8 takeaways from Music Biz 2016

By Emmanuel Legrand


The Music Biz 2016 convention, which took place May 16-18, was held for the second year in a (music) row in Nashville. The event is organised by the Music Business Association, which regroups companies from the physical retail sector as well as digital platforms, saw a rise in attendance by 15% to almost 1,500 participants from nearly 600 different companies and organisations, and with 200 of which speaking at the various sessions. Most of the sessions focused on data and on the state of the business. And since it was in Nashville, there were also some discussions about music and songwriting.


1 – It's the data, stupid! (and you'd better know the acronyms)

Data is sexy! Just ask the participants to Music Biz 2016's “Metadata Summit” attended by

A busy Metadata Summit

several hundred people. As Bill Wilson, Music Biz's VP, Digital Strategy & Business Development, noted it is a stark change from the first Summit, which gathered 12 people in a room is San Diego in 2009. Since then the Metadata Summit has become a major staple in Music Biz's agenda because, as Wilson puts it, “We have a lot of cultural procedural and technology challenges in our business.” And most of these challenges are data-related. There are data issues at the point of creation (what are the identifiers for the compositions and the recordings, as well as a whole sub-set of data standards) and there are data issues at the point of identification of the works (watermarking, fingerprinting, etc) and matching them with the appropriate rights holders. Paul Jessop, Founder & Director of County Analytics, made a comprehensive overview of the “acronym salad” that rights holders have to deal with, including ISRC (recording), ISWC (compositions), ISNI (name identifier), ORCID (open researcher and contributor ID), ISLI (link identifier), GTIN (bar-code) and DOI (digital object identifier), to name but a few. Add to that a series of standards to exchange digital files that the Digital Data Exchange (DDEX) is working on and you have a seriously complex data matrix. As Mark Isherwood, who runs the Secretariat of DDEX, put it, there are “too many versions of each standard, they are too complex, documentation is too abstract and there are inconsistent implementations,” which give s a sense of the task ahead.

2 – Even more data issues... (ever heard of GIGO?)

At every step of the writing and recording process and then at the distribution point, data is required. The key to make all this volume of data useful is accuracy and reliability, which can be summed up by yet another acronym, GIGO or Garbage In Garbage Out. Bad metadata means bad royalties tracking and in the end, no money flowing back to rights holders. Michael McCarty, Chief Membership & Business Development Office and Canada's society SOCAN highlighted the challenges faced by rights holders and PROs when he said that Canadian rapper Drake has worked with no less than 68 co-writers over the years, so data has to include them, their publishers, as well as the splits between each co-writer. “Dealing with the workflow is the most complex part,” said McCarthy. Many different solutions were discussed, from the use of workflow enabler like SongSplits to the use of a registry like the one built by Auddly. In the end, good metadata is of the responsibility of the rights holders, and everyone should contribute, was the consensus. Oh, we did not even talk about cue sheets, but that's a mess!

3 – PROs need to adapt to the digital world

The digital revolution has affected all the payers in the food chain, but none more so than rights holders and performance rights societies (PRO). Joe Conyers, General Manager of Songtrust and VP, Technology at Downtown Music Publishing, said the new age is one of “dealing with much more data than ever and in a much more globalised space” and this has forced PROs to changed their way of doing things from membership organisations to services organisations. Jeff King, COO of Canadian rights society SOCAN, agreed that the work of rights holders and PROs has been totally transformed by the arrival of digital platforms, with their billion of micro-transactions. Making sure that the right amount of royalties are collected for the right songs is the biggest challenge faced by rights holders. “PROs are tracking billion and billion of performances,” said King. Hence the need to have data standards that work, and systems that can deal with such volumes. “There are new expectations, because it's digital, everything can be tracked granularly,” said King. “And a big part is transparency. Who did what when and where is my dollar.” There are 50 million tracks commercially released in the world today said King and the role of PROs is to be able to match the use of all of them. A good PRO, he said, can match up to 95%. Hence SOCAN's acquisition the week before Music Biz of data platform MediaNet, which is “a is a treasure trove of data which will help SOCAN diversify and move faster.”

4 – Nashville is still the Music City, but...

