great major labels. That requires a fantastic international marketing team, and I think we have the best in the business at Warner Music Group, but it also requires an understanding between the international label heads that we’re going to pull together to break each other’s acts.”

“UK artists are now benchmarked by ‘gatekeepers’ in terms of sheer streaming mass.”

27

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MY MANIFESTO What, you thought he’d be worried about a stage set designed to suit Instagram posts? If you did, you haven’t been concentrating. No, Hipgnosis founder Merck Mecuriadis’ manifesto is nothing less than a five point plan for a revolution in power, wealth and ownership…

FEATURE

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as anyone in the industry talking about Merck Mercuriadis a couple of years ago? Well, yes, of course they were, albeit in a comparatively genteel, low-level kind of way. “There goes Merck Mercuriadis,” they’d whisper in the Soho House bar. “He’s managed both Morrissey and Axl Rose, and he ran Sanctuary – must be a glutton for punishment!” Or perhaps, simply: “There goes Merck Mercuriadis. If you want to blag Nile Rodgers tickets, he’s your man.”

These are not the most immediate descriptions that come to mind about Mercuriadis today. The modern set of Soho/Shoreditch industry gossip-mongers are more likely to observe: “There goes Merck Mercuriadis, the man who keeps buying bloody everything in sight.” Or, in the case of the industry’s formerly-acquisitive parties: “There go the copyrights I wanted, snapped up by Moneybags Mercuriadis… again.”

Yet to glibly illustrate Merck as a mere music biz big spender doesn’t quite do justice to his evanglistic belief in the value (and future value) of songs. He might be backed by hundreds of millions, he might have acquired catalogues from Benny Blanco, The Chainsmokers, The-Dream, Dave Stewart and everyone in between – but, according to Mercuriadis, there is a wider point behind his relentless thirst for deals.

As the Hipgnosis Songs Fund founder explains below in his five-point manifesto – aka the things he’d change about the music business tomorrow – he’s aiming to shake up the very power balance this industry is built on... __________________________________________________ 1. Redress Where Songwriters Sit In The Economic Equation There is an imbalance that exists between what is paid to the recorded music side of this industry and what is paid to songwriters; it’s not fair and equitable as it currently stands.

In the old days it didn’t matter, because when I started, which was the old days, 90% of signed artists wrote their own songs.

They knew who they were, what they wanted to be, what the album cover should look like, what the stage show should look like. And the job of someone like me [as a manager] was to (a) believe in them and (b) put a strategy in place to bring their ideas to fruition.

Well, today, 90% of signed artists are still really talented people, but almost every song you hear on the radio is written, at least in part, by an outside songwriter.

If you’re Zara Larsson and you have access to these songwriters, you’re top of the chart. If you’re Iggy Azalea, and five years ago you had the biggest song in the world, with Fancy, but now, for whatever reason, you no longer have access to these songwriters, you’re nowhere. Because the song is the currency on which this business trades. And yet the songwriter is not being treated fairly and equitably, and we need to redress that imbalance.

Right now, the Jonas Brothers are on tour in America, making millions of dollars, and what the crowd really want to hear from

them is a song [they’ve heard] that Ryan Tedder wrote. I’m not suggesting that Ryan should be getting [more] of the money that the band generates from live, but it highlights the imbalance between what the record company gets and what Ryan gets.

It’s important to be clear, this is not about re-dressing the balance between what the artist gets and what the songwriter gets, because, as we know, the artist is on a sliver of what the record company gets anyway. This is about the balance between what is paid for recorded music and what’s paid for the song.

That change starts with the CRB ruling increasing songwriters’ share of the pie by 44% [in the US] over the next four years. It should then continue with the Department of Justice dropping the consent decree laws that affect both ASCAP and BMI in the United States, and it should roll on from there. __________________________________________________ 2. Create A Truly Powerful Songwriters Guild I want to use what is currently half a billion dollars’ worth of assets, and what will be billions of dollars’ worth of assets acquired

by Hipgnosis to, again, change where the songwriter sits in the economic equation, but also be the catalyst for a real Songwriters Guild. Not what we currently have, because there’s no real advocacy at this moment in time.

