The Music Business Buddy
A podcast that aims to educate and inspire music creators in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music. A new episode is released each Wednesday and aims to offer clarity and insight into a range of subjects across the music industry, all through the lens of a music creator for the benefit of other music creators. The series includes soundbites and interviews with guests from all over the world together with commentary and clarity on a range of topics. The podcast is hosted by award winning music industry professional Jonny Amos.
Jonny Amos is a music producer with credits on a range of major and independent labels, a songwriter with chart success in Europe and Asia, a senior lecturer in both music creation and music business at BIMM University UK, director of The SongLab Ltd and the author of The Music Business for Music Creators.
www.jonnyamos.com
The Music Business Buddy
Episode 27: Exploring Longevity and Strategy with Keith Jopling
Unlock the secrets to a thriving music career with the guidance of UK based music industry executive strategist Keith Jopling. The former global head of strategic intelligence at Spotify talks openly about his work as major label consultant, his time kickstarting the research brand MIDIA and his views on the future of the music industry. Uncover invaluable insights into achieving longevity in a rapidly changing industry, drawing inspiration from Keith's podcast, "The Art of Longevity," and his upcoming book. Explore the five essential routes to enduring success, from crafting hit records and classic albums to brand development, and learn how to transform challenges into opportunities for growth.
Emerging artists face the daunting task of standing out in a crowded marketplace, but fear not— my conversation with Keith offers strategies to conquer the anxiety of relevancy. Keith emphasises the power of a music manifesto; a guiding vision crucial for maintaining artistic integrity while navigating commercial demands. Learn from the journeys of artists like Keane and Harry Styles, and discover how to create a vibrant artistic identity that resonates with audiences.
The landscape of the music industry is evolving, with innovative funding models and licensing opportunities offering new paths to success. Dive into discussions on crowdfunding, creative partnerships, and the strategic use of AI technology to enhance artistic reach. Keith shares his experiences from Sony Music to Spotify, highlighting the importance of adaptability and foresight in a shifting industry. Whether you're an aspiring musician or a seasoned professional, this episode is your guide to maintaining balance and securing a prosperous future in the music world.
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The Music Business Buddy. The Music Business Buddy. Hello everybody, a very warm welcome to you. You're listening to the Music Business Buddy with me, johnny Amos, podcasting out of Birmingham in England. I am the author of the book the Music Business for Music Creators, available in hardback, paperback and ebook format. I'm a music creator with credits on a variety of major and indie labels. As a writer, producer, I'm also a music business lecturer and a music creation lecturer. Wherever you are, whatever you do, consider yourself welcome to this podcast and to a part of this community.
Speaker 1:I'm here to try and educate and inspire music creators from all over the world in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music. Okay, so the theme for this week's episode is longevity and strategy, and I am joined by an expert industry executive guest, keith Jopling. Now, keith is a really, really nice guy and a fascinating guy I found in this interview with him, I was just kind of nodding along, learning, taking it all in and just really, really enjoying listening to his brilliant mind. He is a former strategist for Sony Music. He is the former global head of strategic intelligence for Spotify. He is a founder of Media Research the list of Longevity, where he interviews a range of music artists and music creators and from that draws a great deal of inferences that offer an insight to music creators on how to build longevity. So, without further ado, I'm going to hand over and I hope with all my heart that you enjoy this interview as much as I did.
Speaker 1:Ok, here we go. Keith, thank you so much for being here as a part of the music business buddy here today. I really, really, really appreciate it. I'm very excited to talk to you. How are you today?
Speaker 2:Very well, I'm glad to be here. I really love the podcast. I love what you're doing.
Speaker 1:It means a lot to me when people say that, but especially a man of your caliber, keith, so much appreciated. Well, I've just been talking about the art of longevity, your podcast. As I've said to you before, I'm a big fan of what you do on there, a big fan of, uh, of what you do on there. Um, are you? This is a difficult question, but are you able to summarize any of the kind of secrets that have emerged from your podcast interviews that can point us towards the facets that enable longevity?
Speaker 2:that's the million dollar question. That's that's why I did the project. Yeah, I feel like if this was a PhD, it's funny. I mean, I'm sure we'll talk about Brett Anderson, because he inspired the whole thing and eventually came on the show and he said to me oh, this is cool, this is like a school project. And I said, well, it would be if I was 45 years younger, but it's more like a PhD. I mean, there's a lot to it, right? But you've asked me at the right time, because I've just spent the last four weeks writing the manuscript of a book which I will now be pitching like crazy to agents and publishers, cause I wouldn't. I don't want to self publish it, I want to try and get it published.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um commercial or academic, with it well, here's the thing you can probably advise me on this, because at the moment it's sitting between being a business book it's certainly not academic, it's, it's practical but it's sitting between being a business book and like a self-help book for artists, for creators, in a way. Um, and I mean, I don't know if you've got experience on it and you've published a book. So you, you've got some experience, you've got more experience than I have, but my sense is that book publishing, they just want to keep it all very simple. They need to know who this is aimed at before they take it on. So I've got to, I've got to decide. But to come to your question, so I've I've been working on this and the book is in two parts.
Speaker 2:So the first part is the five routes to longevity and you need a combination of them, but there are five, so I'll tell you what are. And then the second part is themes and lessons, and there are 30, 30 odd of those and I'll probably keep going until I eventually get it published and they're the little things. But to start with the five roots so just very briefly, and then we maybe pick one or two is you've got to have a hit record or you've got to have a big song, and the two things are actually slightly different because the nature of hits is changing.
