It’s time for talent (From The Northern Echo)

It’s time for talent

6:19pm Thursday 5th January 2012 in Features & Interviews

Viv Hardwick talks to North-East music agency boss Jim Mawdsley about the future facing the industry in 2012 and hears a success story.

IS North-East music agency Generator best-placed to try and help the “lost generation”

of UK youngsters, I ask the chief executive Jim Mawdsley.

“It’s part of what we do. The M&B (Music and Business) scheme is important for young entrepreneurs to learn the basics. What the programme does is teach music business practice, without having to do a three-year degree,” he replies “What they come away with is a business plan involving basic skills like strategy and planning which helps them fit into the industry whether they want to be a manager, a label or a publisher. We also try and equip them with the digital strategies that go round.”

The talent development scheme that Generator would like to see introduced nationally, is about convincing the creative people who want a successful career, particularly in the early stages, to “take responsibility for their own development”.

“If they can’t write songs, they haven’t got a chance anyway and then there are things like social networking to build up your fanbase so that you can reach people with a new release that’s a digital download or a stream. You also need that fanbase for when you do a gig. Record companies want to know things like ‘How many downloads did you do?

How many views are you getting on your Facebook page? How many people are coming to your gigs?” says Mawdsley.

Is there a particular band that Generator can point to, which can inspire others in the North-East?

“When we were putting the talent development scheme together, we worked under the radar to see if we could do it for the budget we had in mind. We worked with a band called Let’s Buy Happiness from Newcastle.

We saw them, they’d done two or three gigs and had four or five really great songs. Over the course of a year we recorded a couple of EPs by them and formed a fictitious record company called Ghostart.

“We got some music industry PR involved and did a record release campaign. We got a plugger involved and the end result was a strategy which saw them playing at Glastonbury and the Evolution and Great Escape Festivals, plus key support slots in London.

“One of the singles we released got playlisted on BBC Radio 6 music and they did a BBC Radio 1 session for Huw Stephens which really raised their profile,” says Mawdsley.

This proved the theory that a scheme could ensure that a band was “industry ready” so that a recording company didn’t need to do the early development.

The Generator boss feels in future that young people are going to take more informed choices about what they do.

“The most it will cost someone to do one of courses is £895 and you get more hands-on experience than a three-year BA where you could end up walking away with debts of £45,000,” says Mawdsley.

Let’s Buy Happiness recently released a third single which earned good press reviews and are currently working on a debut album.

“Once they’ve got that finished I think they are going to investigate good, solid management.”

THIS hopeful sign comes after Generator organised one of the biggest gatherings of music experts to discuss the future of the music industry.

“The audience was two-thirds from the North-East and the rest came from London, Yorkshire and Scotland. It was a major success that people travelled to it because of the quality of the speakers. The questions we were asked were really intelligent and thought-provoking and for most of the sessions we were turning people away.”

Can he sum up the issue facing the music industry in future?

“The media paint the picture that the recording industry in particular is dying out. Okay, we know that there are 50 per cent fewer people working at major labels, we know that the revenues per release are less than they used to be. But there is a lot of optimism about a re-group or a re-model in terms of how the companies need to restructure in future.

You go back to the essence that people will always consume music. They may consume it in a different way, by subscribing to something like Spotify (the web download service) rather than buying physical product. The main thing is to get people to buy something rather than pay nothing.”

Mawdsley also points to the fact that earnings from live appearances aren’t taken seriously enough when making forecasts.

“The live industry is really healthy and thriving. Angus Baskerville, who works for 13 Artists representing people like Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead, said that he’d put together one tour of 25 dates for Shed Seven each year, which gives them income for 12 months. The whole point of touring used to be about promoting a record.

“One of my best friends is a producer and he recently signed a contract and didn’t even tell me or show me the contract. I couldn’t find the words to say to him about that. The simple truth here is that if you let a company pay for your recording then they own the master rights.”

􀁧 letsbuyhappiness.com