The Live Scene

With less people buying music nowadays, one of the most important revenues for artists is the live scene. I’m sure many of you have been to festivals, concerts or even heard performers play at local venues. So what goes in to playing live and how do you go about it? Hopefully, by the end of this blog, you’ll have an idea and can start to get yourself out there as a performer.

The most important part of any live performance is the preparation and planning. Performing live is the perfect opportunity to connect with fans and get your music out there for people to take notice of. It’s vital to play songs that connect with the audience, engages them and makes them want to come back for more. You can spend hours writing songs that sound great on a recording but if you can’t have a connection with a live audience your career will be held back. The bigger and more passionate the show the more engaging it will be to the audience. For example, I went to see Bring Me The Horizon at Alexandra Palace and it was incredible! From smoke machines to light shows, mosh pits and crowd surfing it was mental. I barely knew the band at the time but due to the power of the show I, like many other people, went and bought their records. Putting on a good show can lead your fan base to sore.

I’m an unknown artist, how do I get started? Thankfully, the live music scene is still buzzing on a local level. For artists starting out, you’ll generally have to find places to perform. Find somewhere that has an audience that suits the music you play. To gain a better understanding you could go to the selected venue and watch a performance. The music industry is a people’s industry and building strong local contacts can help massively. There is a wide array of pubs, clubs and bars that are looking for local talent. If you can get regular gigs on a local circuit you can make a steady income and build a large fan base. As an example, my friend Jim Sole plays locally around 3 nights per week. The exposure and popularity he has built up has given him the opportunity to play at festivals and other large events and many locals flock to the venues he’s playing at.

As a new artist, it’s important to remember that when starting out at smaller venues you will need to do a lot of work behind the scenes. It massively helps having a trusted team of family and friends. For larger venues, there may be an in-house engineer responsible for sound. It’s important to build a good relationship with them; they are in charge of your sound after all. Remember that not all venues have an engineer, so give yourself time to have a thorough sound check. Always bring your own equipment (don’t rely on the venue) and make sure to start slow and work your way up. A 20 minute set is a good length to begin with. As a newcomer, when performing as part of an evening of music, playing first can be a help not a hindrance. It may mean a smaller audience who have drunk a bit less and aren’t as enthusiastic but industry people are more likely to attend. You will also be fresher and probably more polished as you won’t have had to wait all evening to play. It gives you the opportunity to move up the bill in the future, so stay positive. No matter what stage you start at always act professional. No label, publisher, agent, promoter or manager is going to be enthusiastic about signing a diva. Work hard, perform harder and hopefully it will pay off.  

In all aspects of the industry that we’ve looked at so far, the artist can be exploited and unfortunately it is the same in the live scene. A lot of the time artists are expected to promote their own shows and sometimes the venues and promoters think more of the money than the music. In this case, an alternative could be to organize your own shows. This would mean a lot more work but the benefits could be a lot more rewarding. Setting up your own shows means you can offer real value for money. You can host the event wherever it suits you and can control the artistic and visual experience. If you can get a loyal team to help with promotion and setting up you could host a brilliant show. Remember though, that setting up your own show can be expensive and there are licensing issues to consider from both PRS and the local council.

What are promoters and how important are they to the live scene? A promoter is a person or company hired on contract by entertainment venues to promote an event such as a sports match or concert. Promoters are usually paid an agreed fee or a royalty (cut). The royalty is usually a percentage of the admission fees and/or food and drink sales. In the case of smaller venues, it’s typical for the promoter to earn the admission fees while the venue takes the food and drinks revenue. Promoters are vitally important and they can be the difference between a successful event or a failure. They need to have an understanding of what people want to here and match venue to artist. Good promotion companies can build a strong reputation such as The Barfly Group who are based in London. Nowadays, the economy has left the general public with less money to spend on going out. Good promoters will know to place events towards the end of the month (payday) and in late Spring as the weather gets better. Promotion has also expanded into social networking and can take advantage of being able to access a wider audience. Promoters need to keep a close relationship with everyone; Artists, Managers, Booking Agents, Record Labels and the Venue. If a show is well attended and enjoyed, everyone’s status is increased.