Speaker 2:Uh, you can make a classic album again. That's changed. What's a classic album now versus what it was 10 or 20 years ago? Is is a debate, right?
Speaker 2:So with all of these, there's a sort of past, present and future element getting dropped by a label. That's key, I mean. It implies you need to be signed in the first place, but it's getting dropped. That's the rite of passage, and one of the amazing trends that I've found is so many of the guests that I've had on go on and make their best record, creatively and commercially, after they've been dropped. So it's on in the recovery, they, they dig deep.
Speaker 2:I mean, the label's probably kicking themselves thinking why couldn't you do this when you were signed? But I mean, the reason they didn't do it is because there was something wrong in in the environment, right? So getting dropped, um, the other one is being more than the sum of the parts, so having a brand. So, yeah, and that's especially true now. So I'd love to get your view on this, because we're not.
Speaker 2:There's more to music than music. It it's highly visual. There's an incredible amount of music available to us all the time, being released all the time. So you've got to have something to say and you've got to work like you are a brand, like you know you are a cultural brand, and work to the principles of branding, which is like integrated marketing communications, to the principles of branding, which is like integrated marketing communications. You've got to have a look, you've got to have a message, you've got to have the visuals down. I mean I say to all bands now get, get a videographer, get, have a good photographer, document everything that you make, because you, you know, if you do make it up to the next step, your fans is gonna, your fans are gonna love this stuff. Um, so, yeah, yeah, build a brand. That's four. I forgot what the fifth one is. Hang on, I've got some notes. I've got some notes. Hold on.
Speaker 1:There's so many artists now that spend even an entire day a week just filming content.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, I mean yeah're, they're content creators and a lot of them are railing against the idea. But I can talk about that in more detail because chili gonzalez was was really great on that particular subject. Sorry, the fifth one is established quiet legend, so aka cult status. So the whole thing with this behind that is building your fan base brick by brick. Okay, because what often happens with bands of longevity is, I mean, most bands have been on the podcast, have obviously had a career of um you at least 10 years, but, but usually 20, 30, 40, 50 sometimes.
Speaker 2:So they built their careers before the whole digital streaming and social media era in the old school days of you know, labels really pushing them, getting them on the charts, getting them on radio, play the old way. And then something would have happened where you can't possibly sustain that and they will crash. They'll stop having hits, their albums won't sell as much, they'll get dropped, they'll go through that process and then they're left scratching their heads going well, who are our fans? Yeah, who's our audience? And we need to build it up. We need to build it back up and inevitably that is through a completely different route. A bit of DIY, maybe signing with indie labels, just taking it step by step. So the cult status thing is if you're a band starting out now, you need to do that from the beginning, because you can't rely on signing to a label being the route to success. It's the route to something, but it's being the route to success it's the route to something, but it's not. It's not the route to longevity. That's up to you.
Speaker 1:That is all about building it brick by brick, follower by follower, fan by fan, from the beginning that's a very um, a very, very interesting take, because what you just explained there was kind of the old bulletproof way of doing things, and it's something which I don't witness as much in this day and age when we chase you know the instant world, so it's nice to hear you say that.
Speaker 1:I also think it's important as well that that artists have a good idea of you know who their fans are. You know so kind of um, you know what what I've heard marketeers that will talk about like you know who's their fans, and I can't think where I was now when I heard. I was in a meeting somewhere in london and somebody said, oh, they're in there. It's an indie rock, okay, v Vans or Converse oh, converse, oh, okay, and they'll just talk about brands that way and kind of be able to understand that. You know, I always think that's fascinating because you know if Spotify were to go down bang and people don't know who their followers were, what they might look like in the street then they can't quite build longevity, or at least the understanding of how to build it in the same way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right, you're right. I mean it's funny because, going back pre-streaming, especially in my field. So I come from a I guess I come from a data-driven marketing background before it became a thing in music. Yeah, that's what I did in the pharmaceuticals business. I ran a team that was we were called Marketing, development and Operations and it was a team of MBA analysts but what they used to do was kind of challenge the marketing people and make them feel small and I was like we can't look, this is not working. We've got to get some skin in the game here. You've got to dive in and help these guys, because marketers at that time were never data driven. You know this is going back at the start of the century, like 2000 right, okay marketing wasn't ever data driven.
Speaker 2:It was always creative, yeah, always commercial. It was it was person to person, one-on-one. It's either more like sales or more like advertising. Right, that that was marketing.
Speaker 2:And I came into the music business and I was always fascinated by things like plugging.
Speaker 2:I'm like what is that job?
Speaker 2:It's so crude, you're literally just plugging songs to people in radio and so for ages I was interested in making marketing a bit more like marketing in music and so I work with a lot of people in insight teams and things in labels and they would do all of this profiling and research on who they thought the audience was for an artist.
