XXXXXXXX Q2 2019 XXXXXXXX EDITOR’S LETTER You hear it everywhere you go in the UK Tim Ingham the American music industry, where so much business: whatever happened to the days more consumption takes place – and so much of new superstar British acts breaking more industry value is derived. (Spot check: last with regularity in the United States? That year, the UK generated £829m in retail revenues golden run of Mumford & Sons, Amy from subscription music streaming, according Winehouse, Adele, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith – to ERA. That works out at $1.1bn, which makes why did it seem to dry up? the UK subscription streaming market worth The most sensible answer, of course, is the around a fifth of the USA’s ($5.4bn). Population shift to streaming. All of the above acts benefited wise, the UK is about a fifth of the size of the greatly from being considered ‘album’ artists, States, so this all makes logical sense.) with recognition amongst the public – at home Other numbers specifically bear out the and abroad – that they were musicians of lasting struggle British artists are facing. According value, i.e. their work was worth monetarily to the BPI’s annual All About The Music gambling on, in the form of an LP purchase. handbook, UK artists claimed 9.0% of ‘all That era is now rapidly disappearing, music consumption’ (across sales and streams) especially in the United States, where, according in North America last year, with just 7.6% to RIAA data, sales of albums (across CD, of on-demand streams in the marketplace. download and vinyl) fell by $497m last year, to That streaming figure was down on the 7.9% a cumulative value of $1.62bn. To really put “Spot check: registered in 2017, and the 8.4% registered in things into perspective, consider this: Adele’s 2016. Evidently, the situation for UK acts in the 21 stormed the US charts after its release in the UK music US is getting harder, not easier. February 2011. That same year, the US album And then, just as all hope is draining away, purchases market (again, across CD, download streaming a game-changer. Having firmly conquered and vinyl) was worth $2.7bn more (!) than it the UK, Lewis Capaldi is starting to make a was last year. That’s not a typo: in 2011, album market was real name for himself in the States as a priority sales in the United States, according to RIAA worth around act for Capitol Music Group – without sanding data, were worth $4.31bn vs. $1.62bn in 2018. down the subversive Scottish persona which The US albums market, in just seven years, has a fifth of has won him so many domestic plaudits. seen almost two thirds of its value collapse. Meanwhile, Sam Smith has ignored the Into this commercial vacuum have risen the the USA’s mainstream US trend for hip-hop-leaning streaming services, which last year – in all sonics, instead going all-out pop with Normani their forms – took care of 74.8% of the US last year.” for Dancing With A Stranger – now a US Radio recorded music market. (Streaming, including chart-topper. And Koffee, a reggae act from digital SoundExchange collections, generated Jamaica signed via Columbia in the UK, is, in $7.37bn in 2018; the total US market, this very issue, named as a key concern for Sony meanwhile, was worth $9.85bn.) by RCA’s New York-based boss Peter Edge. There is a fair argument, then, that Perhaps all of this tells us something. Perhaps this commercial transition has left British a new wave of British-fuelled success in the US is breakthrough acts a little screwed. If UK-signed beginning. And perhaps it’s got little to do with artists are competing in the track-dominated album sales, or streaming figures, or market data. US landscape of 2019, goes the logic, they will Perhaps, instead, it’s got everything to do with a inevitably lose out to the priority new acts of growing refusal to deliver more of the same. © Music Business Worldwide Ltd Contact: [email protected] 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AX Advertise: [email protected] ISSN 2632-5357 Subscribe: MusicBizStore.com 1 2 WELCOME In this issue... Contributors 10 Peter Edge RCA ALEX ROBBINS ANNABELLA COLDRICK KWAME KWATEN 20 Alex Boateng Island 26 Jack Street & Sam Evitt Method 35 Neighbourhood Benny Scarrs & Jack Foster Alex Robbins is an illustrator whose work As CEO of the Music Managers Forum, Kwame Kwaten is Managing Director has previously appeared on the likes of the Annabella runs the world’s largest of Ferocious Talent – an artist services New Yorker, Time Out, Wired, TIME and community of music managers, with over company covering artist management, 