Music Business USA 2021

20 21

Meet five of the most interesting people working in the US music industry

MBUSA 2021

IF YOU LOVE MUSIC SHOW LOVE TO MUSICIANS. SERVICE, FAIRNESS AND TRANSPARENCY SINCE 2008.

In this issue...

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06

Matt Colon

14

Dallas Martin

18

Mary Megan Peer

peermusic

22

Jamila Thomas

Motown

26

Lucas Keller

YM&U

Asylum

Milk & Honey

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‘IT IS A HERCULEAN TASK MANAGING AN ARTIST IN 2021.’

Matt Colon’s music career started in the late ‘90s as an intern for Def Jam, before he worked at seminal L.A electronic label Moonshine Music. He has managed superstar DJ Steve Aoki since 2005, and in 2017, sold the management company he co-founded, Deckstar, to YM&U in a deal worth north of $20 million. Now, as the newly-promoted Global President of Music at YM&U Group, Colon is leading the growth strategy for the organization. Here, he tells Music Business USA about his new remit, YM&U’s expansion plans, success with NFTs, and above all, the challenges of being an artist manager in 2021…

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t’s hardly a surprise that Collins Dictionary has named ‘NFT’ as its 2021 word of the year.

There were other contenders, of course, with words like ‘metaverse’ and ‘crypto’ making the long list, highlighting a shift to mainstream awareness of virtual concepts first popularized on the fringes of the internet.

In music, NFTs have grown from a buzzy novelty to a serious multi-million-dollar business in the space of 12 months – and talent management firm YM&U is at the centre of this explosion.

“Right now, we are easily the biggest management company in the NFT space,” says YM&U’s Matt Colon, who until recently was the firm’s Managing Director of US Music.

Now, having been promoted to Global President of Music, Colon is tasked with leading YM&U’s global strategy and collaboration between its UK and US Music divisions, whose combined rosters include stars like Common, Steve Aoki, blink-182, Travis Barker, 3LAU, Gary Barlow, Years & Years and Jesy Nelson.

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3LAU

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Colon joined YM&U Group in 2017, when his management firm Deckstar – which he created in 2007 along with Steve Aoki, Lawrence Vavra, Paul Rosenberg, and the late DJ AM – was acquired by UK-born talent management firm James Grant Group, which subsequently rebranded as YM&U after selling a majority stake in its business to private equity firm Trilantic.

In spite of having generated “north of $30 million in NFTs” this year across the company’s clients, YM&U’s global music boss refuses to take credit for this meteoric achievement. “Is [the success] because we’re geniuses, and because we’re so tech forward, and we saw this trend coming? Absolutely not,” he tells us.

“It’s because we had a couple of artists obsessed with crypto that may not have been our highest earners, but we showed them all the same attention that we showed to those [high] earners. We supported them in their journey. They discovered NFTs, and we supported them.”

That support has led to YM&U artist and NFT pioneer 3LAU (Justin Blau) making over $20 million in primary sales from his own NFT releases this year. Plus, 3LAU’s blockchain-based music investment start-up Royal, which offers fractional music ownership of music through its own version of NFTs, has just raised $55 million in Series A funding.

Colon’s long-term superstar client, producer, DJ and Dim Mak label founder Steve Aoki, has also been a leading advocate for the possibilities of the NFT space. Back in March, Aoki’s Dream Catcher NFT art collection sale made over $4 million, with $888,888.88 paid for a single NFT by former T-Mobile boss John Legere. Aoki has also launched his own NFT platform, OddKey, in partnership with comic book creator Todd McFarlane.

Colon theorizes that NFTs have the potential to be a single system that ties together all the “disparate activities in an artist’s life” in today’s music ecosystem, from fanbase building across social platforms to community management and monetization.

“They are smart contracts, which can also be social contracts, and you can give access to a fan through an NFT,” he explains.

“It doesn’t have to be your logo spinning in 3D space for $1,000.

You’re going to see a lot of changes in the NFT space in the near future. You’re going to see some big projects that will turn music on its head.”

Looking to the future – and commenting on his new remit in our wide ranging interview below – Colon tells us that, at the core of YM&U’s strategy going forward, is to have a global footprint.

He’s betting that his firm’s triumphs will come from “having more expertise in house, by being more geographically diverse, more ethnically diverse, and more genre-diverse”.

“It’s just so difficult as an individual manager these days,” he adds.

“You can only be an expert in so many things. We’re knowledge pooling and resource pooling. That’s where we’re going to find

success. The world has become too big and too interconnected for any one person to keep track of it all. It is a Herculean task, managing an artist in 2021.”

You’re now Global President of Music at YM&U. What will that new title entail?

It’s really two-fold. It’s about expansion and syncing up our offices.

We have an L.A, a London and a New York office [across] our US and our UK divisions. There was a desire to work together, but there wasn’t necessarily a vision on how to do it.

Most management companies went through a pretty tough time as COVID progressed. Most of those companies are not built to withstand that kind of financial pressure. Most made it through, thanks to government support, and we’re not excluded from that. But what we also had was a diversified business outside of strictly music, including entertainment, sports, social, business management and accountancy.

Those businesses didn’t suffer in the same way music did, so we had the benefit of a ‘high tides raise all ships’ mentality. Everyone chipped in to make sure everyone was afloat, knowing that if we made it to the other side, we’d be in a stronger position.

Right now, everyone is trying to put their companies back together and get their artists back on the road. We’ve hit the ground running. 2021 may be one of our most profitable years ever on the music side, between NFTs and a diversified roster that’s already touring, between private gigs [and] new sources of income through virtual performances.

With the wind on our backs we saw it as an opportunity to grow the business into the vision that we put forth at the beginning.

COVID has also allowed us to grow without having to worry about geographic limitations. Previously you had to live in L.A or London, or maybe New York. We’ve been able to hire the best that are out there regardless of where they live, regardless of what time zone they’re in. The goal is to grow geographically and to grow in terms of diversity of sounds and staff.

“You’re going to see big projects in the NFT space that will turn music on its head.”

What do you look for in new managers to hire and how much of a track record should they have had before you consider taking them on?

We don’t sign managers for their roster, we sign managers for who they are. We have hired more managers who had lacklustre rosters, but were impressive professionally, impressive strategically and well-liked in the industry.

It’s not difficult to find someone who has a big client base and write them a big check. There’s no art to that. We take maybe more of a Moneyball approach to it.

Every one of our managers has learned the hard way that you can lose a client in a heartbeat. [Artists] might just wake up on 9

Matt Colon has worked with Steve Aoki for over 15 years

the wrong side of the bed. The great managers will always find the next big thing. Our goal is to bet on those managers, and trust that they will find the artists.

We look at it from a human perspective. Next, we look at it academically. What is their knowledge base? What is their network? Do they have experience that we lack? Lastly, we look at their roster and we look at their income stream.