Speaker 2:And I mean it's really funny because when streaming came along, they found that they got a lot of that wrong. Okay, they take an artist like Rag and Bone man at Sony and his whole marketing profile that Sony had put together, thinking that his audience was kind of leaning under 25 females, and actually I think when they got the streaming data, they found, okay, it's over 35 males, that's his audience. So I think you're right, the data is now giving you the pointers and you've got to be data-driven. But if Spotify went down tomorrow, as you said, the other thing that I think artists have and they're really good at, but they've never had a dialogue with the industry or the right person in the industry is they've got a really good editorial feel for who their audience is. I mean, why wouldn't they? Every time they play a gig, they're looking right at them, you know, and people in the live business have a better idea as well of who the audiences are, cause really they're the people who come and see you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've. I've kind of always always thought that about the, about the live side of things. Yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for your insights and longevity, by the way, as well. I love it that you come into your work with that kind of objective viewpoint, because around the time that you would have started to come into the industry, marketing largely for the major labels was about television, about talent, TV shows and alignment of promotion with television and that kind of thing. Of course, a lot has changed since then, hasn't it? But looking to emerging music creators and in fact let's go a little bit more specific If we were to talk about emerging recording artists, people that write their own songs and are looking to forge a career in the music business in whichever way, are there any fundamental pointers that you that spring to mind to you that they should be thinking about?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, and you know what, when I look at, I mean I, I love, I, just I love new music. I'm one of these people that's always constantly filtering you, but it raises my anxiety levels. I'm like, oh my god, I've got to listen to this next new band, um, but I feel like I I owe it to them in some way and I know it's myself. I don't want to miss. I don't want to miss it. And there is. I think there's more good music emerging now than there ever has been before. You know, of an amazing quality in the production and in the songwriting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:And I think maybe it's so ultra competitive now that the problem is, how do you stand out? And you have to stand out if you're going to stand any chance of having a long career. So I guess when you're starting out, there's a couple of pointers. One's just a very practical thing about not going too soon and you know there's been so much in recent years with the rise of TikTok and so on about you get that virality. Or you drop something and it starts to pop and before you know it, you're signed or you're in a conversation about being signed. All of that is just, is you're, you're going to, you're on a hiding to nothing, really, unless you are exceptional. Really, it's the old fashioned values are exceptional? Really it's the old-fashioned values.
Speaker 2:Take your time, practice your art, make sure you are working on the best songs. Don't release um, don't release anything that you really don't think is your best work. You can do that later, yeah, but you've got to get your best work out there, uh, and you've got to. You've got to play live. You've got to just practice your art live, because that is ultimately where you're going to grow your real fan base. Yeah, and of course, that's changed recently. So we talk about that because we used to say that's where you're going to make your money, and that's no longer the case, but it is where you're going to build your fans. Now that's all you know, just old-fashioned stuff. It's never going to go away, though, um, from a longevity perspective, there are a couple of things I would say is as almost as like. You know this, take this as a tip, have a manifesto. You know you look at the history of really cool bands. There's always someone usually it's the front person, but not always. Sometimes it's the guitarist, but someone's got the vision for that band. Yeah, right through to thinking how we're going to look, what we're going to wear when we get up on stage.
Speaker 2:I interviewed tim rice oxley yesterday for the new episode. Um, because they're celebrating the 20th anniversary of King and they're releasing a book, and there's a page in that book where they've got they call it the OK Computer Test, and they've got the playing order of OK Computer, and then they've got the playing order of Hopes and Fears next to it. Before it was ever released, before it ever became anything like a classic album, they were applying a test to themselves really to see whether they had it or not, whether they really believed they had it and it was part of a manifesto. And the other thing in their manifesto was their guitarist had left. So they decided look, our thing is going to be more emotional rock because we're not going to replace our guitarist, dominic he's gone. So we're going to make it more keyboard led. And that became a thing for them, right? So I mean, I look at somebody like Harry Styles.
Speaker 2:You know, when he left One Direction, he was going to build a solo career. What would people expect him to do? Make another pop record. But his manifesto was I'm going to go back to classic rock, I'm going to go back to Van Morrison, bowie. He surprised a lot of people and you know it's worked for him. It's really worked for him. So you've got to have a manifesto at the beginning, something that's going to guide you through it. It's got to be powerful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes so much sense. It's actually I've not worded it that way before, but it is something that I talked to a lot of, um, a lot of emerging artists about. The trouble is it kind of goes a little bit against the grain of the muse for many. For instance, um, the idea of saying, right, I'm going to sit down and do this creatively, kind of stunts creativity, whereas if, when we make music and then we try and figure out where it fits, that's where the art is, but that doesn't make money as well, yeah, so there is a balance somewhere.
Speaker 2:There is a balance. There is a balance. This is fascinating for me, though, because that's why I call it a manifesto, not a mission statement, because they're kind of the same thing. But you know, mission statement is a little bit, a little bit corporate, a little bit brandy, but your manifesto is different. You don't ever have to write it down if, if you're not, you know, if you're uncomfortable with that idea, you think it's too much like too contrived or too clinical, um, you don't have to write it down, but you need to talk about it and bottle it somehow. Okay, um, and james did this.
Speaker 2:I spoke to tim booth. Uh, in one of the early episodes still one of my favorite episodes, and that's the one he was in bed for. All right, okay, I said, did you have a manifesto? He's like, yeah, it was always to take risks and experiment, and they are known for that, and they go on stage and and play, and the set list is built on the fly. You know, you don't get a written set on how many bands do that? I mean, very few bands have got the nerve to do that, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Guns N' Roses used to do that.
Speaker 2:But it's in their DNA. They've done it from the beginning, so they're comfortable with it.
Speaker 1:It's their thing.
Speaker 2:So you don't have to. I mean, essentially, this is marketing. I'm talking about branding here, but in a way, this is what a commercial brand would kill for. I mean, this is what. This is what a commercial brand would kill for. I mean, a good marketer would, would, you know, give up a limb for that kind of authenticity. If you could build a business on a manifesto and never have to write it down, that would be super powerful. But you know, we live in a corporate world where people are writing mission statements every every five minutes and business plans that are this thick. I mean bands, don't do that, you don't have to, but it's, it amounts to the same thing. It's having a vision that's going to be a north star for you to stick with when the going gets bumpy, because it's going to get bumpy yeah, totally, I love that.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense. I hope there's a lot of people listening to this now that are kind of going oh yeah, I need to do that. Yeah, can I ask you about midia? You are currently a consultant director for for midia. What one of the the giants of the music industry research world, right? Um, what I mean?