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry with Music Biz Jim Donio

“Music is an integral part of Nashville’s DNA,” said Music City's Mayor Megan Barry. Despite a shrinking Music Row, the city still boasts one of the highest concentration of songwriters, musicians, producers, studios, music publishing companies and labels is the USA and probably anywhere else in the world. However, it has become harder for songwriters to make a living from songwriting, according to Nashville-based Lynn Morrow, from law firm Adams & Reese. “There is now an 80% decline in songwriters capable of living from this craft,” she said. What has also changed, according to John Ozier, GM, Nashville Creative at music publishing house olé, “five writers control about half of the charts in country” and “producers are getting hugely important in Nashville.” And it is not about country music anymore. A lot of pop songs now originate from Nashville too. More non-country publishers set boutique in Nashville and Sony/ATV recently grabbed headlines because it was the first major publisher on Music Row to have a specific A&R person to focus on songwriters outside of the country realm. Trent Dabbs or Meghan Trainor have penned pop hits recently. Ree Buchanan, founder of independent boutique publishing Wrensong, said what has changed in Nashville as elsewhere is the timeline to develop new talent. “The labels are not doing development any more; they are waiting for us to develop the writer artist. They look at sales and streaming and pick artists that we develop,” she said. And being patient can sometimes pay dividends. Olé's Ozier said that in 2011 his company acquired a catalogue with a song named 'Fire Away' co-written by in 2008 by Danny Green and “a guy named Chris Stapleton.” The song eventually made it onto Stapleton’s album Traveller album, which sold more than one million copies.

5 – If streaming is going even stronger, traditional formats are down, except... (see below)

The ongoing rise of audio streaming consumption in the US in 2015 does not show signs of slowing down in 2016, according to new statistics unveiled by Nielsen in Nashville during the Music Biz 2016 convention. While overall on-demand weekly streaming volume has increased by 203% in just two years, the volume of on-demand streaming rose to 149.8 billion during the first 19 weeks of the year, up 61.7% from the same period on 2015. Audio streaming was driving the growth and accounted for 53.3% of that volume at 79.8 billion streams, up 96.2% compared to the same period of 2015, while video streams reached 70 billion up 34.7%. "Audio streaming share surpassed video in January and hasn't stopped growing," noted David Bakula, SVP, Product Leadership and Analytics for Music, at Nielsen. Russ Crupnick, Managing Partner at research company MusicWatch, concurred with Bakula that streaming was the most active segment in music consumption. He predicted that by the end of 2016 some 175 million Americans would have listened to music via streaming for at least an hour and that the total listening share would be up 10% (Crupnick also predicted that the drop in download sales will happen faster than the drop in CD sales). Comparing the first 19 weeks of 2015 with the same period of 2015, Bakula noted that physical albums were down 9.9%, digital albums down 17.8% (combined down 13.5% at 75 million units) while digital tracks sales were down 23.7% at 303.6 million units. The overall volume was up 9% for the start of the year, with streaming growth offsetting sales.

6 – Vinyl is the industry’s “Energizer Bunny”

That's how Music Biz President Jim Donio described the state of vinyl sales in the US. The surge of vinyl has indeed been one of the happy news for the music industry. Nielsen's Bakula said that during the first 19 weeks of 2016, Nielsen tracked 4.7 million vinyl album sales, up 11.5% compared to the same period of 2015, more than during the whole year of 2012. In 2006, 900,000 vinyls were sold and each year since has experienced a year-on-year growth culminating with 11.9 million sales in 2015. Similarly, the share of vinyl compared to total physical album sales grew from 1.8% in 2011 to 9.0% in 2015. The main genres sold on vinyl are rock (62%), R&B/hip hop (9%), pop (6%), dance/electronic (4%), jazz (3%), country (2%) and the rest (8%). In 2015, the top vinyl sellers in the US were Adele's 25 (115,500 units), Taylor Swift's 1989 (73,800), Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon (50,000), the Beatles' Abbey Road (49,800), Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue (49,000), Arctic Monkeys' AM (48,500), Sufjan Stevens' Carrie & Lowell (44,900), Alabama Shakes' Sound & Color (44,600), Hozier's eponymous album (43,100) and the soundtrack to Guardians Of The Galaxy (43,000). In the case of catalogue albums, vinyls represented from 50% to 70% of the total physical album sales.

7 – Exclusives? Consumers are not interested...