There isn’t anyone advocating for the songwriter. The three big companies can’t, because they’re owned by big recorded music companies. The performing rights societies can’t, because they’re bound by the consent decree rule – and they’re also very cash rich organisations that don’t want to upset the applecart.

I want to end up with a scenario similar to the Screenwriters Guild where, on behalf of movie writers, every three years they march into all the studios and say, ‘Hey, I don’t care if you’ve got Reese Witherspoon or George Clooney to star in this movie; if you don’t get a script, there is no movie. And you’re not going to get a script unless you pay the writers properly.’

So, every three years, they scream and shout at each other, they call each other names, they threaten to bring production to a standstill, but at the end of the day they figure out a way to pay the writers more money – and everybody lives happily ever after.

Or at least for three more years.

I want the songwriters to be represented in exactly that way. It’s a six or seven-year plan, but I intend Hipgnosis to be the catalyst to make that happen.

If you think about what we’ve done, we’ve established songs as an asset class, and an asset class that is now recognised by the most important investment communities in the world as being as good as gold or oil.

That’s amazing for Hipgnosis, but it’s amazing for all songwriters.

It will benefit everyone. I can’t own all the songs in the world, but I can play a part in making sure all the songwriters in the world benefit. And that’s where this Songwriters Guild, with real teeth, will come into play.

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FEATURE

3. Artists Should Get Their Masters Back The system that exists currently [in record deals] is not right. It is basically: we’ll lend you money to build the house, you’ll pay that money back, we’ll still own the house.

It doesn’t mean that those companies that fund artists can’t be involved for the long-term, but once the artist has paid for their records and the company that made a capital investment has been able to make a great return, the artist should get the rights back.

There can be long-term distribution deals, there can be longterm licensing deals, but that system of lending the money, getting paid back and then still owning the house, that has to change.

I’m a big believer in the value of the major companies and the best of the independent companies out there. Because the one thing as an artist that you’re never going to want to do is create that infrastructure. Right now, there’s someone working for Universal, Warner or Sony in Brazil who knows who the best DJs, most influential journalists are etc. I’m never going to know those things, so I’m always going to want to be in business with those companies and I’m always going to value the incredible work they do.

But, the economics of it, in terms of who ends up owning these assets, needs to change. That’s not to say there can’t be some hybrid, but it can no longer continue as it is.

We’re talking about a long hard road towards this, and I would say we haven’t even begun yet. Because part of the problem, and this informs points 1 and 2, is that it’s very easy for people to live in a paradigm that has existed for 75 or 100 years.

You sit there and think you can’t do anything about it, until someone comes along and does do something about it. As regards points one 1 and 2, that’s exactly what I’m doing – being that catalyst and demonstrating to people that these things are possible. Eventually we’ll get to 3 as well.

The split on that [pool] will favour the record company when the artist is unrecouped. Then, as time goes on, it becomes more even, more like 50/50, and then the more successful an artist becomes, the more the pendulum swings in their favour.

What exists at the moment is that you sign to a [frontline major] label and they might give you an advance of £200,000, but you might also have to pay them 20% of your publishing as part of your 360 deal. Then you go out and make a publishing deal for £500,000. Suddenly you’ve got to give the label £100,000 [of that publishing money], which is fair enough. But that £100,000 becomes a profit centre for the [record company]; you’ve given them £100,000, but you’re still £200,000 unrecouped [on your record deal], not £100,000 unrecouped.

So I want to revolutionise 360 deals and create fair and equitable payment structures for artists whereby the more successful you get, the bigger share of the pie you get. __________________________________________________ 5. Value Managers Properly And Fairly The role of the manager needs to be reconsidered, particularly by the legal community, which seems to want to marginalise it.

One of the key issues is that managers should get paid for the work that they do in perpetuity. That’s not to say they should get paid on an entire contract, but whichever songs or albums that come out during their tenure as manager, they should get paid in perpetuity.

It’s no different to a producer.

Your manager could be someone that you spend 10 hours a day with, and a lawyer’s telling you, ‘Don’t pay this person.’ Whereas you could go into a studio tomorrow with someone who you’ve only met once and who you’re never going to work with again, and you would owe them their royalty forever.