Speaker 1:I know that we were talking about this earlier and I didn't know that you were involved with the inception of midia from the very beginning. It has been a bit of a game changer, right, and I know that we were talking about this earlier and I didn't know that you were involved with the inception of Midia from the very beginning. It has been a bit of a game changer, right, and I know that your colleague Mark has worked very, very, very hard on building it into what it is. But what and this is probably a bit of an unfair question following this up now with that but what subjects have come up that you are aware of? That immediately come to your mind, without thinking too hard, that emerging music creators should be aware of when strategizing that sort of manifesto, if you will.
Speaker 2:Well, let me take those separately. So I'm not at Midia now, right? Okay, I'm now an independent again. So for five years I was consulting director at Midia and sort of grew the consulting bit of the business more or less from scratch. But the brand was there and the brand was strong. So Mark had built the brand up from. You're right, the two of us started at the very beginning, but I kind of walked off into the sunset. Um, I didn't fancy at the start. So he effectively founded it himself and then he got his brother, tim, and carol, who is a mutual friend. They really built the business from Mark just being himself and they built it up to 12. And then they invited me for Christmas dinner in 2019. And Mark said do you want to come back? At this point, and the reason I could say yes to that was, if you're going to build a consulting business, you need to build it off of brand. Again, I'm coming back to branding here.
Speaker 2:You can't sell a piece of con, you know, a piece of knowledge-based consulting work to anyone on the back of knowledge, expertise, uh, methodology, none of that. What you need a brand, uh, and your brand is your calling card and that's why people come to you and mark had built that, so I knew the brand was there. Um, what wasn't there was the product, and it's. Consulting is different to research, right? Research? You can kind of research the subject you want. You could talk about what you want, you put it out there and it's like putting a record out. Sometimes it's a hit, sometimes it's a miss, doesn't matter, you move on, you just make another record, you write another report.
Speaker 2:Consulting is solving people's problems. Uh, and you know people would come to you with a problem that could be just one sentence how do we grow from here? Great, fantastic brief Love that we had a lot of those right down to really real, really specific briefs. Like we did a piece of marketing work for Spotify that was all about, really, what can we offer to labels that are going to make a difference in marketing campaigns in 2021? You know, whenever we did that piece of work, we're really specific.
Speaker 2:But you're always solving problems and you've got to focus on that problem. Or if they come to you with an unspecific problem or you think the problem is another one, you've got to define that with them first and then you've got to solve that with them first and then you've got to solve that. So it's a totally different discipline, but it was nice to work the two together. So I always said that consulting we made the work of the analysts and the researchers more relevant and they made our consulting work smarter and more, oh, more future proof, if you like. Okay, um, but yeah. So, yeah, I had five years there and it's great business and you're right to build it up from scratch to be a brand that's recognized as like the go-to oh yeah, in music.
Speaker 1:Research is amazing oh it, it's phenomenal, it is absolutely phenomenal entity and um, it's where I look to for, for you know where are things headed, because one of the best ways we can kind of figure out what the future is going to look like is to analyze the present right, um, and to fully understand.
Speaker 2:And the past, well, the past as well. Yeah, the. I'm a big believer in looking at history because it tends to kind of repeat itself. Look where we are in the world. Right yeah, the proof is all around us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's very, very true. That piece of research that you mentioned there, Keith, that then led you on to becoming the global head of strategic intelligence um at Spotify in the London office is that correct?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, that's amazing um, yeah, I, initially I was a consultant to Spotify. So actually I was working at a different agency and we were pitching to Spotify. Live Nation was our big client and I wanted to grow music. So we were pitching to Spotify and actually you know the people there were like we know who you are, but we don't know the rest of your teams. Why don't you just come and work here? And so I did.
Speaker 2:I was a consultant there and then they kind of invited me to um, this is a really was a kind of life lesson in a way. To they said design your own job. Here's kind of what we don't know. We don't know what our positioning is vis-a-vis competitors. We don't know what the next big growth beyond music stream is going to be. We've got a few ideas. Can you help us with that and write a job spec around it? So I wrote my own job spec, um, and and you know, went into spotify to do that job.
Speaker 2:Uh, which is fine, that's, that's great. The opportunity to to do that is you should probably always take it, but it comes with a quid pro quo. It's like, well, now you have to explain to a lot of people what your job is. Yeah, because no one went. That's the job we want you to do it. It was like these are kind of the things we're thinking of. Can you help us design your own job spec?
Speaker 2:So you know, there's a phrase that is often used in the world of work when you take a new job, which is is it set up for success? And that one was sort of bit of 50 50, bit equivocal, and I've been in that situation many times before and initially I would say media was was that as well? Because they didn't do consulting, they did research. Yeah, um, so you go into a role and you think I, I I've learned a lot because I always think, right, I can do this. Uh, the agency I ran before, um, I got that gig at spotify, um, I went in to turn around the, the media, the telco, media and tech side of the agency and the last, the two people they'd hired before me had failed, that they'd been hired. They did three months, six months, and then they, they got fired. Uh, I was like it's not a problem, I can do it, I know I can do it.
Speaker 1:You gotta be careful, you know you're as rock and roll as anybody I've ever met.
