Day One Closes: Global A&R Forum

The assembled panelists for Global A&R Forum have signed everything from Gnarls Barkley to Muse, to Blur, Sugababes and Madcon.
Sarah Stennet of SSB/ Crown Management, Korda Marshall (MD, Infectious Records), Fredrik Ekander (Bonnier Amigo, Sweden), Mike Smith (MD of Columbia Records, UK) and Bjorn Teske (Sony Music A&R Director, Germany) were on call to discuss the finer points of their most-prized discoveries. They were led into conversation by moderator Joe Taylor (Field Recordings/ Nuxx Publishing & Music Consultant to Record of the Day).
Sarah said she approached Sugababes "as a brand that represented the type of pop music we were doing" and that despite three line-up changes and being picked up after being dropped by their first label, the girls are still in the game and currently working on a new album which will be a co-production with Jay-Z's RocNation label in the US. She thought the main responsibilities involved in management was managing the individuals, working with a label which works through the difficulties and keeping the focus on the brand itself and the music.
Korda signed Muse when they were a bunch of 17 year-olds, he says because it was very obvious from the start that they had the right attitude, focus and drive. Initially signing them for Australia/ UK-only singles deal with matching rights clause for other territories, his market specific approach at first allowed them to ramp up to a global campaign after 3 albums. Interestingly, he had passed on them a few times before signing them as they were too young.
Mike Smith's experience of working with Mark Ronson included taking up reigns from another label (Ronson's first album didn't do so well for Elektra while they were on their last legs). Ronson's version of Radiohead's 'Just' which appeared on a soundtrack in 2006, and his involvement in Lily and Amy's album led Smith to believing Ronson's signature sound was connecting with people at just the right time - that's why they waited two years before launching the album.
Bjorn's experience with the fledgling German rockers Aloha From Hell came when their lead singer was just 14 years old singer. What followed for them was an 18 month period of artist development before partners Bravo Television got behind them. Bjorn reiterated the importance of reaching a mass market after that point. "After grassroots development, you do need Radio/ TV and press. We had already invested Eur500,000, so we needed to get a Gold album with them."
Most of the artists Sarah Stennet has worked with were dropped from their label or sidelined from the industry at one point. She listed Noisettes, VV Brown and Sugababes as examples. She said she looked for the drive from the artists to still be involved - with The Noisettes, the idea of a waste of a unique talent and the work they had put into their career drove her to continue to be involved. They were eventually signed back to the label they were dropped by in the UK, by working with another dropped band under her management company.
After taking the demos from the audience the panel discussed hit discovery. Korda said he heard Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" on a Tuesday afternoon and signed it by Friday and that he's had 4 records like that in a 30 year career.
Michael Jackson was a topic that couldn't be avoided on this panel. Korda spoke of " the big machine whirring" in majors when an artist dies. He compared Sony's job at present to RCA's when Elvis died. Mike Smith, although stressing his role at Columbia wasn't directly involved in Jackson's catalogue at all summed up the feeling in his company: :I think it's really important for the industry...Tony Wilson said it best when he said 'nothing sells like death'. We have to do as much as possible to respect the legacy and his family. We need to do it in a way in which the families feel comfortable with." Fredrick Ekander was of the opinion that music no longer has the ability to touch the same number of people at the same time, and that was why there would never be a superstar like Jackson again. Smith retorted that "The opportunity is still there for an artist to touch people on a global scale, but they just don't come along very often."
After discussing the methods of discovery and the filters used ,Smith's comment on what buzz does to an act was telling in the current music media environment: "Just because something is the most-tipped act of the year, that doesn't mean it's going to crossover."
To conclude the entire panel admitted that they have never signed a band after discovering it on a CD they had been given at a conference , but have signed bands they've seen at conferences - Korda name-checked The Temper Trap who he saw at last year's Musexpo Europe event in London.
And so to the Carbon Lounge for some cocktails and another evening of musical discovery. Follow us on Twitter for updates as we go. We're back tomorrow for more coverage from The Cumberland Hotel, kicking off with The Publishing Forum at 9:30am. Sleep is for wimps.

Snap, Crackle and Pop Music: Elbow for Breakfast?