Now we know about promoters, it’s important to also know about booking agents. Booking agent’s work for the artist and it is their role to organize and plan the ‘live side’ of the artists career. Their role is crucial to building a growth and progression of live events that co-ordinate with the release of the artists recorded work. For example, it’s incredible to see how the band Biffy Clyro have played at Reading and Leeds festival an amazing 5 times, working their way up the bill until they eventually headlined in 2012. Booking agents book tours, negotiate fees and get the best billing for their acts. They should always book a contract that can include rider requests, confirmed fees and percentage splits over sales figures. Booking agents will secure deposits from promoters when securing tour dates. These deposits will be 50% of the fees and if the show is cancelled it will be paid to the artist for compensation. Many of the most talented booking agents have come from being promoters so they know what’s needed to make a show work. Booking agents are paid on commission, similarly to managers, however they are only paid based on the income generated from live performance fees. They tend to only work with signed acts because, as we said earlier, unsigned acts usually book their own gigs. However, they are always on the look out for new talent. A booking agent should be the first target for any new artist as finding a good one will encourage industry interest and lead to bigger exposure. Building a strong live following can speed the path to success. Just look at System of a Down, Arctic Monkeys, Frank Turner, Disclosure and Slipknot.

Without a doubt, the most enjoyable and exhausting aspect of the live scene is touring. As a new artist there are two ways to go; either organizing a tour of different venues or supporting a more established artist on their tour. If you choose to set up your own tour, you can start building a following in many different locations. You have more control as an artist and if you can establish a touring circuit without money from a label and it could become a good source of income. However, there are costs to consider such as; where to stay, transport to venues, equipment required and staff needed. As we mentioned earlier, this can’t be done alone and having a good sound engineer is very important. In order to make your own tour work you should contact promoters and send demos to them. Club nights are also a good way to pull in a large crowd and teaming up with other artists in different areas can help promotion.

If you feel this is too much work you could try supporting a bigger artist on their tour. How would you begin going about that? This is a ‘people industry’ so as a new artist build up your contacts. Attend shows regularly and try to speak to the performing artists or their management. Find an artist who you think will like your music and send the booking agent a demo. Some tour support acts are decided by agents, managers and record companies but more and more artists choose who will tour with them. Supporting a larger act on tour can mean brilliant exposure for an upcoming act. Some of my favourite bands such as Neck Deep, All Time Low, Pvris and Twin Atlantic, I discovered by hearing them supporting other acts.

So, in conclusion, get yourself out there; you never know who is watching. Take time to plan your live shows, engage the audience and make it fun. A&R representatives, promoters and booking agents all attend local music venues and if you can attract one to support you it can catapult your career. Good luck!

Artist Managment

We hear about artist management all the time but do you really know what their roles are and why they are so important? Hopefully, by the end of this post, you will. The relationship you have with a manager is probably the closest in the music industry. Managers are there to guide, advise and take control over business affairs. Finding a good manager can take an artist from being an underground talent to worldwide stardom; such as Brian Epstein (The Beatles), Simon Fuller (The Spice Girls), Malcolm McClaren (Sex Pistols) and Paul Rosenberg (Eminem).

A key thing to remember is that as an artist you employ your manager, not the other way round. They are employed as your representative for the business side and their jobs can include bookkeeping, organizing bills and contracts. It is also their responsibility to find, and negotiate, the best business deals for their artist. As their representative, a manager should always put their artist first. For example, if a record company offers a small advance but higher funding for promotion the manager should advise the artist to take it. It would be preferable for the manager if there were a higher advance so that he could commission more money but he should always put the artist first expecting bigger rewards at a later stage. This will become clearer later on when we look at how managers are paid.

However, when it comes to managers, it isn’t all about business. Many management companies play the role of assistants to the artists and may have a close involvement in daily activities. These jobs might include paying bills, sorting shopping and even buying birthday presents. The relationship formed with a manager can be almost like a marriage so it is imperative that you get along. If the relationship does turn sour it’s dealt with in a slightly different way than other music industry disputes. Courts usually don’t insist that artist and managers must continue working together. This differs from many record label disputes as we’ve seen recently with ‘Kesha’. However, it’s common for courts to enforce that the artist continues to pay commissions to the manager. So finding someone you can work closely with is vitally important and we’ll examine what to look for in a manager, in a bit.

