This site is a blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
Kevin Weaver is the Executive Vice President of the Atlantic Records Group. He is responsible for overseeing the creation and placement of music and artists in film, television and video games. Kevin is also in charge of developing and overseeing soundtrack projects, strategic alliances, licensing opportunities, and marketing initiatives. He has been working with sync licensing at Atlantic since the early-mid 1990s and has managed a variety of projects over the years that have significantly shaped the label’s and other labels’ music licensing business models.
Recently I talked to Kevin about how he got into music licensing, changes he has witnessed in the sync licensing market in the past 15 years and how modern music placement works.
Thanks for taking some time to talk to me, Kevin. How did you come to be Executive VP at Atlantic, and what does that position entail?
KW:
I started as an assistant at Atlantic in 1994 working for the Vice President of soundtracks an A&R. I subsequently became an A&R guy at Jason Flom’s label Lava Records in the middle of 1995. I signed some records and was doing A&R. But those records weren’t really happening. Because I was an assistant to this soundtrack executive, I had a ton of relationships in the film, television, advertising and sync communities. And I thought, “What do I need to do to turn these records around and make some value out of them?” I knew I had these relationships, and that no one was pushing content into the sync world; it was a very laid-back business at that time, where you had people at the special markets divisions of record companies fielding incoming requests via fax. There was no sexiness to it, and nobody that had direct relationships with the artists playing the middle. There was no one aggressively pitching and pushing the content for licensing.
I took out the records that I was A&R’ing as well as some of the other records that Jason Flom, who was my mentor for many years, was working with. Jason was very supportive and encouraged me to do this. With his support, I was able to go out and get in front of the relevant folks at the time who were using music in media and basically give them quality content while at the same time help with the process to make sure it was seamless and that things were getting approved quickly. Over the first couple years of doing that we were able to significantly increase the licensing income at Lava.
That subsequently led to me becoming the first shared Lava/Atlantic employee and executive. I started doing the same thing for the Atlantic content in addition to the Lava content. And I was also able to increase Atlantic’s numbers really significantly over a short period of time. And when Lava folded into Atlantic in 2002, at that point I became the head of the department at Atlantic and all the Atlantic affiliate and division labels.
Very few people have as much time in as you do. I remember when I was working on placement for a commercial a few years ago. And everyone was coming out of the woodwork claiming, “Sync and licensing? I do that!”And I knew you’d actually been doing it since the very beginning. How has that sync marketplace changed over the last 15 years that you’ve been working within it?
KW:
Obviously it’s become much more competitive. People have realized the value of these opportunities to break artists. The media around these opportunities can be critical if timed right – around the launch of the single or the record. We’ve found that we’ve been breaking records over the last handful of years by way of these opportunities while also putting money back in the till to support subsequent marketing and promotional efforts. And everyone has realized to a certain extent that with the decline in income in other areas of the music business, sync is still a major revenue supplier. The importance of sync has become even that much more significant now. And because of all those factors, everybody is out there aggressively chasing sync opportunities, and it’s become more competitive.
I’m fortunate because I’ve been doing this for so long and somewhat built the model of how this works at a record company. I have tons of relationships that go back 15-plus years. And it’s very important to me that the people I do business with feel good about that business at the end of the day and feel it was an easy process and positive experience. I’ve had people continue to want to come back and drink from this well because they know we have great records, are easy to deal with and get stuff done. Because of this, even though sync is a competitive market, we still do great business.
Do you find that the huge number of independent and unsigned artists and the many aggregators of DIY content have brought the overall price down for you?
KW:
It can, and it has a little bit. I think the quality of music that we’re creating with our artists speaks for itself. People who are willing to give their music away for free can hurt us a little bit, but I believe that we’re making really strong records over here, and that people are willing to pay for quality.
We do price super competitively around developing artists. I never want to lose a great opportunity because of money. The visibility is important, so we look at everything on a case-by-case basis. And if there’s a look we can deliver for an artist, but it means I need to waive a fee or help get something approved below fair market value; I’m always willing to entertain those requests and make those deals, if the marketing opportunity mitigates the loss of income on the fee. I’m competitive as it relates to pricing. Wherever there’s a smart marketing play, I’m willing to make the same kind of deal that an indie artist would make, as long as I feel like the visibility is worthwhile.
There have been so many placements since placements really exploded with that first iTunes commercial six or seven years ago. Do you feel the impact of getting music placed in a commercial has diminished because now we have seen it so many times before?