Why should a manager be expected to put their life, their heart and soul into an artist and not be rewarded for it in their later days if they’re successful – when [the opposite is true] for a record company, publisher or producer?

Managers play an incredibly important role – the good ones.

There are plenty of bad ones, I’m not speaking on their behalf; I’m speaking for the ones that can quite rightly be credited with a huge part of an artist’s success, who are prepared to make other people believe in their acts, who are committed to their artists and who put the time and the effort in to do great work. As things stand, they’re far too easily cut out of the picture.

“We'll lend you money to buy the house, you pay us back, we still own the house.”

__________________________________________________ 4. Revolutionise 360 If you look at the great British labels of the sixties and seventies, the one thing they had in common is that they identified talent and then went to work with that talent; they would make a capital investment in that talent.

But then they would spread that investment across many income streams, so it was not unusual for those labels to manage the artist, to handle merchandise for the artist, to book the live shows and to publish the artist. When they did that, they effectively created a pool [of money]. What I want, going forward, is that if there is going to be a concept of ‘360’ in today’s [record] business, that concept should be one where all the money from those income streams goes into a [central] pool.

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INTERVIEW

‘I HAVE AN A&R BACKGROUND, SO THERE WAS NO WAY I WASN’T GONNA ROLL MY SLEEVES UP...’

Radha Medar is managing one of the UK’s hottest new stars in Polydor-signed Mabel, who is enjoying success in her home market as well as the USA and beyond.

Medar is putting her own major label experience – and her experience working with proudly independent MC Skepta – to daily use...

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hether amply-compensated major label exec or ramenmunching songwriter, the fitness industry has all sorts of tricks to inveigle hard-earned money from our clutches. Guilt and self-esteem; now there’s a killer combination to keep you paying a monthly subscription. (Probably more killer than New Music Friday and This Is: Zedd, to be fair.)

However, one of British music’s fastest-rising managers, Radha Medar, owes the keep-fit industry a beer. In 2011, Birminghamborn Medar had started a work experience gig at Warner/Atlantic’s Asylum Records in London, and was keenly searching, as work experience people do, for a way to stand out.

One evening, she was invited by her sister to join her at a Zumba class, where she heard something that was to prove life-changing.

“I listened to this track, and was like, This isn’t really my taste, but it’s definitely different – and it could be really big,” she recalls.

That track was Sam & The Womp’s Bom Bom, a left-field novelty house hit which went on to top the UK Singles Chart seven years ago. Cannily, Medar jotted down the song’s title, confirmed its major label-less status online, and presented it to Atlantic UK boss Ben Cook and Asylum A&R chief, Ed Howard.

In the end, Bom Bom was licensed to Warner Music UK, as opposed to any individual label, but Medar had proven herself internally: she knew how to spot a hit, and she wasn’t afraid to raise her hand when it happened.

This moment, Medar believes today, was something of a big break in her career. “It gave me the ammunition to ask for a proper position,” she says. And, sure enough, soon after, she landed an A&R consultancy gig at Atlantic/Asylum, where she stayed for five years. That experience taught her to think big for

her artists, and when Medar joined Grace Ladoja at Metallic Inc. in 2015, to co-manage Skepta, she did so with the belief that, with the right guidance and strategy behind him, Joseph Adenuga Jr could not only change the game for UK rap, but for an entire community of independent artists, too. (He did just that, of course, with the Mercury-winning, Ivor Novello-winning, Goldselling album, Konnichiwa.)

Another slice of serendipity came along in 2016. So struck was Grace Ladoja by a young model appearing in I-D Magazine, that she sought her out and persuaded her to appear in the video for Skepta’s skull-rattling single, Shutdown. That model, it transpired, was also a very promising young artist – Mabel (aka Mabel McVey), whom Medar has managed to great heights ever since.

(To atypically altitudinous heights, actually, when compared with the paucity of British R&B-leaning music elbowing its way onto the world stage right now. But, hey, who’s juxtaposing.)

Since releasing her debut track, Know Me Better, in 2015, Mabel has secured three UK Top 10 singles – Finders Keepers (No.8) and this year’s Don’t Call Me Up (No.3) and Mad Love (No.8), both released on long-term label, Polydor.