How are managers paid? Managers are usually paid differently than record labels and publishers. They are paid a commission on the gross sums that an artist is paid. As the manager is an employee of the artist, and is hopefully working to get them the best opportunities, they are paid a commission of what the artist earns. The standard rate in the UK is 20% but always remember every contract is different so these things can be negotiated. If you change managers it’s common for the new one to a receive commission of 15% as the previous manager will still be taking their 5%. This is known as an ‘override’ and is in place because the previous manager, usually, will have been the one who brought the artist their first success. Managers are only allowed to commission money from certain activities and not from others. It’s vital to know these so if you choose to employ a manager you don’t get taken advantage of.

What managers CAN commission money from:

• Record Company advances and royalties
• Publishing Company advances and royalties
• Merchandising Company advances and royalties
• PRS and MCPS payments (that go to the artist)
• Appearance Fees for example; Film, TV, Live Shows
• Creative Fees for example; books and articles

What managers CAN’T commission money from:

• Recording Budgets paid by a Record Company
• Touring Budgets paid by a Record Company
• Merchandise Budgets paid by a Merchandise Company
• Tax Repayments

Managers do not usually invest in the artist. They are employees after all and they will expect to get back the costs made on activities such as phone calls, transport, meals, software and promotional activities. It is important to consider that no matter what level of fame you reach you look after your own money. A successful relationship can crumble easily over money. Managers often prefer not to have direct access to the artist’s money so that they are not vulnerable to being accused of mishandling funds. A clever idea would be to set out all duties, tasks, payments and territories early on so these problems don’t arise. You could also set an amount a manager can spend per month and should an expense supersede this, the artist can be contacted.

There are so many managers out there, what am I looking for? Well it’s simple really, you’re looking for someone you can work well with and that will represent you professionally and work hard for you. It’s important to have vigorous interviews in order to find out whether the relationship is going to work. In many cases managers and artists start their business with a trial period in order to see if they can work well together. If you are thinking about finding a manager here are some important questions to consider finding out the answers to.

• How experienced are they?
• How successful have they been?
• How long have they worked in the industry and in what roles?
• What is their reputation?
• What are their strengths?
• Do they focus more on the business or the creative side?
• Are they currently working with any other artists? If so how many? (You want a manager that has time to focus on your career)
• Where are they based?
• How much do they know about you as an artist?
• What contacts do they have?
• Do they have experience of the industry outside the UK (preferably with good contacts in America)
• How often would the contact be between artist and manager?

If you take all of these questions into account and you are able to find answers that satisfy you, and you feel you could work well together, then you may just have found the winning formula. Artist management is one of the most important roles within the music industry and finding the right partnership can lead to a long and extremely rewarding relationship.

Music Publishers

Most people know about record labels, they’ve heard about managers but very few can identify what a publisher does. Their role in the industry is incredibly important so it’s vital to know about it. Publishers don’t release records or have a relationship with the public but they are, by far, the most lucrative area of the industry for creative people. Over the course of this blog I will explain what a publisher is meant to do and how it is possible to survive without them. We will also look at 3 fundamental aspects of the music industry; Copyright, Piracy and Royalties. 

To understand the importance of publishing, we need to first look at copyright. Copyright is a fundamental part of the music industry and without it the entire business would fall apart. It has been around for hundreds of years and started with the copyright of books in the early 1700’s. It meant that people at the time, who were uneducated, were able to access written work and learn from it without the writers being exploited. The government were able to make money from the distribution and many people could finally have access to books, sheet music and other literature. Thus, copyright had officially begun and has stayed vital to this day. In every music recording you’ve ever heard, there are two types of copyright. These are the copyright that exists in the recording and the copyright that exists in the composition. Copyright is simply the rights granted to the creator of an original work. As long as you have the idea for a piece of music, recorded in some hard form, you have copyright to that idea. That form can be written, filmed, recorded etc. It is your right to distribute and adapt it in whatever way you see fit. In order to prove your copyright, it is best to have your ideas recorded down in many forms and to license them. There are regular court cases over copyright infringement; so to stop it happening to you, make sure you’re covered!