We’ve passed on managers who would have added 25-50% of our own profit, just because there wasn’t a desire to work with them. If we’re not working together, what are we here for?

YM&U’s music roster holds a broad spectrum of genres, from Rancid, to Greg Graffin to superstar DJs and producers like Steve Aoki. What do you look for in an artist to work with? What are the connecting traits?

Obviously, success begets success. You have success with somebody like Steve Aoki and you get more clients in the dance music space.

Also, success gives experience, but at the end of day, you’re looking for great artists. The vast majority of the managers [at YM&U] are between their 20s and 40s, so we all grew up in the post-CD generation, listening to our iTunes on shuffle.

A great example is Kevin [Wolff] – the person that manages 10

Rancid also manages Common. He’s a great manager and he loves both genres. Music is music. To manage a great musician, you just need to know their audience. If you can identify who that audience is, how to reach them authentically, the genre doesn’t matter. The tools are the same.

What’s different is how to speak authentically to that artist’s fan base. If you can do that, at the end of the day, all we’re doing is empowering artists. We’re amplifying their voices.

We feel fully capable that we can manage a country artist, a Latin artist, a jazz artist, a bluegrass artist, with the same team. It’s just about time, dedication and authenticity.

How has your view on management evolved from when you guys first started Deckstar back in 2006?

For one, the tools have evolved. There’s always some indicators, whether it’s Shazam, or more lately TikTok. In the past it was Facebook. There was a day when it was MySpace. There are places where people discover new music and traditionally we’ve loved to look at those indicators and try and find things early.

But more often than not, you just hear something and you’re moved by it. Then you meet the artist and it goes back to what I was saying about our manager philosophy: It comes down to the

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person. Life is too short to deal with somebody that you don’t enjoy [working with].

It is very easy to sign an [artist] client, it is very difficult to drop them. People rarely talk about that. Once you’re working with a client, you know where all the bodies are buried. You know the highs, the lows, you know whether or not they can pay their rent, if they have child support.

I’ve toiled for months, sometimes years, over how to drop a client, because you get emotionally attached. It’s the closest relationship they have. And for us it is never a contractual one.

It’s not like an attorney or an agent who can just say, “Sorry, our contract’s up.” We’re the ones who talk to the agent, the attorney, the publicists.

What I’m saying is, it really comes down to the person. It’s nice to like the music, but what’s more important is you believe in the artist. What’s really paramount is, does the artist believe in themselves? Do they want it? Do they want to put in the time and effort?

We don’t sign clients because they make a ton of money, because they will just fire you the next day anyways if you’re not doing a good job. You sign artists because of the person they are. The manager can’t want the artist to be a star more than the artist does.

YM&U entered the NFT sector early on this year particularly with 3LAU and Steve Aoki – with lucrative results. How big do you think the music NFT space can get?

The music portion of NFTs is extremely underdeveloped. There are a handful of people, 3LAU included, that are really pushing the boundaries of what a music NFT is and what it means.

The vast majority see it as a cash grab, like selling ringtones; just another way to make money off music. It doesn’t take much thought or energy. Make a cool graphic, sell it with your name.

They see it like they’re selling merch.

I see the opportunity as much bigger than that. I see it as tokenizing community and access. Things are being developed so quickly that if I were a musician, honestly, I probably wouldn’t do NFTs just yet. But in the next two to four months, so many things are coming online.

You’ve seen bands like The Grateful Dead or Fish create these hyper-engaged communities. But you have to get so big to do that. We’re coming to a place [with NFTs] where you can create a micro-community.

You see it on places like Patreon, where you can have 5,000 fans, they’ll pay a monthly service fee, and you can actually sustain a business that way. Patreon [is] a really cool model, but NFTs can open that up even wider.

“To manage a great musician, you just need to know their audience.”

How do you strike a balance between being friends with clients and also having a professional relationship, especially when it comes to making difficult decisions?

Sometimes it’s easier than other times. There are certain clients who you grow very close to, that you hold on to for years and years just because you become friends and you just want to support them in their careers, come rain or shine.

It’s important to be self-aware. More often than not, I like to say we are often saving the artists from themselves. I’ve said many times [to artists], “As your friend, this is what I would do. As your manager, this is what you should do”.

Artists, anybody, appreciate a multi-multifaceted approach.

They want to hear the pros and the cons. Should an artist pay their entire tour crew their wages when a tour is cancelled because of COVID? Probably not. You don’t know when [touring will] come back. There’s no upside to this. But on the human level, is that the right thing to do?

Some [artists] are very wealthy, but still, a million-dollar check is a million-dollar check. And some of them [live] hand to mouth as well and still make that decision, like “I want to support my crew because: (a) I’m going to want to work with them again; and (b) on a human level, I want to do the right thing.”

And as a manager, that’s where you can say, “You can pay this much, or you can pay that much, but as a friend, if it were me, this is what I would do”.

Steve Aoki launched an NFT platform and we’re seeing other artists invest in NFT platforms too. What are the benefits for an artist of owning a platform?

There was a moment in March, April where a bunch of artists and musicians made a ton of money selling NFTs. Then most of them left the space.

They made the money and left because ultimately those NFTs didn’t hold value. There was no thought behind it. There’s no utility to those NFTs. They might as well have been enamel pins.

A handful of artists, Steve included, stuck with the space and kept developing, kept iterating. What most people have figured out is music NFTs are thoroughly underdeveloped, so the better bet for a musician is to bet on a platform and empower yourself and other musicians to keep experimenting. It’s better to bet on the community than to bet on yourself.

You mentioned Patreon. What do you think about the potential that Twitch has for community building and monetization in today’s music business?

The jury is still out, if I’m being really honest. There is a community on Twitch, but there’s not a robust music community on Twitch. The average music listener isn’t there. It isn’t some place that you generally go to because you want to hear music. It’s generally a gaming platform.

There are tons of people that are into eSports in gaming, that also love music. And there are also musicians that specialize in music 11

for that audience and that do quite well. And [on that score], we are huge Twitch supporters. Steve’s an enormous gamer. He owns an eSports company, and we’ve done plenty of live performances, as has his label on Twitch.

I don’t think the model has been fully worked out yet. There’s something around it that goes back to the Patreon idea; that subscription model and creating micro-communities.

With the rise of the DIY artist sector in mind, how does the role of a manager or a management company fit into today’s music industry?

That’s a great question. It makes management so much more important. There’s definitely a world where you can say, ‘I don’t need a manager. My record label does everything and my agent books my shows.’

But even the biggest artists are now taking more control of their careers. It’s all becoming DIY. How do you manage all that stuff?

Artists are called artists for a reason; they’re creating art. Artists should not have the time to manage a business on top of creating art. If they do, typically the art suffers.