KW:
Not really. It really depends on the scope of the placement, how great the song is, and how well it’s used. At the end of the day, great music is going to react, and it just needs a platform. What I’ve found is that you don’t want to just give away music and not look at the place it’s being used and how it’s being used. If it’s a meaningful placement, it’s going to translate.
Going back to your earlier question about competition with independent music, what we have at Atlantic is the whole company going after a record at the same time. I’m not just out there in a vacuum getting placements. I’ve found that it’s very hard for a singular placement to move the needle in a significant way, even if it’s a huge placement where the song is used really well and has great visibility, without other drivers in place. Not many labels – especially smaller labels – are able to use placement opportunities as effectively as we are and work with the other departments within the label. This really makes a difference when it comes to the power of these placements.
What is standard practice once the Atlantic Group gets the placement? How are you supporting the placement with marketing, sales and promotion?
KW:
We connect the pieces. We use the artist’s social media platform to create awareness around it and connect the fact that the placement you’re hearing or seeing is the artist’s song. We bring back all of the info and a clip of every placement to every department in the company, so they have the actual use and can take that out to show folks. A lot of it is talking points that help build momentum. But, everyone can use these drivers to show radio, video, digital/new media and sales and show these different accounts and partners the visibility we have going on around an artist. Generally, that in and of itself is an incredibly useful tool, because people see a song is out there and getting plays in a significant capacity. And that helps them feel better about getting behind it as it relates to their specific area of the industry.
You have A&R roots. Do you feel that artists getting placements before they’re on a label contributes to their ability to get signed?
KW:
It can. Recently, we signed Christina Perri. She had a single “Jar of Hearts” out before she was signed to a major label. She had her song featured on Dancing with the Stars in a really significant way. She immediately released the song on iTunes on her own, and it sold a lot of digital singles over a short period of time, which immediately put her on the radar of a lot of major labels. She then went on the show and did a live performance of the song, which made an even more significant impact. She went on to sell a few hundred thousand singles around those two uses alone. Every label really jumped in and went after her based on the fact that not only was she getting visibility by way of sync placements, but also, it was reacting.
I think that’s the key to most of these placement situations: If somebody’s getting sync placements but it’s not doing anything – helping with their sales or online searches and hits – then there’s a disconnect, and there’s a reason there’s a disconnect. It’s not often that these placements are going to move the needle significantly without the other drivers I’ve mentioned earlier – having the company and all the resources at the company behind it connecting the dots. I think the Christina Perri example is the real anomaly there; without the real drivers, the use of the song on television a couple times still managed to really make an impact, which ended up getting her a significant record deal. That being said she’s needed the power and the machine of our company behind her to build on this initial success and visibility.
You know a lot about how music is placed in film, and sure you often get asked, “How do I get my music placed in film and TV?” What would your best advice for somebody who is trying to make it happen in their own?
KW:
To be honest with you, I think it’s incredibly hard. It’s a very relationship-driven industry. And one of the reasons I’m able to get so many placements is because of the relationships we have with the folks who control this various media. They trust us. And they know when we’re serving something up, it’s going to be at a certain quality level and easy to clear and use. So, that is something that really helps us get placements and visibility that other smaller independent folks don’t have the benefit of.
But the one thing that these people can do is try to be super targeted and really chase opportunities where their music has real relevance. And they should get to people via real relationships – getting to know people who know the right people. And then they need to be really easy to deal with. Anyone who is a pain in the ass, especially in the developing stages, is not going to get much support. And there aren’t going to be many fruits that come out of that. If they are easy to deal with, and the quality of their music is good, they have a much better chance.
To learn more about Kevin Weaver and the work he does, visit the Atlantic Records Group website.
An older interview from October 2009 but it still has advice useful today.
Gregg Nadel is the Vice President of Marketing and A&R at Atlantic records and the head of an Atlantic Imprint label called F-stop records. He has worked with O.A.R., Zac Brown Band, Marc Broussard, Jon Butler Trio, Paolo Nutini and Trans Siberian Orchestra among others. I was fortunate enough to work with Gregg many years ago when I was in A&R at Lava / Atlantic.
Musician Coaching:
Gregg, thanks for taking the time to meet with me. I often tell people that the best way to get an A&R person’s attention is to self start and to start getting out there on their own selling CD’s, downloads and tickets and developing their online presence, which is the way it was when I was doing A&R. Is this still the most reliable way to get an A&R person’s attention?