In more globally relevant terms, Mabel has been streamed over half a billion times to date on Spotify, while Don’t Call Me Up nestled in at No. 66 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and No. 16 on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40) earlier this summer in the States, where she is signed to Capitol Records.

And it’s fresh off a plane from the US – where Mabel has just played a run of headline shows across New York, Los Angeles, Boston and beyond – that MBUK catches up with Medar to hear all about the manager’s story to date, the ever-escalating levels

“Mabel is really fucking smart.

She takes her craft very seriously.”

37

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To our friends at 3beat Congratulations on 30 years in the business

From everyone at Universal Music

‘WHATEVER SUCCESS WE’VE HAD HAS BEEN THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS’ Pioneering UK independent label 3beat is celebrating 30 years in the business of breaking dance records and providing a launchpad for artists ranging from Skepta to Sigma…

H

onestly, no-one’s advocating getting expelled. A permanent exclusion isn’t necessarily a sure-footed step on the road to success, we get that. But, sometimes, in a roundabout way, it just sort of works out.

It did for Jon Barlow, founder of 3beat Records, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. The label (which started life as a record shop) has, he admits, always been based and propelled “on a whim and a prayer rather than a strategy”.

And its back-story begins with him being expelled from school “for being a bit of a rogue – persistently annoying rather than any one very bad thing”.

The result, he explains, was that his mates were a year ahead of him at Liverpool University – and had got the lay of the land.

“One mate in particular had done the halls of residence thing, and told me to skip that, he’d find a flat instead. So I followed him to Liverpool and moved into this lovely old five-bedroom house.

“On the first day, the doorbell went, and it was these three Scouse girls saying, ‘We've heard you got three bedrooms to spare, can we come and live with you?’ Okay, sure, come in – I’m already loving Liverpool!

“The next day, I was coming back from the shops and I could hear The La’s, There She Goes, coming out of the flat.

“Obviously I thought someone was playing the record with the windows open, but I opened the front door, and there was the band, The La’s, in my front room, playing There She Goes. This is my second day in the city!

“It turns out 48

they’d been booted out of their practice room and the bass player, John Power, was going out with one of the girls from the day before, so they’d turned up at ours. You couldn’t help but feel something was happening – a right place/right time kind of thing.”

A certain serendipity did seem to be at play with, as Barlow recalls, “the whole acid house/rave/drug thing also hitting Liverpool at the same time, and everyone getting swept along with it, including us”.

Part of that culture was digging out rare dance records that had been heard in clubs, which, for Barlow and his mates, meant “traveling to Eastern Bloc [Records] in Manchester every single week – and when we got there, half the people in the shop were people we knew from Liverpool”.

Cue light bulb moment, or maybe fluorescent glow stick moment: the demand is in Liverpool, but the shop everyone loves is in Manchester, so…

3beat opened in 1989, when Barlow was still at University; when thoughts of 30 years later were nothing and plans for the next weekend were everything…

Was the shop successful from day one?

Nuts. So, so good, queues out the door. There was just this youthful vibrancy in the air and, honestly, if we’d only made it through the first 12 months it would have been worth it, because it was just such great fun.

It was a place to hang out, a sort of community centre, as much as a record shop.

How did the transition to being a record label come about?

Well, that was pretty fortuitous as well, and, again, it was to do with it being a place to hang

INTERVIEW

Phil Southall (left), David Nicoll (second left) and Jon Barlow (right) in 1990. Second from right is Hywel Williams who, whilst never a partner, was instrumental in the evolution of 3beat and oversaw the first ever label deal, with FFFR

out. Young kids would come in the shop and say, ‘You guys seem to know what you’re doing, can I play you a record I’ve made, please?’

And could we help them release it. Through a conversation along those lines, the very first record that we ever put out on the label went to No.12 in the charts.

What was that?

New Atlantic, I Know – they were literally a couple of young lads who walked into the shop with this track that they’d made.

And how did you know what you were doing?

Well, obviously, you’re on the periphery of it yourself as a record store, so we had the basics – we pieced it together. Then we went to No. 12 and thought, God, we must be good! We didn’t have another hit for quite a while after that, of course. But even that’s a lesson that’s served me well: you’re gonna have hits and you’re gonna have periods without hits – definitely don’t think you’ve cracked it after one No. 12 single [laughs].