Or so it seems, if we heard correctly the figures that Russ Crupnick, Managing Partner at research company MusicWatch, unveiled at Music Biz 2016. When asked “what do you want from streaming?” consumers answered: first and foremost the free option to listen to music. Exclusives only come at number 12 in their wish list. “It is not their No.1 priority to get exclusives,” said Crupnick, who added that it is not even the best advertisement for services who have the exclusives. During a recent market research, consumers were asked if they knew the various streaming sites picking from an existing list; and guess what, Tidal, home to exclusives from Kanye West and Beyoncé, could only be identified by... 9% of the respondents. “So with all this activity, 91% do not know what Tidal is. They probably still think it is a detergent,” joked Crupnick. “We have to start questioning exclusives.” He added that what people listen to on on-demand services is catalogue (66%), recent music (27%), new releases (5%). “So to think that a new song will change at how we look at on-demand is not accurate,” he said.

8 – And in the end Music Biz is happy

Artist of the Year winners Little Big Town with Donio

The success of an event Music Biz 2016 rests in the hands of the team around Jim Donio who has been in charge of the organisation since 2004. At its peak, the convention by what was then known as NARM could attract several thousand people. The event has been in a re-building mode for the past few years with dividends showing this year. For the second year in a row, the conference was in Nashville and attracted 1,500 people, up from 1,300 last year (and 900 in 2013). Donio is keen to say that there has been a Nashville effect. “The fact that Music Biz was coming to Music City was a no brainer,” Donio says, adding that bring in Nashville introduce Music Biz to a community to which it was largely unknown but who understood the value of hosting such event in the city, and many took part in it.
“Our attendance grew 40% in two years and the reasons for that are multifold,” Donio says. “First, the business continues to pivot and there are new entrants to the community; secondly, as a business there are lots of issues and we continue to be that singular nexus of content and commerce where the debates can take place; and now we are in Nashville which is a very creative city and the third piece of the triangle. There is no industry quite like that in the US.”
Donio says that the relevance his organisation is highlighted by the recent arrival of online radio platform Pandora among Music Biz members, which followed that of Spotify and reflects the changes in the business. “Pandora joining us was a milestone for us in terms of how we've changed,” says Donio. “We are transitioning from a physical market to an access model and we will do so for the foreseeable future. We have been doing this for 30 years. We will never stop changing and we need reflect the times and what is important for our members. [With the conference] we capture a moment in time and it won't change.”
So will it be next year in Nashville too? “We haven't signed a contract yet, but we are looking very seriously into it,” responds Donio. 


10 quotes from Music Biz 2016

"Nashville you have been so good to us. We are blessed to work with so many great songwriters.”
Karen Fairchild from the band Little Big Town, after receiving the Music Biz Artist of the Year Award. 

"We are lucky to have the creative class in Nashville.”
Nashville Mayor Megan Barry who seemed more excited at the prospect of turning Nashville into a hub for start-ups. 

"It is difficult now for songwriters to make a living in the city of songwriters.”
Nashville-based lawyer Lynn Morrow who did not get the memo from the mayor. 

“Songwriters? It's about work ethics: Do they want to work harder than me?”
Boutique music publisher Ree Buchanan who is a hard working woman. 

"A lot of people want to have babies, write songs and write songs, but very few people want to raise babies.”
John Pisciotta, Founder /Managing Partner of MusicSynk/LoudLab Ventures, who likes raising babies. 

"More money flowing in the music eco-system, whichever pocket it goes to, is a good thing." Nashville-based lawyer Steve Bogard, who is not peaky about where the dollars go. 

"Data is key to all. We don't know what we don't know, and what we don't know we can't pay.”
Scott Jungmichel from rights society SESAC, who does a Rumsfeld. 

“It is really a digital world and we are still working in a vinyl industry. If we do not do something about it we will not have an industry anymore. The ecosystem needs to be updated for the digital world”
Jeff King, COO of Canadian performance rights society SOCAN, who does not seem to like vinyl. 

"You're lucky, I lost my voice. Thank you!”
Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen delivering the shortest acceptance message upon receiving. He's usually more talkative with his guitar.

Warner's Esposito and Music Biz's Donio

“All I ever wanted was a backstage, all-access pass.”
John Esposito, the recently promoted Chairman/CEO of Warner Music Nashville, upon receiving the Music Biz Presidential Award for Outstanding Executive Achievement, and who obviously has earned his all-access pass. 

Music Biz 2016 report: Audio streaming continues to grow in the US

Nielsen's Bakula

By Emmanuel Legrand  

The ongoing rise of audio streaming consumption in the US in 2015 does not show signs of slowing down in 2016, according to new statistics unveiled by Nielsen in Nashville during the Music Biz 2016 convention (May 16-18).  