GN: Yeah. I’m always really impressed with bands that are able to get something started on their own. For example both O.A.R. and Zac Brown Band were able to develop a regional following and you can see hard work paying off with more fans coming and buying records and tickets. You can see a direct relationship. Usually that’s just a clear-cut sign that there’s a hard-working artist and real self-starter at the core of what’s happening, and that’s always a really promising sign for me – that an artist or band is out there and working really hard and has what it takes to build something.
Musician Coaching:
I’m assuming there’s still an internal sales process in getting a band signed. In other words, you have to go to the heads of the company to get approval. I would guess most people kind of do in this climate. Does the evidence of this hard work you mentioned make it an easier sell?
GN: I think so. There’s actual quantitative information that something’s happening around a particular artist, and it’s not just, “Here’s a song I really like” or “I think there’s potential here.” There’s more information and more to stand on that you can actually evaluate and say that you’re going to be able to build something. It’s harder and harder nowadays and I think it just really takes an effort between the artist and the label and management and a great surrounding team from all sides to really build something.
Musician Coaching:
What would you say are the factors that you’re looking at most? Obviously, you can look at Myspace plays, Twitter followers, but what are the metrics that you put the most stock in when determining if an artist is viable in the marketplace?
GN: Probably a combination of everything, but the biggest thing to me most of the time is the live show and people that are able to start selling tickets, either locally or hopefully even regionally. And also I’m looking for that special magical thing that is happening at a show that is sort of a community being built. That really is, at the end of the day, what makes the light bulb go on for me.
Musician Coaching:
You’re also doing marketing in addition to A&R. Given this unique perspective, can you tell us what it is you think about a band that makes you think they have the kind of appeal – be it broad or niche – that makes you feel like you can expose them to even broader audiences? Is there something about these artists you select that you look at and think, “I can market the hell out of this?” What is this “intangible” to you?
GN: I try to find artists that are built on real fan bases and not necessarily upon the traditional channels of radio and video, especially in today’s world. I’d rather do everything else and then come to radio and video as the final piece of the puzzle. No matter how great a song you think you have, or how great an artist you have, everything needs to line up absolutely perfectly for to actually connect it at radio and at video and at the mainstream channels. For an artist to have a long-term career, it’s much more important to build the foundation properly and make sure you’re going market by market, winning fan by fan and while you’re doing that on the road, following that online. Number one is finding bands that I know can play and knock people out live. I need to feel confident that if I’m going to go into a city, the next time we come back there will be more people at the show. It’s just patience and hitting the same cities over and over and being really concise in planning.
Musician Coaching:
Does the 360 deal change your selection process at all or how you launch an artist? Was it different 5 years ago than it is today?
GN: For me, personally, no. I’ve always gravitated towards the type of bands that have been able to build touring followings, so for me it’s really an exciting place to be in the business and an exciting future. Now we are partners with the artists on the touring and on the merch and on the fan club, and – all these ideas we’ve been working on and building over the past 10 years – now we’re actually partners on these things. I’m really excited about the next 5 years. For example, there’s a young band I’m working with called Jonathan Tyler and the Northern Lights; starting from being a local thing down in Texas and watching it develop regionally and then nationally on a touring front is the kind of thing I’m really super excited about at the moment.
Musician Coaching:
Along the same lines, how are labels or how is Atlantic specifically contributing to those other streams of revenue above and beyond the old way a record company functioned? I know companies like Warner Music Group was purchasing outside companies to support touring and publishing and merch, but how are you seeing that work?
GN: We have in-house partnership deals now and have our own merch company for retail, touring and online, and we’ve got a VIP ticketing and fan club company. The most exciting thing is that an artist now is never off cycle. As an example, Marc Broussard is in the process of making a new record, but we’re doing this really intimate acoustic tour. We’ll have a full company marketing meeting on the tour – naming the tour, creating merch around the tour, all these things. In the old days it would sort of be off the grid and off the radar. Management would be dealing with that tour, but now it’s just as important 12-16 months after a record for the company to be focusing in and making sure that artist is playing to packed rooms and the tour is doing well and the career is growing as if you were starting to launch a record. It’s a great time for the right artist in these deals because they’re going to get that type of support all the time and on every tour, and managing their Web sites and merch and tour posters and making sure the street team is covering everything. We’ve also brought street team companies in house as well.