Speaker 2:Really, keith, wow, I love that I mean I'll tell you this. This is something I used to talk to mark about a lot at midia. It's like you've bought, you've got this brand to a certain level. Don't make it boring, right. Don't go corporate because you've got to have. It's got to be a bit rock and roll, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. It's got to be uncomfortable in order to improve right.
Speaker 2:I mean the music business should be more rock and roll. There's a great quote, I think it's from an old country singer, I can't quite remember who said it. Um it, it might come to me, but the quote is we're in the fun business, it should be fun, as in right, working in the company should be fun. But in my experience, like you know, a lot of the bigger labels and a lot I mean even the streaming services, you could say this. I could say this Spotify, amazon, all of them is they're very corporate, so they sort of designed almost in a way, to take the fun out of it and that's not.
Speaker 2:That doesn't seem right to me. You know you're working with artists and you're trying to grow their business and their fan base with them. You should be making that work interesting and fun. Yes, not just really really serious at work and then going out to a gig at night or you know, getting a uh, you know, having a meet and greet with the artist, being able to tell your friend, but it's the work itself should be, should be fun. So we've gotten. There's something wrong there in the culture, I think. But we could get, we could digress and be on that topic for the rest of the rest of the podcast well, it would be a very interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, you're absolutely right. It is something I've thought about a few times over over recent years. But one of the fundamental differences that I've observed between um, a and r-ing in the uk and a and&Ring in North America huge, broad statement coming ahead here now but is the route into kind of A&R in the UK is passion and sometimes academia and network, and in America it's far more through creative, through being a producer, working with artists and kind of going in that way, and I think that those two approaches put people in the same position but yield very, very different results.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the americans have got it a lot more rock and roll than we have in that respect that's really interesting and I one of the things that I've always been curious about and this is another broad statement, but I'm convinced that this is true and I'm I think punk has got something to do with it as well in the uk. Okay, is that let's? Let's just be objective about whatever the music is, whatever genre is, whatever style it is. My sense is that if you're going to build as an artist in the us and make it there, you have to be technically better. You have to play better, perform better, sound better. I think in the uk we've always given artists a bit more leeway. You can be a little bit punky, you don't have to be perfect on that instrument you play. You don't have to be super tight, as a band will forgive you that if you're creative and you're just doing something that's new or different or interesting. That might be related to what you've just said about A&R.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perhaps. So I mean, you know, if you look at the amount of recording artists perhaps not so much in the last 10 years but certainly in decades gone by that have kind of really struggled to build an audience in America and then have had to come to the UK in order to do so, you can trace that right back to Jimi Hendrix, you know, and various others, since I remember it happened with Bush in the 90s. You know they're just mega stars in, especially in the midwest, absolute mega stars, um and uh, you know. So, uh, yeah, but but perhaps that is a thing I've never really thought about that before. But that kind of rough and ready, artistic, muse, bohemian thing, yeah, probably washes better here, yeah, and you can get.
Speaker 2:Again, we need to, we'd need to. Really, you know, as sort of two people who work in evidence-based you know area, particularly for me from a background in kind of research and insight, the thing is instinctive, instinctively. Instinct matters, right and intuition matters. And again, I think you can have instant success in the UK. I mean, the whole art of longevity thing was based on this quote from Brett Anderson and Suede where he was saying that all artists have a very predictable career arc, like Stations of the Cross, and it's the struggle, the stratospheric rise, the crash to the bottom, and then the renaissance, if you're lucky, the kind of enlightenment phase. And it was so true for suede and a lot of uk bands at the time, because that's a little bit our culture, isn't it? It's like we'll put you on the pedestal, pedestal right from the beginning.
Speaker 2:So it seems to be overnight success and I'm sure that's more common here than it is in the us. Yeah, we're in the us anyway. You have to go state by state. Yeah, here you could, you, you could have overnight success and it it does. It still seems to be a thing, right, I mean wet leg, the last dinner party, those bands are in an interesting position for me, and I think both bands have been fairly well advised to know their business, because they've kind of gone away and that's that's what you've got to do, uh, otherwise you're going to get sucked into the hype machine. You're going to end up rushing your second record and disappointing people, and that has happened to so many bands, and I think that is a cultural difference between the uk and the us as well yeah, that's, yeah, that's a very, very shrewd observation.
Speaker 1:um, do you, do you think that a part of the longevity is the going away? I mean distance, distance sells, doesn't it? I mean, we're probably about I like to be bold predictions we're probably about 10 years away from describing Katy Perry as a legacy artist, and yet commercially, she's done very little for the last few years, which in itself assists that previous point. So is distance and time away from people, you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder, et cetera, rather than always being there and always being present. Is that a part of it?
Speaker 2:I think it is. I think it is if you want longevity, because if you want longevity you could get it one or two ways. You can either keep on changing and I'm not really talking about Bowie so much as maybe um Linda Perry. You know she was in you know four non-blonde blonde. She had the success there as a band and then she didn't fancy that. But she writes and so she has longevity that way. So you can produce um Aqualung.
Speaker 2:You know Matt Hale, very successful, became a very successful producer. Yeah, so you think, oh aqualung, yeah, they kind of were around for a bit and then they they went away. Well, no, I mean, first of all he made a cracking album just last year, but he's always produced and done really well. So you can have that variety of career, always within, just by being a musician or a writer, or you have to go, you have to aim for some form of classicism. You have to be a classic because that's what lasts. You know it's so difficult now to have that discipline. This is where it comes to.