What was the ambition when you launched the label?

I don’t think we had any proper vision or ambition, because we were just having such a good time. I think the biggest thing at the time was, This is a lot of fun, let's see where it takes us.

It was just wanting to be involved in music somehow. Of course, when you do something and it’s successful, that’s nice. But actually, when you do something and you see the joy that it brings, not just to the people who are loving the music, but to the artist that you’re working with, who was dreaming of getting that music out there, that’s special.

I’m not saying we were purely philanthropic, of course not, but what was never lost on me, especially in the early days, was that were helping carve out careers for people who, I don’t want to sound rude, but who would otherwise have been painters and decorators, or just doing something they didn’t particularly love.

That was actually quite spectacular.

When did the label start to leapfrog the shop in terms or revenue and priority?

Probably when we did our deal with Ministry of Sound.

When was this?

2002 to 2007.

How did that deal come about?

We were on their radar, having the occasional hit, and there were a lot of records breaking outside of London that they were missing 49

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AGNES ALEXANDRA STAN ANGEL CITY ANTON POWERS BERRI CAHILL CALLUM BEATTIE CHERYL DARIO G DUCK SAUCE FUSE ODG GEKO HIGH CONTRAST INNA JON BARLOW KUNGS MAJESTIC MARK MCCABE MARTIN JENSEN MARTIN SOLVEIG MIKE MAGO NEW ATLANTIC PEZZ PHILIP GEORGE PIANOMAN SAK NOEL SIGMA SKEPTA STYLOG TIM CONDRAN

INTERVIEW

out on. We were kind of the epicentre of stuff that was happening up in the North West, so we were a good fit.

But Lohan [Presencer] was very honest; he didn’t want to fund a record label called 3beat without owning it, and I didn’t want to let him own 3beat just for the sake of a short-term deal.

So we created a new label, Boss Records, and during the time we were with Ministry we had five or six very big records.

Is that because of the extra clout of Ministry, or were you just getting better at what you were doing anyway?

I think it was at least partly because I took myself out the shop, I brought a dedicated A&R person in, who’s still with me, Anton [Powers], and we actually started to run the record label as a full-time entity.

And at this time your output is still mostly singles?

It’s virtually all singles. In fact, if I just dial back a little bit, our first ever label deal was with [London Records imprint] FFRR, and we had six Top 10 singles when we were with them.

That was a great era at London: Pete Tong, Tracy Bennett was in charge, Nick Raphael was my label manager, Christian Tattersfield was there.

Then Nick and Christian left, and I went with them. But what we did at NorthWestSide didn’t really work for us or them. They signed some pretty good things, they signed Jay Z(!), and they did Another Level, but they were never quite settled, and I was never quite settled, and that’s when we went to Ministry.

Callum Beattie

Fuse ODG

And what were the big records in that Ministry era?

Mason Vs Princess Superstar [Perfect Exceeder], which went to No.3; Ian Carey, Get Shaky was a good one; Aaron Smith, Dancin’ was another.

Why did that relationship end?

Their business had changed. When we signed with Ministry, Lohan was just the MD of the recording division. He became Chairman of the group, and Ben [Cook] became head of A&R, and then when [Ben] decided to move on, that whole thing – I thought that was pretty unnecessary and pretty nasty, they [allegedly] demoted him to post boy [duties] when he said he wanted to leave [for Atlantic subsidiary label, Asylum, in 2007] – and then there was litigation.

It became a not very fun place to be. It wasn’t a nice atmosphere to walk into. Our deal was coming to an end anyway, so it felt like the right time to go.

Lohan and I had a dinner one night where he tried to say, ‘Please, just let the dust settle, it’ll come good.’ But, without sounding too romantic, it is a little bit like when you split up from a girlfriend; there’s no hard feelings, there doesn’t have to be any massive row – sometimes it’s just time to move on.

“We pick the people first, then do the deal, rather than [focusing] on the money.”

Interesting times?!

Oh yeah, the last of the rock n roll labels – behaviour wise. I was a 20 year-old kid who was winging it a bit, and I’m sitting round the table with some characters who were bloody good at what they did. Tracy gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever had on how to make a record.

