Gary Raymond has to pinch himself when he recalls how, two months ago, he
helped to make chart history. The manager of the rock band Koopa jumped on a
change to the chart rules in January, allowing download-only tracks to
become hits. He mobilised an ardent fan base over the internet and turned
his young charges into the first unsigned act to break the Top 40. Koopa’s
success cost him just £120, garnered acres of press coverage and supposedly
heralded a new pop era in which anyone armed with a good song and some savvy
could become a star. Suddenly, “unsigned” was a status symbol, rather than
an awkward admission that an artist’s career had yet to take off, and 2007
was being hailed as the year of the DIYer.
Yet Koopa’s triumph was not the strike for independence that it seemed, and
Raymond has no plans for his band to release a second single in the same
way. “In week two, we crashed out of the charts,” he explains. “Week two
proves why artists need a label, or at least an enormous amount of money
behind them. Staying in the charts requires advertising, promotion and radio
play, and we couldn’t afford any of those. Were I to win the lottery, I
probably wouldn’t sign a deal. Until then, we’re looking for a label.”
Radio play, usually the key to commercial success, is considered the biggest
stumbling block for DIYers — the main stations deal only with professional
“pluggers”, whose job is to persuade producers to playlist their clients.
Because of the cost (several thousand pounds per single, whether it is
played or not), most of those clients come from major or large indie labels.
Last month, the girl group the Revelations made the papers by becoming the
first unsigned act to be A-listed on Radio 2. The airwaves were declared
open to all. In truth, the Revelations’ manager, Adam Howorth, is an
acquaintance of Radio 2’s music chief, Colin Martin.
“I told Colin about this great group who sound like Abba produced by Phil
Spector,” says Howorth, a former musician and until last year the
communications director at Napster. “I could tell he was tickled by the
description, so I invited him over to the studio. He was just off on holiday
and had an hour to spare, so he popped by and, luckily for us, loved the
girls. The likelihood of anyone without connections getting a break like
that is practically nonexistent.”
As with most of the unsigned acts making inroads into the mainstream, the
Revelations have a team of industry veterans behind them. Howorth’s partners
are a former vice president of music pro-gramming at MTV and a record
producer who has worked with KT Tunstall, Travis and Manic Street Preachers,
while the erstwhile Creation supremo, Alan McGee, deals with distribution,
and the new UK arm of the mighty William Morris Agency books their gigs.
Hardly a bedroom operation.
Despite the support, the Revelations have no wish to stay unsigned and, like
Koopa, are looking for a label. “The single was simply to raise the girls’
profile,” Howorth says. “Now, the labels we were already talking to regard
us as less of a risk, but we’re still living hand to mouth. The problem with
punching above your weight is that it means haemorrhaging money.”
Britain’s biggest unsigned act, Enter Shikari, are alone in turning down
major labels. Last year, the St Albans-based heavy rockers sold out London’s
2,000-capacity Astoria on the strength of their MySpace following. They’ve
been inundated with offers, but so far they’ve stuck with their own label.
Yet they are far from flying solo. A publishing deal with Universal provided
the funds to pay for distribution and marketing, and the large indie label
PIAS has licensed all future recordings for Europe.
“We used to do everything by ourselves, but alone you get stuck at a certain
level,” admits Chris Batten, a member of the band. “Eight months ago, we
took on a manager, Ian Johnson, who runs the label that discovered the
Darkness. He helped us to set up our own label, got us the publishing deal
and organised an agent, a plugger and a PR person. We didn’t have a clue how
the industry worked. There is a lot that bands can do to help themselves,
but ultimately you need people with knowledge and contacts.” Enter Shikari
have not ruled out signing with a major in the future. “We get a lot of
respect for being unsigned, and we like the control it gives us,” Batten
says. “But we are still skint, so, yes, that may change.”
As an A&R man at one major and two indie labels, Simon Banks spent six
years trying to get KT Tunstall signed. In the process, he became her
manager. “I kept getting sacked for trying to sign acts like KT, instead of
obvious off-the-shelf hit-makers,” Banks says. “There is a lot that is wrong
with big labels, but would I want to be without one? No way. As an A&R,
I saw £30,000 or £40,000 spent on acts who went nowhere. If you intend to
see a project through to the end, you have to commit to about £200,000.
“That’s why signing with a major is the least risky option. If your aim is to
sell millions of albums, you absolutely need a record company, or at least
major distribution.” Banks believes that the hype about DIY labels is
misleading. “The chart rule changes mean that, technically, anyone can get
to the top of the charts. But to make any money, you have to sell 20,000 to
30,000 records, and that’s a huge task. It’s not just funding you need, it’s
expertise.”
Ben Drury, who runs www.indiestore.com,
a chart-eligible download website specifically for unsigned acts, has
noticed some changes. “Being unsigned has acquired a certain cachet,” he
says. “One trend is for large management companies to act as angel investors
and build interest in their clients as unsigned. They are then in a better
position to negotiate a label deal.” The veteran manager Tim Clark, a former
MD of Island Records who has Robbie Williams on his books, is against
managers funding their clients. “I feel that is a conflict of interest,” he
says. “The key for the future is separating the finance from the services.
For decades, record companies have been financiers and service providers.
And because artists need money, they were forced to take services that were
expensive and often shoddy. Allow artists to buy services such as marketing,
plugging and distribution separately and they gain a freedom that did not
exist before. The majors are excellent at manufacturing — they have
factories, and the economics are still firmly with physical sales — but they
are not up to date on digital. In the past, you took the good with a great
deal of bad.”
Clark, however, believes that he has found a new way. His latest signing, the
Brighton-based Passenger, are funded by Ingenious, a venture capital firm.
“Ingenious was the first, but more of these firms are getting into music,”
he says. “There are tax advantages for them, but their interest stems mostly
from the revolution the music business has gone through since Napster
arrived.”
Swapping a major label for a venture capital firm sounds like moving from one
high-street bank to another. “You’re right,” Clark laughs, “but the new one
has much better terms.”