Officiated by The Official Charts Company's Martin Talbot and ex-Universal A&R/ artist manager Joel Harrison, The Managers Forum panellists between them have sold a helluva lot of record. Luckily they imparted some wisdom about the challenges facing artists at either end of the sales scale.
Jim Chancellor (MD of Fiction Records & manager of Athlete), Phil Chadwick (Elbow's manager), James Sandom ( Supervision Management - The Kaiser Chiefs), Cassandra Gracey (manager of Gabriella Cilmi) and Deville Schober (manager of showcasing artists of this event Aloha From Hell) all pitched in with what they thought was most important to keep in mind when managing in today's climate. Schober thought it was "more important than ever to fight against 360 deals" which may fly in the face of common perception of today's grab-all deal structures. Gracey, who manages Cilmi and Island artist FrankMusik (also showcasing at MusexpoEurope), stressed the importance of individual artists expectations and having a clear roadmap for each different artist. James Sandom thought it was about staying true to the artist's original aesthetic and ideals.
On the subject of getting revenue for your artist outside the record deal, there was some interesting asides on dealing with Ad synchs. Chadwick revealed that Elbow turned down £1m from a breakfast cereal brand for the use of their hit 'One Day Like This', as well as turning down offers from Orange mobile phones and Birds Eye's Fish Fingers. The reasoning behind it was simple to understand, as Phil said: "The band had decided 'do we want to have a gig where someone shouts 'play that one off the cereal advert!'?". He also offered insight into the costs associated with up-scaling your act. A Wembley Arena show for Elbow only just broke even, but was done as a point to prove that the band could pull it off. The blanket license which TV stations in the UK enjoy for the use of music in their programme was descried as 'heartbreaking' by Chadwick, who admitted to watching 'The Katie and Peter Show' on ITV2 when Elbow's 'Mirrorball' was used.
Cassandra thought there was still the right deals to be done when your artist is in demand for co-branded opportunities: Frankmusik got 'tens of thousands of pounds' for the Blackberry-sponsored TV show he did.
Jim Chancellor said he didn't factor in synch revenue when signing a band as it may not happen in the near future. He expressed the opinion that although MGMT broke in US by clever use of synch, it wouldn't happen over here because the act are perceived as too 'cool' to get away with such a thing in the UK. Chadwick responded that the generation from which the artist belongs to is a factor -Elbow being a bit older means they're less responsive to ad synchs than younger acts. Outside the synch activity, Chadwick also focused on the importance of having a great champion of your act within the label structure - Elbow specified that they would only work with Liz Goodwin in Polydor UK as their product manager because of her passion for working the band through the entire Universal system (which he described as a 'grown-up record label). James Sandom concluded the advice by saying he found it good to have a small network of other managers which he trusts to check things like festival/ commercial fees and run past problems and opportunities as they arise. A fascinating panel with some real lessons learned.

Mini-Keynotes: Detica and MATIVision

Two short keynotes sandwiched in between the big discussions today brought some interesting new products to our attention.
The first was brought to us by the good folk at Detica. Before being given a brief product demo, we were told about the lack of proper metrics available in the music business. Detica's alleged that the impact of the demise of Zavvi and Woolworths on music retail market wasn't really known - and if/when such collapses happened in any other business, the analysis would have happened by now. Attempting to redress the lack of available information on such things, Detica unveiled a tool which forecasts the long-term impact of digital piracy on the music industry’s revenues. The new ‘Price for Music’ model is available for anyone to access via a nifty free website. It allows users to explore scenarios by inputting their own business variables and generating easy-to-understand graphs and charts projecting revenue over time. Neat.

The afternoon mini-keynote was a special presentation from MATIVision, a Greek technology company which offered a revolutionary live music video technology which captures events in spherical video format, from different positions in the event venue. Have a play around with it on their site.