Musician Coaching:
I’m also told that Atlantic has allowed you to manage some of the artists you’re working with as well. How are you managing that workload, and how are you seeing the role of a manager changing?
GN: I think the workload is a functionality of only taking on as much as you feel you can handle and really do a great job. Whether it’s management, signing a new band or taking on a different project internally, that all falls under the same category for me. It’s how much I think I can do. From the management side, I’m not necessarily looking to manage stuff that’s signed to F-Stop or Atlantic only. It could be things that are either unsigned and continue to be independent, or at another label. It just has to be the right project and feel the right way for me to want to get involved.
Musician Coaching:
Could you tell me a little bit about the philosophy behind F-Stop and who is signed there and how it works?
GN: So far we have an artist named Matt Hires and Jonathan Tyler and the Northern Lights. I think the philosophy is to create a small internal team around a small roster of artists that can live off the radar and really develop from the baby stage of their career and get their feet under them with our help before having to go into the bigger system. Then at the right point in time we pull on the different levers within company to start helping out and building and then – whether it’s a year or two years or two albums down the road – depending on each project and each artist, we want to get them into the Atlantic system.
Musician Coaching:
You’re getting tons of unsolicited calls and e-mails. Any other advice you’d have for artists about things you wish they’d have together that would impress you?
GN: Honestly, this sounds silly, but if I stumble onto somebody’s website or Myspace, the first point is to make sure you have contact information. It seems crazy, but I’ve stumbled upon things where I can’t get a hold of the person. Stuff comes in all different shapes and sizes, and I’ve learned not to be turned off if someone’s Myspace or Web site doesn’t look great or if a song isn’t recorded the right way. It’s about listening to a song and seeing what’s really going on.
Check out Gregg’s label F-Stop Music
This is part two of a two part interview with Andy Karp a manager and marketing executive by way of a very successful career in A&R at Atlantic Records (Signed Kid Rock, Simple Plan, Click 5, Porcupine Tree, Skillet and many others). If you missed part one you can check that out – here.
I know after you left Atlantic you could’ve gone back into another label job somewhere but you opted not to. I know because we have spoken of it in the past that we both find some major flaws in the label system today. From your vantage point as someone who was enormously successful at major labels – what do you think is the most flawed about the way these labels are operating today?
AK:
I don’t know what the most flawed thing is, because there are a lot of flaws. But they are also in a very tough spot. There’s no obvious answer to fix their problems that anybody can give them. I tend to think more philosophically about these things. I think it’s better if you talk more about the major labels in general and not specifically about Atlantic, because Atlantic is one of the major labels that’s doing particularly well. They have a much more pronounced digital strategy than any other major by leaps and bounds. That’s an area where they’re being very forward thinking.
The question is more from an A&R perspective. This may not be fixable. The majors have a huge problem, which is they carry enormous overhead and some of them still have 150-200 employees. It’s a very difficult burden to carry in this kind of environment. Philosophically, my thoughts tend to be that when people are rejecting your product and the vast majority of the music you put out, the thing you should do is go left. And it seems like majors are instead doubling down on mainstream stuff. The problem is not that it’s mainstream. There are not a lot of people out there that are bigger suckers for a good pop song than me. The problem is that happens when you are operating only within very fine-tuned parameters and parameters that are shrinking and whatever Top 40 is playing now – Top 40 is a format that is reflective of its audience and a completely research-driven format and the audience is fickle and changes very quickly and things fall out of favor very quickly.
Right now, Top 40 is incredibly urban focused, whereas a year ago it wasn’t nearly as much. If you’re a major, what you’re doing is focusing on acts that can fit right between those very fine lines. But the problem is that between the time when you find the acts and record the music and find the songs you think are hits, those parameters can change. The creative part of it is very expensive now because it has to fit. If it doesn’t fit, you don’t have a shot. You put your track out and promote it through these big media driver approaches that people have always done – you make a video and work it and spend money on radio promotion and fly the bands around to have appearances at radio stations. What ends up happening is you sell a boatload of singles. It’s a really tough bargain for most labels. The problem is they have conditioned themselves to operate in this fashion, and I don’t know that they have the wherewithal to try a different approach.
