m magazine issue 44
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M Magazine - Issue 44TRANSCRIPT
21ST CENTURY RIGHTSThe changing face of music publishing
BRITISH METTLEStill rocking
THE IVORS
Members Music MagazineIssue 44June 2012
Everythingchanges
M full page PRS for Music.indd 3 31/05/2012 14:33:23
PRS for Music, 29-33 Berners Street, London W1T 3ABT 020 7580 5544 E [email protected] W www.prsformusic.com
The printing of M Magazine is managed on behalf of PRS for Music by Cyan Group Ltd, Twickenham. www.cyan-group.com
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ISSN 0309-0019© PRS for Music 2012. All rights reserved. The views expressed in M are not necessarily those of PRS for Music, nor of the editorial team. PRS for Music accepts no responsibility for the views expressed by contributors to M, nor for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustrations, nor for errors in contributed articles or advertisements. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited.
M is printed on paper manufactured using chlorine-free pulps and the raw materials are from fully managed and sustainable forests.
EDITORIAL
EditorPaul NicholsAssociate EditorsAnita Awbi Natalie Bedeau Steve ColeBusiness EditorBarney HooperMembership AdviserMyles Keller
PRODUCTION
Production & Design DirectorPaul NicholsArt DirectorCai Taylor
CONTRIBUTORS
Rosie Blanchard, KaKei Cheng, Jon Duncan, Laura Driffield, Alex Dorobantu, Pip Ellwood, Gemma Kenyon, Marianne Long, Jules Parker, Sarah Thirtle, Kim Williams
14 dark legendsThe enduring success of British metal
18 take that The biggest comeback in music history
22 music publishing Change is the only constant
28 up, up and awaySelf-confessed Anglophile and prolific songwriter Jimmy Webb
4 members and music
8 money and business
11 comment and debate
27 i wrote that
34 picture this
Welcome to the summer issue of M, in which we have a lot to celebrate.
The Ivors celebrate and reward the talents of your songwriting and composer peers and this year's line-up of recipients doesn't disappoint. It was no surprise to see Adele named Songwriter of the Year, crowning a year of extraordinary achievement for the singer.
We look back at the career of Take That, who collected the PRS for Music Outstanding Contribution to British Music award, and also chat to the highly regarded Jimmy Webb, who was over to London to collect the PRS for Music Special International award.
Continuing The Ivors theme, songwriter Justin Parker talks to M about working with Lana del Rey on Video Games. The popular hit earned the pair the Best Contemporary Song gong.
Later in the magazine, we shine some light on the often overlooked but incredibly successful and enduring British heavy metal scene, looking at
some of the great new talent who make no secret of their reverence for the elder statesmen of this genre.
Our publisher members continue to support and nurture great talent; MPA Chairman Chris Butler and other publishers discuss the challenges they are facing in the 21st century.
PRS for Music Chief Executive Robert Ashcroft comments on the success of your repertoire overseas, and provides the detail of the financial results for 2011 - a return to growth following a dip in 2010.
Matthew Herbert talks to M about his current project One Trilogy and how he prizes process and form above all else.
Finally, as Diamond Jubilee fever swept over a damp London, we cast an eye back to the Silver Jubilee with Soul II Soul. The collective played their first gig at the Fridge in Brixton 1977 and we honoured this with a PRS for Music Heritage Award (page 34).
Write to [email protected] and visit www.m-magazine.co.uk
FEATURES
REGULARS
MEMO
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m44_june 2012_3
cover: take that
contents
m online
1. nina nesbittBMG Rights ManagementThis singer songwriter from Edinburgh was only 16
years old when she emerged on the British music
scene last year. With a dedicated following, she has
supported Ed Sheeran and Example on tour. Her EP
The Apple Tree has received airplay on BBC Radio
Scotland and Radio 1 and reached number six on the
iTunes chart. www.ninanesbittmusic.com
2. paws UnpublishedPaws are a punk rock band from Glasgow who have
just signed to FatCat Records. They have shared the
stage with bands such as Dum Dum Girls, No Age
and Black Lips. BBC Scotland tipped them as ones
to watch in 2012, and they were nominated for Best
Live Act at The Scottish Alternative Music Awards.
PAWS have recorded sessions for BBC Radio 1 and
BBC 6 Music and release their debut LP later this
year. www.wehavepaws.com
3. madeonWarner/Chappell Music LimitedHailing from Nantes in France, 17 year old
Madeon’s unique blend of electro-pop and house
came to world attention with the releases of
Shuriken and For You. His single Icarus reached
number 22 in the UK singles chart. Madeon is
appearing at several dance music festivals, and
supporting Swedish House Mafia at the Milton
Keynes Bowl this summer.
www.facebook.com/itsmadeon
4. cher lloyd Syco, Sony/ATV Music PublishingCher rose to fame in the seventh series of The X
Factor and was signed to Simon Cowell’s Syco
Music. Her debut single Swagger Jagger entered the
UK Singles Chart at number one. She has just signed
a record deal with L.A. Reid's label and releases her
debut album in the United States later this year.
www.cherlloyd.com
5. conor maynard Universal Music PublishingBrighton singer Conor Maynard won MTV's Brand
New for 2012 award. His YouTube channel has the
fifth most subscribers in the UK. Over the past few
months, Conor has been working with songwriters
including Jermaine Dupri and Dianne Warren. His
debut single, Can't Say No, debuted at number two
on the UK singles chart. www.conor-maynard.com
6. jake bugg Kobalt Music PublishingNottingham singer songwriter Jake Bugg started
playing guitar at 12 and performed at Glastonbury
2011 on the BBC Introducing stage, aged 17. His
songs have appeared on various BBC radio playlists
and one, Country Song, has been used in a Greene
King IPA beer advert. He appeared on Later... with
Jools Holland last month and supported Michael
Kiwanuka on his European tour. www.jakebugg.com
4
5
2
6
1
3
new members
m44_june 2012_5
members
just joined sign upfor information about becoming a member visit prsformusic.com/joinus keep up to date at m-magazine.co.uk and follow us on
twitter @M_magazinePRS
m online
1. nina nesbittBMG Rights ManagementThis singer songwriter from Edinburgh was only 16
years old when she emerged on the British music
scene last year. With a dedicated following, she has
supported Ed Sheeran and Example on tour. Her EP
The Apple Tree has received airplay on BBC Radio
Scotland and Radio 1 and reached number six on the
iTunes chart. www.ninanesbittmusic.com
2. paws UnpublishedPaws are a punk rock band from Glasgow who have
just signed to FatCat Records. They have shared the
stage with bands such as Dum Dum Girls, No Age
and Black Lips. BBC Scotland tipped them as ones
to watch in 2012, and they were nominated for Best
Live Act at The Scottish Alternative Music Awards.
PAWS have recorded sessions for BBC Radio 1 and
BBC 6 Music and release their debut LP later this
year. www.wehavepaws.com
3. madeonWarner/Chappell Music LimitedHailing from Nantes in France, 17 year old
Madeon’s unique blend of electro-pop and house
came to world attention with the releases of
Shuriken and For You. His single Icarus reached
number 22 in the UK singles chart. Madeon is
appearing at several dance music festivals, and
supporting Swedish House Mafia at the Milton
Keynes Bowl this summer.
www.facebook.com/itsmadeon
4. cher lloyd Syco, Sony/ATV Music PublishingCher rose to fame in the seventh series of The X
Factor and was signed to Simon Cowell’s Syco
Music. Her debut single Swagger Jagger entered the
UK Singles Chart at number one. She has just signed
a record deal with L.A. Reid's label and releases her
debut album in the United States later this year.
www.cherlloyd.com
5. conor maynard Universal Music PublishingBrighton singer Conor Maynard won MTV's Brand
New for 2012 award. His YouTube channel has the
fifth most subscribers in the UK. Over the past few
months, Conor has been working with songwriters
including Jermaine Dupri and Dianne Warren. His
debut single, Can't Say No, debuted at number two
on the UK singles chart. www.conor-maynard.com
6. jake bugg Kobalt Music PublishingNottingham singer songwriter Jake Bugg started
playing guitar at 12 and performed at Glastonbury
2011 on the BBC Introducing stage, aged 17. His
songs have appeared on various BBC radio playlists
and one, Country Song, has been used in a Greene
King IPA beer advert. He appeared on Later... with
Jools Holland last month and supported Michael
Kiwanuka on his European tour. www.jakebugg.com
4
5
2
6
1
3
new members
m44_june 2012_5
members
just joined sign upfor information about becoming a member visit prsformusic.com/joinus keep up to date at m-magazine.co.uk and follow us on
twitter @M_magazinePRS
Top right: AdeleRight: Siouxsie SiouxBelow: Stan Tracey accepting his award from Danny Thompson
Above: Brian Molko and Fiction
Above: Mark-Antony Turnage is among the composers included in New Music 20x12
free olympics weekender
visit: www.m-magazine.co.uk want to get involved? email: [email protected]
m online
Adele continued to conquer the year’s music awards, taking home another two statuettes for her mantelpiece from the 57th Ivor Novello Awards.
At a packed ceremony in London’s Grosvenor House Hotel ballroom last month, the six times Grammy winner was given the Songwriter of the Year accolade by Annie Lennox. She also received the PRS for Music Most Performed Work Award for her number one hit Rolling in the Deep, along with co-writer Paul Epworth.
But it was PJ Harvey, not Adele, who received the Best Album Award for her Mercury Prize winning album Let England Shake. The singer songwriter from Dorset also pipped Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow to the post.
Meanwhile, newcomer Ed Sheeran won the Best Song Musically and Lyrically Award for his debut single The A Team. He was up against stiff competition, with Adele’s Rolling in the Deep and Florence + the Machine’s Shake it Out both in the running.
The PRS for Music Special International Award went to American composer and lyricist Jimmy Webb, whose impressive songbook spans worldwide hits such as Wichita Lineman and Up, Up and Away (see page 28).
Stan Tracey CBE was also acknowledged for his remarkable career spanning six decades. The veteran pianist and jazz legend was awarded the first ever Ivor Novello Jazz Award, while Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber received a BASCA Fellowship.
For a full list of winners and to watch video interviews with winners and guests including Take That, Ed Sheeran, Boy George and Siouxsie Sioux, visit www.m-magazine.co.uk
adele dominates at the ivors
Justin Parker, another newcomer, took the Best Contemporary Song Award for Video Games, which he co-wrote with American artist Lana del Rey. He told M: ‘I was so surprised. It was my first ever single - my first piece of work to be out in the world. Amazing.’ (see page 27)
The prestigious PRS for Music Outstanding Contribution to British Music accolade went to Take That (see page 18), while Spandau Ballet songwriter Gary Kemp received the award for Outstanding Song Collection, joining a list of previous winners that includes Queen, U2 and Steve Winwood.
Robin Gibb passed away on 20 May aged 62, following a long battle with colon cancer. Born on the Isle of Man in 1949, he went on to sell more than 200 million records with his brothers Maurice and Barry in the Bee Gees.
Their biggest hits include Stayin’ Alive and Night Fever from the 1977 film soundtrack Saturday Night Fever, but their renowned back catalogue also numbers international best sellers Massachusetts, I’ve Gotta Get a Message To You, Lonely Days and How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.
In 2004 the Bee Gees were awarded CBEs and received the BASCA Fellowship Award at the 51st Ivor Novello Awards two years later.
Guy Fletcher, PRS Chairman, said: ‘Few people enjoy a career in music lasting more than 50 years, yet Robin Gibb was still only 62 when he passed away.
‘With brothers Barry and Maurice, they formed one of the most powerful songwriting teams of all time. Apart from the phenomenal success of the Bee Gees, they enriched the lives of so many international stars, delivering for them some of their most enduring hits; Islands in the Stream, Chain Reaction, How Deep is Your Love and dozens more.
‘Robin was also very active in his support of Bomber Command charities and was President of CISAC, the International Confederation of Authors’ and Composers’ Societies… We have lost a true friend and a unique songwriter.’
BASCA has launched a new British Composer Awards logo and website to support the annual celebration of contemporary classical and jazz music. Now firmly established in the cultural calendar, the event gathers together hundreds of British composers, and those who support the creation and performance of their music, to recognise the country’s musical pioneers. The next ceremony will take place on 3 December.
For more information and to check out the new look visit www.basca.org.uk
The PRS for Music Foundation is offering free tickets for its Olympics weekender at London’s Southbank Centre from 13 to 15 July. Every one of its New Music 20x12 commissions will be performed, with most events completely free.
The weekend will be punctuated by one-on-one composing surgeries and a series of four workshops for aspiring composers focusing on folk music composition, vocal compositions, and writing for text and dance. The sessions will be hosted by the Brunel Institute of Composing and will involve many of the New Music 20x12 composers and performers.
The weekend forms part of SBC’s Festival of the World, which closes on 9 September.
For full programme details, and to apply for free tickets, visit www.southbankcentre.co.uk
BBC Radio 6 Music’s Matt Everitt was in conversation with Placebo front man Brian Molko at this year’s showcase by the sea, The Great Escape. In the highly anticipated session, Molko shared his songwriting experiences and dissected Placebo’s fifteen years of fame and notoriety in front of a packed theatre audience.
The session formed part of programme of events organised by PRS for Music for the opening day of the three day event on 10 May, which included panel debates, keynote speakers and a networking session.
Later, upcoming bands House of Hats, Munich and Us Baby Bear Bones took part in a live Make it Happen session,. The unique panel experience gave the bands access to practical career advice from industry experts including Natasha Bent, booking agent, digital marketing exec Marni Wandner, artist manager Dan O’Neill, and Full Time Hobby label boss Nigel Adams.
On the Friday, PRS for Music Foundation took over the Green Door Store venue to showcase three of the bands it supported to travel to the South by South West festival in America earlier this year. London based indie quartet Hatcham Social headlined, supported by expansive soul folk act Jonquil and upcoming four piece Fiction.
For more information about PRS for Music at The Great Escape, see the business news section of M or visit www.m-magazine.co.uk
the great escape
robin gibb1942 – 2012
british composer awards
MARK A
LLAN
m44_june 2012_76_june 2012_m44
news
members & music
Top right: AdeleRight: Siouxsie SiouxBelow: Stan Tracey accepting his award from Danny Thompson
Above: Brian Molko and Fiction
Above: Mark-Antony Turnage is among the composers included in New Music 20x12
free olympics weekender
visit: www.m-magazine.co.uk want to get involved? email: [email protected]
m online
Adele continued to conquer the year’s music awards, taking home another two statuettes for her mantelpiece from the 57th Ivor Novello Awards.
At a packed ceremony in London’s Grosvenor House Hotel ballroom last month, the six times Grammy winner was given the Songwriter of the Year accolade by Annie Lennox. She also received the PRS for Music Most Performed Work Award for her number one hit Rolling in the Deep, along with co-writer Paul Epworth.
But it was PJ Harvey, not Adele, who received the Best Album Award for her Mercury Prize winning album Let England Shake. The singer songwriter from Dorset also pipped Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow to the post.
Meanwhile, newcomer Ed Sheeran won the Best Song Musically and Lyrically Award for his debut single The A Team. He was up against stiff competition, with Adele’s Rolling in the Deep and Florence + the Machine’s Shake it Out both in the running.
The PRS for Music Special International Award went to American composer and lyricist Jimmy Webb, whose impressive songbook spans worldwide hits such as Wichita Lineman and Up, Up and Away (see page 28).
Stan Tracey CBE was also acknowledged for his remarkable career spanning six decades. The veteran pianist and jazz legend was awarded the first ever Ivor Novello Jazz Award, while Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber received a BASCA Fellowship.