The role of a manager has become exponentially more important because now we’re running entire businesses. We’re not just telling a label when to put something out, or when to tour. We’re launching Kickstarters every day. I mean that figuratively. We’re creating new IP, new ideas, making new partnerships. We’re trying to turn over every rock to find new sources of income.

There’s so much more opportunity and so many more ways to break an artist than there used to be, but it’s also exhausting and time-intensive. It is next to impossible for any one person to try and do it all, much less a team and certainly not an artist on their own.

Following on from that, from a manager’s point of view, what is the role of the record label in today’s music business?

It’s changing, rapidly. It depends on the artist. If you want to be a Top 40 Pop artist, the role of the record label is crucial. One thing the labels have better than everybody else is access to the streaming services. They also have, oftentimes, financing that you don’t otherwise have access to.

Obviously a lot of these platforms we’re talking about are essentially alternative forms of financing. But not every artist is built to be on Patreon, or has a community to help finance them.

Labels can take punts and spend money on things.

The great labels still have good A&R. They still bring ideas to the table. The labels that I enjoy working with the most, it has nothing to do with the money. It has to do with, ‘Do they actually contribute to the process, or am I just going to them for approval of our ideas?’

If that’s the case, unless there is a ginormous check involved, you’re just creating a new level of approval. You’re just creating a speed bump in the process.

There are plenty of artists that do not need labels. There are other sources of income. There are other ways to build community.

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YM&U client (and crypto in music pioneer) RAC

There are other ways to finance art. That doesn’t mean that labels don’t have a place, but the label’s place in music is changing.

UnitedMasters recently announced that they’ll start paying artists in cryptocurrency and EMPIRE recently paid an artist a $1 million advance in Bitcoin. How do you foresee the use of crypto shaping the business?

There’s a nice story to be told about the adoption of cryptocurrency.

Our artist RAC was the first artist to sell his album on the blockchain, in 2017 or 2018, We sold his album for Ethereum.

It took months and months to explain to his label at the time what it was and why we’re doing it. All to sell 100 albums! It was equivalent to like $2,000 at the time. Now, granted that $2,000 is probably $40,000 or $50,000 [today], but it was a small step.

The examples you’re giving are just more and more endorsement.

More importantly, the question will be, ‘How does the blockchain empower music? How does it solve some of the problems with opaqueness in accounting, lack of transparency with royalty payments and royalty tracking?’

All of these things are solvable on the blockchain. It’s just how quickly are the powers that be going to engage? Not much will happen without the major labels participating.

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YM&U client Common

What would you change about today’s music business and why?­­ I wish that there was a better way for communities or fans to dictate popularity. It’s largely based on algorithms telling us what we should be listening to, or what other people are listening to.

We still rely on radio, we still rely on playlisting, we still rely on largely major labels, putting up the funds and giving access. I wish there was an easier way for the public to discover music, to finance music, and for that music to be successful without all these intermediaries taking a cut and inserting themselves, for better or worse.

paycheck to paycheck, as an entry level music intern.

But I loved music, I didn’t care how much I made. I didn’t care that I could only afford to eat bags of popcorn for dinner; I was working in music. A lot of people come to the music industry for the status, the celebrity and the social flex. I just love music, and if that’s your guiding light, then success will find you.

For somebody who wants to get into the industry. Number one, don’t say ‘No’. The answer is always, ‘Yes’, even if it’s something you don’t want to do. You never know what it will lead to.

And then beyond that, just start doing it. You don’t need to wait for someone to give you a job. If you want to be a manager, find artists out there. There’s no school for it.

Most of us in the music industry did not come out of college and get a job at a record label. Almost everyone I know did something for free in the music industry for years before someone paid them to do it. My advice is, just do it. Work for anyone who will take you. n

“I didn’t care that I could only afford to eat bags of popcorn; I was working in music.”

What’s the best advice that you’ve ever been given in this business, and what advice would you give to somebody coming up in the artist management world?

The best advice I’ve been given was when a friend of mine said that his mother always told him, ‘Find something you love so much, that you do it for free, and then find someone to pay you for doing it.’ I was making great money coming out of college and working at a dot com. I decided to quit that job so I could live, barely

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Photo Credit: Lance Gross

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PLAYLIST

KEY SONGS IN THE LIFE OF…

Dallas Martin Could you name the five tracks that have changed your life, from childhood to now? Dallas Martin meets the challenge…

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f Dallas Martin never achieved another thing in US hip-hop, his legacy as a game-changing A&R specialist would be etched into the history books.

Martin has A&R’d hip-hop greats such as Roddy Ricch, Meek Mill, Wale, Rick Ross, Cordae, and the late Nipsey Hussle.

But as President of Warner Music Group’s Asylum Records, Martin is hungry to unleash the potential of the next generation of stars, at a time when the presence of hip-hop in the States and around the world has never been greater.

“There’s no better feeling in our business than discovering and breaking a new artist, and I learned early on that it’s important to log as much time in the studio as you do in the office,” he says. “There’s incredible untapped independent talent in the world, and I’m confident that we have everything it takes to be the best home for the stars of the future.”

Martin was named President of Asylum earlier this year, while he also remains a member of the Atlantic Records executive team as EVP of A&R. With Asylum’s quasi-indie status, he reports to President of ADA Worldwide, Cat Kreidich (as well as Craig Kallman, Chairman & CEO of Atlantic Records).

Martin, who was born in Flint, Michigan, began his music biz career in 2008 as an intern at Def Jam Records under the late Shakir Stewart, whom he credits for fostering his love of the industry.

In 2011, Martin moved to Los Angeles to join Warner Records, where he secured a

deal with Miami rapper Rick Ross and his Maybach Music Group.

In addition to exclusively A&R’ing Ross’s releases, Martin added Maybach’s Meek Mill, Wale, and Omarion to his roster. He was instrumental in Mill’s iconic debut studio album, Dreams and Nightmares, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and hit No.1 on the Top R&B/HipHop Albums chart. Martin has A&R’d all of Meek Mill’s albums, including the Billboard 200 chart-toppers Dreams Worth More Than Money and 2018’s Grammynominated Championships.

In 2013, Martin joined Atlantic Records, where he signed the late Nipsey Hussle, releasing the No.1 album, Victory Lap, and the Grammy-winning single, Racks in the Middle.

In addition to the aforementioned artists, at Atlantic Martin helped cultivate rising talents such as Grammy-award winning Roddy Ricch – who broke records with the octuple platinum hit The Box – and Cordae, whose debut album, The Lost Boy, earned him two Grammy nominations.

At Asylum, Martin has been working closely with artists like Houston rapper KenTheMan (who just released a new project titled What’s My Name), Detroit’s Sada Baby, whose Whole Lotta Choppas remix was certified Gold last year, as well as Landstrip Chip, FL Dusa, and Jay Loud.