While overall on-demand weekly streaming volume has increased by 203% in just two years, the volume of on-demand streaming rose to 149.8 billion during the first 19 weeks of the year, up 61.7% from the same period on 2015.   Audio streaming was driving the growth and accounted for 53.3% of that volume at 79.8 billion streams, up 96.2% compared to the same period of 2015, while video streams reached 70 billion up 34.7%.

"Audio streaming share surpassed video in January and hasn't stopped growing," noted David Bakula, SVP, Product Leadership and Analytics for Music, at Nielsen. Taking into consideration all the various formats, Bakula said that the industry in the US was in transition but still healthy. Comparing the first 19 weeks of 2015 with the same period of 2015, Bakula noted that physical albums were down 9.9%, digital albums down 17.8% (combined down 13.5% at 75 million units) while digital tracks sales were down 23.7% at 303.6 million units. The overall volume was up 9% for the start of the year, with streaming growth offsetting sales.

Bakula noted that audio overtook video streaming in January of 2016 and has continuously been growing since while video streaming share has been in decline. Even more so, the growth radio of audio streaming has been accelerating. Video streaming has seen a major slowdown. At the start of 2015, video streaming was experiencing year on year growth rate of 100-120%, the rate has started to decline in October 2015 to 50-60% before dropping to 20% at the end of April 2016.

Asked why the growth has been so significant, Bakula commented that the arrival of Apple Music in the middle of 2015 has boosted the streaming market and that other service operators like Spotify seem to be enjoying growth too. "We already had a rising tide situation last year with streaming, and when YouTube or Apple came with a new product, the whole tide has risen," said Bakula.

The music genres that fared the best in audio streaming were country, rock, dance/electronic, hip hop/R&B and pop, while Latin and children music did better in video streaming. Some music genres such as rock, classical and jazz tend to have a share of streaming from catalogue above 80%. When it comes to the biggest genres in streaming, rock takes the lead (28% of total streaming consumption), hip hop/R&B is "super hot" according to Bakula with the release since the beginning of the year of new material from A-level artist such as Kanye West, Beyoncé, Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar (20.9% of total activity), pop (18%), and country (9.8%). It is interesting to note that Classical and Jazz have more or less the same share in streaming that they had in the physical world, with 1.5% each.

In 2016, so far there have been 6 songs that have sold over 1 million units when for the same period in 2015, there were 17. The best selling song in 2016 is Flo Rida's My House with 1.7 million sales, which would have only have earned the track a No.8 position at this point last year (when the top selling track was Bruno Mars' Uptown Funk! with 4.4 million sales. Bakula noted that the top 200 songs "are down 30% compared to the same period last year."

Bakula also shed some light on the ongoing rise of vinyl sales. During the first 19 weeks of 2016, Nielsen tracked 4.7 million vinyl album sales, up 11.5% compared to the same period of 2015, more than during the whole year of 2012. In 2006, 900,000 vinyls were sold and each year since has experienced a year-on-year growth culminating with 11.9 million sales in 2015. Similarly, the share of vinyl compared to total physical album sales grew from 1.8% in 2011 to 5.9% in 2014 and 9.0% in 2015. Since the start of 2016, the share has risen to 11.2%. The main genres sold on vinyl are rock (62%), R&B/hip hop (9%), pop (6%), dance/electronic (4%), jazz (3%), country (2%) and the rest (8%).

In 2015, the top vinyl sellers were Adele's 25 (115,500 units), Taylor Swift's 1989 (73,800), Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon (50,000), the Beatles' Abbey Road (49,800), Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue (49,000), Arctic Monkeys' AM (48,500), Sufjan Stevens' Carrie & Lowell (44,900), Alabama Shakes' Sound & Color (44,600), Hozier's eponymous album (43,100) and the soundtrack to Guardians Of The Galaxy (43,000). In the case of catalogue albums, vinyls represented from 50% to 70% of the total physical album sales.

[Typed while listening to Bob Dylan's 'Nashville Skyline']

10 takeaways from Canadian Music Week

[An edited version of this story was published by Music Week]

By Emmanuel Legrand

The three days of Canadian Music Week's conference (May 4-7) in Toronto were packed with dozens of sessions covering wide the music sector, from A&R to live, syncs to music cities, streaming to royalties collections, copyright issues to creators visions. Here are a few takeaways from the conference.