For a full list of winners and to watch video interviews with winners and guests including Take That, Ed Sheeran, Boy George and Siouxsie Sioux, visit www.m-magazine.co.uk
adele dominates at the ivors
Justin Parker, another newcomer, took the Best Contemporary Song Award for Video Games, which he co-wrote with American artist Lana del Rey. He told M: ‘I was so surprised. It was my first ever single - my first piece of work to be out in the world. Amazing.’ (see page 27)
The prestigious PRS for Music Outstanding Contribution to British Music accolade went to Take That (see page 18), while Spandau Ballet songwriter Gary Kemp received the award for Outstanding Song Collection, joining a list of previous winners that includes Queen, U2 and Steve Winwood.
Robin Gibb passed away on 20 May aged 62, following a long battle with colon cancer. Born on the Isle of Man in 1949, he went on to sell more than 200 million records with his brothers Maurice and Barry in the Bee Gees.
Their biggest hits include Stayin’ Alive and Night Fever from the 1977 film soundtrack Saturday Night Fever, but their renowned back catalogue also numbers international best sellers Massachusetts, I’ve Gotta Get a Message To You, Lonely Days and How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.
In 2004 the Bee Gees were awarded CBEs and received the BASCA Fellowship Award at the 51st Ivor Novello Awards two years later.
Guy Fletcher, PRS Chairman, said: ‘Few people enjoy a career in music lasting more than 50 years, yet Robin Gibb was still only 62 when he passed away.
‘With brothers Barry and Maurice, they formed one of the most powerful songwriting teams of all time. Apart from the phenomenal success of the Bee Gees, they enriched the lives of so many international stars, delivering for them some of their most enduring hits; Islands in the Stream, Chain Reaction, How Deep is Your Love and dozens more.
‘Robin was also very active in his support of Bomber Command charities and was President of CISAC, the International Confederation of Authors’ and Composers’ Societies… We have lost a true friend and a unique songwriter.’
BASCA has launched a new British Composer Awards logo and website to support the annual celebration of contemporary classical and jazz music. Now firmly established in the cultural calendar, the event gathers together hundreds of British composers, and those who support the creation and performance of their music, to recognise the country’s musical pioneers. The next ceremony will take place on 3 December.
For more information and to check out the new look visit www.basca.org.uk
The PRS for Music Foundation is offering free tickets for its Olympics weekender at London’s Southbank Centre from 13 to 15 July. Every one of its New Music 20x12 commissions will be performed, with most events completely free.
The weekend will be punctuated by one-on-one composing surgeries and a series of four workshops for aspiring composers focusing on folk music composition, vocal compositions, and writing for text and dance. The sessions will be hosted by the Brunel Institute of Composing and will involve many of the New Music 20x12 composers and performers.
The weekend forms part of SBC’s Festival of the World, which closes on 9 September.
For full programme details, and to apply for free tickets, visit www.southbankcentre.co.uk
BBC Radio 6 Music’s Matt Everitt was in conversation with Placebo front man Brian Molko at this year’s showcase by the sea, The Great Escape. In the highly anticipated session, Molko shared his songwriting experiences and dissected Placebo’s fifteen years of fame and notoriety in front of a packed theatre audience.
The session formed part of programme of events organised by PRS for Music for the opening day of the three day event on 10 May, which included panel debates, keynote speakers and a networking session.
Later, upcoming bands House of Hats, Munich and Us Baby Bear Bones took part in a live Make it Happen session,. The unique panel experience gave the bands access to practical career advice from industry experts including Natasha Bent, booking agent, digital marketing exec Marni Wandner, artist manager Dan O’Neill, and Full Time Hobby label boss Nigel Adams.
On the Friday, PRS for Music Foundation took over the Green Door Store venue to showcase three of the bands it supported to travel to the South by South West festival in America earlier this year. London based indie quartet Hatcham Social headlined, supported by expansive soul folk act Jonquil and upcoming four piece Fiction.
For more information about PRS for Music at The Great Escape, see the business news section of M or visit www.m-magazine.co.uk
the great escape
robin gibb1942 – 2012
british composer awards
MARK A
LLAN
m44_june 2012_76_june 2012_m44
news
members & music
hits and missesFollowing a dip in royalties collected in 2010, PRS for Music returned to growth in 2011, collecting £630.8m for its songwriter, composer and music publisher members. The rise, equating to £19.6m, or 3.2 percent, was driven by royalties from licensed online music services and money collected from music use overseas. The rise in collections meant a total of £557.3m could be distributed to members during the year, a record amount.
Royalties from licensed digital music services such as iTunes, Spotify, We7 and 7Digital now account for six percent of total PRS for Music income and grew 45.3 percent, excluding ringtones, in 2011. The society has licensed an array of digital music providers and members now earn money from downloads, streaming and subscription services, as well as new cloud-based offerings such as Apple’s iTunes in the Cloud and iMatch.
With 90 agreements covering nearly 150 countries around the world, international royalties now equate to just less than 30 percent of total PRS for Music income at £187.7m. British music is enjoyed the world over, and efforts to improve coordination and cooperation with collecting societies in other countries has delivered strong results. The success of songwriters such as Adele and Taio Cruz led to a 16.6 percent boost in royalties collected from the US, Canada and South America alone.
Following a slight dip in 2010, royalties collected from live music, including popular and classical concerts, festivals and tours, grew 8.2 percent to £22.5m. The festival market was strong throughout the year and the popularity of the Take That Progress tour boosted the live sector overall. Public performance sales, which includes general music licensing for businesses across the UK, remained stable with a nominal increase of 0.9 percent to £131.4m; a strong result in the face of difficult trading conditions across the UK.
Will Page, chief economist at PRS for Music, used his keynote speech on day one of The Great Escape to look behind the sales figures to uncover what is really happening in the recorded music industry.
Looking at the Top 10 albums of 2011, he said that five broke the one million sales mark. He went on to explain that despite the Adele’s phenomenal year – she had two of the top five sellers - the established law of music retailing dictates that the top 20 percent of titles generate 80 percent of demand. Therefore, the remaining 80 per cent of titles only generate 20 percent of demand.
And, while the number of hit albums seems to have remained constant during the last decade, with around five or six per year selling over the million mark, it was the smaller albums that were feeling the squeeze of an industry under pressure.
He continued: ‘If you follow our work, you might be aware of an emerging 95 rule too. What we are saying here is that in this long tail inventory of more choice, the top five percent of titles generate 90 percent of demand, while the other 95 percent of titles generate just 10 percent of demand. We are seeing this across digital marketplaces. So, we actually have this hit-centric business, which is opposite to what the long tail theory predicted.’
Of the albums that sold between 100,000 and 750,000 copies, 50 fewer albums sold in that range in 2011 compared to 2002. ‘That’s a drop of 35 percent,’ Page said. ‘What this is telling us is that the hits still hit, there’s no problem there, but we’ve seen a big slump in demand for titles that make up the body of the industry.
‘This may be due to increased choice or maybe something that’s happening in media. It’s definitely something we should all explore, considering many artists and managers in the audience will be aiming for this mark when their careers take off,’ he said.
Page was joined on stage by a panel comprising Tim Chambers from Live Nation, Ruth Simmons, founder of soundlounge (see Comment, page 13) and Martin Mills, chairman of the Beggars label group.
Mills said that while the middle was squeezed and fewer albums were selling over the 100,000 mark, the market for small acts, selling between 10,000 and 99,000 copies, seemed to be robust. ‘There’s a lot happening off the conventional radar,’ he explained. ‘I think album sales in the small indie sector are really healthy. The market is definitely becoming more polarised.’
Royalties collected from broadcasters grew 1.9 percent to £148.8m, following new deals and renewals with major TV channels and networks, including the BBC, ITV, Five, Box TV, Bloomberg, Turner, ESPN and Disney.
Only recorded media, an area heavily reliant on the declining CD market, saw a drop in royalties collected, falling 13.3 percent to £101.6m. The decrease mirrored the market, as music consumers switched away from these formats towards digital distribution of music.
PRS for Music chief executive Robert Ashcroft said: ‘The continuing popularity of our music in other countries demonstrates the global success of the UK music industry. Our efforts to support copyright at home and abroad, combined with the energy we continue to put into the licensing of new digital services, enabled us to pay additional royalties to our members last year.
PRS members voted in new publisher director John Minch, Chief Executive of independent publisher Imagem, at the 2012 AGM last month. Existing publisher director Simon Platz, head of Bucks Music, was reappointed, along with external directors Estelle Morris and Wanda Goldwag. Meanwhile, three writer directors were also reappointed; Mick Leeson, Lynsey de Paul and Edward Gregson.
The meeting was hosted by PRS Chairman Guy Fletcher at Royal Society of Medicine in London on 31 May. He congratulated members on an outstanding year for their music at home and abroad, citing global commercial success and big wins at the Grammy, Ivor Novello and BRIT Awards. Fletcher also thanked PRS for Music staff, adding that
prs 2012 agm
more musicin pubs
2011: record royalty year uk’s top live venues
PRS for Music is launching a campaign targeted at pub landlords to educate them on the value of hosting live music. The society commissioned independent researchers CGA Strategy to assess the benefits that live music brings to UK pubs and bars, and the findings showed that, on average, those venues featuring live music nights take an extra £306 more in drinks sales on those days. On Friday and Saturday nights this rises to an average of £667 more a day.
The research will now form the backbone of the campaign, which hopes to highlight the potential competitive advantage live music can offer pubs in these difficult economic times.
As part of the campaign, landlords and pub managers will receive a guide to hosting gigs and information about the recent changes to the Live Music Act alongside the research. PRS for Music will also encourage venues that do not currently use live music to enter its annual Music Makeover competition, where venues can win £5,000 towards music equipment.
London’s Southbank Centre has topped the PRS for Music list of leading concert venues for 2011. The Southbank Centre, which consists of the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery, held 422 musical events last year, attended by more than a million people. The Sage in Gateshead and Birmingham’s O2 Academy came in second and third respectively.
The society analysed data from 10,000 live music events last year and found that the top 100 venues hosted 13,781 concerts, while the top five venues held more than 1,829 concerts between them. London accounted for 30 percent of the top 100 venues, followed by Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol respectively.
In a year where the focus is on sporting venues, the report celebrates the value of all venues and reinforces the fact that music is at the heart of Britain’s creative industries. The music business is worth £3.9bn to the UK economy and live music is an essential contributor to growth.
The European Commission (EC) will launch its directive on collective rights management at the end of June. The initiative will have two parts, including regulations governing the operation of collecting societies such as PRS for Music, to encourage increased transparency and accountability standards, and secondly, a passport model for licensing digital services across countries.
Full details of the passport model are yet to be released but it is believed societies that meet the new standards will have wider scope for licensing members’ repertoire across borders. PRS for Music has been working with the EC, contributing to the debate on ways to improve
ec launches society directivegovernance and transparency in the European collecting society network.
Solutions for the licensing of music across national borders can be complex, and PRS for Music has been liaising with its partners on developing solutions that would enable easier licensing and reduced processing costs. The new EC proposals will be complementary to the work the society has already undertaken, and would sit alongside initiatives such as a global repertoire database.
Any new regulation would be subject to scrutiny by the European parliament and it could take more than two years to come into force.
‘The licensed digital market is now delivering a significant income stream for our members. This goes some way to replacing revenues lost from the declining CD market although online piracy continues to be a problem. The way we consume music is changing, but PRS for Music is adapting to ensure those that create it can continue to earn a living.’
Non-operational costs grew £14.5m, due to contributions to the organisation’s now closed defined benefit pension scheme and investment in future system capability, including the global repertoire database.
Operational costs increased by £1.1m in 2011, reflecting the cost of collecting processing and distributing additional royalties from over 350,000 businesses and 150 countries. PRS for Music now processes in excess of 65 billion usages of music annually, from digital streams to live performance and TV and radio play.
together, members and employees had made the society one of the best. PRS for Music Chief Executive Robert Ashcroft outlined the society’s strategic priorities over the coming year, including an emphasis on copyright protection, revenue growth and cost reduction. He also told members to expect upcoming announcements on new international partnerships. There was also an update from Brian Willey, Deputy Chairman of the PRS for Music Benevolent Fund, and members were urged to contact the fund if they needed financial assistance. He also encouraged all members to buy tickets to September’s Marc Bolan 35th Anniversary concert fundraiser. See www.prsformusicfund.com
£ million 2011 2010
Broadcast 148.4 145.6
Online 39.1 27.6
International 187.7 169.8
Public performance 131.4 130.2
Live 22.5 20.8
Recorded media 101.7 117.2
Royalty income 630.8 611.2
Interest and other income 4.5 4.6
Total revenue 635.3 615.8
Costs (76.5) (66.4)
Charitable donations (1.5) (1.5)
Net distributable revenue 557.3 547.9
Broadcast (23.5%)Online (6.2%)International (29.8%)Public performance (20.8%)Live (3.6%)Recorded media (16.1%)
m44_june 2010_9
money & business
8_june 2012_m44
news
hits and missesFollowing a dip in royalties collected in 2010, PRS for Music returned to growth in 2011, collecting £630.8m for its songwriter, composer and music publisher members. The rise, equating to £19.6m, or 3.2 percent, was driven by royalties from licensed online music services and money collected from music use overseas. The rise in collections meant a total of £557.3m could be distributed to members during the year, a record amount.
Royalties from licensed digital music services such as iTunes, Spotify, We7 and 7Digital now account for six percent of total PRS for Music income and grew 45.3 percent, excluding ringtones, in 2011. The society has licensed an array of digital music providers and members now earn money from downloads, streaming and subscription services, as well as new cloud-based offerings such as Apple’s iTunes in the Cloud and iMatch.
With 90 agreements covering nearly 150 countries around the world, international royalties now equate to just less than 30 percent of total PRS for Music income at £187.7m. British music is enjoyed the world over, and efforts to improve coordination and cooperation with collecting societies in other countries has delivered strong results. The success of songwriters such as Adele and Taio Cruz led to a 16.6 percent boost in royalties collected from the US, Canada and South America alone.
Following a slight dip in 2010, royalties collected from live music, including popular and classical concerts, festivals and tours, grew 8.2 percent to £22.5m. The festival market was strong throughout the year and the popularity of the Take That Progress tour boosted the live sector overall. Public performance sales, which includes general music licensing for businesses across the UK, remained stable with a nominal increase of 0.9 percent to £131.4m; a strong result in the face of difficult trading conditions across the UK.
Will Page, chief economist at PRS for Music, used his keynote speech on day one of The Great Escape to look behind the sales figures to uncover what is really happening in the recorded music industry.
Looking at the Top 10 albums of 2011, he said that five broke the one million sales mark. He went on to explain that despite the Adele’s phenomenal year – she had two of the top five sellers - the established law of music retailing dictates that the top 20 percent of titles generate 80 percent of demand. Therefore, the remaining 80 per cent of titles only generate 20 percent of demand.
And, while the number of hit albums seems to have remained constant during the last decade, with around five or six per year selling over the million mark, it was the smaller albums that were feeling the squeeze of an industry under pressure.
He continued: ‘If you follow our work, you might be aware of an emerging 95 rule too. What we are saying here is that in this long tail inventory of more choice, the top five percent of titles generate 90 percent of demand, while the other 95 percent of titles generate just 10 percent of demand. We are seeing this across digital marketplaces. So, we actually have this hit-centric business, which is opposite to what the long tail theory predicted.’
Of the albums that sold between 100,000 and 750,000 copies, 50 fewer albums sold in that range in 2011 compared to 2002. ‘That’s a drop of 35 percent,’ Page said. ‘What this is telling us is that the hits still hit, there’s no problem there, but we’ve seen a big slump in demand for titles that make up the body of the industry.