Here, for Music Business USA’s Key Songs In The Life Of… feature, Martin picks five tracks that have changed his existence – and tells us what they mean to him...

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PLAYLIST

1) C.R.E.A.M. – Wu-Tang Clan (1994) I grew up in Flint (Michigan) and couldn’t really afford to buy music, but my cousins in Detroit who I was with all the time put me on to hip-hop early. Seeing the C.R.E.A.M. video for the first time, I was infatuated with the artists —the way they dressed, the way they talked, the unique personalities, the slang.

Wu-Tang was one of the first groups I really connected with. It made me wanna go to New York and learn about the city. I didn’t get there for a minute, but ended up moving to NYC when I got my first job at Def Jam that started my music career.

2) Juicy – The Notorious B.I.G. (1994) This was the first record I ever heard from Biggie. My cousins got the Ready to Die album when it came out in 1994, I was probably about 10 years old and it blew me away. I was amazed

by Biggie. How dope his flow was, how charismatic he was.

He’s an incredible lyricist and wordsmith. Every line connects. At a young age, he made me fall in love with hip hop. And to this day, Biggie is my favorite rapper of all time.

3) Nuthin’ But A “G” Thang – Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg (1992) This song was really my first introduction to the West Coast sound. I remember listening to it on the radio in the car with

Martin worked with Grammy winner Roddy Ricch at Atlantic Records

my pops and bugging out the first time I saw the music video on MTV. It was such a wild sound. The production is so dominant and hypnotizing. It’s everything you’d want in a hit record. I never thought I’d live on the West Coast, but I’m in LA now and I can’t imagine being anywhere else.

4) In Da Club – 50 Cent (2003) This record came out my freshman year of college.

I remember being in Atlanta, hearing it the first time at a basketball game with my friends – and as soon as the beat hits, you feel it.

I’d never heard 50 before but I knew from that moment that he was gonna be a hitmaker. From production to flow, he took over the game with that record.

His sound dominated for years after that.

Unforgettable.

5) Dreams and Nightmares – Meek Mill (2012) This is probably the biggest intro in hip-hop history.

It’s one of those songs that’ll be played in the club for years and years. It’s a career highlight to have been a part of it. I remember being in the studio with Meek in Miami when he recorded it...you know it’s special, but you don’t know how big it’s gonna be. The first time we heard it get played we were at a club in Miami and you could just feel the energy.

People knew every word, they connected to the song and the emotion. Ten years later, the reaction is still crazy every time.

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INTERVIEW

‘I WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE MUSIC INDUSTRY DEVELOP A MORE POSITIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES’ Peermusic has long been one of the most legendary family-run names in global music publishing. Mary Megan Peer sets out her vision as CEO, and for the industry itself...

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t the beginning of this year, Mary Megan Peer became Chief Executive Officer of peermusic — the family-led and owned company that her father and predecessor, Ralph Peer II, helmed for 37 years.

She moved up to the top seat after serving as Deputy CEO, during which time she helmed the publisher’s expansion into neighbouring rights, while also contributing to business growth equating to a 15% year-on-year increase in global receipts and a 12% rise in income collected for clients.

Recent releases peer has a stake in that have helped contribute to that growth include Justin Bieber’s Peaches (co-produced by Shndo) and his Platinum-selling Changes album (featuring music co-produced by Sasha Sirota, The Audibles, Sons of Sonix and Phil Beaudreau and executive produced

by Poo Bear).

The company also celebrated a Pulitzer Prize in Music win earlier this year thanks to composition Stride by Cuban-born Tania León, and has a credit on Beyonce’s Grammy-winning Black Parade (cowritten by peer client Rickie “Caso” Tice).

Other chart successes have come courtesy of Black Eyed Peas and J Balvin’s Ritmo for the Bad Boys For Life soundtrack, Skrillex, Bieber and Don Toliver’s Don’t Go (produced by Poo Bear), Still Chose You feat. Mustard from The Kid Laroi’s Billboard 200 No.1 mixtape (co-written by Q Gulledge), and DJ Snake’s Run It feat.

Rick Ross & Rich Brian, which featured in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings trailer and ESPN’s football anthem campaign.

Today, Mary Megan Peer oversees peermusic’s 38 offices in 31 countries and over 200 employees worldwide — a growing global footprint that she’s played a key role in establishing.

In 2019, that work included leading the acquisition of Korean independent K-pop publisher, Music Cube, adding Korea as the thirtieth country to the peermusic global network, alongside 40,000+ copyrights and works by groups including BTS, Red Velvet and AOA. By encouraging collaboration between peermusic’s Western writers with talent in Japan, China and South Korea, Peer helped the company enjoy charting K-pop releases in all three countries and introduced writers to K-pop labels. This resulted in Korea becoming the third largest territory in the peermusic network in terms of revenue.

Previously, she led the opening of peermusic’s first office in mainland China, which followed the establishment of a successful joint-venture partnership in the country.

Alongside her CEO role, Peer recently produced an album, Last Tango Before Sunrise, featuring works by peermusic classical performer and conductor Jose Serebrier, which was released in August alongside a book about his life.

She is also currently involved in a children’s cartoon project with longtime peermusic writer Donovan, which is based on his music and stories, and is the youngest member on ASCAP’s board.

Here, we chat to Mary Megan Peer about lessons learned across her career, how to run a successful publishing company, and a few issues faced by the music industry at large...

“I’d like to see digital services pay a fair rate in a manner that’s trackable.”

Before you worked at peermusic, you started your career in Wall Street. What did you learn during that time, that has served you well in music and publishing?

I only started in this business 12 years ago professionally but my 19

father was always introducing me to writers so I grew up knowing a lot more about songwriting than probably the average person does. When I was working on Wall Street, most of the time I worked in mergers and acquisitions for entertainment and media companies so at times I worked with music companies and at times other content creators. I learned about how rights were valued and different ways to unlock that value and how companies did a lot of planning around it.

Most companies I worked with, but not all, were public, so I also learned about what sort of reporting and compliance issues go into a public company. It’s interesting now that I see so many music publishing companies trying to explore that route.

I learned a lot about big picture dealmaking but the thing that I didn’t get at all was any experience in operations. So it was really important to me that when I joined peermusic, I got to work on the ground at a company that was functioning day in and day out.

A couple of years after I joined, I moved to Argentina to the Buenos Aires office and that was the first time I’d really gotten fully involved in operations, rather than doing deals at a high level and then stepping aside because other people were implementing them and working on them on a day to day basis.

What have you learned from working closely with your father?

My father has an innate ability to look at multiple sides of an issue and forge towards a common path.

I hear this appreciated by colleagues within the industry as he always looks to connect the common interests among music publishers to enhance the market for songwriters.