 

IFPI's Moore

1 - The war on YouTube is open  

 

The tone was set by music industry leaders during the super session on 'The State Of The Global Industry' opening the 34th Canadian Music Week: It was open season on YouTube, responsible for the growing "value gap” (IFPI CEO Frances Moore) or “value grab” (Cary Sherman, CEO of the RIAA). Each leaders of recorded music trade organisations IFPI, RIAA (USA), BPI (UK), ARIA (Australia) and Music Canada hit at the Google-owned video streaming platform, accused of exploiting loopholes in the law to build a business on the back of creators with “safe harbours.” One who did not believe (no pun intended) that there is a value gap is Denis Ladegaillerie, Founder and CEO of Believe Digital, one of the world’s leading digital distribution company. “There’s no value gap for us,” he said. “YouTube represents 20% of our revenues. We have a staff of 60 focusing on video revenues. There is a value gap with majors because they do not know how to extract the best from YouTube.”  

 

Merlin's Caldas

2 - Streaming is No.1 

 

There was no doubt that streaming has impacted the music industry in 2015 like never before. In her keynote presentation, IFPI CEO Frances Moore, noted that the global 3.2% growth registered in 2015 owed a lot to streaming with streaming revenues offsetting the decline in physical sales and in digital downloads. Even markets that were slow to embrace streaming like Japan and Germany are catching up, which gave industry leaders present in Toronto for a cautious optimism. “We have had five years of consistent streaming growth,” said Cary Sherman, Chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), confirming that streaming revenues rose to $2.4 billion in 2015 from $1.9 million in 2014. “There is a lot of room for growth in the subscription market and that's good news for us,” said Sherman. In his keynote, Charles Caldas, the CEO of indie labels’ agency Merlin revealed that for 70% of its members, streaming is the main source of revenues. He indicated that in 2013, audio streaming represented $75 million for Merlin’s members, $130 million in 2014, $200 million in 2015 and he forecasted that in 2016, it would reach $275 million. Apple Music’s launch in the second half of 2015 made a difference. “The more people get exposed to services, the more they are embracing it,” said Caldas.  

 

3 - Canadian artists kick asses on the global stage 

Universal's Remedios

 

Many participants at CMW pointed out that Canada was a country "where the music industry is punching so much above its weight,” as IFPI’s Moore said. It produced three of the world’s ten most successful artists in 2015: Justin Bieber, Drake and The Weeknd. It also helped that CMW took place on the week Drake was shattering digital records with his new album Views. Universal Music Group Canada President and CEO Jeffrey Remedios -- who was previously co-founder of indie label Arts & Crafts -- is confident this is just the start. “It’s our time to be confident as an industry to take artists from here. We’re looking to sign them here and develop them here. It’s a huge mandate of mine,” he said.

 

4 - UK artists have their best year in the US and Canada 

 

CMW gathered this year 2,900 delegates, among which a larger contingent of Brits than usual because the UK & Ireland were the countries in focus this year. From the BPI’s Geoff Taylor’s to UK Music’s Jo Dipple, BASCA’s Vick Bain, MMF’s John Webster and WIN’s Alison Wenham, many organisation leaders had made the trip to Toronto. Supported by UKTI, the British presence included networking sessions, prominent slots on panels and artist showcases. BPI’s Geoff Taylor used the CMW platform to reveal new figures about the success of British acts in North America. British acts accounted for 17.6% of artist albums bought in the US in 2015, up from 12.2% in 2014, while in Canada the share is 22%, thanks to such acts as Adele, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Coldplay and Mark Ronson. “The drumbeat of British music success in North America just keeps getting louder,” said Taylor. And there were a few drink parties. The one hosted by the British delegation saw UK Music's Jo Dipple marvel at the “handsome” new Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, while asking the British government for more support for the arts…  

 

Alex Tapscott

5 - The revolution will be blockchained  

 

Whether it will work or not, one thing is certain, the blockchain technology is getting a lot of attention. The CMW session on the topic was packed and offered participants a taste of things to come. Pledge Music founder Benji Rogers has turned into the world’s more passionate advocate of the technology for the music sector. For him, the ledger of transactions that the technology allows will allow more transparency and also better tracking of the works and their usage. Canadian tech guru Don Tapscott and his son Alex, who made a presentation linked to the release of their book ‘Blockchain Revolution: Finally! Musicians Will Be Compensated Fairly For The Value They Create!’, also believe that the blockchain is the answer to data issues in the music industry.  