‘This may be due to increased choice or maybe something that’s happening in media. It’s definitely something we should all explore, considering many artists and managers in the audience will be aiming for this mark when their careers take off,’ he said.
Page was joined on stage by a panel comprising Tim Chambers from Live Nation, Ruth Simmons, founder of soundlounge (see Comment, page 13) and Martin Mills, chairman of the Beggars label group.
Mills said that while the middle was squeezed and fewer albums were selling over the 100,000 mark, the market for small acts, selling between 10,000 and 99,000 copies, seemed to be robust. ‘There’s a lot happening off the conventional radar,’ he explained. ‘I think album sales in the small indie sector are really healthy. The market is definitely becoming more polarised.’
Royalties collected from broadcasters grew 1.9 percent to £148.8m, following new deals and renewals with major TV channels and networks, including the BBC, ITV, Five, Box TV, Bloomberg, Turner, ESPN and Disney.
Only recorded media, an area heavily reliant on the declining CD market, saw a drop in royalties collected, falling 13.3 percent to £101.6m. The decrease mirrored the market, as music consumers switched away from these formats towards digital distribution of music.
PRS for Music chief executive Robert Ashcroft said: ‘The continuing popularity of our music in other countries demonstrates the global success of the UK music industry. Our efforts to support copyright at home and abroad, combined with the energy we continue to put into the licensing of new digital services, enabled us to pay additional royalties to our members last year.
PRS members voted in new publisher director John Minch, Chief Executive of independent publisher Imagem, at the 2012 AGM last month. Existing publisher director Simon Platz, head of Bucks Music, was reappointed, along with external directors Estelle Morris and Wanda Goldwag. Meanwhile, three writer directors were also reappointed; Mick Leeson, Lynsey de Paul and Edward Gregson.
The meeting was hosted by PRS Chairman Guy Fletcher at Royal Society of Medicine in London on 31 May. He congratulated members on an outstanding year for their music at home and abroad, citing global commercial success and big wins at the Grammy, Ivor Novello and BRIT Awards. Fletcher also thanked PRS for Music staff, adding that
prs 2012 agm
more musicin pubs
2011: record royalty year uk’s top live venues
PRS for Music is launching a campaign targeted at pub landlords to educate them on the value of hosting live music. The society commissioned independent researchers CGA Strategy to assess the benefits that live music brings to UK pubs and bars, and the findings showed that, on average, those venues featuring live music nights take an extra £306 more in drinks sales on those days. On Friday and Saturday nights this rises to an average of £667 more a day.
The research will now form the backbone of the campaign, which hopes to highlight the potential competitive advantage live music can offer pubs in these difficult economic times.
As part of the campaign, landlords and pub managers will receive a guide to hosting gigs and information about the recent changes to the Live Music Act alongside the research. PRS for Music will also encourage venues that do not currently use live music to enter its annual Music Makeover competition, where venues can win £5,000 towards music equipment.
London’s Southbank Centre has topped the PRS for Music list of leading concert venues for 2011. The Southbank Centre, which consists of the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery, held 422 musical events last year, attended by more than a million people. The Sage in Gateshead and Birmingham’s O2 Academy came in second and third respectively.
The society analysed data from 10,000 live music events last year and found that the top 100 venues hosted 13,781 concerts, while the top five venues held more than 1,829 concerts between them. London accounted for 30 percent of the top 100 venues, followed by Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol respectively.
In a year where the focus is on sporting venues, the report celebrates the value of all venues and reinforces the fact that music is at the heart of Britain’s creative industries. The music business is worth £3.9bn to the UK economy and live music is an essential contributor to growth.
The European Commission (EC) will launch its directive on collective rights management at the end of June. The initiative will have two parts, including regulations governing the operation of collecting societies such as PRS for Music, to encourage increased transparency and accountability standards, and secondly, a passport model for licensing digital services across countries.
Full details of the passport model are yet to be released but it is believed societies that meet the new standards will have wider scope for licensing members’ repertoire across borders. PRS for Music has been working with the EC, contributing to the debate on ways to improve
ec launches society directivegovernance and transparency in the European collecting society network.
Solutions for the licensing of music across national borders can be complex, and PRS for Music has been liaising with its partners on developing solutions that would enable easier licensing and reduced processing costs. The new EC proposals will be complementary to the work the society has already undertaken, and would sit alongside initiatives such as a global repertoire database.
Any new regulation would be subject to scrutiny by the European parliament and it could take more than two years to come into force.
‘The licensed digital market is now delivering a significant income stream for our members. This goes some way to replacing revenues lost from the declining CD market although online piracy continues to be a problem. The way we consume music is changing, but PRS for Music is adapting to ensure those that create it can continue to earn a living.’
Non-operational costs grew £14.5m, due to contributions to the organisation’s now closed defined benefit pension scheme and investment in future system capability, including the global repertoire database.
Operational costs increased by £1.1m in 2011, reflecting the cost of collecting processing and distributing additional royalties from over 350,000 businesses and 150 countries. PRS for Music now processes in excess of 65 billion usages of music annually, from digital streams to live performance and TV and radio play.
together, members and employees had made the society one of the best. PRS for Music Chief Executive Robert Ashcroft outlined the society’s strategic priorities over the coming year, including an emphasis on copyright protection, revenue growth and cost reduction. He also told members to expect upcoming announcements on new international partnerships. There was also an update from Brian Willey, Deputy Chairman of the PRS for Music Benevolent Fund, and members were urged to contact the fund if they needed financial assistance. He also encouraged all members to buy tickets to September’s Marc Bolan 35th Anniversary concert fundraiser. See www.prsformusicfund.com
£ million 2011 2010
Broadcast 148.4 145.6
Online 39.1 27.6
International 187.7 169.8
Public performance 131.4 130.2
Live 22.5 20.8
Recorded media 101.7 117.2
Royalty income 630.8 611.2
Interest and other income 4.5 4.6
Total revenue 635.3 615.8
Costs (76.5) (66.4)
Charitable donations (1.5) (1.5)
Net distributable revenue 557.3 547.9
Broadcast (23.5%)Online (6.2%)International (29.8%)Public performance (20.8%)Live (3.6%)Recorded media (16.1%)
m44_june 2010_9
money & business
8_june 2012_m44
news
Performing (PRS):13 July 201215 October 201214 December 201215 January 2013
Mechanicals (MCPS):31 July 201231 August28 September31 October
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Music Guard.indd 1 30/05/2012 14:57breed.indd 1 30/05/2012 14:52m44_june 2010_11
The High Court in London has ruled that filesharing website The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK based Internet Service Providers (ISPs). An obvious and flagrant abuser of copyright and intellectual property legislation, The Pirate Bay is now no longer available to users of Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, 02 and Virgin Media internet services.
The Pirate Bay originated in Sweden in 2003 and rapidly became one of the most popular filesharing sites across Europe, offering music, videos and games to users. Despite a Swedish court decision in 2009, which found its creators guilty of helping people circumvent copyright controls, and the subsequent quashing of an appeal in 2010, the site remained in business. This new ruling will now block access in the UK, with other countries likely to follow suit.
The move to block the website was led by the BPI industry body, which had previously asked ISPs to voluntarily restrict access. ISPs asked for legal clarity on the issue, so the BPI, with the support of many in the industry including PRS for Music, sought a High Court order.
Robert Ashcroft, chief executive of PRS for Music said: ‘This decision demonstrates that our legal system provides effective sanction against those who deliberately circumvent copyright and is an important step towards establishing a level playing field for music service providers on the internet.
‘As such, we welcome it unreservedly, but we also believe it should sit alongside other measures, such as a traffic light system to inform consumers at the point of search whether a website is licensed or unlicensed, and voluntary action by industry to deny infringing sites access to advertising revenues and credit card payment.’
Any action to protect content provokes debate and some described the move as ‘censorship’ and ‘ineffective’. Hacking groups immediately launched attacks on ISPs that obeyed the order. Ironically, even The Pirate Bay itself became the victim of online hackers after it spoke out against the attacks.
money & businessnews
Crossing borders: PRS for Music has launched an international hub and interactive world map that members can click on to find out more about the society’s activities in each country. The hub provides access to all of the society’s international subsites, covering countries in which it has an appointed agent such as Bermuda, the Bahamas, Cyprus and Malta. Visit www.prsformusic.com/international
Soundmouse: PRS for Music was able to pay out radio royalties with increased accuracy in the April distribution, thanks to fingerprinted data from Soundmouse. The music recognition technology helped the society process 21 percent more radio performances during the quarter.
Disputes and counterclaims: The new rules governing PRS for Music’s disputes and duplicate claims policy will take effect from 28 June 2012. Among the policy changes will be a reduction to the timeframe for providing supporting information to speed up the process, simplification of policy language and clear guidelines on reversionary rights conflicts. Visit prsformusic.com after 28 June for more details.
Classic FM relaunch: Global Radio’s classical music station Classic FM has launched a new website, which it claims will become the ‘world’s biggest online classical music destination’. New features include a diary of classical concerts, lists of recommended listening, a database of audio, video and images featuring key classical composers and performers, plus the ability to buy the music that listeners have heard on air.
Digital outperforms physical for the first time: Digital revenues have surpassed physical product revenues for the first time in UK record industry history, the BPI has found. They accounted for 55.5 percent of revenues in the first quarter of the 2012, boosting the record industry’s overall market value by 2.7 percent to £155.8m. Sales of digital albums continued to grow substantially, increasing by 22.7 percent to £35.9m and outstripping revenues from single track downloads for a second successive quarter.
ACTA update: The Dutch parliament has urged the country’s government not to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a global treaty that aims to harmonise some intellectual property laws in countries around the world. The European Union and 22 member countries, including the UK, already signed the treaty earlier this year, although some are reconsidering their position. The European Parliament and European Courts of Justice are both still to endorse it.
news in brief
sinking the pirates
prs, mcps admin fees riseThe PRS and MCPS boards, have approved an increase in the administration rates charged on PRS royalties and the commission rates charged on MCPS royalties.
Overall PRS administration revenue will rise by approximately one percentage point from the October 2012 distribution. Meanwhile, the MCPS commission rates on mechanical royalties in the AP1 category have already increased from 6.25 percent to 7 percent and on the DVD1 rate from 7 percent to 8.7 percent.
PRS for Music said that it had to react to the changing music industry, which has seen a dramatic decline in demand for recorded media products such as CDs and DVDs, and a shift to digital music consumption. Despite continued growth in royalty collections as a whole, collections from recorded media have steadily fallen over the past decade and digital growth has not yet offset this decline.
‘Throughout this time we have managed to increase our overall distributions to members year-on-year, except in 2010, all the time closely managing our costs and enabling PRS and MCPS, through their alliance, to become one of the most efficient collective management societies in the world,’ PRS for Music chief executive Robert Ashcroft said in a statement.
‘The decision to make these changes to administration and commission rates protects royalty payments for writer members and publishers, and protects all members - even those who do not receive mechanical royalties - from a significant increase in costs in the unlikely event that MCPS were to cease trading. If that were to happen all costs of running PRS for Music would sit with PRS members and significant liabilities would also be incurred,’ he said.
Performing (PRS):13 July 201215 October 201214 December 201215 January 2013
Mechanicals (MCPS):31 July 201231 August28 September31 October
your next paydays
www.hardcase.com
20 years of excellence1992 - 2012
made in the uk & extremely proud
HARDCASE INTERNATIONAL LIMITEDTel: + 44 (0) 1246 451234Fax: + 44 (0) 1246 572457
Email: [email protected]
Musicians Insurance
Instant quotes online or by phone
*Price based upon £100 worth of equipment in the UK only
Cover from only£2.45
per month *
Tuned to your needs
Music Guard.indd 1 30/05/2012 14:57breed.indd 1 30/05/2012 14:52m44_june 2010_11
The High Court in London has ruled that filesharing website The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK based Internet Service Providers (ISPs). An obvious and flagrant abuser of copyright and intellectual property legislation, The Pirate Bay is now no longer available to users of Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, 02 and Virgin Media internet services.
The Pirate Bay originated in Sweden in 2003 and rapidly became one of the most popular filesharing sites across Europe, offering music, videos and games to users. Despite a Swedish court decision in 2009, which found its creators guilty of helping people circumvent copyright controls, and the subsequent quashing of an appeal in 2010, the site remained in business. This new ruling will now block access in the UK, with other countries likely to follow suit.
The move to block the website was led by the BPI industry body, which had previously asked ISPs to voluntarily restrict access. ISPs asked for legal clarity on the issue, so the BPI, with the support of many in the industry including PRS for Music, sought a High Court order.
Robert Ashcroft, chief executive of PRS for Music said: ‘This decision demonstrates that our legal system provides effective sanction against those who deliberately circumvent copyright and is an important step towards establishing a level playing field for music service providers on the internet.
‘As such, we welcome it unreservedly, but we also believe it should sit alongside other measures, such as a traffic light system to inform consumers at the point of search whether a website is licensed or unlicensed, and voluntary action by industry to deny infringing sites access to advertising revenues and credit card payment.’
Any action to protect content provokes debate and some described the move as ‘censorship’ and ‘ineffective’. Hacking groups immediately launched attacks on ISPs that obeyed the order. Ironically, even The Pirate Bay itself became the victim of online hackers after it spoke out against the attacks.
money & businessnews
Crossing borders: PRS for Music has launched an international hub and interactive world map that members can click on to find out more about the society’s activities in each country. The hub provides access to all of the society’s international subsites, covering countries in which it has an appointed agent such as Bermuda, the Bahamas, Cyprus and Malta. Visit www.prsformusic.com/international
Soundmouse: PRS for Music was able to pay out radio royalties with increased accuracy in the April distribution, thanks to fingerprinted data from Soundmouse. The music recognition technology helped the society process 21 percent more radio performances during the quarter.
Disputes and counterclaims: The new rules governing PRS for Music’s disputes and duplicate claims policy will take effect from 28 June 2012. Among the policy changes will be a reduction to the timeframe for providing supporting information to speed up the process, simplification of policy language and clear guidelines on reversionary rights conflicts. Visit prsformusic.com after 28 June for more details.
Classic FM relaunch: Global Radio’s classical music station Classic FM has launched a new website, which it claims will become the ‘world’s biggest online classical music destination’. New features include a diary of classical concerts, lists of recommended listening, a database of audio, video and images featuring key classical composers and performers, plus the ability to buy the music that listeners have heard on air.
Digital outperforms physical for the first time: Digital revenues have surpassed physical product revenues for the first time in UK record industry history, the BPI has found. They accounted for 55.5 percent of revenues in the first quarter of the 2012, boosting the record industry’s overall market value by 2.7 percent to £155.8m. Sales of digital albums continued to grow substantially, increasing by 22.7 percent to £35.9m and outstripping revenues from single track downloads for a second successive quarter.
ACTA update: The Dutch parliament has urged the country’s government not to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a global treaty that aims to harmonise some intellectual property laws in countries around the world. The European Union and 22 member countries, including the UK, already signed the treaty earlier this year, although some are reconsidering their position. The European Parliament and European Courts of Justice are both still to endorse it.
news in brief
sinking the pirates
prs, mcps admin fees riseThe PRS and MCPS boards, have approved an increase in the administration rates charged on PRS royalties and the commission rates charged on MCPS royalties.
Overall PRS administration revenue will rise by approximately one percentage point from the October 2012 distribution. Meanwhile, the MCPS commission rates on mechanical royalties in the AP1 category have already increased from 6.25 percent to 7 percent and on the DVD1 rate from 7 percent to 8.7 percent.