I’ve learnt a lot from this collaborative approach, even when it seems like issues could be divisive.

He also is skilled at seeing both the big picture and detailed side of everything. I think this is a great skill to have in music publishing, where you constantly have to look at broader trends in music, but also be responsible for collecting and tracking micropennies of income.

the acquisition to expand into neighbouring rights, which we completed about a year ago now. It was an area that I looked at for a while as a good place for expansion and a way to use our network, resources and technology development to service a whole new area of clients.

What are the key ingredients that go into running a successful publishing company?

Publishing is driven by the creative so having a team who can successfully nurture relationships with talent and see how the talent can contribute to broader music trends is crucial. Having a long-term vision for a writer or producer’s career is important, as is giving them time to make that vision happen.

However, as much as publishing is creative, a successful publishing company must be strongly focused on the administrative aspects as well.

Understanding how to register, collect and track your catalogs is crucial, even more so with the diversification in revenues from new digital players.

How has being family-owned and run impacted the way that peermusic has operated?

Being family-owned has given us a long-term vision for both our writers/producers and for the company. We’ve allowed our writers the time to build and develop great songs while building a company with global reach.

Rather than being focused on quarterly reports to investors, we can make decisions based on a longer-term path to growth. I think we can show success in this in that 2020 was our highest year of receipts ever, and because we’ve had many writers signed to us over the course of their careers.

“Being family-owned has given us a longterm vision for our writers/producers.”

You were named CEO earlier this year — what do you bring to the role that’s different from your predecessors?

I never really knew my grandparents in any sort of business role so it’s really my father who I can contrast my experience with. He has never worked outside of music and always felt that was something he missed in terms of his business experience. So we thought it was very important for me to spend time outside of the company, working in different industries and appreciating different ways to do business.

Also, I’m a good deal younger than he is so I’m probably bringing in some new perspectives on how music is going to be used and what we can do with our catalog going forward.

He worked very closely with me but I was the one who led 20

As you know, the publishing sector has long rallied for better remuneration for songwriters. Where do you stand on that debate?

Clearly it’s a big issue around the world because we’re seeing so many governments looking into it. It’s quite gratifying to see the debate enter the mainstream because many publishers, including us, have laboured on these points for a long time, almost by ourselves.

I’d like to see all the digital services pay a fair rate in a manner that’s trackable and transparent to us. The fact that, in most cases around the world, digital rights are paid to us from two different sources, owing to the split between mechanical and performance, makes it very difficult for us to accurately track what we’ve been paid across various uses and service types from each DSP etc.

So in terms of changes, I would really like to receive payment for digital and mechanicals and digital performance rights from one entity so that we can tie it up and confirm that our writers are

INTERVIEW

Poo Bear

being paid what’s owed to them.

What would a fair rate for songwriters mean to you?

This phrase is used in conjunction with digital licensing and to me it means setting rates so that a successful songwriter can support themselves based on the income they get from their career. Since rates are often a percentage of the income a service makes from a subscriber or advertisers, it would help if there was a minimum in addition to a percentage rate.

Aside from the issues that we’ve already touched upon, what would you change about the music industry and why?

I would really like to see the music industry develop a more positive relationship with technology companies. I think there’s so much that technology can and has added to music, from production to listener experiences, new ways to use it and TikTok or other services.

I feel like the industry, rather than regarding technology as a potentially enabling force, tends to view technology companies as a group which is generally trying to use our product without paying us. Unfortunately, this reputation isn’t totally unfounded but it would be great if we could start from a more positive place.

What are your future plans and ambitions as CEO? My immediate plans are focused on ensuring the company recovers successfully from Covid and integrating our new neighbouring rights companies. Although we continue to do better than budget, we have seen income around the world dip as a result of lockdowns.

I need to make sure we limit this as much as possible and continue to focus on other avenues of growth. I also want to find ways to offer both publishing and neighbouring rights clients expanded services to improve their income streams now that we have new capabilities.

Longer-term, I plan to continue to leverage peermusic’s global infrastructure to find new opportunities for our writers. This may mean further expansion into new territories or additional focus on specific genres.

The film and television business continues to grow strongly and finding ways to meet their music needs will be important to us in the future.

Final question, what advice would you offer to your younger self?

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. This is a complicated business and I really believe that if you can’t explain something, you don’t fully understand it. n 21

INTERVIEW

‘IT WOULD BE NICE TO SEE COMPANIES BEING PROACTIVE AND NOT REACTIVE’ Jamila Thomas changed the face of the US industry with the launch of The Show Must Be Paused. Now she has big ambitions for her new life at Motown Records...

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arlier this year, Jamila Thomas joined Motown as VP, Artist Marketing, following a career that’s spanned positions at Atlantic, Asylum, Def Jam and Cash Money.

During that time, Thomas has worked on a host of campaigns for superstar artists such as Drake, Nicki Minaj, Jhene Aiko, Pusha T, Frank Ocean and 2 Chainz.

Alongside her day job, Thomas co-founded global initiative The Show Must Be Paused, which arrived last year in order to tackle inequities, racism and social injustices in the music business.

In her new role, she’s determined to support the vision of newly named Chairman and CEO of Motown, Ethiopia Habtemariam, who is focused on signing the next generation of superstars.

As well as overseeing marketing strategies and campaigns across the label’s roster, Thomas is tasked with leading marketing initiatives for the newly relaunched historic spoken word imprint, Black Forum.

Way before she started building her impressive CV, as a 14-yearold junior in high school, Thomas had already decided the music business was to be her destiny.

“We got asked to write what we want to be when we grow up and I said I wanted to own a record label,” she remembers. “I remember my teacher was like, ‘What do you mean? Like Virgin Records, the record store?’ and I was like, ‘No, I want to be like Clive Davis and Puff Daddy.’”

The early inspiration came from the fact that Thomas’ dad worked in radio so she grew up around the industry. After making sure her first internships in college were at music companies, she saw that few women were working in the offices, especially not in senior positions, and noted the challenge. “I decided that I wanted 23

to figure out how to get the corner office.”

Thomas’ first professional job was as an assistant in the marketing department at Def Jam in New York, where she worked her way up for four years, and then moved over to Cash Money before joining Warner.

Standout memories during her early career include 2 Chainz’ T.R.U era, when he re-signed to Def Jam as a solo artist, changed his name from Tity Boi (following criticisms of sexism) and went through a brand reinvention.

“That was one of the first times I got to work with an artist who was very hands on and sure about the direction of the campaign,” Thomas remembers.

“Him and his team knew exactly what they wanted the concept to be, the messaging, they had this whole T.R.U University idea, which was when digital marketing was just starting to become a thing, and they had a whole campaign for that.