Speaker 2:The manifesto for me is you've got to be brave enough to step away, even when I mean, you know, didn't daniel x say it? You've got to be artists should be producing more and working all the time. I mean, people say 24 7, always on marketing fomo. You know, don't go away, because if you, if you go away, people will forget about you. You have to have the confidence to resist that.
Speaker 2:I mean Sam Fender he's been working on his new record and there's two reasons for doing it. One, you've got to come back with the best possible work you can do, which you need to do undistracted, and you need to take your time over that work. But also you need to recover, right so every day. But also you need to recover right so every day. We're still reading about, even in this enlightened time we're in. We read about artists who burned out Chapel Row, you know, having to cancel shows, having to say to her fan base she's not in a good place. We're still doing it. We're still putting artists on the pedestal and working them, and working them because of the commercial interests and all of that, and maybe sometimes it's that we want them to to be successful. You're only going to do that long term if you are willing to, to step away from the game and just take your time and the.
Speaker 1:The accountability on that sits with the music creators, I think, because part of the research that went into my book was looking into the infrastructure that is used to curate a greater sense of artistic well-being, and I looked at what other major labels are doing in order to do that. Now there's two aspects to that. Number one, the awareness of it. Fantastic, that's evolution. But what they're actually doing about it is, in my opinion, actually kind of very little in as much as that. They're there if you need them.
Speaker 1:So the accountability and I'm not kind of criticizing any recorders there because they can't kind of go hey, we sent struggle in.
Speaker 1:You come this way it's got to be on the artist that you should kind of be able to go right, you know what I've been doing this, night after night after night after night. I've kind of forgotten who I am when I step into the daylight, right, so maybe it's time for me to do this, but the musician's therapy is music, right, so it's like a double-edged sword. So I find in this day and age, now in the 2020s, we see a lot of contemporary music institutions doing the same thing as major labels, which is, we've got this infrastructure here, which is a referral for a counseling service. It's here if you need it and that's fantastic, but I think it really is all they can do, because there's a sense of accountability on music creators to go am I burning out? The trouble is they don't know they're burning out until they start to burn. So there's a pattern there and I think you know it comes with experience, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:It does. But I think that's one of the things that I think maybe experience there isn't that helpful, because, again, someone like brett anderson might and I probably did say when I spoke to him, is that you've got to learn from your mistakes.
Speaker 2:Yeah he did talk about that in that episode you know you've got to and he was very um, he was very passionate and adamant on that. But I think it's incumbent on the industry, on the artists' representatives, actually to, when it comes to burnout and when it comes to mental health, is just make sure they don't get into that state it's avoiding it isn't it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you can avoid it. You know you can avoid it. You know you, you can avoid it. I think you're right. I I think it's good to see labels do all that stuff and have in-house counseling and just recognize it. I think that's great.
Speaker 2:I think I suspect, like, like you say, it's maybe it's not working as effectively as it needs to, because really it needs to be a third party. Yeah, I mean, you're not going to get effective counsel from the people you're in business with, because there's just a vested interest in you being commercially successful. Vested interest in you being commercially successful. It puts managers in a tough position because managers, you know, often have put so much hard work and they put half their life into getting an artist to a position where they can be successful so that they don't want to see them pull back from the brink. Um, but they've, they've got a responsibility to do that. Uh, I think it is. Maybe it's better in educational institutions. I think maybe in, uh, in charitable organizations who can step in, maybe the featured artists, coalition, mmf musicians yeah, yeah, can step in and be a bit more objective and a bit more effective.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, I mean, you're right, the artist has got to say I'm, but and I think now it's acceptable to say that I mean going back to when a lot of my guests on the art of longevity started out. If it's 20 years plus ago, it wouldn't have been acceptable no, no, to go to your label or even your manager and say, look, I'm, I can't do this, yeah, uh, it would have been a disaster, you know, and you would probably been talked around. Yes, you can, you can do it, you know, whereas now I think it's just got to be a lot more. It's got to be a lot more professional and a lot more responsible in terms of how that whole thing is managed with longevity in mind, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, that's that's. That's one of the things I was thinking about when it comes to longevity, because there has to be that sense that I guess all music creators have a sense of fragility to them. You know, it's not a linear path. It's up and down and up and down, and creative highs and lows, and that does something to a person. Some people can handle that better than others and it doesn't make them stronger or weaker or whatever.
Speaker 1:But you know, in that subject of longevity, that's surely a facet, isn't it? I mean, you know, and looking ahead, by the way, on the subject of longevity, that that, that, that's surely a facet, isn't it? I mean, um, you know, if, and looking ahead, by the way, on the subject of longevity and I'm mindful of time, so we'll maybe, maybe wind down with this question, but let's return to that longevity, right, if we look at the future, and because this is one of the things I really like to do is to, you know, is to really look ahead and kind of go what, where's things go? Where are things going to be 10, five years from now, whatever? Um, what areas of growth do you see moving forward for music creators and what can they do about that, to support it.
Speaker 2:I've got an idea on this okay, yeah, well, let's talk about it, because I'm interested to know what you think as well. I mean, for me, there will be one of the fundamental things that I can see around the corner is a shake-up in funding. Okay, I mean that agency I talked about, that I worked at before spotify was, uh, was partly financial services, and I said to those guys before I left you're doing all this work in financial services, fintech's going to be huge. Just get into fintech now. You know, and I mean it.
Speaker 2:I mean, look at where fintech is and look where it is in in the uk in particular, that you know. I think we're one of the one of the world leaders. So I think fintech is, is on the way to solving artist funding. It's going to be really interesting for the labels, because it's one of the strongholds of a label is we can still. We're still the guys you come to for money and most creators need money, right, they need that investment. So there are services emerging already.