 

Pulse's Textor

6 - Virtual reality will arrive…but be patient 

 

John Textor, executive chairman of Pulse Evolution Corporation, who “resurrected" Tupac at Coachella in 2012 and Michael Jackson at the Billboard Music Awards in 2014, with virtual representations of the artists, is buoyant about the future of Augmented Reality (AR) more than about Virtual Reality. Textor thinks VR still suffers from giving users a sense of unbalance, but he sees a great future for AR, especially in the field of music. “We are going to make VR more engaging through hyperreality,” he said, revealing that a world tour with a virtual representation of Elvis in in the making.  

 

AEG's Meglen & Ralph Simon

7 - When Prince calls, you pick up the phone  

 

John Meglen, President & Co-CEO, Concerts West/AEG Live, recalled some of the landmark moments in his career, including securing a residency for Celine Dion in Las Vegas, which was, at the time, "the single biggest deal with an artist ever," worth $150m. In the wake of the Vegas deal, Meglen was in his office and his secretary tells him Prince in on the phone. "I said 'yeah yeah' and she says 'I think it's really him', so I pick up the phone and it's Prince who says 'I've been reading about what you did with Celine' so I say 'why don't you come see it'." Prince goes to Vegas and Meglen sneaks him in the venue after the lights were down and gave him a tour of the theatre before meeting with Dion. "If that's the way you treat artists then I want you to work with me," said Prince. Added Meglen: "We made a deal and there was no manager, no agent, no lawyer and no contract, and we worked with nothing in writing from to 2004 to 2008.” Well, not exactly, they had something in writing for the 21-night residency at the O2 in 2007 because AEG’s founder Philip Anschutz was worried something might happen

 

8 - It's a "human being business"

 

Because the music industry is a business, people tend to forget that it's a business made first and foremost by people. Such was the useful reminder from Neil Warnock, the global head of music and United Talent Agency. "We are in a human being business," said Warnock. "We are here to motivate artists, to help them and the artist is relying on us to be at the very best so that we can to bring a lifestyle or make a career. But you need think skin." So his advice to aspiring agents: be entrepreneurial, understand it is a 24/7 job, be able to communicate well with people, and "you've got to absolutely love music. The whole thing about being an agent is to see a talent and be mesmerized by it." Warnock gave a glimpse of what this relationship with artists means to him when he spoke of Motorhead's founder Lemmy Kilmister, whom he represented since his time with Hawkwind. "I felt a terrible loss when I got the call," said a visibly moved Warnock. "Lemmy was unique and uncompromising. He was one of the smartest men I know, he was well read, always had his head in a book. He knew where he was going all the time. He had the music he wanted, the lived the life he wanted. He was probably selfish and that's what made the man and the music. And he was gone in a bang. I miss him daily."

Capitol's Barnett

9 - It's the "most exciting time" for music

 Major labels are alive and well and continue to play a crucial role in the global eco-system if they keep on investing in new talent, according to Steve Barnett, the chairman and CEO of Capitol Music Group. "What is lifeblood of the industry? To break new artists. And who is the best to do that? Us, labels," said Barnett. "Look at Sam Smith, when we do something like that, it helps the whole ecosystem." He added, "I think is it the most exciting time ever for music and the gate keepers can't stop you." Barnett, who is from Wolverhampton, has been involved in the US careers of several British artists. When he was at Columbia he oversaw the launch of Adele's 19 and 21 and worked with One Direction. At Capitol, he was instrumental in building the career of Sam Smith. He praised the support of UMG Chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge in the efforts to revitalise Capitol. "I can't think at one time when we wanted to do something that they did not agree to," said Barnett. "They've been very supportive. It was a very difficult acquisition. The idea was to recruit team and our ambition was to rebuild the company. It will go down as a great acquisition. EMI had been belated in the past five years and it is now integrated into Universal which is by far the best system in the world." Barnett also told of his pride to be the custodian of a legacy that includes Frank Sinatra, The Beatles and the Beach Boys, to which he also added recently Neil Diamond. "What's the most important catalogue in the world? The Beatles! And we have that," enthused Barnett.

 

10 - Who pays your salary?  

