Industry discussion

Today we watched an interview between our teachers and music manager Emma. She started as an artist, was signed to universal and has now moved to managing, however, she says the industry has massively changed over the year and so her title has broadened. She owns an agency and is also a publisher, she also manages artists and has also written songs for other people.

She's worked with many artists and even helped write musicals with people such as 'Finding Neverland'. She worked for Simon Howells record label psycho and therefor all the tv shows linked to this label. she is super diverse which means she has a lot more financial security because she has more opportunities for varying jobs more than someone who only has experience in one category. 

These days it's much easier to get a deal with a record company if you can prove there is already interest in you as an artist, especially on social media platform and apps such as YouTube. One of her artists who co wrote the song 'put your records on' with Corinne Bailey Rae has been earning a lot of money because a guy in America (Ritt Momney) made a cover of the song and requested permission to release the song and it went viral on Tik Tok and then everywhere on all streaming services. This, in turn, then brought the original back to popularity and took it from 89 million streams to over 600 million streams, all thanks to Ritt Momney who has now been signed to Columbia Records. 

RITT MOMNEY"S VERSION:

THE ORIGINAL BY CORINNE BAILEY RAE: 

THE TIK TOK CHALLENGE:

Emma does a lot of searching for new artists, what you're looking for varies from person to person, for something like XFactor it's very different than someone for a record label. They look at following and audience, image, talent and then it's just who fits what they require and who stands out.

The pandemic has had a huge affect, people have been let down and managers are unable to meet their artists etc. so social media has massively grown especially in terms of finding new artists. 

Physically copies are still relevant but it depends where and who. Physical is huge in Asia, much more so than digital release whereas in the uk everything is mainly digital. People tend to only buy physical copies at gigs and concerts more as a memory and a keep sake. Physical copies are released in tiny numbers compared to how they used to be. Vinyl is coming back but as merchandising more than anything else. 

Videos however, are coming back in because it's much easier to access video streaming services such as YouTube so people are starting to make more extravagant videos to give people something to talk about.