PRS for Music said that it had to react to the changing music industry, which has seen a dramatic decline in demand for recorded media products such as CDs and DVDs, and a shift to digital music consumption. Despite continued growth in royalty collections as a whole, collections from recorded media have steadily fallen over the past decade and digital growth has not yet offset this decline.
‘Throughout this time we have managed to increase our overall distributions to members year-on-year, except in 2010, all the time closely managing our costs and enabling PRS and MCPS, through their alliance, to become one of the most efficient collective management societies in the world,’ PRS for Music chief executive Robert Ashcroft said in a statement.
‘The decision to make these changes to administration and commission rates protects royalty payments for writer members and publishers, and protects all members - even those who do not receive mechanical royalties - from a significant increase in costs in the unlikely event that MCPS were to cease trading. If that were to happen all costs of running PRS for Music would sit with PRS members and significant liabilities would also be incurred,’ he said.
m44_june 2010_1312_june 2012_m44
forum
Ruth Simmons is the founder and chief executive of music marketing company soundlounge. Clients include Mars, Kellogg’s, McDonald’s, M&S, and both the Labour and Conservative Parties. She lectures and presents on music related subjects around the globe, from copyright to measuring the sound of a brand. She is recognised as a leading expert in this area and is regularly published in Brandchannel, AllAboutBranding and Music Ally. For Ruth’s golden rules of sync, visit www.m-magazine.co.uk
Ruth Simmonssync or whim
In today’s music industry, the money is in live and live is dominated by heritage acts. Of course there are always the ongoing discussions about releasing a greatest hits album or reforming a band. But the truth is, money is tight all round and making a sync deal, whether for an emerging band or an iconic act, is becoming increasingly important. And, in an age where there are more sync opportunities than ever, it seems that artistic integrity is less of an issue. More artists are saying yes to sync.
Music is potentially a powerful tool for a commercial. It can lift an average visual to another plane. The agencies know this. Ask anyone who works in music supervision and they will tell you
the Digital Copyright Exchange and the current Copyright Consultation. We have consulted with the European Commission, which will issue a new Directive on The Collective Management of Rights later this month, and we have supported the Global Repertoire Database working group in its historic quest to develop the infrastructure needed to ensure that the administration of copyright remains fit for the digital age.
It is imperative that we continue to streamline our administration processes to adapt to this changing environment and ensure we remain one of the most efficient collecting societies in the world. Such is the scale of the challenge, however, that we cannot do this alone and we must continue to liaise with other societies to save costs by eliminating duplication in the processing and management of rights.
We have increased our efforts to partner with societies that share our outlook and I look forward to announcing further collaborations in due course. We already work with Swedish society STIM for our copyright database ICE and the Nordisk Copyright Bureau on the processing of recorded media royalties. Therefore, it is a logical step to work with others to share costs and investment, to enable royalties from digital services to be paid in a timely manner to those who have created the music.
We take great pride in the continuing popularity of our members’ music, both here in the UK and around the world. The way we consume music may be changing but the quality of our members’ repertoire is constant. We too are constant in our purpose; to ensure music creators continue to earn a living from their craft.
We all look forward to further growth from the now buoyant digital music market and will continue to enhance the way these royalties are processed and distributed to you.
While we can take a great deal of encouragement from these financial results, we should not overlook the considerable challenges faced by our organisation and the wider industry. The issues of copyright and collective rights management have been subject to various reviews in the UK and Europe, and we must continually strive to defend our right to collect on our members’ behalf, upholding the value of their music by promoting and protecting the value of copyright.
There is still much work to do to manage copyright in the digital space. We are actively engaged with the coalition government, which commissioned the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth, the Hooper Feasibility Review of
It is always a pleasure to recognise the success and talent of our membership and those in the wider music industry. At last month’s Ivor Novello Awards, I had the honour of presenting Adele and co-writer Paul Epworth the PRS for Music Most Performed Work accolade for their song Rolling in the Deep. In the same week I attended a dinner to celebrate the life and work of legendary American songwriter Jimmy Webb, who was in town to receive his PRS for Music Special International Award at The Ivors. Although both songwriters come from very different generations, they share an exceptional talent that has led to two very successful musical careers.
Our role at PRS for Music is to ensure that your talent is valued, copyright is protected and royalties are collected whenever and wherever your music is used. Therefore, I am particularly pleased that, since the last edition of M, we have announced a 3.2 percent increase in royalties collected and distributed to our members. We are collecting more internationally, licensing a growing number of UK and European online businesses and processing more data than ever before.
Importantly, our royalties from online services are growing and now stand at £39.1m. We understand that download, streaming and subscription models are at the heart of future music consumption and have taken the lead in licensing new services that can deliver royalties to creators and publishers.
Perhaps you can only count the number of syncs that have made it to top of the charts on the fingers of one hand. But over the last five years the lower reaches of the hit parade have been littered with TV tie-ins.
Barclaycard is one brand that has effectively copied the Levi’s model and harnessed the familiarity of vintage tracks like The Bellamy Brothers’ Let Your Love Flow and Boston’s More Than a Feeling to great effect, rocketing them back into the best selling lists after 20 or more years away.
But in these days of smartphones and Shazam, new music is muscling in on the act too. Only this April, Let’s Go, by Scottish dance king Calvin Harris,
entered the charts at number two after being played out regularly in the advert breaks by Pepsi Max. And then there’s former Amy Winehouse protégé Alex Clare, whose career has gone into overdrive both sides of the Atlantic after Internet Explorer licensed his single Too Close.
At the other end of the spectrum, ingénues Julia Stone and Rachel K Collier both bubbled under the singles charts in May thanks to inspired versions of the Grease anthem You’re the One That I Want (Sky Atlantic) and Jimmy Cliff ’s Hard Road to Travel (Quality Solicitors).
They prove that small screen exposure of unexpected tunes can catch the public’s imagination as surely as headline grabbing John Lewis soundtracks such as Fyfe Dangerfield’s reworking of She's Always a Woman and last Christmas’ controversial cover of The Smiths’ Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want by Slow Moving Millie.
Chas de Whalleysync inc
how creatives are painstaking in their selection of the track they need. Sir John Hegarty, the ‘H’ in the BBH agency and the man who brought you iconic adverts for Levi’s and Lynx, reportedly said, ‘The music is 50 percent of the experience in the commercial’. The question is - do agencies reflect that in their commercial behaviour?
So, you get the call you’ve been wishing for. ‘We’ve got down to the final three tracks to use in our commercial.’ They continue. ‘One of these is yours and it’s perfect with the visuals. Everybody loves it but we haven’t got any money. Of course it’s a great promotional platform for your track and bang on your target market.’ What do you do?
From the production point of view, if you agree to lower fees or even nothing by bartering marketing visibility against immediate earnings, the TV production team has got the track its wants on budget. If these are the terms of the deal, what should you ask for in return?
I am not here to judge the ‘whys’ of these kinds of commercial transactions, but the bottom line is, does it work for the music industry? Does increased eyeball time in between the programmes actually improve artist awareness, sales, downloads, attendance at concerts or the number of real fans?
The evidence is not looking great. Levi’s used 29 tracks for their 501 jeans campaigns. Over a 14 year period, only seven syncs made number one, and four of those had already enjoyed that level of success before.
Since those heady days of licensing, there have been literally thousands of sync deals. But how many tracks can you accurately match product to song? At a straw poll in Cannes Lions, we found that around three quarters of advertising professionals
could either name the track or name the product, and those products were usually the big players like car or cola companies, but not with any consistent accuracy.
The hard truth is that advertising agencies have an obligation to their client to create a memorable experience that encourages the consumer to buy more products. It is not, at the end of the day, their job to sell music. That’s ours.
As some sad soul who still watches the adverts, it is an ongoing challenge to find out what track was used where. Unless I am shazamming right there and then, correctly identifying a track is slim. The brand websites, or YouTube, rarely list the music used and even the advertising and marketing trade papers are still ignoring the sound credits. To date, few brands factor the role of the music into their return on investment calculations. Perhaps when they do, they will begin to appreciate the difference between the value and the worth of a track and more money will be available to get the music right.
Chas de Whalley edits thesyncsurvey, a monthly newsletter which links the music used in screen campaigns with the publishers and record companies that control the rights and the music supervisors and advertising agencies that brokered the deals. The former head of UK A&R for CBS Epic Records, he produced U2’s first two singles and signed Shakin' Stevens and Adam Ant. He has written for NME, Music Week, Mojo and Time Out among others.
Meanwhile advertising agencies still mine original material and acts like The Temper Trap, Noisettes and Ben Howard can claim big breaks courtesy of a sync licence. So, the advertising and marketing trade papers may still choose to ignore the value good music brings to an advert campaign, but elsewhere along the sync supply chain you might hear a different story.
PRS for Music Chief Executive Robert Ashcroft
The way we consume music may be changing but
the quality of our members’ repertoire is constant
Robert Ashcroft is Chief Executive of PRS for Music.
comment & debate
the big issues
£ million 2011 2010
Broadcast 148.4 145.6
Online 39.1 27.6
International 187.7 169.8
Public performance 131.4 130.2
Live 22.5 20.8
Recorded media 101.7 117.2
Royalty income 630.8 611.2
m44_june 2010_1312_june 2012_m44
forum
Ruth Simmons is the founder and chief executive of music marketing company soundlounge. Clients include Mars, Kellogg’s, McDonald’s, M&S, and both the Labour and Conservative Parties. She lectures and presents on music related subjects around the globe, from copyright to measuring the sound of a brand. She is recognised as a leading expert in this area and is regularly published in Brandchannel, AllAboutBranding and Music Ally. For Ruth’s golden rules of sync, visit www.m-magazine.co.uk
Ruth Simmonssync or whim
In today’s music industry, the money is in live and live is dominated by heritage acts. Of course there are always the ongoing discussions about releasing a greatest hits album or reforming a band. But the truth is, money is tight all round and making a sync deal, whether for an emerging band or an iconic act, is becoming increasingly important. And, in an age where there are more sync opportunities than ever, it seems that artistic integrity is less of an issue. More artists are saying yes to sync.
Music is potentially a powerful tool for a commercial. It can lift an average visual to another plane. The agencies know this. Ask anyone who works in music supervision and they will tell you
the Digital Copyright Exchange and the current Copyright Consultation. We have consulted with the European Commission, which will issue a new Directive on The Collective Management of Rights later this month, and we have supported the Global Repertoire Database working group in its historic quest to develop the infrastructure needed to ensure that the administration of copyright remains fit for the digital age.
It is imperative that we continue to streamline our administration processes to adapt to this changing environment and ensure we remain one of the most efficient collecting societies in the world. Such is the scale of the challenge, however, that we cannot do this alone and we must continue to liaise with other societies to save costs by eliminating duplication in the processing and management of rights.
We have increased our efforts to partner with societies that share our outlook and I look forward to announcing further collaborations in due course. We already work with Swedish society STIM for our copyright database ICE and the Nordisk Copyright Bureau on the processing of recorded media royalties. Therefore, it is a logical step to work with others to share costs and investment, to enable royalties from digital services to be paid in a timely manner to those who have created the music.
We take great pride in the continuing popularity of our members’ music, both here in the UK and around the world. The way we consume music may be changing but the quality of our members’ repertoire is constant. We too are constant in our purpose; to ensure music creators continue to earn a living from their craft.
We all look forward to further growth from the now buoyant digital music market and will continue to enhance the way these royalties are processed and distributed to you.
While we can take a great deal of encouragement from these financial results, we should not overlook the considerable challenges faced by our organisation and the wider industry. The issues of copyright and collective rights management have been subject to various reviews in the UK and Europe, and we must continually strive to defend our right to collect on our members’ behalf, upholding the value of their music by promoting and protecting the value of copyright.
There is still much work to do to manage copyright in the digital space. We are actively engaged with the coalition government, which commissioned the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property and Growth, the Hooper Feasibility Review of
It is always a pleasure to recognise the success and talent of our membership and those in the wider music industry. At last month’s Ivor Novello Awards, I had the honour of presenting Adele and co-writer Paul Epworth the PRS for Music Most Performed Work accolade for their song Rolling in the Deep. In the same week I attended a dinner to celebrate the life and work of legendary American songwriter Jimmy Webb, who was in town to receive his PRS for Music Special International Award at The Ivors. Although both songwriters come from very different generations, they share an exceptional talent that has led to two very successful musical careers.
Our role at PRS for Music is to ensure that your talent is valued, copyright is protected and royalties are collected whenever and wherever your music is used. Therefore, I am particularly pleased that, since the last edition of M, we have announced a 3.2 percent increase in royalties collected and distributed to our members. We are collecting more internationally, licensing a growing number of UK and European online businesses and processing more data than ever before.
Importantly, our royalties from online services are growing and now stand at £39.1m. We understand that download, streaming and subscription models are at the heart of future music consumption and have taken the lead in licensing new services that can deliver royalties to creators and publishers.
Perhaps you can only count the number of syncs that have made it to top of the charts on the fingers of one hand. But over the last five years the lower reaches of the hit parade have been littered with TV tie-ins.
Barclaycard is one brand that has effectively copied the Levi’s model and harnessed the familiarity of vintage tracks like The Bellamy Brothers’ Let Your Love Flow and Boston’s More Than a Feeling to great effect, rocketing them back into the best selling lists after 20 or more years away.
But in these days of smartphones and Shazam, new music is muscling in on the act too. Only this April, Let’s Go, by Scottish dance king Calvin Harris,
entered the charts at number two after being played out regularly in the advert breaks by Pepsi Max. And then there’s former Amy Winehouse protégé Alex Clare, whose career has gone into overdrive both sides of the Atlantic after Internet Explorer licensed his single Too Close.
At the other end of the spectrum, ingénues Julia Stone and Rachel K Collier both bubbled under the singles charts in May thanks to inspired versions of the Grease anthem You’re the One That I Want (Sky Atlantic) and Jimmy Cliff ’s Hard Road to Travel (Quality Solicitors).
They prove that small screen exposure of unexpected tunes can catch the public’s imagination as surely as headline grabbing John Lewis soundtracks such as Fyfe Dangerfield’s reworking of She's Always a Woman and last Christmas’ controversial cover of The Smiths’ Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want by Slow Moving Millie.
Chas de Whalleysync inc
how creatives are painstaking in their selection of the track they need. Sir John Hegarty, the ‘H’ in the BBH agency and the man who brought you iconic adverts for Levi’s and Lynx, reportedly said, ‘The music is 50 percent of the experience in the commercial’. The question is - do agencies reflect that in their commercial behaviour?
So, you get the call you’ve been wishing for. ‘We’ve got down to the final three tracks to use in our commercial.’ They continue. ‘One of these is yours and it’s perfect with the visuals. Everybody loves it but we haven’t got any money. Of course it’s a great promotional platform for your track and bang on your target market.’ What do you do?
From the production point of view, if you agree to lower fees or even nothing by bartering marketing visibility against immediate earnings, the TV production team has got the track its wants on budget. If these are the terms of the deal, what should you ask for in return?
I am not here to judge the ‘whys’ of these kinds of commercial transactions, but the bottom line is, does it work for the music industry? Does increased eyeball time in between the programmes actually improve artist awareness, sales, downloads, attendance at concerts or the number of real fans?
The evidence is not looking great. Levi’s used 29 tracks for their 501 jeans campaigns. Over a 14 year period, only seven syncs made number one, and four of those had already enjoyed that level of success before.
Since those heady days of licensing, there have been literally thousands of sync deals. But how many tracks can you accurately match product to song? At a straw poll in Cannes Lions, we found that around three quarters of advertising professionals
could either name the track or name the product, and those products were usually the big players like car or cola companies, but not with any consistent accuracy.
