The Animal Farm

We had a meeting in Midem with a company from a large foreign territory whose origins were in the audio industry. Dating back to the 70s, the company’s history had seen it morph from a tech company to a creative company with many a fine twist and turn. The bossman was keen to do deals and surprisingly candid about his firm’s weaknesses. He said that their biggest downfall was their inability to book tours.

Talk to anybody who knows anything about anything and that’s what it boils down to. Gigs. Bands need to tour.

With impeccable logic he had decided to set up an agency. It would be ready by summer. Judging by his previous efforts, there was little reason to doubt the man.

Have a look at the map, not only of the world, but of your own county. There are plenty of pubs out there to play. How many have you filled this week?

Another meeting was with a big Chinese label whose previous client was an English major label, recently sold. They ended their presentation with this unforgettable line: “So, we don’t have a catalogue anymore because our client was sold. We don’t have any records to sell. Have you got any?”

I was looking, with the eye of my mind, at an unfathomable vastness of opportunity…

A Korean company active in the field of K-pop (which stands for a particular brand of pop performed by Korean artists) said their 10 A&Rs go through 100 songs every week to find the right singles for their artists. I guess they release a fair few of them as a constant stream of music. Shortened versions of the songs are sold as ringtones. It’s fast moving stuff.

If we are lacking anything, I bet it’s the willingness to go out to them there hills and find the money that grows on them there trees.

I spent a hot Midem minute listening to music futurologist Gerd Leonhard from whom I learned that while the music biz is a business worth a few billion dollars, the telecoms industry is worth several trillion.

I’ve never been to a telecoms industry do, but I have been to many music biz bashes over the years. You gotta laugh at the irony of people with broke ass record labels drinking £10 bottles of Kronenburg (v.e.r.y. slowly) in posh hotels…

A veteran music biz dude noted that in conventions past there used to be music blaring out from everywhere. This year you were lucky to bump into any.

It’s fact that in “music business” the word “music” comes before “business”.

However, most of what you see when you’re out there are digital-platform-solution companies with incredibly complicated and cool sounding mission statements, all trying to make you think that there is a digital solution to what is essentially an artistic problem.

Namely, it takes an awful lot of talent and expertise to make great music and great records.

On a personal level, why should I give a sh*t about how many million songs you can manage with your new digital content management system, when I can count the records that I really, really like on two hands?!

On a wider level, surely a bit more attention on quality over quantity would be a good thing, would it not?

Next year The Animal Farm stand (our first ever) is going to be massive. We’ll have live farm animals. The catering will be stupendous, we won’t run out of booze. The waitresses will be hotter than any you’ve seen. There will be a gig every hour on the hour. The sound system will be gigantic.

It will drown out every fucker trying to sell me a digital solution to a problem I don’t have. I know which party I’d want to be at. The one where there’s music.

After a nice dinner on the Croisette we walked to the British Bar for a drink with the MD of a major label in a peripheral European territory. I asked him about his rise to the top of the tree in his business.

He started working for his uncle’s indie label while at Uni. Learned the tricks of the trade working across everything the label did. Uncle passed, he bought the company, taking an enormous personal risk. Also set up a publishing company. Made some cool new signings and had international hits. Sold it all to one of the majors and went to work for them. That major merged with another. He was made redundant, so he set up a new independent company. Worked like a dog. Eventually merged it with one of the remaining majors and got the top job there.

30 years in the making.

Meanwhile, Mat was deep in conversation with an American tech geek who was in town talking about his new platform that monitors stats across the web better than anything else. The geek was amazed to find out that in our business “the guys who create all the content” (artists) are, according to him, so “f***ing lazy”.

He had Silicon Valley investors on his side and, presumably, on his back. Mat says the guy was a little bit insane, but he made his point with beer assisted vigour. Mat swears that he was foaming at the mouth slightly when he shouted:

“Do you have any idea how f***ing hard those guys in the Valley work? The hours they put in???!!! And then I look at these artists and I go: what the hell is wrong with you? Get in the f***ing van and f***ing tour!”

Good point well made.

I just returned from Midem, arguably the world’s biggest music business conference where people connected with the business of music get together to find new partners. It takes place over a long weekend of meetings in the stellar setting that is Cannes. Over the next few days I will try to convey what we got out of our four days of music biz galore in a series of “postcards from Midem”.

We met a big shot American manager. A big shot is someone of whose artists Linkin Park are not the most successful. He said that during every Midem he takes 3 meetings with people he doesn’t know. He wanted to meet us because we look like an interesting company, he said. Awesome.

A very enjoyable and hugely educational conversation boiled down to one astute observation, made by the manager once he had listened to what we do and how we got to where we are now. Said the man: “So… you’ve learned to make records efficiently and cheaply.”

I guess everybody with a laptop makes recordings efficiently and cheaply these days, but not everyone is able to make records… you dig?

Here’s one we made earlier, for the stoner rockers Orange Goblin. It’s pleasing to read that the first thing the reviewer notices is the production.

The full review is at The Obelisk.