Interesting read
billboard @billboard
Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller Q&A: "The music industry is an utter mess"
blbrd.cm/OdJsfr Now United is not signed to a major label. Why did you decide to go it alone?
A lot of my best mates run those labels. They're my friends, so it's nothing personal. At the moment my vision is to do things that they couldn't help me with. Without being arrogant, I know more than they do and they wouldn't in a million years put the resources into Now United in its first year that I have because they are risk-averse.
[Their] business model is: look at the analytics from Spotify or Apple or YouTube, figure out what's going to fly and chuck some money behind it. ....
What is the thinking behind keeping Now United off streaming services and making the group's music available for free on its website?
I wanted a very soft launch for Now United.
[Today's] music industry is all about: "My song has had a billion views or X gazillion streams." I genuinely don't care about that because -- one, they're not making very much money out of it. No one is getting rich -- or not how I define rich. And secondly, the engagement is so thin. That is not the [correct] path. The [correct] path is to create legitimate meaningful engagement with people that discover you and love you and it has to be an authentic connection. The engagement is where all the value comes. They'll be the ones that want to learn our dances. They'll be the ones who want to come to our concerts and buy our merchandise or do the other thousand exciting ideas that we have to interact with our fans. I couldn't really give a monkey's [ass] if we have a gazillion streams on Spotify because it doesn't actually mean anything. I want to engage on every conceivable level -- not just streaming.
Will you make the band's music available on streaming services in the near future?
Absolutely. This is a soft building process. We will embrace everything.
Streaming is the future, but it's just not our priority right now. When we are ready to do it, we will do it. I want to reverse out of the programed way of breaking artists and try to basically define new ways to engage with your fans.
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What's your view of the music industry in 2019?
The music industry, as it stands right now is feast or famine. You're either sitting there high-fiving because you've got a billion streams, you own the master and life is great. Or you're a songwriter that's just written a song that has a billion streams, sung by an artist that may or may not be that great and you're making not a lot and left thinking: "What happened?" Bernie Taupin would not be very happy right now if he was writing hits with Elton John because he would be getting nothing and no one would even particularly care. The way that the dollar is divided right now is, in my opinion, an utter mess. But the opportunity going forward for talented artists -- whether you are in basement in Stockholm or in Nigeria -- if you think carefully, life will be great. So I could not be more optimistic about music.
What do you think has to change in order for the music industry to maximize its potential?
One of the biggest problems for the music industry to fully embrace is that the rights issues are an utter disaster. Even with major record companies that control so much it's very hard to really innovate. With all due respect to my friends, I don't think [record companies] are very innovative at all, so frankly I give them two out of 10 for innovation. But what stymies a lot of it is the rights issues are too complicated. Nowadays songs can have ten different writers and eight different publishers, so how do you get alignment? You can't innovate with that chaos going on and consequently there is no innovation. With Now United we can do anything we want. We can do something for free. I can wake up in the middle of the night with some crazy idea and we can do it. I don't have to ask anybody. I don't have to haggle with lawyers and say: "Can you waive your rights to allow us to do this?" The reason why a record contract is 10,000 pages long is because they are trying to protect deals that they did in 1961 and also try to innovate going forward and not shoot themselves in the foot. The industry is weighted down with baggage of deal making and rights issues and that's a real problem.