Speaker 2:I mean mentioning names, it's it's not really about names, because it could be the first generation doesn't work, but the next generation does. But I kind of like what Beatbread's trying to do. Duetti has come onto the market. Recently there's different takes on crowdfunding. When artists have a different route to funding, they're no longer held by the label to do the creative bit, so they can do what they want creatively, and then it's down to them and their manager to hire the right team for them, which might be a label, but it might be an agency, it might be put put a team together of really good freelancers that you know it's like what Coldplay does when they take their their massive tour on the road.
Speaker 2:Right, they're working for freelancers essentially sound people, lighting people, videographers, stage designers but the team they keep that team loyal because they find a team that works for them. So I think, you know, for artists that are really showing promise, I think if they can solve the funding equation and go elsewhere for funding, they've got a wider range of choices and control about who does their marketing. I just think about that for a minute. I mean, it's something probably artists don't really think about. When they get signed, because they're signed by an a and r person who's really passionate about them uh, inevitably they're assigned a project product manager and a marketing team who may not be. Yeah, I mean, they're marketing a different artist every other week. Now, like priority artists are only prior priority for the two weeks they're releasing the music and then the next one's coming along, the next one. So if you are a metal artist, you should be going to a bunch of people who really love metal and they love your take on metal. So I think that's going to change. If you're funded differently, you will pick who you want to work with and represent you differently, um, so that's going to be a huge change for me.
Speaker 2:The five routes to longevity are all changing, so the the idea of having a hit record is totally different now than it was before. It's really about your best songs and what you do with those songs, and sync is is important, probably more important than it's ever been. Uh, finding a different, an alternative journey for your best songs than the charts or than radio because, or even playlists right, you've got to find an alternative journey for your best songs and make them live and breathe and work for you, and so all of that is is going to change. Oh, there's a lot that will stay the same, but you know, for me, that's the fundamental shift is where you get your funding and what's the arrangement you've made with your funders, because if it's fintech driven and it's there's ai technology and predictive analytics come into it they shouldn't really care too much about how you go to market. They should only care that you hire the best team on your behalf to go to market, and then the game's changed right, fundamentally different I love that.
Speaker 1:Um. The second point that you made there, keith, falls in line with one of the things that I talk quite passionately about to emerging artists, and that is creative licensing of their recorded music. Um, because I think it's. I think a lot of music creators find it quite difficult to be able to know, for example, how their music aids a visual um. They might prefer, for example, for a music publisher or a record company or anybody else that's in an objective and business mindset, to be able to look at it and go, oh you know, this thing you've done here, great, yeah, it's going to fit over here, and I don't think we're seeing as much of that anymore.
Speaker 1:Um, and so I think that music creators um need to be able to do that, and if they can't do it themselves, then it's about partnership work, um, but that might be a way closer partner you know, like a videographer that films, that that works really closely with them and I'm glad you said that earlier as well, because I think it's so important now for so many artists to be able to have that videographer Maybe they are the videographer or they work closely with somebody that can do that. But if that same person or somebody closely affiliated with that team says you know, this brand over here, this is perfect, this really really sells what they do, or do you know this kind of like the growth of this I don't know health and well care thing over here? We should pipe this music into that, because that's the kind of people it could help if it's used like this through an app or those kind of creative licensing opportunities. I think we have to go a bit further out the box than this could be on a crime drama, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, I totally agree. It's almost like having a creative director alongside the band or one or a member of the band taking on that role and working with, as you say. You know, maybe it's someone on the creative team, or maybe it is someone on the marketing team, maybe it's someone on the management team, or it could be the label, right, it's just. I mean, for so long marketing in music has been really about route one. I mean, when I first came into the business, it was radio, was make or break it, like if you had a uk artist and you were breaking them on a major label level or a big indie level, you had to get them on radio one, two. If you didn't, the campaign would probably fail right, and before that it was mtv. Then streaming came along and it became playlists. And then tiktok came along and it became about you've got, we've got to get this to blow on tiktok, right, and you know a bit of a mystery more about how that works. But either it works that way or, if it's, if it's blowing up, then we sign it right. Yeah, that is that's route one. Um, and it's. It's rapidly disappearing because it's been um, there's just there aren't enough slots, there are just not enough slots. They don't, they're not, they're not around for long enough, those slots. There's no point getting a number one on the chart if it's just for a week and everybody's forgotten who you are tomorrow. It's just a badge, so you need to take it and use it as a badge. So it's what we're really talking about is brand marketing. It's creative marketing. It's building your brand, your statement. What are you saying? What's your? How do you look what? What other content are you making around? Your music? You can put the music first, but you need all that other stuff. So you need to enjoy it and you need to have a team who really know how to work it. And I think we've seen that model emerge elsewhere. I mean, you know it's definitely emerged out of k-pop um, which is you might look at it and think it's a one-off, but it's just an example of what you can do when you take a whole cultural approach to branding as a band um. So you just do it. You do it for your level, what you feel comfortable with, but you can't rely on the markers anymore. You can't rely on the playlist or even a tiktok viral video, because it's gonna, it's gonna be there and then it's gonna go away. And so many artists have said to me like, okay, I got on the playlist, it was brilliant. Yeah, before I knew it, I had, I had my one million plays and then I'm not on the playlist now. So how do I do it again? There's no point doing it again. Really, you've got to build a world in which you are building your fan base, fan by fan, and then get them to work for you as well. You know work on your craft and then you know the fans will work for you.