The hard truth is that advertising agencies have an obligation to their client to create a memorable experience that encourages the consumer to buy more products. It is not, at the end of the day, their job to sell music. That’s ours.
As some sad soul who still watches the adverts, it is an ongoing challenge to find out what track was used where. Unless I am shazamming right there and then, correctly identifying a track is slim. The brand websites, or YouTube, rarely list the music used and even the advertising and marketing trade papers are still ignoring the sound credits. To date, few brands factor the role of the music into their return on investment calculations. Perhaps when they do, they will begin to appreciate the difference between the value and the worth of a track and more money will be available to get the music right.
Chas de Whalley edits thesyncsurvey, a monthly newsletter which links the music used in screen campaigns with the publishers and record companies that control the rights and the music supervisors and advertising agencies that brokered the deals. The former head of UK A&R for CBS Epic Records, he produced U2’s first two singles and signed Shakin' Stevens and Adam Ant. He has written for NME, Music Week, Mojo and Time Out among others.
Meanwhile advertising agencies still mine original material and acts like The Temper Trap, Noisettes and Ben Howard can claim big breaks courtesy of a sync licence. So, the advertising and marketing trade papers may still choose to ignore the value good music brings to an advert campaign, but elsewhere along the sync supply chain you might hear a different story.
PRS for Music Chief Executive Robert Ashcroft
The way we consume music may be changing but
the quality of our members’ repertoire is constant
Robert Ashcroft is Chief Executive of PRS for Music.
comment & debate
the big issues
£ million 2011 2010
Broadcast 148.4 145.6
Online 39.1 27.6
International 187.7 169.8
Public performance 131.4 130.2
Live 22.5 20.8
Recorded media 101.7 117.2
Royalty income 630.8 611.2
ON 10 JUNE THIS YEAR, a band comfortably into their 60s strode out to face one of the summer’s biggest British festival crowds. With crinkled faces and thinning hair, they played songs from a back catalogue that stretches back over 40 years. Menacing, powerful and joyous, they were songs that both shaped a genre and still inspire it today.
Fans who loved them the first time round rubbed shoulders with those born nearly a quarter of a century after the band formed. Because, when Black Sabbath headlined on Sunday night at Download Festival, the cheers were not only for them but for a genre that remains an enduring success story in British music: metal.
Few outside the confines of Download’s Donington Park site will care. Although British metal might have been thriving from 1970 until today, the mainstream barely gives it a glance. ‘Metal’s a dirty word,’ says Andy Copping, Download’s promoter and the man who put Black Sabbath at the top of its bill. ‘Download will sell 100,000 tickets this year. Only Glastonbury is bigger than us in the UK. But the mainstream media just don’t recognise us. If you’re not Lady Gaga or Coldplay, they’re not fucking interested.’ But that’s exactly how a lot of metal fans like it.
When Black Sabbath released their self titled debut in 1970 it was almost universally panned, yet it went to number eight in the album charts. It was the first chapter of a repetitive tale for the genre: critics hated its juddering power and direct riffs; fans adored it. ‘It’s working class music for working class fans,’ Copping says. ‘Once metal bands get fans, those fans stick with them through thick and thin.’
So it was with Sabbath. Just four months after their debut came the classic album Paranoid, named after the song that remains their sole Top 10 hit single. And with that, they kicked off another defining truism of British metal; it’s never been a genre which has required hit singles. Alongside Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and British metal blazed its trail on long players. That Deep Purple’s guitar shop staple Smoke On the Water charted outside the UK’s Top 20 says much.
‘We’re not reliant on hit singles and we never have been. I’m grateful for that,’ says Craig Jennings, head of Raw Power Management, which currently looks after the new wave of Britain’s brightest metal acts like Bullet For My Valentine and
METAL RULESTom Bryant considers the raw power of British metal, uncovering a staunchly independent world where heritage is hailed and endurance is everything.
Main page: Black Sabbath Above: Asking Alexandria
Bring Me the Horizon. ‘We don’t rely on big chart hits. If we have an act on the A-List at Radio One for weeks, we don’t tend to see those records going into the Top 10. But what it does do is build the brand of the band, which creates a lifestyle around them. That’s what bands need to last.’
Those that followed in Sabbath’s footsteps would argue the same. Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Saxon, and the rest of the new wave of British heavy metal were all ignored as punk and pop dominated late 70s and early 80s cultural history, yet their fans built their lives around them. It means that Iron Maiden are still here today, still playing stadiums, and still touring in their own jet. Just last month, their 1982 album The Number of the Beast was voted the best British album of the last 60 years in an HMV poll, beating The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Queen. Meanwhile, Def Leppard headlined Download in 2011 and 2009 with Whitesnake also high up the bill. Almost none of their punk or pop peers can do similar. And if they can, they’re certainly not still playing to young crowds. Metal’s heritage acts are.
‘That’s definitely something we’ve seen,’ says Copping. ‘I’ll see a kid in a Slipknot shirt going to watch Def Leppard. By the same token, I’ve seen people in ZZ Top shirts watching Bullet For My Valentine.’ It’s a sign that metal crosses generations. The dating process that affects all music seems to have been kinder on metal, with modern bands still influenced by their aged predecessors.
‘You can trace the lineage from Black Sabbath and on from there,’ says Copping. ‘Speak to any contemporary act, bands like Bullet For My Valentine, and they’ll still cite Black Sabbath as an influence.’
Someone ideally placed to judge this generational leap is the singer with fast rising British metallers Rise To Remain. Austin Dickinson is the son of Iron Maiden frontman Bruce and, while his band is successful in its own right, he acknowledges it was his father who introduced him to metal.
‘Metal is inter-generational,’ he says. ‘I think that’s down to the passing down of records from father to son. It’s down to fathers playing music in the car. And it’s infectious, there’s no doubt about that – once you get the bite, it can last for 50 years. And it’s a damn good bite to get.’
Today’s most successful new British metal band, Bullet For My Valentine, feel similarly that metal commands a loyalty almost to the exclusion of all else. ‘I was a hotshot sports player – I played rugby
PROFILE
M44_JUNE 2012_15
ON 10 JUNE THIS YEAR, a band comfortably into their 60s strode out to face one of the summer’s biggest British festival crowds. With crinkled faces and thinning hair, they played songs from a back catalogue that stretches back over 40 years. Menacing, powerful and joyous, they were songs that both shaped a genre and still inspire it today.
Fans who loved them the first time round rubbed shoulders with those born nearly a quarter of a century after the band formed. Because, when Black Sabbath headlined on Sunday night at Download Festival, the cheers were not only for them but for a genre that remains an enduring success story in British music: metal.
Few outside the confines of Download’s Donington Park site will care. Although British metal might have been thriving from 1970 until today, the mainstream barely gives it a glance. ‘Metal’s a dirty word,’ says Andy Copping, Download’s promoter and the man who put Black Sabbath at the top of its bill. ‘Download will sell 100,000 tickets this year. Only Glastonbury is bigger than us in the UK. But the mainstream media just don’t recognise us. If you’re not Lady Gaga or Coldplay, they’re not fucking interested.’ But that’s exactly how a lot of metal fans like it.
When Black Sabbath released their self titled debut in 1970 it was almost universally panned, yet it went to number eight in the album charts. It was the first chapter of a repetitive tale for the genre: critics hated its juddering power and direct riffs; fans adored it. ‘It’s working class music for working class fans,’ Copping says. ‘Once metal bands get fans, those fans stick with them through thick and thin.’
So it was with Sabbath. Just four months after their debut came the classic album Paranoid, named after the song that remains their sole Top 10 hit single. And with that, they kicked off another defining truism of British metal; it’s never been a genre which has required hit singles. Alongside Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and British metal blazed its trail on long players. That Deep Purple’s guitar shop staple Smoke On the Water charted outside the UK’s Top 20 says much.
‘We’re not reliant on hit singles and we never have been. I’m grateful for that,’ says Craig Jennings, head of Raw Power Management, which currently looks after the new wave of Britain’s brightest metal acts like Bullet For My Valentine and
METAL RULESTom Bryant considers the raw power of British metal, uncovering a staunchly independent world where heritage is hailed and endurance is everything.
Main page: Black Sabbath Above: Asking Alexandria
Bring Me the Horizon. ‘We don’t rely on big chart hits. If we have an act on the A-List at Radio One for weeks, we don’t tend to see those records going into the Top 10. But what it does do is build the brand of the band, which creates a lifestyle around them. That’s what bands need to last.’
Those that followed in Sabbath’s footsteps would argue the same. Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Saxon, and the rest of the new wave of British heavy metal were all ignored as punk and pop dominated late 70s and early 80s cultural history, yet their fans built their lives around them. It means that Iron Maiden are still here today, still playing stadiums, and still touring in their own jet. Just last month, their 1982 album The Number of the Beast was voted the best British album of the last 60 years in an HMV poll, beating The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Queen. Meanwhile, Def Leppard headlined Download in 2011 and 2009 with Whitesnake also high up the bill. Almost none of their punk or pop peers can do similar. And if they can, they’re certainly not still playing to young crowds. Metal’s heritage acts are.
‘That’s definitely something we’ve seen,’ says Copping. ‘I’ll see a kid in a Slipknot shirt going to watch Def Leppard. By the same token, I’ve seen people in ZZ Top shirts watching Bullet For My Valentine.’ It’s a sign that metal crosses generations. The dating process that affects all music seems to have been kinder on metal, with modern bands still influenced by their aged predecessors.
‘You can trace the lineage from Black Sabbath and on from there,’ says Copping. ‘Speak to any contemporary act, bands like Bullet For My Valentine, and they’ll still cite Black Sabbath as an influence.’
Someone ideally placed to judge this generational leap is the singer with fast rising British metallers Rise To Remain. Austin Dickinson is the son of Iron Maiden frontman Bruce and, while his band is successful in its own right, he acknowledges it was his father who introduced him to metal.
‘Metal is inter-generational,’ he says. ‘I think that’s down to the passing down of records from father to son. It’s down to fathers playing music in the car. And it’s infectious, there’s no doubt about that – once you get the bite, it can last for 50 years. And it’s a damn good bite to get.’
Today’s most successful new British metal band, Bullet For My Valentine, feel similarly that metal commands a loyalty almost to the exclusion of all else. ‘I was a hotshot sports player – I played rugby
PROFILE
M44_JUNE 2012_15
CHANGES
M44_JUNE 2012_19
THE IVORS
Christopher Barrett charts the biggest comeback in pop history.
SINCE THE BEATLES DISBANDED, few British bands have come close to achieving comparable chart success and adoration except, perhaps, Take That.
From getting their break on The Hit Man and Her TV show in 1990 to playing eight nights at Wembley Stadium two decades later, it ’s been a long, remarkable, and occasionally rocky road for the five members of Take That.
The pop quintet have sold many millions of records and set a fair few; for a start they have sold concert tickets in greater numbers at a greater speed than any band in UK history. Their Progress Live 2011 tour saw 1.34 million tickets snapped up within 24 hours of going on sale. They have been no less successful on record with seven of their albums and 11 singles having reached number one in the UK.
It is hardly surprising that Take That’s trophy cabinet is fit to burst with 20 BRIT and eight MTV gongs among their vast haul. But last month Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen and Robbie Williams were given arguably the most coveted award of them all - an Ivor
It felt so right, like the five of themhad been recording forever. It’s just confident and effortless
Novello Award (the PRS for Music Outstanding Contribution to British Music).
Sponsored by PRS for Music and judged and presented by fellow songwriters, the award is widely regarded as the highest industry accolade songwriters can garner. Indeed, on picking up the award, Gary Barlow told the audience at the London ceremony, ‘There’s nothing like winning an Ivor as a songwriter.’
With five trophies already under his belt, Barlow is no stranger to Ivors acclaim. The Take That frontman and lead songwriter was very much at the band’s creative helm until they split in 1996. During that first Take That incarnation, Barlow wrote almost all of their hits including Back For Good, which reached number one in 31 countries.
In 2006 Take That re-formed, signed to Polydor and re-entered the studio. Since then it has been all hands on deck creatively. But it wasn’t until July 2010 that Robbie Williams’ influence was again felt.
After disagreements with fellow band members led Williams to leave Take That in 1995, he went solo.
EVERYTHING
CHANGES
M44_JUNE 2012_19
THE IVORS
Christopher Barrett charts the biggest comeback in pop history.
SINCE THE BEATLES DISBANDED, few British bands have come close to achieving comparable chart success and adoration except, perhaps, Take That.
From getting their break on The Hit Man and Her TV show in 1990 to playing eight nights at Wembley Stadium two decades later, it ’s been a long, remarkable, and occasionally rocky road for the five members of Take That.
The pop quintet have sold many millions of records and set a fair few; for a start they have sold concert tickets in greater numbers at a greater speed than any band in UK history. Their Progress Live 2011 tour saw 1.34 million tickets snapped up within 24 hours of going on sale. They have been no less successful on record with seven of their albums and 11 singles having reached number one in the UK.
It is hardly surprising that Take That’s trophy cabinet is fit to burst with 20 BRIT and eight MTV gongs among their vast haul. But last month Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, Mark Owen and Robbie Williams were given arguably the most coveted award of them all - an Ivor
It felt so right, like the five of themhad been recording forever. It’s just confident and effortless
Novello Award (the PRS for Music Outstanding Contribution to British Music).
Sponsored by PRS for Music and judged and presented by fellow songwriters, the award is widely regarded as the highest industry accolade songwriters can garner. Indeed, on picking up the award, Gary Barlow told the audience at the London ceremony, ‘There’s nothing like winning an Ivor as a songwriter.’
With five trophies already under his belt, Barlow is no stranger to Ivors acclaim. The Take That frontman and lead songwriter was very much at the band’s creative helm until they split in 1996. During that first Take That incarnation, Barlow wrote almost all of their hits including Back For Good, which reached number one in 31 countries.
In 2006 Take That re-formed, signed to Polydor and re-entered the studio. Since then it has been all hands on deck creatively. But it wasn’t until July 2010 that Robbie Williams’ influence was again felt.
After disagreements with fellow band members led Williams to leave Take That in 1995, he went solo.
EVERYTHING
Above: Chris Butler
Opposite page: Professor Green, (Bucks Music)Below: Zulu Winter (BMG Chrysalis)
evolution revolution
Sitting on a leather chair in his company’s well stocked library, Chris Butler, chairman of the Music Publishers’ Association and chief operating officer at Music Sales, sips from a cup of tea. The room is packed to the rafters with sheet music and, glancing over the wooden bookshelves and coloured spines, it could almost be any year, in any decade, during the publisher’s long history. It’s as if the digital storm outside never hit. Except, just three months ago, this same room hosted a press conference to launch the company’s new suite of smartphone and tablet music apps.
‘I remember doing a piece for ITN last year when Steve Jobs died,’ he says. ‘I was asked what view the publishing industry had of Apple. I told them that you’ve got to take your hat off to people like Steve, people who have really transformed our industry.’
Music Sales, like many publishers, has been around long enough to weather significant industry changes and format shifts, altering its course to keep up with the prevailing winds. Both a sheet music publisher and classical and pop rights catalogue owner, the company sits across every aspect of music publishing, including the emergent apps space.
‘Our job is to be a good publisher, not only to identify writing and composing talent and really understand where that writer is coming from, but also identify where the market is going and what the market wants to hear,’ Butler stresses. ‘Our job is not to create and control technology; it is to work with the technology of our time.’
No music publisher has been immune to the flood of digital technologies that has battered mechanical royalties and altered the way we interact with music forever. But, while record companies bear the scars of a decade long war with digital pirates from Napster to The Pirate Bay, publishers still have lessons to learn and a future to shape.