So what are music publishers and how do they relate? A publisher collects the money due to a songwriter for the use of their music compositions. They are only interested in the copyright found in the compositions. They don’t sign recording artists, they don’t make records, remixes or shoot videos. That’s down to record labels, as we spoke about in the previous post, and they are interested in the copyright in the recordings. Publishers sign writers and collect the money generated by the use of their songs. Good publishers can assist in getting you a record deal and can also help to get your compositions into adverts, movies and TV, where there is a lot of money to be made. These are known as synchronization deals. Publishers usually pay an advance to the writer; half when they sign the deal and half when they have fulfilled their guarantee, and will then exploit the composition for a period of time, which can vary from a couple of years to many decades. As a side note to remember, the word exploit in the music industry doesn’t have negative connotations it’s a legal term that means to make full use of.

There’s money to be made in many outlet streams as a songwriter such as when songs are sold to the public, played on the radio, performed live, used in adverts and heard in TV and film. These are known as royalties. A royalty is simply money paid to a writer and artist from the sale of songs and recordings. For example, every time you click to listen to a song on Spotify (as a premium member) the recording artist and songwriter earns a royalty. Obviously this money is split if the writer / artist has a publishing and record deal. Typically an artist will get 75% of the money made with a publishing deal. With a record label you’re your likely to get 15% of the royalties made. As I’m sure you might have noticed, there is a lot of money in song writing and even more if you are both writer and artist. For example when Ellie Goulding covered and released Elton John’s ‘Your Song’ he earned a compositional royalty whilst still making money on his original version of the song. There are many songwriters whose names you’ve never heard of and whose faces you wouldn’t recognize if you walked past them on the street but they are behind acts such as Beyonce, Rihanna and One Direction and they are making millions. 

Is it possible for writers to make money without using publishers? Yes it is, just as it’s possible for artists to become successful without a major record label, there are ways songwriters can earn royalties without going through a publisher. The simplest way is for them to join societies that will pay them directly. The biggest of these is PRS for music, which stands for Performing Rights Society. There are many PRO’s (performing rights organizations) throughout the world but PRS is the UK’s society. They collect money due to a composer for the performance of their music. Every venue or broadcaster that uses music in a pub, restaurant, shop, radio station etc must have a PRS license in order to play music. They pay PRS a fee (usually based on how many people are likely to hear the music) and in turn PRS use that money to pay composers. Should you have a publishing deal as well, PRS will split the money 50/50 between you and your publisher. Then, depending on the publishing contract you hold, the money can be worked out accordingly. PRS play the role of the police for your music and anyone can join them for a one off fee of £50.00. You can upload your compositions to them and they will track when your songs are played and will pay you a royalty accordingly. As someone who has recently signed up to them, I would highly recommend them. They are easy to deal with, help prove copyright and work on your side as a songwriter. They also have a side organization, called MCPS, which stands for Mechanical Copyright Protection Society. They collect royalties when mechanical copies are made such as vinyl, CD’s and, nowadays, downloads. Remember though that whilst these are very viable options for songwriters they are merely collection societies they don’t push your music whereas good publishers will. 

Having your songs licensed with a publisher or a PRO can help you prove your copyright and stop it from being infringed but can it help with piracy? Well, unfortunately, the short answer is no, not really. We hear about piracy so regularly that we’ve become desensitized to it. In fact 70% of online users don’t think there is anything wrong with piracy and around 67% of the worlds piracy is downloaded in the UK and the USA. So what is piracy? It’s simple, it's STEALING. Many millions are lost each year due to piracy and the common response we hear is that musicians make enough money for it not to be important. That may be true, but for those musicians starting out who spend thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours putting music together, piracy destroys the opportunity for success and royalties. So how do we get these sites taken down? We just need to educate people that it’s theft, just as if you broke into someone’s house and stole their instruments. We need to stop businesses from sponsoring the sites and keeping them running. We need to monitor the people using them; in Germany, if you pirate anything, you receive an instant fine of €2500. We all need to work together to get these websites closed down internationally and we all need to earn more so that people have the money to spend on art. Simple right? Ok, not really, but the least all you music lovers can do, is do your bit by supporting your passion and paying for the music you listen to. Whether that is downloading, buying CD’s or even paying Spotify, Tidal, Apple music membership etc. Remember the money doesn’t make it back to the artist if you don’t have a premium membership. If you don’t pay for your music, it's difficult to make the point that other people should buy the music you make one day. There will always be pirates in some form, for example  when Isohunt’s servers were taken down, it vanished for a few months and then appeared again with its servers on the island of Tonga because the licensing laws are weaker there. Crazy right?