 

There was an awkward moment during the panel '21st Century Schizoid Creators?’ when US singer/songwriter, label owner and music activist Blake Morgan pressed Featured Artists Coalition CEO Paul Pacifico to reveal who paid his salary. Blake implied that Google was funding the FAC, a rumour that has been gaining traction in recent weeks (sometimes Google is replaced by Spotify). Pacifico joked that he wished that his salary was paid by Google because it would probably be higher. And on a serious note said that the FAC budget is made mostly of contributions from patrons, including FAC members such as Nick Mason, as there are no fees charged to members, and that these contributions are capped at £10,000 per person. Morgan accepted the response but did not seem convinced. Speaking to Music Week afterwards, Pacifico said he did not understand the foundations for these rumours simply because the statutes of the FAC made it impossible for one company to finance the organisation and that anyone in his position would abide by these rules and therefore this innuendo was just plain rubbish.

10 quotes from Canadian Music Week 2016

By Emmanuel Legrand

Tony Visconti receives the Nile Rodgers Award from CMW's Neill Dixon

The participants to Canadian Music Week 2016 -- which included a large contingent of Brits, as the UK & Ireland were the countries featured this year -- were treated with a series of keynotes from such luminaries as Tony Visconti, Eddie Kramer, UTA's Neil Warnock, Capitol Music Group's Steve Barnett, Believe Music's Denis Ladegaillerie, Merlin's Charles Caldas, among others.

Here's a sample of quotes picked during the Toronto gathering that took place May 4-7.

"I am not finished doing music. I’m only interested in making quality music, not crass commercial pop. I do love deep pop music, like David Bowie. We have to put out quality music again. It never died, but it has been repressed."  
Producer Tony Visconti upon receiving the Niles Rodgers Global Creators’ Award.

"Three weeks before he passed away, I open my iPhone and I see David's face on FaceTime, and he tells me he has written five songs for the next album. So if he had not died I would probably be working on his next album today." 
Tony Visconti, when asked if he thought Blackstar was going to be Bowie’s last album.

"There were people at Capitol and EMI that were so daunted by the past that they were

Capitol's Steve Barnett

afraid of the future."
Steve Barnett, Chairman & CEO of Capitol Music Group, about the mental state of the people who worked for the company.

"I was there at that time and if we did as much blow as they do on the show nobody would be alive today."
A&R legend Seymour Stein on HBO's TV show Vinyl. If he remembers he was there.

"40% of grassroots venues in London have closed. That's about 90. That's a crisis."
Shain Shapiro, Founder and Managing Director of Sound Diplomacy, about the legacy of Boris Johnson as mayor.

"Really? Where were you two years ago because that's what we did two years ago!"
Simon Wheeler, Director of Digital at Beggars Group, commenting on the announcement that streaming is now Warner Music Group's main source of revenues.

“The music business is changing and evolving. We, as the music industry, have a responsibility to leave the industry better than we found it.”
Jeffrey Remedios, CEO of Universal Music Group Canada, taking his job seriously.

“For the Rolling Stones in Cuba, we knew the site could fit 750,000 people but there were

AEG's Meglen & Ralph Simon

more than that, people were all around, on the roofs… It was really massive: we had 61 containers, we shipped the stage from Belgium, we dropped 40,000 botles of water because we did not want to be short of water. We ltterally brough everything, except food. And we should have brought food, but we didn’t!"
John Meglen, President & Co-CEO of Concerts West/AEG Live, expressing reservations about the quality of the food in Cuba.

“Over $20 billion has gone from the industry over the last 16 years. Our creative class is worse off now than in the pre-digital era.”
Graham Henderson, President and CEO of Music Canada, cares about the creative class.

“Canadians? They never show up for work and their are drunk. They are from the colonies, that's how it is. You have to be gracious, they still have the Queen's head on their notes."
Neil Warnock, Head of Worldwide Music at United Talent Agency, reflecting on life in the colonies. Of course, he was joking. (he really was!)

Believe's Ladegaillerie & Jeremy Silver

“At this stage the streaming market is not mature enough for subscription models only. Ad-supported streaming services are the best way to convert month by month users from free to pay models. If you only focus of subscription models, you lose the conversion. When Beyoncé gives an exclusive to TIDAL, piracy explodes. We need to find the right balance."
Denis Ladegaillerie, Founder and CEO of Believe Digital, who is not ready to follow Lucian Grainge on this issue.



“Can you build a girfiend? That's the most common request... I always say no.”
John Textor, Executive Chairman of Pulse Evolution Corporation, about the potential of virtual reality.

"The key challenge for the music industry is to re-attach the value of music to the monetary value of music."
Mark Mulligan, founder of MiDIA, summed up nicely the challenges ahead.