Again, FFRR wanted us because of the Northern thing, because there was a real distinction between what people were listening to down south and up north, and I don’t think Pete really got it, or liked it. Nick, on the other hand, was actually a DJ in Leeds, so he was playing the records we were making, and he was heading back to London saying, ‘We have to do it, these records are massive.’

More than once he had the courage to lock horns with the bosses on my behalf, at a time when I didn’t perhaps have the courage or confidence that he had. He forced quite a lot of our records to be up-streamed, and without his tenacity, some of the records we signed might not have gone on to get the full backing that they got.

And you fell into the arms of Universal! Were there other options though?

Yeah, there were. But I’ve always prided myself on not being that guy that just prostitutes himself, going from one Chairman to the next, to the next, to the next. I’ve always wanted to be certain that when we decide to work with somebody, we pick the people first, and then do the deal based on that, rather than just trying to get a deal because of the money involved.

I’ve always believed that success in this business is going to come through the relationships you have, which is why our decisions have always been based on people rather than deal points.

Actually, the first deal we did with Universal was through All 51

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Around the World. And then we just outgrew that situation – the amount of hits we were having and the amount of records we were releasing, it no longer felt like we were a satellite, but that we had to be plugged into Universal directly.

How has the Universal experience been for you?

Honestly, I adore working with Universal for a number of reasons. One is that the bosses have been consistent throughout my entire Geko time with them. Something that sometimes enables us to win deals is the fact that people know that I’m a permanent fixture, and I think that’s so important and something we benefit from at Universal.

[Universal Music UK CEO & Chairman] David Joseph was there from the first deal I did and he’s still there now. We know each other, we’ve spent time together and he has this great balance of always being there with whatever support or advice we need, but also completely believing in us and trusting us.

He’s got many skills, obviously, but one of M-22 the biggest is that he’s confident enough in the deals he does and in the people he does those deals with, so that he can let you get on with your job.

Ministry micromanaged us to some extent, but at Universal, as long as we keep having good years, which so far we do, we have the freedom to do things without needing permission or approval every step of the way.

The biggest parts of what we do are all in-house, operated from Liverpool: A&R, promotions, etc.

In that way, Universal treat us just like one of their self-contained frontline labels. David and his team see us very much like Polydor, Virgin or Island. We have the same international path, we have the same [central Universal / Globe] people looking after our branding and our syncs, we have the same admin team looking after royalties and we have the additional weight of their digital sales team as well as our own.

We have the benefits of an indie environment, that speed and nimbleness, but where necessary we also have that muscle.

Certainly when we did the Sigma album, for example, which was a huge success, we leant heavily on the expertise of Universal to deliver that, because that’s the level they work at – TV advertising, product in supermarkets, things that an artist and album of that scale need.

You mentioned Sigma, what have been the key artists and projects you’d pick out from your time with Universal so far?

The top three would have to be Sigma, Skepta and Fuse ODG. Every single one of those, we took to album stage. Fuse ODG’s album [T.I.N.A., 2014] went Silver and had five Top 10 singles. Sigma’s album [Life, 2015] is north of half a million units worldwide, two No.1 singles, BRIT nominations.

And Skepta, that was the first artist deal that we did after we’d signed with Universal, a two album deal, and I remain incredibly good pals with him and his management.

How did you come to sign him?

Well, first up, he was – and obviously still is – one of the brightest and most forwardthinking artists that we’ve ever worked with. I’d heard his self-released record, Bad Boy, which I loved. And from day one, I never thought it was a London MC thing; I thought it was a nationwide thing. So I decided that the first time I wanted to see him doing a gig was outside of London.

He was supporting N-Dubz, and I went to see him in Manchester and Newcastle.

N-Dubz were huge, and these were their headline shows, but the biggest cheer was for when Skepta walked on stage.

It’s easy to be big in your own postcode, but who’s got the talent and ambition to look further than that, to go nationwide, to maybe become big internationally?

With Skepta, that was all there from the start. And within 10 minutes of meeting him I knew what he was capable of.

“David [Joseph] is confident enough in the deals he does to let you get on with your job.”

What was he like to work with, him and his team?