It has been widely acknowledged that the music industry was slow to adapt to the rising power of the new technology companies, opting instead to protect the old world. But in doing so, recent history has been ‘littered with examples of the failure to license’, believes Butler.
‘The music industry was left far behind by peer-to-peer sites, the Napsters of this world, which then became legitimate businesses. We ended up perhaps losing control and losing the higher ground, and we’ve since had to play catch up with the people who have revolutionised our business.’
Sure, the industry has shifted, bringing reason enough to eye the future with trepidation, but is change really something new? In the 1920s and 30s, sheet music publishers faced the invention of the gramophone and the radio, followed by TV and, later still, the seven inch single, the LP and the controversial blank cassette. One glance back over Oxford University Press records from the roaring 20s will confirm the mood of general mistrust, with documents denouncing the creation of a British collecting society and staff memos urging them to ignore PRS as it ‘simply will not work’.
Nearly a century later, the music industry turns yet another
corner. But this time, publishers know that change is the only constant. As Andrew King, PRS board member and general manager of independent publisher Mute Song notes: ‘Every now and then a new set of people will come along who don’t really want to pay to use music. Record companies didn’t want to pay us, especially the groovy little indie labels. Then the video guys didn’t want to pay us. Now the digital guys have turned up and they don’t want to pay us either.’
King recalls the Puppet on a String days of the early 1960s, when publishers foisted hit singles onto artists’ managers over boozy lunches in Soho. He quips that, while the business works hard to adapt, the golden age may have already passed: ‘As a music publisher 20 years ago, you just lay in bed and record companies poured mechanical royalties down your neck! That was all you had to do.’
But the technology shift hasn’t just affected mechanical royalties for pop and rock publishers; the whole ecosystem has evolved. Within the classical and sheet music sectors, digital typesetting and music engraving programmes such as Sibelius have revolutionised the way music is created and distributed. Meanwhile digital rights management and demand for pan-regional licences has irreversibly altered the relationship between publishers and their collecting societies.
In 2012, music publishing has reached a crossroads. Digital revenue streams have not yet produced the golden ticket some hoped. For many, they still make up less than ten percent of income. Meanwhile traditional CD and DVD incomes,
not
Our job is not to create and control technology;it is to work with the technology of our time
M44_SEPTEMBER 2011_23
Smartphones, sheet music and syncs: Anita Awbi spends time with the publishing community to find an industry in flux.
DESM
ON
D M
UCKIA
N /
TOM
OX
LEY
FUTURE
Above: Chris Butler
Opposite page: Professor Green, (Bucks Music)Below: Zulu Winter (BMG Chrysalis)
evolution revolution
Sitting on a leather chair in his company’s well stocked library, Chris Butler, chairman of the Music Publishers’ Association and chief operating officer at Music Sales, sips from a cup of tea. The room is packed to the rafters with sheet music and, glancing over the wooden bookshelves and coloured spines, it could almost be any year, in any decade, during the publisher’s long history. It’s as if the digital storm outside never hit. Except, just three months ago, this same room hosted a press conference to launch the company’s new suite of smartphone and tablet music apps.
‘I remember doing a piece for ITN last year when Steve Jobs died,’ he says. ‘I was asked what view the publishing industry had of Apple. I told them that you’ve got to take your hat off to people like Steve, people who have really transformed our industry.’
Music Sales, like many publishers, has been around long enough to weather significant industry changes and format shifts, altering its course to keep up with the prevailing winds. Both a sheet music publisher and classical and pop rights catalogue owner, the company sits across every aspect of music publishing, including the emergent apps space.
‘Our job is to be a good publisher, not only to identify writing and composing talent and really understand where that writer is coming from, but also identify where the market is going and what the market wants to hear,’ Butler stresses. ‘Our job is not to create and control technology; it is to work with the technology of our time.’
No music publisher has been immune to the flood of digital technologies that has battered mechanical royalties and altered the way we interact with music forever. But, while record companies bear the scars of a decade long war with digital pirates from Napster to The Pirate Bay, publishers still have lessons to learn and a future to shape.
It has been widely acknowledged that the music industry was slow to adapt to the rising power of the new technology companies, opting instead to protect the old world. But in doing so, recent history has been ‘littered with examples of the failure to license’, believes Butler.
‘The music industry was left far behind by peer-to-peer sites, the Napsters of this world, which then became legitimate businesses. We ended up perhaps losing control and losing the higher ground, and we’ve since had to play catch up with the people who have revolutionised our business.’
Sure, the industry has shifted, bringing reason enough to eye the future with trepidation, but is change really something new? In the 1920s and 30s, sheet music publishers faced the invention of the gramophone and the radio, followed by TV and, later still, the seven inch single, the LP and the controversial blank cassette. One glance back over Oxford University Press records from the roaring 20s will confirm the mood of general mistrust, with documents denouncing the creation of a British collecting society and staff memos urging them to ignore PRS as it ‘simply will not work’.
Nearly a century later, the music industry turns yet another
corner. But this time, publishers know that change is the only constant. As Andrew King, PRS board member and general manager of independent publisher Mute Song notes: ‘Every now and then a new set of people will come along who don’t really want to pay to use music. Record companies didn’t want to pay us, especially the groovy little indie labels. Then the video guys didn’t want to pay us. Now the digital guys have turned up and they don’t want to pay us either.’
King recalls the Puppet on a String days of the early 1960s, when publishers foisted hit singles onto artists’ managers over boozy lunches in Soho. He quips that, while the business works hard to adapt, the golden age may have already passed: ‘As a music publisher 20 years ago, you just lay in bed and record companies poured mechanical royalties down your neck! That was all you had to do.’
But the technology shift hasn’t just affected mechanical royalties for pop and rock publishers; the whole ecosystem has evolved. Within the classical and sheet music sectors, digital typesetting and music engraving programmes such as Sibelius have revolutionised the way music is created and distributed. Meanwhile digital rights management and demand for pan-regional licences has irreversibly altered the relationship between publishers and their collecting societies.
In 2012, music publishing has reached a crossroads. Digital revenue streams have not yet produced the golden ticket some hoped. For many, they still make up less than ten percent of income. Meanwhile traditional CD and DVD incomes,
not
Our job is not to create and control technology;it is to work with the technology of our time
M44_SEPTEMBER 2011_23
Smartphones, sheet music and syncs: Anita Awbi spends time with the publishing community to find an industry in flux.
DESM
ON
D M
UCKIA
N /
TOM
OX
LEY
FUTURE
The song went viral, sparking an internet feeding frenzy. Persistent radio airplay followed and in May 2012 the pair won the Best Contemporary Song Award at The Ivors. Justin recounts the capricious tale.
My publisher had a meeting with Lana at the end of 2009 and our first session was the beginning of February 2010. The first song we wrote was really good so it was a great beginning for us. It was called On Our Way, I hope it sees the light of day at some point. From there, every time she came over from New York to work on songs, there would be a session booked in. We seemed to click in a few different ways, which was great.
It was piano chords that triggered Video Games. I can’t remember exactly when I wrote them but they were on my mind at the time. The song was written at the end of a session where we were finishing another one. Her manager was pestering her to write another song. At the time he was paying my train fare to the studio because I was broke. He kept texting her saying, ‘Make sure you write another one!’ I was a bit pissed off because I thought it would be an easy day finishing off a song we’d started the week before and I got a bit angry. But then I thought, ‘Oh fuck it ’, and played her the chords I had in my head. About three hours later it was all written. If her manager hadn’t been trying to get his money’s worth, maybe it wouldn’t have been done at all, who knows?
I recorded all the piano parts that day. We built the full structure on the piano and she wrote the
lyrics. It’s a bit like a nursery rhyme but it doesn’t use generic chords. I always try to bring something different. I can’t abide listening to the same chords over and over. I’d rather not write than come out with the same old thing.
Lana’s an amazing lyricist. She reminds me of a teenager writing in her diary at the end of the day. That’s the vibe she has; she sits in the corner with her little book. It ’s very sweet, but what she comes out with is amazing. And her voice is stun-ning when she sings dark and beautiful melodies. I don’t know about other singers, but Lana turns into a different person when she sings. She gets really picky about what she wants, how she wants to phrase things, and she’ll do things until they’re absolutely perfect. She ended up re-recording Video Games. Our demo was a bit faster and she wanted to take it easier and make it a bit slower.
We both knew it was great, but a song like that doesn’t sound like a single, it doesn’t sound like its going to get played on the radio. So we just thought it was a beautiful song, we both loved the music and the lyrics. She was unsigned at the time so we didn’t have any idea what would happen with it.
Initial feedback confirmed what we had originally thought. Everyone said we needed to be up tempo, because that’s the general theme on radio. But she obviously wanted to take the song forward and make a video for it, which she put up on YouTube. That’s how people picked up on it before she was signed. All the blogs went mad for it, then Fearne Cotton heard it through a friend and gave its first ever radio airing, on BBC Radio 1. That’s when the record labels jumped in. They’d all heard of her and the songs but they were waiting for some-thing tangible to happen before they invested.
In a way, it was a breath of fresh air for people, compared to what was out at the time. But it was lucky we were able to get it out on radio and people got the opportunity to hear it. The timing was in-credible. I’m not sure it could have gone any better. For a first single, and the exposure she got for the video, it was just amazing.
It was a dream for me to be associated with Lana for my first break - it just couldn’t be better. It allows me to work with cool people and has set me up in an area where I can write the music that I want to write with people I want to work with. Having done it with Lana from the very beginning, when she had her dream of putting this together, I can see that it was a fantastic way of doing things. The sense of achievement is absolutely massive when you hear your songs on radio.
It’s a real life rags to riches story. A year ago, Lincoln born songwriter Justin Parker was cash strapped and relatively unknown. Then his cohort, the irresistible Lana del Rey, uploaded a video she’d made for their song Video Games on YouTube.
Video GamesWritten by Lana Del Rey and Justin ParkerUK Publishers: EMI Music Publishing and Sony/ATV Music Publishing
If her manager hadn’t been trying to get his
money’s worth, maybe it wouldn’t have been done
at all, who knows?
m44_june 2012_27
i wrote that
SongLinkThe leading tipsheet for songwriters and music publishers, established
in 1993 and still going strong. Every month we publish great leads
detailing artists, labels, managers and producers worldwide who need
songs or co-writers. Covers all styles of music including pop, rock,
dance, R&B, country, MOR, jazz crossover, folk, blues etc. Leads sent
by e-mail every month with interim updates. “Easily the best service ofits type in the world” - Ed Chalfin, Magic Fire Music, New York City.
CuesheetSister publication to SongLink which details upcoming Film & TV pro-
ductions in need of music, songs, full scores, cues etc. Sent twice a
month by e-mail, our listings include leads from some of the industry’s
top music supervisors and commissioners based in the UK/Ireland and
USA/Canada. Covers all types of productions including major & indie
feature films, TV drama & documentaries, plus the occasional advert,
video games, web tv, etc. Contact us for a free sample issue today.
Special combo-discounts available if you subscribe to both services. Please note that unpub -lished writers need subscription approval - send 2 sample works by MP3, web Links or CD.
Contact: David Stark, Editor/Publisher
SongLink International / Cuesheet
23 Belsize Crescent, London NW3 5QY
Tel: 020 7794 2540, e-mail: [email protected]
www.songlink.com • www.cuesheet.net
CELEBRATING ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SONGWRITING
10% DISCOUNTFOR PRS MEMBERS
SONG SPRINGBOARD WEEKENDS FOR BEGINNERS
DEVELOP YOUR SKILLSEVENING CLASSES
CELEBRATING ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SONGWRITINGEVENING CLASSES AND WEEKEND
WORKSHOPS ALL LEVELS
THE “ENGAGED SONGWRITER” DIPLOMA FOR ASPIRING PROFESSIONALS
SUMMER SCHOOL 2012 DEVON Aug 24-27
Whatever your songwriting experience and confidence, LSC have a course/workshop/programme for you - where you will be respected, listened to and passionately supported. PRS/BASCA/MU discounts.
www.londonsongcompany.com07832 200980 [email protected]
SONG
10% DISCOUNTFOR PRS MEMBERS
SONG SPRINGBOARD WEEKENDS FOR BEGINNERS
DEVELOP YOUR SKILLSEVENING CLASSES
CELEBRATING ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SONGWRITING
CELEBRATING ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SONGWRITING
10% DISCOUNTFOR PRS MEMBERS
SONG SPRINGBOARD WEEKENDS FOR BEGINNERS
DEVELOP YOUR SKILLSEVENING CLASSES
CELEBRATING ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SONGWRITINGEVENING CLASSES AND WEEKEND
WORKSHOPS ALL LEVELS
THE “ENGAGED SONGWRITER” DIPLOMA FOR ASPIRING PROFESSIONALS
SUMMER SCHOOL 2012 DEVON Aug 24-27
Whatever your songwriting experience and confidence, LSC have a course/workshop/programme for you - where you will be respected, listened to and passionately supported. PRS/BASCA/MU discounts.
www.londonsongcompany.com07832 200980 [email protected]
SONG
10% DISCOUNTFOR PRS MEMBERS
SONG SPRINGBOARD WEEKENDS FOR BEGINNERS
DEVELOP YOUR SKILLSEVENING CLASSES
CELEBRATING ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SONGWRITING
Whatever your songwriting experience and confidence, LSC has a course/workshop/programme for you, where you will be respected, listened to, supported and validated. PRS/BASCA/MU discounts.
c
song writing
The song went viral, sparking an internet feeding frenzy. Persistent radio airplay followed and in May 2012 the pair won the Best Contemporary Song Award at The Ivors. Justin recounts the capricious tale.
My publisher had a meeting with Lana at the end of 2009 and our first session was the beginning of February 2010. The first song we wrote was really good so it was a great beginning for us. It was called On Our Way, I hope it sees the light of day at some point. From there, every time she came over from New York to work on songs, there would be a session booked in. We seemed to click in a few different ways, which was great.
It was piano chords that triggered Video Games. I can’t remember exactly when I wrote them but they were on my mind at the time. The song was written at the end of a session where we were finishing another one. Her manager was pestering her to write another song. At the time he was paying my train fare to the studio because I was broke. He kept texting her saying, ‘Make sure you write another one!’ I was a bit pissed off because I thought it would be an easy day finishing off a song we’d started the week before and I got a bit angry. But then I thought, ‘Oh fuck it ’, and played her the chords I had in my head. About three hours later it was all written. If her manager hadn’t been trying to get his money’s worth, maybe it wouldn’t have been done at all, who knows?
I recorded all the piano parts that day. We built the full structure on the piano and she wrote the
lyrics. It’s a bit like a nursery rhyme but it doesn’t use generic chords. I always try to bring something different. I can’t abide listening to the same chords over and over. I’d rather not write than come out with the same old thing.
Lana’s an amazing lyricist. She reminds me of a teenager writing in her diary at the end of the day. That’s the vibe she has; she sits in the corner with her little book. It ’s very sweet, but what she comes out with is amazing. And her voice is stun-ning when she sings dark and beautiful melodies. I don’t know about other singers, but Lana turns into a different person when she sings. She gets really picky about what she wants, how she wants to phrase things, and she’ll do things until they’re absolutely perfect. She ended up re-recording Video Games. Our demo was a bit faster and she wanted to take it easier and make it a bit slower.
We both knew it was great, but a song like that doesn’t sound like a single, it doesn’t sound like its going to get played on the radio. So we just thought it was a beautiful song, we both loved the music and the lyrics. She was unsigned at the time so we didn’t have any idea what would happen with it.
