The music business: everything you know is wrong
I love the way that Guy Hands, the new owner of EMI, blunders in where angels fear to tread and questions a load of the music business's most cherished assumptions.
His latest is suggesting that a few less decisions about who to sign should be made by the a&r men and a few more by the so-called "suits". The Guardian reacts with horror suggesting that this is betraying the legacy of legendary a&r men like Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic and Seymour Stein of Sire and calling upon the manager of The Verve and Badly Drawn Boy to back up the old way of doing things.
In fact, both Ertegun and Stein owned their own companies, were as hard-nosed as the hardest-nosed businessman and, in the case of Ahmet, were never seen in anything other than a suit. The guys who owned their own firms made business decisions like anyone would. Sam Phillips sold Elvis's contract to RCA for $50,000 and invested the money in Holiday Inns.
The guys who go round flinging money at the likes of Badly Drawn Boy to make under-performing albums all work for publicly owned multi-nationals, have company cars, expense accounts and pension plans. They have a massive investment in things staying the way they are. Now that the troubles of the music business are the stuff of the City pages and the Culture section, aren't we sick of reading assumptions about how the music business works - and at the moment, manifestly fails to work - made by people who haven't changed their mind about how things are since they saw "Rock Follies"?
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My monocle popped out and
My monocle popped out and shot halfway across the room when I read that EMI employs 260 - that's two hundred and sixty - A&R people. I think there is fat to be trimmed there. And I think Guy Hands is quite right to wonder what the fuck these people do all day and what exactly they contribute to the bottom line (apart from a load of lousy acts and red ink).
Business change
There are any number of books on business change, but two common themes are that you need to know and listen to your customer and to have a clear and compelling vision of where you want the business to go. I'm not so sure EMI do either of these things - there is a better argument for a number of smaller labels, with smaller acts, close to the customer - let's face it, the market is fragmented to the point where it almost ceases to exist, and with a clear ethos which it's employees can understand and be passionate about. Maybe the EMI Mothership should be as small as possible providing overheads like finance etc, and invest in niche areas where undeniably there is a market - people still like music! It is ancient now but "Thriving on chaos" by Tom Peters explains all this stuff at great length and is worth a dip into. Sorry to sound like a management consultant, whooops, I am one.
Meanwhile, in her new job
our own Jude Rogers says this: http://www.thelipster.com/articles/2987010%C2%A0%E2%80%93
Does anybody know anybody
who actually likes Badly Drawn Boy??
I Went to see him live last year
with my good lady and another couple.
A few Points
He has a wolly hat.
He has a great drummer.
He has some fine tunes spread out over the course of several patchy albums.
He is intermittantly brilliant live (like his albums actually)
He is a totally obnoxious and needs a good kick in the ass because some of the carry on with his band was uncomfortable with the audience. We thought he was like a bullying employer.
I've done my time Mr Badly Drawn, no more concerts and no more records.
The End.
Which maybe explains....
...how entertaining he was/is as a solo act. Don't know whether he does that often, but as warm up for REM at Old Trafford 2003, he was very droll. I think he is just an awkward old cuss and should be looked at the same way as we look at, say, Van Morrison.And I know he hasn't the repertoire to deserve that veiled accolade yet, but how much future would you have given the Bert Bangs sessions, or whatever they're called .
A&R. (just add S&E)
Perhaps they don't always hunt the talent quite as hard as they should do.
Read this most entertaining article by ex A&R man John Niven on what happened to him.
The Music Business is after all a Business
I think that the music biz has had it too easy for too long. Massive profits for successful acts has funded a lazy attitude to investing in talent and the resultant strategy of looking for similar acts to already succesful ones. EMI have just entered the world most of us are in whereby the means to the market will change substantially and often.
The A&R process does not seem to be an effective way of developing talent anyway - most of the talent struggles to be discovered and actually what happens is the most marketable stuff gets the big push or labels fight each other to sign a band with a buzz. Most businesses would not support a development process that has that many failures.
And at the same time...
...in a business which is no longer about distribution, what's the advantage of scale?
Re the inexpertly sketched bloke.
Is it possible to rub him out?
Dodgy Football Analogy Time
I do think the music business is heading for a similar place to football. Desperate labels signing superstars to long term deals and taking money away from developing young talent. Then said superstars wriggling out of deals cos they don't want to play for that label anymore. There will be a couple of large survivors (Sony, UMG) as they have wide ranging media interests which will add valuable revenue streams (think Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal). iTunes will distort the current market in a similar way that Chelsea has in football but its not sustainable in the long term.
Realise the analogy creaks around the edges but I was keen to make it work.......
A game of two halfs
It's been like this forever but I like the idea of 'the long tail' applying to the music business; whatever they try to sell it will sell (even if it's just one or two) and the majority won't sell very much. Therefore reduce the cost of producing what you are selling makes sense but
a) do you increase the number of artists and hope you get lucky b) use your highly tuned pop antenna to track down the next big thing (highly unlikely!)
c) do a transer deal and hope they haven't peaked
A&R all a bit of a lottery isn't it...
What I think they are beginning to understand is that in this day and age if you're in the business of selling digital files then your business model is really on sticky ground, you really need to create some added value to make anyone (under 25) want to buy the stuff.