“It was very creative and it was very out of the box. I’ve been trying to model my campaigns like that ever since — giving artists a chance to be hands on when they can, opening the door for communication with talent, and letting them know that it’s not what ‘the label wants’, it’s what we want.

We’re partners.”

Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange album (also released via Def Jam), on the other hand, was “the total opposite,” says Thomas. “He was very to himself and didn’t like to share much with the label but he’s a genius and following his lead was probably one of the best decisions.

“The way that he was open and honest with that [revelatory open] letter, written by himself when the album came out, was beautiful because it came from him.

“It wasn’t a press moment, it wasn’t thought of by the label, it was the artist sharing something with his fans that was very personal and it really explained the album. That taught me that it’s okay to take a backseat to a creative and watch them work.”

During her time at Atlantic, Thomas is most proud of putting together an all-female rap showcase featuring Bri Steves, Rico Nasty and Maliibu Miitch. “At the time, Atlantic had all these developing female rap acts who weren’t necessarily getting the looks that some of the big artists at the time were getting, so we created our own platform.”

The “packed” showcase led to the artists touring with each other, performing at the BET Awards and helped open the door for fellow female talents.

Thomas says: “The biggest lesson I learned there was that sometimes you have to build your own stage, you have to build your own table and create your own seats. Sometimes you can’t wait for partners to come to you. You have to go to them and make enough noise until people start to pay attention.”

At Motown, projects Thomas is currently working on include

Migos, City Girls and the Fire in Little Africa album from Black Forum by a group of artists from Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is about the Tulsa race massacre on Black Wall Street.

Here, we chat to her about ambitions at Motown, diversity in music, the keys to success in marketing and what she’d change about the industry and why.

What are your ambitions in your new role at Motown?

My ambitions here are to support Ethiopia and her vision for the new direction that she’s taking the label on.

It’s exciting to me that I’m working under someone who is one of the few black female Chairmen because, growing up, that’s not the position that, as a woman of color, I saw we held in a business.

But she’s put in the hard work and worked her way up to this point. It’s inspirational.

I’m excited about doing the work with Black Forum, which focuses on activism, spoken word and leadership in the community.

I don’t know any other major labels that have a label imprint doing that and that type of work is a passion of mine. So I’m here to grow professionally, learn from Ethiopia, and contribute any way I can to ensure that we remain a leader in the culture, black music and in the community.

“Sometimes you have to build your own table and create your own seats.”

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You’ve done a lot of work to improve racial diversity in the music business via The Show Must Be Paused — from your perspective, is there anything that needs to change or be worked on in order to ensure that the progress that seems to have been made over the last couple of years is baked into the business for years to come?

It’s important to be consistent and it’s crucial that there’s a long term plan. We can’t just be reactionary and do these short term plans and focus on what we can do right now. Some companies are really putting in the work to think beyond the next year to five to 10 years and are putting things in place internally, not just doing public announcements.

The DEI officers are planning and strategizing, getting approvals for things, announcing new programs for professional development and changing the way that an internship looks to open the doors for more people. I think that type of work will be here long when we’re gone.

We can’t do business the same, there needs to be a new way of doing things moving forward. The long term plan is what really matters and that’s how the changes will last.

Your professional expertise is in marketing — what are the key ingredients that go into a successful campaign?

Knowing the music. You can’t plan a roll out for something that you haven’t moved with. Take your time to listen to the artist and understand, on the music side, what the taste and tone of the project feels like.

INTERVIEW

Normally it would be like, ‘Oh, we need to just put out a new song’ but that was one of the ones where it was like, ‘No, we need to put out this song and whatever it’s going to take to clear this song… ’ which ended up taking months.

Normally you never get to “leak” a song first to see if people like it — you don’t find out until you shoot the video, you’ve made the cover or you’ve done all this stuff and you hope it sticks. That was a moment where we knew that was going to be a very catchy record and something that was going to impact culturally.

We started to really realize that people are discovering music outside of the traditional platforms. TikTok raised its hand as a leader in that conversation and it’s become a testing ground for new music, even if it’s just a 32 second snippet. You can find out if that is what people want just based on if it’s going to catch because like I said, you can’t tease it at a show anymore like we used to because things aren’t open.

Ethiopia Habtemariam

I’ll also say, just having a conversation with the artist is important. Our job is to spread a message to a mass audience and to drive awareness and sales, but there’s a way to do it and I think it’s important that the artist is being represented correctly and authentically.

The fans can see right through a gimmicky campaign so if it’s not something that’s inspired by the artist and music, you need to start over. Two key ingredients are taste and tone.

Timing is also very important: knowing the marketplace and if this is the time for new music or if this is the time to remix a song that’s doing really well so we don’t knock out the record that everyone’s playing.

Then it’s about having drivers, outside is barely opening so not everyone is doing shows still and it’s important to find creative ways to reach fans and also tap into new ones in a safe manner in a digital space, whether it’s through radio or socials — pushing yourself as a marketer to think outside of the box.

What are some of the ways that you’ve had to think outside the box during the pandemic?

One way it happened for us was with the City Girls Twerkulator record. The song was supposed to be on one of the albums and it wasn’t cleared and one of the girls put out a snippet online, she did a TikTok to it and there was a young [influencer] who made a dance to it and it took off.

What one thing would you change about the music industry today and why?

How long it takes to make progress. I understand that some of this stuff didn’t happen overnight but it takes a long time to bring people around to a new way of business. I get it, a part of it is it’s been working all of this time, everyone has made a lot of money, so if it’s not broke, don’t fix it, but I hope that with everything that happened in 2020, and the progress that’s been made in 2021, and how quickly partners have jumped up to correct some things internally, they see that it just takes someone to do the right thing and for someone to say something.

The stuff that we saw happen right after Blackout [Tuesday] could have happened way before that. It could have happened way before we paused the show, it’s just that no-one did it. It would be nice to see companies being proactive and not reactive. I hope the sense of urgency that we’ve been seeing stays because that is the only way we’re going to see change, so people don’t get stagnant and just go back to the way things were.

What’s the one piece of advice you’d give a younger version of yourself or someone who is looking to follow in your footsteps?

Just when it feels like it’s getting hard, that’s right when you’re on the verge of a breakthrough and it’s important not to give up.

It’s important to make sure that you remind yourself why you started because there’s going to be moments you question why you’re still here, and why you’re still putting yourself through this because it’s not easy. There’s no handbook on how to get into the music business and how to move up, you have to figure out your own path.

In those moments of doubt, take a second to remind yourself why you want to do this and what your true passion is, because that’s what’s going to keep you grounded, keep you focused and prepare for the long road ahead. But it’s well worth it, it really is. I know we don’t save lives, I’m not a surgeon. But to provide entertainment on a global scale and work with some of the most creative people I’ve ever met is a blessing. n 25

FEATURE

MY MANIFESTO Lucas Keller, Milk & Honey founder and songwriter advocate, lists the five things he wants to change about the music business… in typically forthright fashion

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hen Lucas Keller moved to L.A in 2009, having cut his music industry teeth in Chicago, he had dreams of making it big.