It was honestly like working with the ultimate punk rocker. He was anarchic, he was militant, he was everything that you would want a pure artist to be.

But that meant you could get a telephone call where everything that you’d decided the day before was out the window, and he was going to do something completely new and completely different.

That was the brilliance of it and that's part of what’s made him as big as he is, for sure. It also makes for a roller-coaster journey for a record company!

Did you always know he was going to move on?

Yeah, we did. The good news is our relationship – our business 53

relationship – ended with the song That’s Not Me, which I think might be the most important song that we’ve ever put out, because it wasn’t just his breakthrough record, it was a really important record for British music. It was a landmark record for some very important years that followed. Skepta broke down barriers, and we were a part of that.

Also, as well as the fond memories and a great friendship, there’s the fact that at least he didn’t go to another record label; he’s doing it on his own.

How did the Sigma relationship come about?

Well, Sigma was one of those lovely moments where it was almost textbook in a way. We got them to do a couple of remixes for us, and we just knew they were special producers. The remixes were brilliant, Skepta was one of them, Duck Sauce was another one.

It was easy to position those remixes, because the tastemakers were already very into them. And then we met them and we just knew we could work with them.

They didn't have a finished record when we signed them, they certainly didn't have Nobody to Love. They had a couple of drum and bass records that were good and, in a similar way to Skepta and Fuse ODG, being part of a scene was really important to them. I think again, slightly different maybe in terms of cultural

importance, but certainly in terms of playing a role in taking drum and bass to a mainstream audience... Rudimental obviously will be up there, but even if they’re not number one, they’re number two or three in terms of success.

It’s funny actually, the Sigma story, because they were both in relationships and neither of them were the main breadwinners, and I think that they had decided they were going to quit.

They just did a few more DJ sets, and made Nobody to Love for their own DJ sets. It was a record heavily sampling a record that had only just recently been released [Bound 2, by Kanye West], so they literally made it with no consideration whatsoever as whether they were making a hit record or not. They just made a record that they thought would work in their set.

And like I say, I honestly think that if that record hadn’t taken off, they would have called it a day. But, yeah, thankfully, it was just one of those records that put a smile everyone’s face [the single went to No. 1 in the UK].

Bringing things up to date, what are the highlights of 2019?

In business terms, we’ve signed our latest deal with Universal, a three-year deal, but with an automatic add-on of two years.

We chose to do the longest deal that we’ve done with them, because we're now in a borderless industry and there are times when all of

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INTERVIEW

a sudden Britain feels quite small within the global market.

We used to sit there in our release meetings thinking what have Ministry got, what have Positiva got; now we're competing against every single record out there.

So, in actual fact, the thing that has possibly been curtailed is the one-off track; they've become harder to do because, rightfully so, artists are blocking up the airways again.

And in that environment, we knew we needed to go on a journey of becoming a label where the vast majority of our output was artist-driven, whether that’s in terms of a front person or a dance producer – it’s about multiplerecord signings and multiple-hit artists. And we know the best way to go on that journey is with Universal.

In terms of the roster [today], we’ve got M-22, Sigma, Geko, Callum Beattie. We've signed a wonderful new artist called Jetta, we’ve got High Contrast – we’ve actually got about 8-10 artists that are either in cycle of just starting on cycle.

Sigma

Skepta

What difference has streaming made to you as a label?

Well, we had to relearn our trade. We had to re-educate ourselves. I think we’ve always been lucky in the music industry, to work in an environment that constantly changes, so it never gets dull. But certainly in the last few years, there’s been more change in a smaller period of time than at any point previously.

It was streaming and the end of pre-orders, that was where we really needed to re-learn our trade. Because all of a sudden, instead of having eight or 10 weeks to campaign a record, to convince people it was worth backing before it came out, we’re now doing all of that [from the moment] the record has been released. Certainly if you’re starting a record from zero, or an artist from zero, and that's really difficult to do.

But yeah, it’s wonderful, we’ve now got an infinite amount of playlists to put our records on, and we know full well our music is traveling globally, whereas previously you weren’t too sure about that.

