keepers of the cultural choice
Posted by popkitchen | Filed under music
balkan beat music conference
Let’s get one thing clear – there is no such thing as music industry in Serbia. That is not to say that there are no bands, there are many working to get their music released in a traditional way or that there is not a scene, but the revenue from sale of music is miniscule. Though I was a kid in the times prior to the breakdown of former Yugoslavia, from what we are being told the story goes like this – Tito’s Yugoslavia was the most Western out of all Communist countries (it was on the better side of the iron curtain), thus young people were looking up to Anglo-American pop culture as a means of emancipation. And from this perspective we can claim that Yugoslavia had a pretty vibrant popular culture – both in terms of mass taste, as well as fringe stuff – I wrote already about black wave cinema of the late sixties/early seventies, also new wave music from the 80’s needs to be mentioned, as a perfect example of capturing the zeitgeist.
With the war, the sale of licensed music stopped, while the local music scene struggled for survival. I remember buying bootleg CDs as a teenager, called „Bulgarian CDs“, named after a country in which they are produced. Whole of my generation lost a habit of buying music, so when torrents and file sharing software appeared, it basically fitted into our worldview – finally we had the means for what we practiced, or at least wanted to, all along.
On one hand, it sucks. On the other, if there were not for a pirate scene in the 1990’s, would there ever be a festival like EXIT, which gathers around 100.000 people every year.
Sorry for the long intro. But, I needed to get some things out of the way, so I could tell you that the perspectives of people working in music industry in Britain and Serbia are totally opposite. Everything that we could gather from this conference was just interesting bits of information. Regarding this aspect, one of the most remarkable guests was John Dyer, Director at Domino Records. I got to chance to interview him for Popboks webzine and he was a joy to talk to. Even during the conference, John was informative, jovial, down-to-earth. That is to say, when he talks about online marketing, he is talking about decisions that are common sense for the bands that want promotion, not selling us quips about Facebook/MySpace/Twitter miracles. More importantly, Dyer works at Domino, which is one of the biggest independent labels around. With roster of artists such as Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Animal Collective, Bonnie Prince Billy they are probably the most relevant label around.
john dyer
I spoke to Dyer about the future of independent labels, new ways of consuming music, bands that could get us out of recession, as well as personal influences. Dyer is primarily music fan, then music executive: he is witty and unpretentious.
Popboks kindly allowed me to translate the article into English.
POPBOKS: Talk of the division on independent and major labels was present here today. Same complaints are heard all over the world. What does someone, working for an indi label, thinks about that?
If I was in that room, I would gather some money to hire someone to make a fifth major label. A company to do the negotiating.
P: Something like an aggregator?
Yes. Like an aggregator.
P: But would Domino participate in that?
Domino could provide advice, but we have to run our own business. The question is why would we do it? But, if people really wanted to do something, they need to work on that, otherwise the old problem would be repeated all over again. Which goes back to the question – do you want to have a proper music industry or to just end up on the major?
P: Do you think that the recording industry came full circle, from the single, LP, then the CD, to the single again?
That’s true. That is the way people reinvent things. When we talk about people’s desires, once they like the artist, they want to hear the whole album. At this moment, people have the choice to buy only the single. iTunes is good. They deliver what they promise. It is hard to get them to do extra for you. Decision-making people in iTunes are actually making music decisions – of course, when you have a big name, they push it, as they know it needs to sell a lot. This is valid for the UK. Where it stops being relevant is countries, for example, in South Europe or Scandinavia, because iTunes haven’t bothered building country by country store, after all it is a scale business.
P: In terms of streaming and services like MySpace or Last f.m., can a label refuse to allow the songs or albums for streaming? And if you do allow, how does that affect you?
So far, we have been able to control the conversation. But Last f.m. is not a streaming service, they are hiding behind the story that they are Internet radio, thus they are not legitimate streaming service. On the other hand, you need to know how streaming services work, people need to listen to you, repetitively. In a way, they are rewarding people with large catalogues. If you represent tiny 1% of the market, which means something in the physical market, like a position on the charts, in streaming services it just drives the price down, against all music available. I think it is a pretty dull experience, for a consumer. It is not good for a young culture.
P: Last year the biggest story in the recording industry was merging of functions of a publisher and concert organizer, exemplified by the contract between Madonna and Live Nation. Is that a viable option for the future?
Something like that can work in the case of big pop stars. Concerning alternative music, it is hard as it is. You can not enter other people’s territory, which is already small. Promoters hate managers, managers hate records labels, it is all a vicious circle. We can only do what we do best and that is the issuing of albums. If you listened what the IT companies were saying and their thing is to say that they know how things work, right now there wouldn’t be any record labels left. But that is simply not true.
What we can do for a band is to help them build their own infrastructure. Like a website. For example, 30% of all sales of Domino go through websites of the bands.
P: How do you see the role of independent labels during the time of recession? Now you need a new band, a hit, to drive you through the recession.
Yes, we do. Always. If you trace the history of independent record labels, they had a significant hit in the first ten record releases. Factory had Joy Division, New Order, then they put a lot records until Happy Mondays came along. Then Rough Trade, they had bands like Scritti Politti, Stiff Little Fingers, Aztec Camera, then there was a break before The Smiths. Mute had Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure among its first releases. Music label lovers - they are still putting out making music that major labels are not interested in. This way bigger artists are subsidizing smaller artists. A taste has a place in the decision making. In this business, we are not interested in bringing the quarterly increased profits to the shareholders. Sure, we want to make money. However, we can turn off the tap and say that we pushed this artist too far, we don’t want to over saturate the market.
Your question is – why is it important that independent labels exist, right? People quite like choice. Even people who like Britney Spears, they would be disturbed if that was the only thing available. Because in few years time, they can look at something and say “my brother quite likes that’ or “my sister likes it, I am glad it exists”. Independent labels represent cultural choice.
P: What is the next big thing for Domino Records?
In America, we have an artist called Dirty Projectors. He comes from the same space like Vampire Weekend. He sits in Brooklyn and he is like a band’s band, he is the guy who gave the confidence to all these other bands to get involved in music. His stuff is pretty leftfield, but I believe that we can bring it to a higher level of consciousness and let Serbia download it by the thousands and not pay us (laughs).
P: You mentioned Factory Records, I read what you wrote when Tony Wilson died. Does Domino model itself to a label like Factory?
I was quite fond of him, as a friend. But, I would never have signed for his record label, the man was chaotic. Our owner, Lawrence Bell is admiring Chris Blackwell at Island, that is a really good touchstone. Of course, we are looking up to Factory, Rough Trade, Creation, Mute, today Beggars Banquet. We look at the lessons that they have had and we try to avoid the bad things. There are quite a few things at Factory that I would avoid. But Tony’s PR, his anti-culture passion, his arty Situationist experiments, these bands would not have come to Factory, if he was different. They had incredible commitment and there are not many people, who don’t see money as the prime objective. This is what we are trying to do, build services around our artists.
Tags: balkanbeat music conference, belgrade, domino records, john dyer, Last.fm, online music, popboks
May 17th, 2009 at 3:15 am
cool post, jele. i listen to indie/new music podcasts and i must say i have a lot of respect for artists who put out their music on CC licenses for everyone to listen to. of course, most big names (and those in this post are already pretty big) wouldn’t really go for free, but their myspace pages and websites have enough audio content to tickle any music lover’s fancy. the internet is changing the way music is distributed, but does not kill it.