So how would you go about getting a publisher? In a similar way to getting a manager and a record label, you need to find out what suits you. You need to ask important questions and receive answers that satisfy you. You need to make sure you’re not signing away your songs for a company to own them for years and not help you. 

Here are some questions you could ask a publisher:

How many songs am I obliged to write?

How do I get paid?

Can I write for another publisher while I’m signed? (Usually the answer is no they will have exclusivity)

Will you help me get a record deal?

Will you help me get synchronization deals?

What territory does the agreement cover?

Publishers can be an extremely useful and lucrative way of making a living as a songwriter but they can also make your life very difficult if you’re not careful. See Paul McCartney article. Remember you are the artist and without art the entire music business would disappear.

For all things music check out my website Eliot Ash

Record Labels

Record labels. What are they? Why do we need them? What types are there? How can they help us? Or are they just the devil for all you musicians out there? During this blog post I will hopefully be able to answer those questions for you, so that you can make an informed decision about whether they are the way to go. 

Record labels are split into two categories, major and indie. There are 3 major record labels; ‘Warner Music Group’, ‘Universal Music Group’ and ‘Sony Music’. We’ll examine these closer in a bit. An indie record label is any label that has no affiliation to these big 3. For clarification, it has nothing to do with indie music, it just means independent. For example ‘Hopeless Records’ are a big indie record label associated with pop punk music and ‘Warp Records’ specializes in EDM (electronic dance music). The 3 major labels do have many offshoots such as ‘Interscope’, ‘Island’, and ‘Geffen’ records but it’s important to remember that a label is only indie if it is completely independent from the big 3. 

Within a record label there are many key roles. Obviously, the focus on these roles varies between major and indie and we will examine this further later on. The key roles include; CEO, President, A&R Department, Product Manager, Business Affairs, Lawyers, Sales Team, PR, Radio Plugger, Marketing Manager and International Department. So as you can see, it takes a lot of people to keep the music business lucrative. In fact, it’s estimated that ‘Universal Music Group’ employs around 7000 people. Each of these roles is important but each has very different responsibilities. For example, the lawyers and business affairs team are there to keep an eye on the business side. It is the music business after all. It’s their job to monitor contracts and see that the company and its artist are getting the best deals. The team that deals most closely with the artist is the A&R team. A&R stands for artists and repertoire and their team may include scouts, assistants and a head of department.  It is the role of the A&R team to liaise with the artists. They oversee the creative process of making and marketing a record and can even be there to help guide the artist through. The A&R team also scouts new talent and sometimes puts their job on the line over recommendations of who should be signed. 

Once an artist has completed a record, and it's time for release, there are many crucial jobs within a label to make sure the sales come pouring in. These include product, sales, marketing and PR departments and radio pluggers. The product department is responsible for booking the pressing plants to manufacture the physical product and coordinating artwork. The marketing team is employed to look after promotional activity and the sales department is in charge of selling the product to different retailers. Usually, that would mean various shops but nowadays there are many more outlet streams for people to absorb music, so it's key for people in the sales department to exploit this. The PR department manages the artist’s relationship with the wider media including newspapers, magazines, websites and blogs. A radio or TV plugger has a similar role to a PR person, except that they deal with media specifically in radio and TV and try to get coverage for the artist in those media. It’s important for these departments to have good contacts.