They are instead doing 360s, and most of the labels are not capable of exploiting 360 rights. I don’t even have a philosophical problem with 360 deals as a person that is outside of it and manages artists, provided they can exploit the rights with best in class services. Most of the majors haven’t proven they can do that. The truth is, most of the majors should’ve been asking for 360 type deals 25 years ago when they were writing big checks for tour support. Now they are asking for more rights and giving less in return. And the problem is, it’s survival for them. I understand why they are trying to do it, but it makes it all the less likely that any band with a real following will want to do that type of deal without getting a massively front-loaded deal. And truthfully, if you’re asking for 360 deals while focus is on the type of acts that sell singles that nobody is ever going to want to go see in concert, you’re minimizing that chances that those 360 rights, those merch rights, are going to be valuable, because who wants to buy t-shirts for acts that don’t have any real staying power? It’s an odd Faustian bargain. I would think you’d be much more likely to want to spend money to build the live base of things that are left of center. Those are the acts that have real fans.
So how is your new company operating given that this is the environment that we all deal with?
Artist Haven is a management branding entity. Our goal is purely focused on fan building. That’s essentially it. We are very much of the belief that the future of the entertainment business – not just the music business – is going to be simply catering to people that care. And this is not rocket science. It’s not like we’re the first people to come across this idea. But if you look at the landscape, we have just been talking about how majors have this problem where they are catering to people that are fans of one song rather than of an artist. People that are fans of artists spend money on that act. People that are fans of songs only buy those songs.
Is there anything artists can do to make people buy into them as a part of culture vs. a disposable song? Is that something you can manipulate or is just something some people have?
AK:
Some people do have it and some people don’t, that’s a fact. That’s one of those things you become hyper aware of doing A&R. If you don’t recognize that, you’re going to be in A&R for about a year and then will be off working at Pluck University (*** This is Andy mocking the fast food chicken job that I had prior to being his intern and then assistant- I was 19…shut up…***). I think it all starts with music. That’s it. If your music is not great, and if people aren’t connecting with it, it won’t matter. In terms of being a creative person trying to figure out how to make your art better and perfect your art, you want to be different and distinctive, but at the same time, you have to be observant and see which songs people react to at your gigs and know why they react to them. If you have a tune that the crowd always goes crazy about, and that song is a legitimate expression of what your band is about then you should write more things like that. Look at these songs and see why they work. It’s about never taking your audience for granted, treating your fans like investors instead of like customers. They are customers, but I like to think of them more like investors. The reason “investors” is a term that works for me is because people are really passionate about the bands and the artists they love. When the music really represents times in your life and is a soundtrack to you, you have a very emotional investment in the creative output of that artist. That’s why I like to think of it as being more than just a customer. I think in fact using the term investor is less crass and callous than calling someone a customer.
I never liked the word either- I agree with you.
AK:
What you simply have to do is, always be true to yourself, because people react to authenticity. In doing that, you also have to be really smart and understand how the relationship between artist and fan works. It’s a weird thing, because fans expect an enormous amount from you and have a lot of impressions built up that may not always be grounded in reality. You have to make sure that you’re never hosing them. If you’re an act and on a major and put out a record, and then your label wants to put out a deluxe version of that record because it finally started to sell, that’s nice that you can jack the price up a couple dollars and get more fans out of people that just bought the single, but you just stuck it to a bunch of fans that bought the first record first by putting that deluxe version out.
Said by somebody that has clearly been stung by that exact ruse.
AK:
Right. I think it’s terrible. It’s an incredibly short-sighted approach. You can certainly say it’s just one thing, but it doesn’t take a lot to make people distrust your motives. That doesn’t mean you can’t make money, or that fans always want the artists they care about to exist in this little vacuum, and nobody else should know about it. It really is more about whether people believe that the music is authentic and is coming from the artist’s heart and is a real expression of what the artist is about, and whether or not the fans feel that the artist is taking them for granted. Are their ticket prices more expensive? Did they pay more to be part of a fan club and were supposed to get the rights to get prime ticketing, and then you went to the show and found out you paid four times what some other guy sitting right next to you paid for the ticket, because he got it late when the broker opened up seats? That’s the kind of stuff that can be hard to prevent but really leaves a bad taste in fans’ mouths. Make your merch better than other people’s merch. If you spend $20 on a shirt, don’t make your t-shirt $45. It’s about understanding little things like that, and that the trust the investor puts in the artist is a sacred contract. If you are dismissive of it, they will leave. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure that out. Think about the bands you love yourself. How would you like to be treated or rewarded for your consistent patronage and support of their music? That’s really it.