Initial feedback confirmed what we had originally thought. Everyone said we needed to be up tempo, because that’s the general theme on radio. But she obviously wanted to take the song forward and make a video for it, which she put up on YouTube. That’s how people picked up on it before she was signed. All the blogs went mad for it, then Fearne Cotton heard it through a friend and gave its first ever radio airing, on BBC Radio 1. That’s when the record labels jumped in. They’d all heard of her and the songs but they were waiting for some-thing tangible to happen before they invested.
In a way, it was a breath of fresh air for people, compared to what was out at the time. But it was lucky we were able to get it out on radio and people got the opportunity to hear it. The timing was in-credible. I’m not sure it could have gone any better. For a first single, and the exposure she got for the video, it was just amazing.
It was a dream for me to be associated with Lana for my first break - it just couldn’t be better. It allows me to work with cool people and has set me up in an area where I can write the music that I want to write with people I want to work with. Having done it with Lana from the very beginning, when she had her dream of putting this together, I can see that it was a fantastic way of doing things. The sense of achievement is absolutely massive when you hear your songs on radio.
It’s a real life rags to riches story. A year ago, Lincoln born songwriter Justin Parker was cash strapped and relatively unknown. Then his cohort, the irresistible Lana del Rey, uploaded a video she’d made for their song Video Games on YouTube.
Video GamesWritten by Lana Del Rey and Justin ParkerUK Publishers: EMI Music Publishing and Sony/ATV Music Publishing
If her manager hadn’t been trying to get his
money’s worth, maybe it wouldn’t have been done
at all, who knows?
m44_june 2012_27
i wrote that
SongLinkThe leading tipsheet for songwriters and music publishers, established
in 1993 and still going strong. Every month we publish great leads
detailing artists, labels, managers and producers worldwide who need
songs or co-writers. Covers all styles of music including pop, rock,
dance, R&B, country, MOR, jazz crossover, folk, blues etc. Leads sent
by e-mail every month with interim updates. “Easily the best service ofits type in the world” - Ed Chalfin, Magic Fire Music, New York City.
CuesheetSister publication to SongLink which details upcoming Film & TV pro-
ductions in need of music, songs, full scores, cues etc. Sent twice a
month by e-mail, our listings include leads from some of the industry’s
top music supervisors and commissioners based in the UK/Ireland and
USA/Canada. Covers all types of productions including major & indie
feature films, TV drama & documentaries, plus the occasional advert,
video games, web tv, etc. Contact us for a free sample issue today.
Special combo-discounts available if you subscribe to both services. Please note that unpub -lished writers need subscription approval - send 2 sample works by MP3, web Links or CD.
Contact: David Stark, Editor/Publisher
SongLink International / Cuesheet
23 Belsize Crescent, London NW3 5QY
Tel: 020 7794 2540, e-mail: [email protected]
www.songlink.com • www.cuesheet.net
CELEBRATING ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SONGWRITING
10% DISCOUNTFOR PRS MEMBERS
SONG SPRINGBOARD WEEKENDS FOR BEGINNERS
DEVELOP YOUR SKILLSEVENING CLASSES
CELEBRATING ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SONGWRITINGEVENING CLASSES AND WEEKEND
WORKSHOPS ALL LEVELS
THE “ENGAGED SONGWRITER” DIPLOMA FOR ASPIRING PROFESSIONALS
SUMMER SCHOOL 2012 DEVON Aug 24-27
Whatever your songwriting experience and confidence, LSC have a course/workshop/programme for you - where you will be respected, listened to and passionately supported. PRS/BASCA/MU discounts.
www.londonsongcompany.com07832 200980 [email protected]
SONG
10% DISCOUNTFOR PRS MEMBERS
SONG SPRINGBOARD WEEKENDS FOR BEGINNERS
DEVELOP YOUR SKILLSEVENING CLASSES
CELEBRATING ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SONGWRITING
CELEBRATING ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SONGWRITING
10% DISCOUNTFOR PRS MEMBERS
SONG SPRINGBOARD WEEKENDS FOR BEGINNERS
DEVELOP YOUR SKILLSEVENING CLASSES
CELEBRATING ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SONGWRITINGEVENING CLASSES AND WEEKEND
WORKSHOPS ALL LEVELS
THE “ENGAGED SONGWRITER” DIPLOMA FOR ASPIRING PROFESSIONALS
SUMMER SCHOOL 2012 DEVON Aug 24-27
Whatever your songwriting experience and confidence, LSC have a course/workshop/programme for you - where you will be respected, listened to and passionately supported. PRS/BASCA/MU discounts.
www.londonsongcompany.com07832 200980 [email protected]
SONG
10% DISCOUNTFOR PRS MEMBERS
SONG SPRINGBOARD WEEKENDS FOR BEGINNERS
DEVELOP YOUR SKILLSEVENING CLASSES
CELEBRATING ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC SONGWRITING
Whatever your songwriting experience and confidence, LSC has a course/workshop/programme for you, where you will be respected, listened to, supported and validated. PRS/BASCA/MU discounts.
c
song writing
Paul Sexton discovers why self confessed Anglophile and prolific songwriter Jimmy Webb is still breaking hearts over the radio.
JIMMY WEBB’S GLASS IS ALWAYS HALF FULL, as it should be for someone whose unparalleled catalogue continues to mean so much to so many. But there’s no denying that he talks with a certain nostalgia about the pop heyday that his incredible songs helped to create.
When the Oklahoman craftsman was on his unstoppable first run of hits as a composer, the power of the compositions was matched only by the wattage of the radio stations sending his work around the world. From 1967 onwards, to quote his first Grammy-winner, Webb was Up, Up and Away.
The flood gates never stood a chance: the Richard Harris epic MacArthur Park, The Worst That Could Happen by the Brooklyn Bridge, Do What You Gotta Do by the Four Tops, and endless others as the years went on, from Art Garfunkel to Linda Ronstadt. Not to mention the timeless classics Wichita Lineman, Galveston and By the Time I Get to Phoenix, all those and many more recorded by Webb’s ultimate vocal channel, Glen Campbell.
‘It’s just amazing,’ he says, still barely able to believe the impact a well turned three minute tune could have. ‘You go, “How could this be? How could these songs go out in the world and make things happen on their own?”’
He recounts one of many cherished stories he’s been told by grateful devotees, of a couple who split up but got back together years later when one gave the other a copy of Wichita Lineman. ‘These songs released these emotional missiles that went flying out into people’s lives,’ he says, with no trace of self importance.
‘Cupid used to be lumbered with the fact that he basically had a single shot weapon. He could only shoot one arrow at a time. Not any more, folks!’ he laughs, thinking back to the golden days of Top 40 stations. ‘We’re on the radio, we’re shooting millions of bullets 24 hours a day! We’re killing ‘em out there! That really intensified the whole phenomenon of young people falling in love.’
UP, UPAND AWAY
In May, the love in the room in London’s Grosvenor House as Webb was presented with the PRS for Music Special International Award, showed the respect due a man who started out in awe of one Great American Songbook and set about creating a new one.
‘I love Britain so much, and have since my first trips over here when I was a mere child, really, 18, 19 years old, working with Richard Harris,’ he says. ‘I became an overnight Anglophile, which quite upset Richard. He didn’t like it at all, and took me on a couple of propaganda missions to Ireland, to de-Anglicise me.’ Their friendship led to two albums, both released in 1968 and all written, produced and arranged by the precocious American. A Tramp Shining contained both the unique MacArthur Park and the beautiful ballad Didn’t We, and was followed by a second project, The Yard Went On Forever.
These days, he gives plenty of his experience back. Last year, after a decade on the board of ASCAP, Webb added new responsibilities as chairman of the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. ‘There’ve only been four chairmen in its history,’ he says in humble tones. ‘Johnny Mercer, Sammy Cahn, who I knew very well, a lovely fella. Then of course Hal David, and there’s no way to say how highly we think of him.’
He approaches the job with outspoken solemnity. ‘I blame the internet, and I don’t care who knows it,’ he says firmly. ‘We’ve been in a struggle for intellectual property rights since the first day I walked into that building. It’s almost like the little Dutch boy who puts his finger in the dyke. By the time there’s another meeting, we’ve got another dyke.
‘There’s really quite a huge and dramatic canvas that’s being painted right now, and we don’t know what the end picture is going to be. Both PRS for Music and ASCAP, and people like us all over the world who are trying to take care of our writers, don’t want to be in the position of having
given away the family store. And to be remembered as the generation who blew this wonderful thing we had going, of getting musicians paid for doing their work.’
There was never much doubt that Jimmy Layne Webb was going to be part of that noble breed himself. Encouraged by his mother to take piano lessons as a boy, he played in his preacher father’s church and chose music as a serious option when, after the family’s move to California, his mum passed away at a young age and his dad went home. Even before that, he’d had his first experience of getting a song on the radio, and tells a delightful story about it.
‘I had a group of girls I worked with called The Contessas. They were all blondes, lucky me, and they worshipped me, naturally,’ he smiles. ‘I taught them the songs and rehearsed them and played the piano, I was probably about 16. I had them all dressed up in their blue gingham outfits with their hair pulled back, the 1960s style. All beautiful, cute girls, and good singers, very coquettish.
‘I drove them out to the radio station, pulled up in front, and I had copies of the record in the trunk of my car. We went up to the front and knocked on the door and the girl said, “No no, you can’t come in.” Then a couple of the DJs walked through and saw the girls, and said, “Come on in!” They opened the door, all of a sudden the radio station was full of blonde girls and the DJs were happier than hell.
‘Suzy Weir was our lead singer, and she said, “Would you play our record?” and one of the DJs was in the control room, he said, “I sure will honey, if you’ll sit on my lap.” She sat on his lap and he played our record.
‘The excitement of that was indescribable, listening to your own record on the radio. Today, think about walking into a radio station without your bullet proof vest on. Things have so utterly changed that so much of the sweetness and the innocence have gone out of it.’
M44_JUNE 2012_29
PROFILE
Paul Sexton discovers why self confessed Anglophile and prolific songwriter Jimmy Webb is still breaking hearts over the radio.
JIMMY WEBB’S GLASS IS ALWAYS HALF FULL, as it should be for someone whose unparalleled catalogue continues to mean so much to so many. But there’s no denying that he talks with a certain nostalgia about the pop heyday that his incredible songs helped to create.
When the Oklahoman craftsman was on his unstoppable first run of hits as a composer, the power of the compositions was matched only by the wattage of the radio stations sending his work around the world. From 1967 onwards, to quote his first Grammy-winner, Webb was Up, Up and Away.
The flood gates never stood a chance: the Richard Harris epic MacArthur Park, The Worst That Could Happen by the Brooklyn Bridge, Do What You Gotta Do by the Four Tops, and endless others as the years went on, from Art Garfunkel to Linda Ronstadt. Not to mention the timeless classics Wichita Lineman, Galveston and By the Time I Get to Phoenix, all those and many more recorded by Webb’s ultimate vocal channel, Glen Campbell.
‘It’s just amazing,’ he says, still barely able to believe the impact a well turned three minute tune could have. ‘You go, “How could this be? How could these songs go out in the world and make things happen on their own?”’
He recounts one of many cherished stories he’s been told by grateful devotees, of a couple who split up but got back together years later when one gave the other a copy of Wichita Lineman. ‘These songs released these emotional missiles that went flying out into people’s lives,’ he says, with no trace of self importance.
‘Cupid used to be lumbered with the fact that he basically had a single shot weapon. He could only shoot one arrow at a time. Not any more, folks!’ he laughs, thinking back to the golden days of Top 40 stations. ‘We’re on the radio, we’re shooting millions of bullets 24 hours a day! We’re killing ‘em out there! That really intensified the whole phenomenon of young people falling in love.’
UP, UPAND AWAY
In May, the love in the room in London’s Grosvenor House as Webb was presented with the PRS for Music Special International Award, showed the respect due a man who started out in awe of one Great American Songbook and set about creating a new one.
‘I love Britain so much, and have since my first trips over here when I was a mere child, really, 18, 19 years old, working with Richard Harris,’ he says. ‘I became an overnight Anglophile, which quite upset Richard. He didn’t like it at all, and took me on a couple of propaganda missions to Ireland, to de-Anglicise me.’ Their friendship led to two albums, both released in 1968 and all written, produced and arranged by the precocious American. A Tramp Shining contained both the unique MacArthur Park and the beautiful ballad Didn’t We, and was followed by a second project, The Yard Went On Forever.
These days, he gives plenty of his experience back. Last year, after a decade on the board of ASCAP, Webb added new responsibilities as chairman of the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. ‘There’ve only been four chairmen in its history,’ he says in humble tones. ‘Johnny Mercer, Sammy Cahn, who I knew very well, a lovely fella. Then of course Hal David, and there’s no way to say how highly we think of him.’
He approaches the job with outspoken solemnity. ‘I blame the internet, and I don’t care who knows it,’ he says firmly. ‘We’ve been in a struggle for intellectual property rights since the first day I walked into that building. It’s almost like the little Dutch boy who puts his finger in the dyke. By the time there’s another meeting, we’ve got another dyke.
‘There’s really quite a huge and dramatic canvas that’s being painted right now, and we don’t know what the end picture is going to be. Both PRS for Music and ASCAP, and people like us all over the world who are trying to take care of our writers, don’t want to be in the position of having
given away the family store. And to be remembered as the generation who blew this wonderful thing we had going, of getting musicians paid for doing their work.’
There was never much doubt that Jimmy Layne Webb was going to be part of that noble breed himself. Encouraged by his mother to take piano lessons as a boy, he played in his preacher father’s church and chose music as a serious option when, after the family’s move to California, his mum passed away at a young age and his dad went home. Even before that, he’d had his first experience of getting a song on the radio, and tells a delightful story about it.
‘I had a group of girls I worked with called The Contessas. They were all blondes, lucky me, and they worshipped me, naturally,’ he smiles. ‘I taught them the songs and rehearsed them and played the piano, I was probably about 16. I had them all dressed up in their blue gingham outfits with their hair pulled back, the 1960s style. All beautiful, cute girls, and good singers, very coquettish.
‘I drove them out to the radio station, pulled up in front, and I had copies of the record in the trunk of my car. We went up to the front and knocked on the door and the girl said, “No no, you can’t come in.” Then a couple of the DJs walked through and saw the girls, and said, “Come on in!” They opened the door, all of a sudden the radio station was full of blonde girls and the DJs were happier than hell.
‘Suzy Weir was our lead singer, and she said, “Would you play our record?” and one of the DJs was in the control room, he said, “I sure will honey, if you’ll sit on my lap.” She sat on his lap and he played our record.
‘The excitement of that was indescribable, listening to your own record on the radio. Today, think about walking into a radio station without your bullet proof vest on. Things have so utterly changed that so much of the sweetness and the innocence have gone out of it.’
M44_JUNE 2012_29
PROFILE
Your current project One Pig is part of the One Trilogy. How did the project come about?I did my previous record, called There’s Me and There’s You, with the big band and a choir. There were 400 people on that record and thousands of samples. It was a very big production and after that I wanted to simplify my process. I thought I’d make a record out of one thing, but I couldn’t quite decide what that one thing should be, so I made a trilogy. The final one in the set was the pig record, and it was very unknown territory. I wanted to do a biography of a life through to death, from birth. Pigs play such a vital role in our lives, whether we realise it or not. You’ve probably come into contact with a pig product 20 times already today. They’re in ink, paper and used processes to make bread, milk, orange juice, beer, wine, bullets, margarine, make-up, car brakes, literally everything. So, in many ways, that record was about giving a voice to a previously unknown or unheard life.