What are the differences between major and indie labels? As I’m sure you might have guessed, the main difference between the two is funding. This, therefore, means it’s practically impossible for an indie label to employ enough people for each of the roles we’ve spoken about above. For example, the CEO of ‘Warner Music Group’ Stephen Cooper, who alone makes nearly 5 million dollars a year, is heavily involved in the financial side of running the label but doesn’t spend a great deal of time with the artists and will delegate that to the A&R team. At an indie label there may only be a few members in an A&R department and it is quite common for artists to be in regular contact with the CEO and managing directors.  The difference in size of these corporations means that at an indie label some roles may be encapsulated by a couple of people. For example, one or two people might be running PR, radio plugging and marketing. This lack of funds can also mean that sometimes indie labels aren’t able to take an artist to the next step if they become successful. For example, when ‘Adele’ released the album ‘21’ she was signed to indie record label ‘XL Recordings’ but in order for the PR, marketing, plugging, sales and international department to match the success of the album she had to sign with ‘Beggars Group’ (owned by Sony) to take full advantage of the records success. It is for these connections and reputation that the major labels control 80% of the music industry. 

So, if major labels have it all why would you want to go with an indie? Well I, like I’m sure most of you, initially couldn’t see the appeal of an indie label. After all, ‘Ed Sheeran’, ‘Taylor Swift’, ‘Green Day’, ‘Eminem’, ‘Avicii’, ‘One Direction’, ‘Beyonce’, ‘Rihanna’ etc are all signed to major labels. However, they have some extremely positive aspects that make them quite an attractive prospect. Due to the limited finance, they choose the acts they represent carefully and, as we mentioned earlier, indie labels tend to specialize in certain types of music. This means they have a personal affiliation with their acts and are passionate about seeing them succeed. Major labels such as ‘Universal’ have acts as vast as ‘Metallica’ and ‘Lil Wayne’. Indie labels are able to give the time and attention to artists that majors can’t and often a strong relationship is built up with many acts staying with the same label for their entire career. For example, British rock band ‘Arctic Monkeys’ were signed by indie record label ‘Domino’ in 2005. With the labels help, the bands first album ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ became the fastest selling debut album in British music history. Since then the band have produced another 4 massive albums with the same label and have had hits worldwide. Other artists who have had successful careers with indie labels are ‘Franz Ferdinand’, ‘The Prodigy’, ‘Depeche Mode’, ‘Madness’, ‘The Libertines’, ‘The Smiths’, ‘Motorhead’ and ‘Dizzee Rascal’. 

Another difference between major and indie record labels is the contracts they offer. The word contract can strike fear into most upcoming musicians so it’s crucial to know what to expect from them. It’s true that many artists such as ‘Florence and the Machine’, ‘Kesha’ and ‘30 Second to Mars’ have got into contract difficulties. At a major record label you will usually be given something called an advance. This is basically a wage paid to you to live and can be many thousands. It is typical at a major label for them to choose the producer working on the album, what songs will be on the record and be jointly responsible over the artistic control. They have a major reputation to uphold and will only release music they believe will be a success. Many artists have been signed to major labels and dropped without music ever being released. In most of their contracts they will own the music you make with them, so remember, if a major drops you they still own your music. In order to make their money back as well they tend to take around 85% of the royalties made. We will look at royalties in greater detail in another blog.  However, it is not all doom and gloom. It’s important to remember that with one of these three names behind you many stars have reached worldwide acclaim. These companies have incredible contacts, wealth and talent that can propel your career. 

Indie label contracts are slightly different to major’s. The advance they give is obviously nowhere near as much but as a musician you have more artistic control. As we said earlier, these companies work closely with the artist and you will have a say in both how the album is recorded and marketed. As the advance is less, and the label has less to recoup, you are also more likely to receive higher royalties. In the case of moving on from an indie label it is very common for artists to keep the entitlement to all their work. Indie record labels are also much easier to negotiate with at the contract stage whereas there are many lawyers to debate with at a major record label.

So why should you want a record label at all? You could form your own, plenty have. It’s about finding one that works for you, where you don’t feel taken advantage of and that will help you get to where you want to be. For me personally I’m aiming for an indie label such as ‘Hopeless’ or ‘Cooking Vinyl’ as the work they do suits me as a musician. But every artist has different needs and every person in the industry is looking for something different out of it. So in order to take full advantage of the opportunities a record labels can offer you, it’s vital to research the one that suits your needs best. 

For all things music check out my website Eliot Ash