You’re totally right. Now, you were telling me about how you are building fan bases with Artist Haven. What else is going on with that?
AK:
We’re not just doing music. I think if there’s one thing that’s particularly interesting these days is that anyone that creates content, and anyone that creates media is all in the same boat. We’re all floating in the same river, which is trying to get people to pay attention and pay for things.
I knew we (Content creators and the industries surrounding them) were all in trouble when I heard the porn business was struggling too.
AK:
I remember reading an article about that, and I was pretty surprised by the number of analogous problems they were having with record companies. If you think about it, they were approaching it the same way. They were policing copyright violations, people using their content without paying for it, creating packages that have additional content. It’s actually kind of fascinating, and somebody should probably write an article about it for Atlantic or The New Yorker or Vanity Fair or something like that. But anyone that produces content is in this boat. The bottom line for us is that nobody can predict exactly what systems are going to be in five or ten years. I tend to think it’s going to be subscription based, where music is going to be a service, and it’s all streamed. That would seem to make a lot of sense, but we’re certainly nowhere near that happening. I can’t envision music being free. We’re trying to take a unique approach to every artist we handle. In some cases it may make a lot of sense to give an artist’s music away. In other cases, it may make sense not to and to focus on very elaborate packaging and content to sell to fans that want vinyl or surround-sound mixes on Blu-Ray. I do think that part of the problem is because those of us at majors – and I include myself in this because I was there, whether I believe in it or not – really devalued music over the last 15 years. As a result, we deserve part of the blame for the mess we’re all in. I think it will ultimately come down to figuring out who your audience is and serving them somehow. If it means giving away music to get more fans, then great, if it will build another area of your business. But we’re not afraid to do whatever it takes to create that audience. At the end of the day, it’s always going to be about finding ways to sell things to people that care. So, if we give things away it’s going to be to build a different area of the business.
Artist Haven is handling a couple different acts. I have a self-help author, a band called Cynic, a guitar player named Justin King. They’re all very different, and none of them are Top 40. It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t work with something Top 40, but it means we’re trying to focus on projects where if we do our job right and they do their jobs right we can help our clients find people that are really passionate about what they do.
To learn more about Andy Karp and his new company please visit Artist Haven and check out his Jazz Quartet.
Andy Karp is a manager and marketing executive by way of a nineteen-year career at Atlantic Records. He is also a gifted multi-instrumentalist and one of the few people I know who can play a Chapman Stick. Andy started in the Radio Promotion department and moved into A&R where he eventually became The Executive Vice President / head of A&R. During his tenure Andy signed Kid Rock, Simple Plan, Skillet, The Click Five, Porcupine Tree, Skillet and David Garza. My first real job in the industry was as Andy’s assistant at Lava / Atlantic. Andy was kind enough to take the time to share with me his perspective on the ever-changing business and catch me up with what he is up to at his new company Artist Haven. This is part one of a two part interview.
Tell me about how you got started in the music business, and how you got started playing music.
AK:
I started playing music as a little kid. I took piano lessons from age 7 to 18. I probably didn’t practice until I was about 13, but my mom was very patient and tolerant, and I kept playing anyway. I started playing bass when I was 14 or 15 and drums a year later. I played sax for a few years in the school orchestra, and all sorts of other odd things. I played the vibra-harp for a year. I just loved music, and wasn’t particularly good at it, although by the time I stopped taking piano lessons, I was a fairly decent piano player. But I was going to college at that point, and I felt you could only play so many instruments, so I focused on bass. I never really took myself seriously s a drummer until the last couple years. I was studying music and theory in college and some pretty avant-garde music, and engineering and all these kinds of things. I knew I really wanted to play. That was my biggest goal.
Once I graduated, I started playing in bands and had the misfortune of not being a really great singer. If you’re not a singer, you’re always going to be reliant on finding the right band at the right time and the right vehicle for you to do what you want to do. And that adds a lot more variables to it – as if there weren’t enough already. I had done an internship at MCA in their A&R and publishing divisions when I was a junior, and as I was playing in bands, I thought, “Maybe I can get a job at a label” so I could move out of my mom’s while I was looking for the perfect musical situation. I managed to get a job in the mail room of Profile Records and spent six weeks there hauling giant mail bags a couple blocks a few times a day filled with hip hop records. I managed to get a job as a gopher in the promotion department of Atlantic Records. I started there in September of 1989, and I stayed at Atlantic for 19 years. That’s really the story.