In the end, he did just that: Keller’s Milk & Honey is today one of the world’s pre-eminent songwriter, producer and DJ management companies, repping talent that’s created/co-created global hits for everyone from BTS to Lewis Capaldi, Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat, Selena Gomez and Dua Lipa.

Milk & Honey’s songwriter/producer roster includes talent including Jenna Andrews, Oak Felder, Jamie Hartman, J.White Did It, Stuart Price, Sir Nolan, David Hodges and many more.

In addition, Milk & Honey also represents Triple-A sporting stars, and it hasn’t been left out of the music catalog acquisition goldrush, either: Keller recently told the Los Angeles Business Journal that his clients have sold over $100 million in publishing assets over the past two years.

But 12 years ago at LAX, fresh off that plane from Illinois, none of this was exactly mapped out.

Keller began a four-year stint working at The Collective, a large-scale L.A talent business that brought together swathes of entrepreneurial young managers under one roof. There, Keller was sandwiched between the offices of Linkin Parks’ manager and Enrique Iglesias’s manager.

Despite looking after talent as majestic as Jimmy Cliff and other legacy artists, Keller struggled to find professional fulfilment being a cog in someone else’s machine.

Yet, crucially, he says he wouldn’t have been able to build Milk & Honey and its impressive roster of writers/producers without putting his time in at The Collective. “You learn so much of what to do, and also what not to do by working for other people along the way,” he says.

This fact informs the first of Keller’s five points on his Manifesto for change in the music industry. Each of these points is a rallying cry for the business to shake up prehistoric practices and to quash injustices that threaten the future prosperity of artists and songwriters.

Keller founded Milk & Honey in 2014, operating initially from a desk in his then small apartment in Hollywood. Today,

the company employs 28 people globally, across offices in L.A, New York, Nashville, Dallas, London, Amsterdam, and Sydney.

Wisconsin-raised Keller’s perspective on the industry is a unique one. And, as his five-point Manifesto is about to prove, the man doesn’t hold his tongue. Over to Lucas...

1) A lack of executive mentorship – causing a culture of Gmail entrepreneurs There are a lot of people with real businesses running around the industry today who’ve made it big with one client, a laptop and a Gmail account. But when I talk to these young executives, none of them seem to have any heroes on the business side of things.

They all have music heroes, but nobody has really studied the history of the music industry.

Do these guys know who Ahmet Ertegun is, or David Geffen, Jon Landau, Clarence Avant, Miles Copeland? Do they look up to them? Maybe some of them know who Irving Azoff is because he’s still working. But I believe to truly love and respect the fabric of this business, you have to learn the history of this business.

Maybe I’m an oldster before my time [Keller is 37]. But it just feels like there’s this culture of managers, especially in L.A, that started breaking one act, they don’t really have any training, and it can get tedious. I can’t tell you the amount of meetings I’ve sat in with ‘meaningful’ managers or executives and I’m sorry, but they’re just not that impressive in a room. Maybe that’s because they were never actually taught how to sell anything.

Someone once said to me, ‘Keller, I think you just wish you were alive in the ‘70s and ‘80s music business,’ and maybe they’re right. But what I know for sure is that with the stories and the history of those bygone days... there were much more impressive meetings and executives!

Perhaps to be a brilliant manager today you only really have to understand digital and not worry so much about ‘performing’.

But I tell you this: that makes you lackluster to be around.

I don’t blame these guys for that; what’s at fault is the complete

“To truly love and respect this business, you have to learn its history.”

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lack of mentoring for new music business guys coming through.

Some of my best mentors were people I was one office over from or guys that let me sit on their couch, just listening to their phone calls. And I definitely learned what not to do from some of the people I’ve worked with down the years.

That’s mentorship too; if you’ve worked with people who are bullies, or even colleagues or clients who were complicated to deal with, you can learn a huge amount from those experiences on how to carry yourself when you set up your own shop.

We need to have executives willing to send the elevator back down. I remember the first time Linkin Park’s then-manager [Rob McDermott] – who I used to work for – sat down with me and said, ‘No Lucas, you’ve got it all wrong. You’re going to call every single festival [booker] 90 days after their festivals close, and you’re going to work in reverse on a 24 month plan.’ As soon as I sat down and wrote that out, it really helped me create plans for the bands and artists I was managing, and I still use it as a system today. Any client at my company has a 24 month plan.

Too many managers are reactive instead of being proactive.

I think we’re in a bit more of a selfish business now; people are just focused on their own shit. So for someone to sit down and say, ‘Okay, I’m going to help this younger executive...’, it’s much more of a rare thing.

2) Putting it all in the middle of the table You have this disproportionate situation where the artists and labels are taking much more than the publishers and songwriters from streaming. That’s totally out of whack, and it’s something where I really appreciate the campaigning that Merck [Mercuriadis] is doing for songwriters being at the table when their own deals are made.

The big thing for me is that we also need to get all people to the table, and figure out, ‘Okay, how can we all share in this?’ Because it’s not just songwriters who are frustrated. In the US, a record label will be the first to tell you, ‘Wait, we spent all this money on radio promo, but we don’t get any share of your ASCAP and BMI checks?’ [In the States, radio plays result in a payment for songwriters via their PROs, but – unlike in Europe – artists get no performance royalties from such a broadcast.]

So it’s like, well, okay, let’s have a conversation about it. Those [songwriter] checks are not small – BMI and ASCAP pay out over a billion dollars every year. But if we’re going to talk about sharing that with the labels, then let’s also have a conversation about what revenues are coming in their side that my clients deserve a cut of.

There’s these imperfect systems that have been going on for

years, and it’s like: Why does this [model] need to continue to exist? I have one client who believes that if we don’t get songwriters at the table with the labels, and we don’t start to share our royalties with them [and vice-versa] in the next few years, then a rebalancing of the economics of this business will never happen. I think that’s accurate. There’s got to be a better way for everybody to share, where the labels don’t feel ripped off and neither do we.

While I’m on the subject of ‘imperfect systems’, by the way, the live business is on another level.

If you look at some of these old rules, these granular details of, say, how you settle a concert, the back-end promoter profit and expenses, just the nuanced way that world works, you think: These rules probably go back to vaudeville or something, or the very early days of touring. And you’re like, Who created this shit?

The ‘age old’ agents gouge the promoters, and then promoters lie on the settlement sheets; this stuff needs fixing. The music industry needs to start being less selfish and work as a team, and really share, with transparency.

3) ‘No conflict, no interest.’