38 Ryan Walter Interlude Artists i-D. Oh, and Music Business UK. He has 500 global business members in the UK label services, music consultancy and once again created our cover image based and a network of over 2,500 in the US in-house production. A respected on a quote from our lead feature. This and elsewhere. The MMF aims to educate, management veteran, Kwame’s own time, those words come from the innovate and advocate for a fairer, more writing/production efforts include work 46 Amanda Playle Decade Management British Chairman and CEO of RCA in transparent music industry that operates in for Mick Jagger, Tom Jones, Ultra Nate, New York, Peter Edge. the interest of artists and their fans. Seal and Mark Morrison. 52 Alan McGee Creation MURRAY STASSEN PETER ROBINSON RHIAN JONES 56 Jim Chancellor Fiction 64 Dina LaPolt LaPolt Law 66 Jeremy Marsh Warner Music Murray Stassen is the Deputy Editor Peter Robinson has been a music journalist Rhian Jones is a respected freelance 74 Martha Kinn & Sophie Bloggs YM&U of Music Business Worldwide and Music for over 20 years, and keeps a keen eye journalist who often focuses on the music Business UK. Stassen is a former Deputy on the global entertainment industry. industry. In addition to writing regularly Editor of UK trade paper Music Week. Robinson has written for the likes of for Music Business UK and Hits Daily He has also written for the likes of VICE The Guardian, The Times, TIME, Noisey, Double, she is a Contributing Editor for 86 Bill Curbishley & Robert Rosenberg Trinifold Media, The Line Of Best Fit and Long Live i-D, Smash Hits, Q Magazine, Time Out, Music Business Worldwide. In this issue, Vinyl. In this issue, he interviews Bill Attitude, Notion and The Telegraph, and Rhian interviews the likes of Jack Street, Curbishley and Trinifold, Amanda Playle, runs his own must-read online publication Sam Evitt, Jack Foster, Benny Scarrs and 96 Matt Wilkinson Apple Music / Beats 1 Martha Kinn and Sophie Bloggs. over on Popjustice. the co-founders of Chess Club Records. 8 9 LEAD FEATURE ‘I MARRY BUSINESS TO MY PASSION FOR MUSIC – NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND’ Peter Edge is one of the highest-flying Brits in the global industry, running RCA Records at Sony in New York. At heart, he says, he’s still the fastidious A&R setting a high bar for the artists his company signs... eter Edge’s journey into the music business is cooler than yours. P The RCA Records CEO and Chairman was studying at Coventry Polytechnic in the early ‘80s – DJ’ing on local radio and in nightclubs in his spare time – when he struck up a friendship with Jerry Dammers from The Specials (and, later, The Special AKA). As a result, A&R maven Edge’s earliest exposure to the music-making side of the business was a front-row seat for one of the most creatively daring periods of one of the great British groups. (Ghost Town, released in 1981, remains one of the UK’s most bizarre, harrowing and brilliant No.1 records ever.) From there, Edge moved down to London, nabbing a job as a music producer on a show called Switch on Channel 4, while continuing to DJ. It was through Switch that Edge met Simon Fuller – who was then working at Chrysalis Music Publishing. Edge told the Idol-founding magnate about a new track he’d discovered, Holiday by Madonna, and the duo managed to lock down the publishing. Smart move. How did Edge then become one of the most powerful British executives in the modern-day global business, and the head of RCA? By paying his dues. Fuller recommended Edge (understandably) to Chrysalis President Doug D’arcy, who hired the A&R specialist to start a new label, Cooltempo. The imprint went on to play an influential role in ‘80s UK electronic music – signing the likes of Adeva (Respect) and Paul Hardcastle (19) – as well as inking deals with 1 11 XXXXXXXX pioneering hip-hop acts from overseas like Eric B. & Rakim, what’s the ‘sell’ for RCA? Other than the advance cheque! Monie Love and Doug E. Fresh. The big thing is that we’re a creative-first label. That really speaks Edge’s talent was then spotted by Benny Medina and Lenny to who I am and who we are as a company. We like to do different Waronker, and he was hired by Warner Bros. Records, moving to and innovative kind of things – sometimes obtuse things. We like Los Angeles in 1991. More success followed, including working to do the unusual. with The Jungle Brothers, before he was poached by Clive Davis at Arista in the mid-’90s. This started a career for Edge at Sony/ You spent your formative years in Coventry, as a friend of BMG that has now lasted 23 years.