Obviously there are a few little details missing. You don’t become head of A&R just hanging around for 19 years, at least not in my recollection.
AK:
(Laughs) Back in the old days, if you stayed there long enough, they eventually just gave you a department to run. But, no, I spent about a year as a gopher and then another 5 ½ years as the assistant to the head of the promotions department – Andrea Ganis – who is still there and was a great mentor and friend to me and still is. When Lava Records started in 1995, Jason Flom hired me to do A&R for him. The reason he hired me was simply because I was fortunate enough to have an encyclopedic knowledge of bands and producers and engineers and all kinds of stuff. I don’t know quite why that was, but I think my brain just decided it was going to remember something, and that’s what it was. It might have been better if it was quantum mechanics, but unfortunately it was engineers of Scorpions Records.
The editorial note here is that I’ve actually seen you engaged in a dialogue with Matt Pinfield, and I was terrified.
AK:
Matt’s pretty good. He’s a good guy, and we always have a lot of fun talking about obscure alt rock or punk bands. He is kooky like me in that same way. But Flom hired me because I was somebody that knows all these bands and figured I would eventually run into something that was pretty good. He gave me a shot. I didn’t sign anything for a year and a half. I was very fortunate that Lava had acts. And you were there then, Rick, so you know how it worked. The first artist I signed was David Garza, who you and I both think is brilliant. And the second act was Kid Rock. And when Kid Rock broke, it went from there. It was a good second act to sign. It worked out well for everyone.
Clearly that gave you more chances to sign more artists as an A&R guy. When you sign a successful act like Kid Rock, they tend to be more lenient about letting you sign more.
AK:
That’s true. But I never took a lot of swings. There are two very definitive schools of thoughts in terms of how you approach A&R, whether at a label or at a management company. A&R is such a broad term now. It really is essentially quality control in the modern context and creative direction. That is applicable in a lot of different areas. One school of thought is that you can’t have hits if you don’t put records out, so therefore you should sign as many things that are good as you can, because at least in the context of major labels at that time, if you have big success at anything, people don’t remember the failures. If you have one success out of eight things you put out, people don’t remember the other seven. But that was never my school of thought, and part of it was because I didn’t like enough stuff to do it that way.
So of the guys in the last 20-30 years that have sold a sizable chunk of records, I’d be willing to bet I’ve signed fewer things than almost all of them. And it’s not saying I’m so good or have such a good batting average. It’s just saying that I had a different approach. One of the things that held me back in the music business was the fact that I couldn’t approach acts inherently dishonestly and tell them things I didn’t sincerely believe, like, “You’re going to be hugely successful, and here’s what we’re going to do.” If I tell that to 10 bands, you know there could be a very good shot that you’re just bullshitting to 10 different acts. It’s so hard to have anything that’s successful, and truthfully, most A&R people don’t even have one thing that’s successful. That’s just empirical. But I never felt comfortable going and talking up nonsense to close deals. I was more from the “Look, I really believe in this, and we’re going to do everything we can do. You know what the chances of success are. What I can promise you is that I’m going to do everything I can possibly do, give you the best advice I can possibly give you and do everything to steer you through the label and give you the best shot humanly possible.” That was an approach that I felt was the morally right thing to do, and it worked for me because it was consistent with my personality. And I never wanted to be one of those clichés.
It was certainly not the pervasive methodology of the trade.
AK:
Certainly not at the time. Things are very different now because I’ve been out of the major label system for two years, and happily so. But this is the first time in my memory where signing to a major is not necessarily one of the top goals for most artists. That’s a fairly unusual place for labels to be.
What’s funny is, I kind of feel like – and I do have some statistics to back this up in terms of keyword search volume, and I can’t say whether these are real musicians or not – but people searching online, “how to get a record deal” is off the charts whereas “how to market and sell my music” is much less. I realize that’s not a representative sample, but I think most musicians feel about the labels like most men feel about Tila Tequila. “Oh my God She’s disgusting, but I don’t think I’d turn down a date with her if it was offered.”
AK:
That’s a fair point. But I would simply ask whether that is an accurate predictor. I wonder if you took that kind of a poll of the acts that are best positioned to be offered deals and have followings and can sustain some kind of independent business, whether it’s small or large, and have empirical proof that people care about their music feel the same way. That might be a better gauge.