For a while there, it seemed like nearly every senior label person I dealt with in the US had a side publishing company, or some other side hustle. And I was always amazed, because I was like: how is the business allowing this to happen?

It’s mainly labels, but not just labels: I remember sitting down with one senior guy at a large publishing company, and realizing that all of the publishing executives reporting to him were also managing writers and producers on the side.

We’ve all gotten used to that kind of thing, but it’s a real slippery slope, and rarely ends up in favor of the writers and artists.

The executives get motivated to think like: ‘Hmm, how do I get my people on this record?’ which becomes bad for the [writer] community. Also, somehow these execs seem to have this ability to skirt every exclusive employment agreement in California!

But the real thing to touch on here, which nobody ever wants to touch on – and I’m not afraid to mention – is the three major music publishing CEOs. They have great salaries, nice titles, but each of them also wears a pair of golden handcuffs. I don’t know how they’re advocating for us our songwriters when the major publishers are owned by the companies who benefit from [the recorded side of the music industry] getting the majority of the money.

The three heads of the biggest publishers should be the loudest people in the business fighting for songwriters to be paid more, and they’re not because everybody wants to keep their job.

“It’s a real slippery slope, and rarely ends up favoring the songwriters.”

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FEATURE

David Hodges

There’s other specific things that get frustrating in that dynamic: I’ve had songwriters make records with a major publisher, and the artist [performing on the record] is also signed to that same publisher. Then there’s some split dispute, and the publisher calls me or my team to try and muscle us because the other writer they have – the artist – is a bigger client for them than we are. And I’m like: ‘Huh? Are you our publisher? Or are you someone else’s publisher?’

In so many ways, so many times, people in this industry are conflicted. As a rule, at Milk & Honey we try to stay as unconflicted as a management company as possible. That’s tough as you grow, but we believe there’s an ethical obligation there.

We’ve created publishing ventures with a few of our bigger songwriters and producers, and that allows us as a company to own [shares of ] publishing assets. We sold one of those publishing assets earlier this year, and were both a manager and a publisher in that case – which is a conflict if ever I heard one! So we didn’t take commission as a manager, and try to keep things as pure as possible.

4) Too much music... and 45 flavors of label services companies One day, when I was bored, I wrote down all the distribution and artist/label services companies I could think of and I got to

Oak Felder

about 45. That could be everything from the simple turnkey, ‘we upload your songs’ guys, all the way to companies who say they offer all the services of a major record label.

You know what I think of these companies? Booooring!

This whole sensationalist: ‘You’ve been getting robbed by the majors, we’re going to give you 85%! We’re going to let you keep your copyrights! We do 50/50 net deals!’ Wow, these guys do everything! Except that one thing: actually breaking artists.

I love the model, I really do – we’re just not breaking stars in these systems.

Let me be clear: I think it’s great that a very under-celebrated part of our industry – the successful artists who don’t belong on frontline major record labels – have options in the marketplace and partners to work with. I remember getting a call from Jeff Price the month he started TuneCore; it was an amazing concept.

This idea that distribution can become a fairly-priced commodity for no commission is very exciting.

What I’m not excited about is label services companies hiring a lot of great staff, then signing way too many things and becoming companies that are all about aggregate, where there isn’t any service. It’s become a bloated and uninteresting business.

It’s a fantastic business for the owner, and it can be good if you’re a very proactive management company willing to do so much of the work. But the fact is, these services companies often aren’t great for the artist or the manager; because when [the services company] is taking such a slim slice of the revenues, 29

independent! Oh wait... they signed to a major.’ Because at some point, it’s always about the money.

I don’t see a whole lot of change in that paradigm coming.

There’s always an artist that wants the big advance, and there’s always a manager that wants their commission. And as we all know, major labels would much sooner give you extra money than really bend on the royalty rate.

Jenna Andrews

5) Songwriters are crying out for a leader

they have to scale, so they sign hundreds of artists, in some cases thousands of artists, and that model – ‘we have 300 lackluster clients stuck in the middle of the business!’ – is very rarely where you want to find yourself.

The company that might win in that space, and there are more of them being born every day, is the one that says: ‘We’re going to have 10 or 20 artists, not 300; we’re going to stay boutique, we’re going to focus and spend properly on the artists we do sign, and we’re going to break stars.’

One great thing the [services] companies have done is to put continued pressure on the majors to do more competitive deals. But there’s a bit of a myth going on there too. Yes, Taylor Swift has a sweetheart deal with Universal Music Group, but [young artists] are still going into those major companies and signing 16 or 17 point royalty deals today.

There’s more leverage in those negotiations than there used to be, definitely, and I’m thankful for it. But with every one of the very few independent artists that does break today, you watch them like: ‘They’re gonna stay independent! They’re gonna stay

The lack of organization and leadership in the songwriter community today keeps causing all these fragmented groups, these fragmented movements, who are all advocating for their specific demands rather than really banding together. And then those fragments individually go up against the majors. The majors can’t take these groups seriously if they’re not united.

It’s a huge undertaking, but I’m passionate about the fact that all of us – songwriters, songwriter representatives – need to come together as one, and only then go in and have those difficult conversations with the major music companies. Simply stated, songwriters need to get paid more, and should not be viewed so far down the value chain.

There are [legal] issues around songwriters unionizing in California specifically, but there are still ways we could come together. But it needs to include everybody; I’ve heard too many conversations that go, ‘I tried to bring everyone together but these 20 people didn’t show up...’

We’ve had it as a company; we represent a lot of songwriters and a lot of producers, and there have been times when I haven’t gotten the call about a certain songwriter issue because people have tagged me as a ‘producer manager’ and go, ‘You can’t advocate for the songwriters if you’re also advocating for producers.’ Bullshit. I’m advocating for fairness.

There are some great people in the US songwriting community who are really collaborative, and then there are others who I think are really lazy, and/or just focused on their day job. We need the community as a whole to take this seriously before it’s too late.

This is the beauty of the Hollywood [film & TV] Writers’ Guild. In L.A last year, just on a random Tuesday, you read: ‘Writers all fire their agents.’ And you’re like, wow, this is really powerful! And then everyone came back to the table and made a better deal for Hollywood’s writers.

In music, nobody in this space, singularly, is powerful enough to go up against the majors. But together? If the majors find out their hits are going to run dry? No more big songs? That’s a different conversation. It’s a levy that will soon break, I do believe. n

“If the majors find out their hits are running dry? That’s a different conversation.”

30

Kyle Rittenhouse

Trayvon Martin

17 Years Old

17 Years Old

Carries Assault Rifle

Carries Bag of Skittles

Kills/Injures 3 People

Walks in a Hoodie

‘NOT GUILTY VIGILANTE’

KILLED BY ‘NOT GUILTY VIGILANTE’

#blacklivesmatter