We will sometimes get 20 to 30 New Music Fridays, and that can be in Australia, the Philippines, Singapore, America... We still rely on the power of radio, and the audience that radio can give you is still important, but each radio station has 24 hours of programming, that's it; they can't change that. And each radio

station can only add X amount of new records every week; they can’t change that. In the streaming arena, there are no limitations. So our productivity is able to be a lot higher and our reach is a lot wider.

Somebody told me the other day just a mad stat, based on the streaming numbers that we do: every second of every day, somewhere, someone in the world is listening to one of our records. I’ll take that!

What are the most important lessons you’ve learned in the last 30 years?

Always be nice to people – respect and decency, whether that’s the person on reception or whoever, anyone and everyone. Sir Lucian Grainge wasn’t always Sir Lucian Grainge, you know what I mean? That’s served me well over the years, because the most important elements of whatever success we’ve had has been through relationships.

Sometimes that means rolling your sleeves up, or having people roll their sleeves up with you, or winning deals.

I always say it’s the music industry, not the industry of music. If you can be respectful about the fact that you're dealing with people, you’re dealing with artists, and if you can be kind and generous about that, that will stand you in good stead.

“Skepta is the ultimate punk rocker – anarchic, militant, everything you want a pure artist to be.”

What’s been the highlight across the three decades?

I’m a bit of a festival-head, I still like my lost weekends in the middle of a field. And one of the great joys is seeing a massive crowd reacting to one of your records, or seeing the development of an act to the point where they claim a rightful place on a big stage in a big field.

Looking forward, what’s exciting you about prospects for 3beat over the next few years?

I tell you one thing, as excited as I am about artist development, I’m equally excited about the next wave of employees I’m going to develop and work with, some of whom I haven’t even met yet.

We’re going to be employing sub-25 and even sub-21-year-olds.

I use too many football analogies, but there’s that one about how you can’t win anything with kids. Well we know that’s not true, you can win everything with kids. And the future of 3beat isn’t just about the next generation of artists, it’s about the next generation of employees. n 55

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Every Picture Tells A Story

Date: 18th February, 1976 Location: The Lyceum Theatre, London Marc Bolan is in his dressing room before a gig at the Lyceum Theatre, London, during the Futuristic Dragon tour. Seated in front of him are his Mum and Dad, Phyllis and Sid Feld. They were heading to the bingo and they decided to pop in and say hello to their son on the way!

On the right-hand side of the picture is a journalist from Sounds.

I’m the one making the introduction. My hair was less grey and slightly longer in those days. And a PR with a cigarette dangling in hand was nothing unusual.

I was working for the doyen of PR, Keith Altham, who was, at that time, without doubt the PR in the UK. However, his setup consisted of one room in Marble Arch, with three phones, a bookkeeper called Claudine (who came in a couple of times a week) and me.

Keith believed in throwing people in at the deep end. It was certainly a sink or swim environment. He was very busy with The Who and I was given my own clients. I had special responsibility for two artists in particular, the mighty Hawkwind and Marc Bolan.

Marc had gone through a bit of a dip in his career and this was part of the beginning of a comeback. He was great fun to work for, 122

had a wonderfully generous spirit and was totally charismatic – an absolute star in every sense of the word.

His lovely nature was illustrated when Keith was rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack, leaving only me to man the phones and run the show. I was 18 years-old at the time. The first star to ring asking for my boss was reasonably sympathetic. The next seemed less concerned: ‘Okay, but I’ve got an album coming out next week, how will we handle the PR on that?’

The next call was Marc. His response: ‘Wow man, what a drag, I’ll be over to help out in the office.’ I didn’t think much more about it and got on with things. 20 minutes or so later, the doorbell rang. It was Marc in a glitter jacket, eyeshadow, the whole look. He smiled, rolled up his sleeves and got stuck in. He spent the rest of the afternoon answering phones.

That tells you everything you need to know about Marc.

I’m pleased to say the story ended happily when it turned out that Keith hadn’t had a heart attack, just smoked some very strong grass! n Alan Edwards, founder of The Outside Organisation, is one of the most successful PRs in the history of the music business. For once it is true to say that it would be easier to list the legends he hasn’t worked with. He is currently sprinkling magic PR dust on the new Marc Bolan tribute album, Angel Headed Hipster.

PRS for Music member Flohio performing at PRS Presents #PRSF Funded

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