The New Power Players : Show Me The Money

With representatives from 7 Digital, We7, Getty Images and Ministry of Sound, this panel aimed to demystify the revenue streams behind the music industry's new power players. Ted Cohen from TAG Strategic looked after proceedings, which viewed a trend-shift from the a-la-carte industry to a service economy. 7 Digital's Ben Drury accepted that while no one single model would work for everyone, there is definitely a shift from consumer demands from wanting to own music to just wanting to stream.
But the purchase model still holds ground, as Ben admitted that the major labels pushed them towards their recent deal with Spotify which provides one-click purchase integration. Whether this simply was an extension of their current affiliate deal, or an expression of a lack of confidence on the part of the majors in Spotify's business model, is yet to be made clear. Drury also confirmed that the firm's Indie Store offering for DIY artists has 60,000 musicians and bands signed up to it. Getty's Vince Bannon also noted that the band Metric, have made $300K since Christmas through their own DIY activities.
Ministry of Sound's Rudy Tambala piped up halfway though this panel, comparing the line-up for the first panel to a "bunch of old blokes, sitting out on the porch, spitting tobacco.", which might have been a bit unfair - they weren't that old.
Ted Cohen gave a response to BPI's Geoff Taylor's recent comments about Napster in a column written for the BBC. When Cohen worked with Napster he no desire to make a deal with the recorded music business, they just wanted to build a base, get the law changed. In the light of today's news about the sale of The Pirate Bay, we could see history repeating itself.

Daytime Tuesday (am): Jazz is out of the traps

Musexpo Europe's daytime panel kicked off with an at times heated but always entertaining global keynote. There were also some news announcements. Radio 1's head of music policy George Ergatoudis hinted that the radio station is poised to launch a new set of interactive and community features, based on a recent "visualisation" experiment whereby listeners could watch what was happening in the studio in real-time, as well as witnessing all of the text messages being sent in on a live feed.

EMI Music Publishing UK president Guy Moot, Island co-president Ted Cockle, Big Life Management founder Jazz Summers and International Talent Booking MD Barry Dickins made up the stellar line-up.

Paul Brown from Spotify sadly wasn't able to make today's proceedings but might have been interested at the amount of time spent discussing the potential foibles of their business model. There was much worry about the ad revenue versus subscription take-up (premium subscribers for Spotify are alleged to be in the region of 15,000 in the UK at present).

The broad range of topics ranged from using the right communication channels, managing them (Summers talked about the number of people at Big Life tasked with managing social networking comments) and thinking about alternative methods of utilising a fanbase. Tinchy Stryder, a UK No 1 artist sells 500 T-shirts per month which don't have his name or image on it - the lesson to be learned is using not just the music, but the lifestyle and message behind an artist to maintain fans interest.

First Evening: The Heat Is On

While London sweltered under the hottest weather in quite some time, Musexpo Europe 2009 provided shelter from the oppressive heat in the form of our first night of showcases before the more serious matter of talking shop began.

The Borderline, home to many a discovery at last year's Musexpo Europe, saw temperatures rise for the smoking London debut from Germany's Aloha From Hell. 16 year-old front woman Vivi Bauernschmidt busted some top notch rocker moves out front, while a band which could have been products of an assembly-line for rock musicians (standard T-shirt issue: Motley Crue, Guns N' Roses) certainly had the chops to convince. They've cast their net wide already with hits in Austria and Japan where they are a priority for SonyBMG. Perhaps that net might spread even wider after this incendiary appearance.

Hilltop Hoods followed, bringing a glimpse of Australian hip hop to the London audience. Platinum at home, selling 100,000 records thus far, with album The Hard Road hitting No.1, they've also received the prestigious J Award for Best Australian Album. We also learned of a more impressive achievement: at recent sold-out Islington Academy shows, the crowd (no doubt very thirsty antipodean ex-pats) set the record for bar takings, splashing over £5,000 on booze. No wonder, this is perfect music to get rowdy to. Watch out for their anarchic brand of provocative beats.

Norway are the current Eurovision Song Contest title holders, so we were interested to see what kind of sugary pop extravaganza they could throw our way on Musexpo's European jaunt. Datarock's pulsating dance/rock/comedy show confounded our expectations and definitely turned the heat up with an addictive set of memorable bangers. Dressed in immaculate (if ill-advised, given the weather - have we mentioned how hot it is in London right now?) red hooded track suits, they bounced, raved and generally did awesome things like sing songs about Commodore 64's, which we enjoyed. They even closed with a song which paid homage to Prefab Sprout. A brilliant party band.

With our appetites whetted for two further nights of showcase action, we also have to get our serious heads on for two days of networking and panels. Can you stand the heat?