Speaker 2:And there's a band called half moon run. Do you know half moon run? No, I don't know them. Okay, so they're not a well-known band. They're quite big in canada, which is where they're from. They're from, uh, they are from montreal, uh, so where they play in montreal, they play big theaters or even arenas, um, and I saw half. I mean they mean they're on their fourth, fifth album, but not a household name. So really interesting from a longevity point of view, because they are the bands I'm interested in, because there are so few household names. Now, right, I mean we can talk. We could probably talk about bands for the next hour and say, do you know, and we wouldn't know it right, and that could be one of our up and coming favourites.
Speaker 2:These guys are superb live.
Speaker 2:They make classic records.
Speaker 2:They don't have hits.
Speaker 2:Their albums don't chart.
Speaker 2:They don't really care too much because that side of it doesn't work for them. Yeah, it would be nice if it happened. It would be nice if it happened, but it wouldn't be the world that they'd step into. The world that they play in is is the world that they've created for their fans, and one of the things that I witnessed seeing them live was it was fans bringing their friends, it was dads bringing their kids, it was kids bringing their dads or their moms to see this band.
Speaker 2:Like, because this band is amazing and that is how they do it. They build up, they build their world and their community around them based on just the stuff that they do, which is really cool, and they have really great photos on instagram and they have a really really good sound guy, you know. So that whole creative team around them is super pro, uh, and so you know they they treat the whole thing with the respect that it deserves and they're only going to do that from within the half moon run camp. You know, no label is going to do that for them. I think they were signed to bmg and bmg did their best with the record. That's what they're there for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but your band, your creative vehicle is yours right well, yeah, yeah, but you see, now I'm listening to you talking about half moon run, right, that's what they're called, right, okay, and what fascinates me there, without listening to their music and I very much will have to be spoken, by the way, but, but um is if they are captivating that many people and those people are having the trust in their friends and family to say, hey, this is great, come and share this with me, then that means that their music is resonating with people and everything around the music is resonating with people, but it comes from the nucleus, the germ of the music right Now. Why is it then that the music has not resonated with people further afield? It's probably just because it hasn has not resonated with people further afield. It's probably just because it hasn't been introduced to people further afield.
Speaker 1:One of the things that excites me is being able to go okay, let's get really creative on how we license that, so that people are not being. People hate being force-fed these days. Don't they Get into this, get into that. It's like we need to be that. That's why you know, background music, production music, library music, etc. Is so interesting because it's hyped into people's lives without them having to chew on it and think about it. It just aids an experience, and so it could well be that their music could well be licensed in.
Speaker 1:And I don't I don't mean when I say license, I don't mean necessarily let's get this onto hulu or let's get this onto netflix, because everyone's chasing those goals. I'm talking about the stuff that's more interesting than that, you know. Let's pipe it into this experience. That experience, oh, I never really thought about that. You know, I see the music industry now trying to play catch up with that a little bit. If we look just the just the other day I was reading the IFPI report from this year and I saw a quote from somebody quite senior at Universal Music talking about the role that their catalogue can do to support the health sector and the role that music can play in supporting Alzheimer's. Absolutely, it definitely can. But there's research from the 1970s that said that that was a thing. So it's almost like they're trying to play catch up there. Let's think a little bit further out the box, and that's something that excites me, because that music from that band could and can and hopefully will travel further afield.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think what you've just said is I think it nicely explains what's really happening in the world of music marketing. So it goes together with what I said about funding is, you know, labels are changing as well. So they're just they're no longer about that pure artist brand development side of things. That that's why they're talking about licensing their catalog for health, health care benefits, and that's a growing world and there's there is an opportunity there. That's what they're good at. Right. They've got catalogs. Yeah, they market those catalogs pretty much on a trade, wholesale level, right? So they're looking to do big deals with people who need access to lots of music. It's going to work on that level. It's fine. But on a growing, a band, growing your art as whatever it is you do rapper, singer, songwriter, rock band that's something that a label's only ever going to be transient in that journey anyway, right, you're going to go into a deal eyes wide open on one record or two records.
Speaker 1:The rest of it is down to you keith, can I just say a huge thank you for being here and for contributing your fantastic mind to the music business body, because there are things that you've said today that are going to be so useful to so many of the listeners and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for you doing that well, it's a I mean, you're welcome and carry on doing what you're doing.
Speaker 2:And and let's talk again because, um, you know, we're all in the same boat here. I think we're all trying to help creators do what they do and be successful at it, and that's a very, very complex word these days, isn't it?
Speaker 1:it is, it is, but we'll, but we'll keep going on it. I really do appreciate it. And yeah, yeah, thank you Keith. Wow, riveting, I think he's probably the right word. Keith is such an interesting guy, isn't he? Especially when he opens up about his own ideas. There's so many interesting facets to him, right. But what really interests me is when he just kind of shoots from the heart right and just says kind of what he's thinking, especially when we lean towards where things might be headed in the future. I think he's just fascinating.
Speaker 1:I hope that you got a lot out of listening to him there. I must say one particular point, and I noticed it more when I was editing, actually, than when I was actually interviewing him. But I was thinking, wow, I remember, you know, many moons ago, being that young kid that used to send off demos to the major record companies. And now here's the guy that they consult with, you know, and here's the guy that the streaming services consult with when they say you know, this is what we're trying to do, how do we do it? You know they go to him. That's how amazing he is. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed it and also, if you want to hear more from Keith. Please do check out his podcast, the Art of Longevity. I have learned so much from listening to him on that podcast. So anyway, until next time. May the force be with you.