Do you think that’s why One Pig has captured peoples’ imagination? Everyone knows what a pig is, from my two year old son to his 70 year old grandmother. There’s no explanation required. Someone saw the show recently and said it was like watching The Titanic
– you know what’s going to happen from the very beginning, the pig’s going to die. So it changes how you listen to it. That arc of birth, life and death is something that music and musicians have tried to express for millennia. Really, with the invention of sampling technology and tape machines, finally we can actually make that a reality. It can now be a documentary rather than just a musical impression of it, which is how it has been previously.
Was the idea behind One Pig something that you wanted to explore for yourself or something you wanted to share with others to provoke thought? It’s definitely both of those things, in as much as I have an impulse to amplify stories that I think are largely unheard or undocumented within music. But I think more importantly, it has to be teaching myself something that I didn’t know before. Largely, with a lot of the work I do with sound, I feel in uncharted territory. I remember when I recorded 3,500 people eating an apple all at the same time about seven years ago, I thought, ‘Wow, this is a sound that probably people have never heard before.’ It’s a very privileged position to be in, and I very much feel like I’m really lucky to be exploring the unknown. In a way, it’s a first experience for me, and then hopefully other people through that.
The inimitable Matthew Herbert is a methodical soundsmith, prizing process and form above all else. In a career spanning two decades, he has mastered various musical genres from jazz and classical to electronica and house. His production credits include Björk, Róisín Murphy and Merz, and he has remixed the likes of Dizzee Rascal, Quincy Jones and Ennio Morricone. Herbert’s latest experimental album One Pig, which uses samples from the life and death of one animal, is out now on his own label.
on my ipodetta james - at lastMy first introduction to this song was on a
music score. I read the lyrics and sang my
own melody to it. Later, upon finally hearing
the song, I don’t know how I managed to live
without it for so long..
stevie nicks - i sing for things Great song, great voice. Without a doubt at the
end of every night Fleetwood Mac would make
the Jukebox - you’ll catch us dancing round a
pool table.
joni mitchell - little green The story behind this song is really sad, it’s
about her daughter. I always sing a bit of Joni
to my little girl, she’s an inspiration to me and
my songwriting.
björk - wanderlustI just think Björk is amazing lyrically and
musically. I’ve been listening to the Volta album
again recently, great sounds.
my morning jacket - thank you tooA classic. I love the lyric, ‘You really saw my naked
heart, you really brought out the naked part’.
radiohead - pyramid song I’m a huge Radiohead fan. I’ve been very lucky
and have seen them from the side of the stage
once, which was a dream come true. I love when
the drums sneak in unexpectedly on this track.
neil young - birdsI get such a free feeling when I listen to this,
and everything I was worrying about that day
just disappears. It’s very simple and yet very
powerful.
stairs to korea - all of your friendsA one man band, armed with just guitar, pedal
board and classics. I haven’t heard anything else
like this.
ryan adams - please do not let me goI won’t ever let you go Ryan; you’ll always be on
my playlist! He’s one of my favourite songwriters.
There are some live versions of this song, like the
Glasgow gig from 2006, that send tingles down
my spine.
www.michelestodart.com
This is an excerpt of the full interview, available at www.m-magazine.co.uk
Matthew Herbert’s Russian Big Band will perform on the Europe Stage, Trafalgar Square, for the Cultural Olympiad’s River of Music event on 22 July.
Michele Stodart came to attention as The Magic Numbers’ bassist. The band’s first two albums ‘The Magic Numbers’ and ‘Those the Brokes’ went platinum and gold respectively. Now solo, Michele’s forthcoming debut album The Wide-Eyed Crossing is a smouldering mixture of folky Americana and searing lyricism. Single ‘Foolish Love’ is out in June.
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We are the UK’s independent association representing music writers in all genres, from songwriting, through to media, contemporary classical and jazz.
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BASCA campaigns in the UK, Europe and throughout the world on behalf of all members.
BASCA member events offer access to industry professionals and an invaluable opportunity to network with contemporaries.
Held within the members’ section of the BASCA website, professional resources available include advice sheets, sample contracts and agreements.
The professional services BASCA offers include an online collaboration service, a legal service, tax helpline and a digital record label.
Whether you are just receiving your first royalty cheque or you’ve been writing music for years, BASCA can support your career!
m44_june 2012_33
sixty secondsOne Pig is obviously a very intense journey. How does it feel to perform it live?It can be quite an emotional show. You can hear it honking and grunting a lot for the first half an hour. And then there are the little details; for example when it’s dead we recorded the butchery and made a track out of that. Part of the introductory beat is the air being beaten out of the lungs. This is pig you’ve heard being born. You’ve heard those lungs take in air for the first time. Just from a performance perspective it changes – it’s not like playing the piano. You’re playing a body part, effectively. There’s a real violence to that, which can be quite unsettling. It raises all sorts of complicated philosophical and moral questions, and you consider whether it’s appropriate to use these noises, and how we should react as performers and audience.
One One, the first album in the trilogy, contained many more songs, in the traditional sense. Did you have to consciously immerse yourself in songwriting or did it happen naturally?It’s something I’ve always done and probably like most songwriters I started playing relatively cheesy piano ballads aged 12 or 13. When you first start writing songs, they really are songs. The first thing you do isn’t necessarily pig based! So I’d always written songs and for the last few years I’ve sidelined that aspect in my attempts to concentrate more on the sound than the songwriting aspect. It was real self indulgent treat to go back to writing songs again and not necessarily feeling like I had to deal with these bigger subjects in such an explicit way. It felt like a guilty pleasure.
Why do you normally like to set yourself boundaries and strict rules?Because music is in a crisis point. Technology has, over the past 10 or 15 years, drawn us to go in very particular directions. It’s encouraged us to use samplers to play things like the Vienna Symphony Orchestra or a beautifully recorded Steinway piano rather than the Syrian revolution or a watermelon or whatever amazing thing we can think of to sample out in the world. The programme that I mainly use to write music is Logic Pro, and the programme has really changed over the past 10 or 20 years. Now when you load it up it asks you what kind of style you are writing – R&B, pop, singer-songwriter or rock – and loads up a whole series of presets for you, including loops and tempos, ready for you to just do it.
making music
Your current project One Pig is part of the One Trilogy. How did the project come about?I did my previous record, called There’s Me and There’s You, with the big band and a choir. There were 400 people on that record and thousands of samples. It was a very big production and after that I wanted to simplify my process. I thought I’d make a record out of one thing, but I couldn’t quite decide what that one thing should be, so I made a trilogy. The final one in the set was the pig record, and it was very unknown territory. I wanted to do a biography of a life through to death, from birth. Pigs play such a vital role in our lives, whether we realise it or not. You’ve probably come into contact with a pig product 20 times already today. They’re in ink, paper and used processes to make bread, milk, orange juice, beer, wine, bullets, margarine, make-up, car brakes, literally everything. So, in many ways, that record was about giving a voice to a previously unknown or unheard life.
Do you think that’s why One Pig has captured peoples’ imagination? Everyone knows what a pig is, from my two year old son to his 70 year old grandmother. There’s no explanation required. Someone saw the show recently and said it was like watching The Titanic
– you know what’s going to happen from the very beginning, the pig’s going to die. So it changes how you listen to it. That arc of birth, life and death is something that music and musicians have tried to express for millennia. Really, with the invention of sampling technology and tape machines, finally we can actually make that a reality. It can now be a documentary rather than just a musical impression of it, which is how it has been previously.
Was the idea behind One Pig something that you wanted to explore for yourself or something you wanted to share with others to provoke thought? It’s definitely both of those things, in as much as I have an impulse to amplify stories that I think are largely unheard or undocumented within music. But I think more importantly, it has to be teaching myself something that I didn’t know before. Largely, with a lot of the work I do with sound, I feel in uncharted territory. I remember when I recorded 3,500 people eating an apple all at the same time about seven years ago, I thought, ‘Wow, this is a sound that probably people have never heard before.’ It’s a very privileged position to be in, and I very much feel like I’m really lucky to be exploring the unknown. In a way, it’s a first experience for me, and then hopefully other people through that.
The inimitable Matthew Herbert is a methodical soundsmith, prizing process and form above all else. In a career spanning two decades, he has mastered various musical genres from jazz and classical to electronica and house. His production credits include Björk, Róisín Murphy and Merz, and he has remixed the likes of Dizzee Rascal, Quincy Jones and Ennio Morricone. Herbert’s latest experimental album One Pig, which uses samples from the life and death of one animal, is out now on his own label.
on my ipodetta james - at lastMy first introduction to this song was on a
music score. I read the lyrics and sang my
own melody to it. Later, upon finally hearing
the song, I don’t know how I managed to live
without it for so long..
stevie nicks - i sing for things Great song, great voice. Without a doubt at the
end of every night Fleetwood Mac would make
the Jukebox - you’ll catch us dancing round a
pool table.
joni mitchell - little green The story behind this song is really sad, it’s
about her daughter. I always sing a bit of Joni
to my little girl, she’s an inspiration to me and
my songwriting.
björk - wanderlustI just think Björk is amazing lyrically and
musically. I’ve been listening to the Volta album
again recently, great sounds.
my morning jacket - thank you tooA classic. I love the lyric, ‘You really saw my naked
heart, you really brought out the naked part’.
radiohead - pyramid song I’m a huge Radiohead fan. I’ve been very lucky
and have seen them from the side of the stage
once, which was a dream come true. I love when
the drums sneak in unexpectedly on this track.
neil young - birdsI get such a free feeling when I listen to this,
and everything I was worrying about that day
just disappears. It’s very simple and yet very
powerful.
stairs to korea - all of your friendsA one man band, armed with just guitar, pedal
board and classics. I haven’t heard anything else
like this.
ryan adams - please do not let me goI won’t ever let you go Ryan; you’ll always be on
my playlist! He’s one of my favourite songwriters.
There are some live versions of this song, like the
Glasgow gig from 2006, that send tingles down
my spine.
www.michelestodart.com
This is an excerpt of the full interview, available at www.m-magazine.co.uk
Matthew Herbert’s Russian Big Band will perform on the Europe Stage, Trafalgar Square, for the Cultural Olympiad’s River of Music event on 22 July.
Michele Stodart came to attention as The Magic Numbers’ bassist. The band’s first two albums ‘The Magic Numbers’ and ‘Those the Brokes’ went platinum and gold respectively. Now solo, Michele’s forthcoming debut album The Wide-Eyed Crossing is a smouldering mixture of folky Americana and searing lyricism. Single ‘Foolish Love’ is out in June.
www.basca.org.uk
We are the UK’s independent association representing music writers in all genres, from songwriting, through to media, contemporary classical and jazz.
Our members include Sir Paul McCartney, Dizzee Rascal, Michael Nyman, Gary Barlow, David Arnold, Sir Elton John, Imogen Heap, Howard Goodall, John Powell, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Kate Bush, Chris Martin, and many more.
BASCA campaigns in the UK, Europe and throughout the world on behalf of all members.
BASCA member events offer access to industry professionals and an invaluable opportunity to network with contemporaries.
Held within the members’ section of the BASCA website, professional resources available include advice sheets, sample contracts and agreements.
The professional services BASCA offers include an online collaboration service, a legal service, tax helpline and a digital record label.
Whether you are just receiving your first royalty cheque or you’ve been writing music for years, BASCA can support your career!
m44_june 2012_33
sixty secondsOne Pig is obviously a very intense journey. How does it feel to perform it live?It can be quite an emotional show. You can hear it honking and grunting a lot for the first half an hour. And then there are the little details; for example when it’s dead we recorded the butchery and made a track out of that. Part of the introductory beat is the air being beaten out of the lungs. This is pig you’ve heard being born. You’ve heard those lungs take in air for the first time. Just from a performance perspective it changes – it’s not like playing the piano. You’re playing a body part, effectively. There’s a real violence to that, which can be quite unsettling. It raises all sorts of complicated philosophical and moral questions, and you consider whether it’s appropriate to use these noises, and how we should react as performers and audience.
One One, the first album in the trilogy, contained many more songs, in the traditional sense. Did you have to consciously immerse yourself in songwriting or did it happen naturally?It’s something I’ve always done and probably like most songwriters I started playing relatively cheesy piano ballads aged 12 or 13. When you first start writing songs, they really are songs. The first thing you do isn’t necessarily pig based! So I’d always written songs and for the last few years I’ve sidelined that aspect in my attempts to concentrate more on the sound than the songwriting aspect. It was real self indulgent treat to go back to writing songs again and not necessarily feeling like I had to deal with these bigger subjects in such an explicit way. It felt like a guilty pleasure.
Why do you normally like to set yourself boundaries and strict rules?Because music is in a crisis point. Technology has, over the past 10 or 15 years, drawn us to go in very particular directions. It’s encouraged us to use samplers to play things like the Vienna Symphony Orchestra or a beautifully recorded Steinway piano rather than the Syrian revolution or a watermelon or whatever amazing thing we can think of to sample out in the world. The programme that I mainly use to write music is Logic Pro, and the programme has really changed over the past 10 or 20 years. Now when you load it up it asks you what kind of style you are writing – R&B, pop, singer-songwriter or rock – and loads up a whole series of presets for you, including loops and tempos, ready for you to just do it.
making music
Jazzie B is a DJ, producer, entrepreneur and co-founder of music collective Soul II Soul. In 2008 he was given the inaugural Ivor Novello Inspiration Award and, in the same year, received an OBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours List.
Strangely enough, Soul II Soul began in 1977 on the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, which was our first gig. We were 14 years old and were having a street party in N19. We were given twelve quid to be the entertainment. I set up a sound system outside my front door, everyone had ice cream and jelly and I played my heart out from nine o’clock in the morning until about midnight. It ’s quite ironic that here we are again; it ’s the Queen’s jubilee and we’re getting a Music Heritage Award from PRS for Music. You couldn’t have written this any better.
This picture, taken in our lock-up around 1985, captures the nucleus of Soul II Soul a few years before our record deal with Virgin. From the left you’ve got DJ Crime, Aitch B, myself, Jazzi-Q,
Sparky D and kneeling down in front is Daddae Harvey. It was a kind of press shot: you have to remember we were pretty large up and down the country just as a sound system and we had the shops at that time too.
A lot of middle class journalists labeled us capitalists. They failed to understand that we couldn’t get a job. Maggie Thatcher came in and suggested everyone got off their arses and we took full advantage. So, instead of being these illegal rogues, we were legitimised by the Manpower Services Commission, which gave us £1,000 to set up a business. We ended up having accountants and solicitors and paying taxes.
The fact that we were able to transfer our ideas into a legitimate business through to getting a record deal blew people out of the water. They were saying, ‘they must have done this,’ or, ‘they had connections’. We were children of immigrants, born and raised in Britain, and went through all that old fiasco when it came to jobs.
Capitalism wasn’t even in our vocabulary at that time – it was a means of survival.
Our business was structured like a sound system. You’ve got the owner, operator, mic man, selecter, van driver, electrician and so on. That’s exactly how it worked for us then and still does today. The difference is that we hit the jackpot.
As for our deal with Virgin, every sound system puts its own music on to dub plates, so the only decision was when we should commercially release our music. We wanted to be the biggest sound system in the world. When we released a track that was so huge, every other sound system was forced to play it, so it was a way to crush the opposition. All the record deal meant was that, instead of selling our own records in our shops, we had proper nationwide distribution that could react to demand.
Soul II Soul had nothing to do with corporations and branding, it grew out of a way of life.
Jazzie B OBE and Soul II Soul in Camden, circa 1985.
On 21 June 2012,
Soul II Soul
were awarded a
PRS for Music
Heritage Award,
recognising the
iconic British soul
band’s first live
gig at Brixton’s
The Fridge (now
Electric Brixton)
in 1991. Visit
www.m-magazine.
co.uk to find
out more.
got a photo to share and a story to tell? [email protected]
34_june 2012_m44
making musicpicture this
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