No question. I was not basing it on a representative sample. But I do think it’s funny that the prevailing mindset still is, “Please save me. Please escalate me to stardom.”
AK:
It’s interesting, because there probably has never been a time when that kind of “please hand it to me” attitude was a guarantee of failure, and now it is. Fifteen years ago it probably wasn’t that way. At least you could get to a certain level. The point is, I’ve seen it so distinctly that the people that work the hardest get the luckiest. It’s never been clearer. The big drivers of media become less influential. MTV has whatever audience it has, but it certainly isn’t a music audience. Commercial radio is losing influence every year as loses listeners. Young people don’t consume music through those big drivers anymore. As you start to see those things shift, it’s become super clear that nobody’s guaranteed to have a career. We used to be able to take people if they were really good and turn them into stars if you had the right material and the right look. Now, if that stuff succeeds it’s almost anomalous.
My take on the business, and mind you, I was out long before you were, and I definitely want to talk about what you saw changing. I was really out of the real system by 2004. But I found that even during my tenure it started to switch. It was less about A&R and more about M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions). It started to be about labels looking for existing businesses to acquire and fund. Is that apt?
AK:
I think that’s a fair point, if you look at your band as a business. We didn’t sit around in a meeting and say, “We’re only signing bands that have followings and can sell 75,000 records independently or make at least $200,000 per year independently.” No one sat around and figured that out. But if you talk about mergers and acquisitions, there’s a philosophical shift that happened, where the big euphemism became branding. Sometime in the mid-2000s branding became a business and an approach. It became a noun and a verb. When that shift happened, bands started to think of themselves as businesses, and labels started to look at bands as businesses just as they were looking into buying smaller labels that had a niche and could provide them acts that had a sales base and a fan base and could give them credibility with an audience that you can’t have as a major label because you serve every kind of consumer. They were also looking into buying into acts the same way they would buy into labels. That was a change philosophically. But now you see record sales continue to dwindle, and there’s logic to that approach, even if it wasn’t spoken and intentional.
Does that mean the shift on the labels side had become less about early grassroots development? Did it become about taking bands that are self sustaining to the next level, rather than taking bands from nowhere, to self sustaining and then upwards?
AK:
People love to say there’s no grassroots marketing or band development at labels. But I don’t think that’s really fair. That stuff does happen. It just is a question of whether or not they are good at it. In majors, there are some people that are very conscientious and incredibly hard working and very dedicated to their acts. I think those general dismissive comments that are frequently made about majors are not true. I spent enough time there to know there are people who are very conscientious about stuff like that. There are also people whose jobs are not to worry about that stuff and are about how to make the trains run on time and make the balance sheet. That’s the tension. Don’t think it doesn’t exist at indie labels too. Indie labels have to sell records and keep their lights on unless they are funded by someone that is independently wealthy and it’s a pure passion play. Those are businesses. It’s just that the tension is much more glaring in a major label system.
The grassroots thing and long-term marketing does work, but it has to be really under the radar. If you take a band like Porcupine Tree. Porcupine Tree is a band where we did three records on Atlantic and Lava Atlantic. The band just played Radio City Music Hall. Now they are licensed to Roadrunner. If you talked to them, I think they would tell you that the labels never really did much for them. I think we definitely contributed in some ways and not in others. In terms of a grassroots story, that’s a pretty distinct grassroots success. You’re talking about a band that had a large catalog and a small following in Europe and no following in the U.S., and now they can draw 5500 people in New York and have a business where if you had a 360 deal with them, you’d be very happy. I think the problem is that you take things like that that are left of center, and very often there is a lot of pressure to get those things out of the system because they don’t make sense. They don’t want you to waste people’s time on things that are in left field. And I tend to think the opposite way. When you’re trying to build something long term, the stuff that is most likely to find an audience is the stuff that’s a little skewed and not the stuff that’s right down the middle. If you can take a pop act and build an act, if the songs are good enough, I think that’s great and you can do that. But I think you’re more likely to find success with stuff that’s quirkier. And I think it’s too bad, because Porcupine Tree’s success could’ve been something that Atlantic could’ve trumpeted and taken a great deal of pride in, but there were really never a lot of supporters.
You can read the 2nd part of the article HERE.
——-
Check out more information on Andy’s company here or follow Artist Haven on Twitter.
