Having managed iconic acts from The
Yardbirds to Marc Bolan to Wham! as
well as claiming a number of production
and writing credits, including co-authorship of
Dusty Springfield's You Don't Have To Say
You Love Me, Simon Napier-Bell has been at
the sharp end of the music industry during some
of its most successful decades. But, having now
published his fourth book, Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-
Ay, which comprehensively charts the evolution
of popular music over the last 300 years, Napier-
Bell has an academic perspective on the business
that few others can match.
Forget reminiscing about a pre-iTunes era,
Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay traces the music industry all
the way back to the British Parliament's establishment
of the right of ownership for creative work in 1713.
From there, Napier-Bell gives a detailed and blunt
account of music's journey from the promotion and
sale of sheet music for amateur pianists, right through
to today's difficult transition to the access model of
music streaming - highlighting and critiquing the
biggest stars in musical history on both the artistic
and executive side along the way.
We won't spoil the ending, but what's clear in
Napier-Bell's take on things is a love of the biz in
all of its filthy glory and some real optimism for
the future at a time when headlines everywhere else
seem to be willing the mighty industry to finally
admit defeat. Don't hold your breath, says
Napier-Bell.
"The thing that comes up time after time is
that this industry is in decline, but I haven't seen
any decline or even a crisis in the music industry,"
he tells Music Week. "The overall figures of money
being spent in the music industry in the last three
years have gone up every year. What's in decline is
the sale of records - what's increasing the overall
pot is the income to publishing companies and
most of the publishing is owned by the record
companies, what they lose somewhere they make
somewhere else.
"The whole point is that we have a $68 billion
a year pot and as long as the public is willing to
spend $68 billion a year, there are going to be
entrepreneurs who come along and find a way
of taking it from them. It may no longer be for
records, it may be for streaming or something that
we have no concept of yet, but it won't go away."
What have you taken from all this research into the
music industry and its history?
Once I started my research for the book, I changed
my mind about quite a few things. One was
that there's actually no way that artists are taken
advantage of; artists are part of the business, they
come in to it to make money. [Over the years]
the artists have come in and adapted what they're
best at doing, making music, for the technology of
the music business. In the beginning, the business
was based on sheet music, so the artist wrote sheet
music. Sheet music had to be sold to amateur
pianists, so publishers were very keen on simple
songs that only had a few chords with a small range.
They found this wonderful formula of eight bars
repeated and so on. Then, when records came, songs
became three minutes long. Before that, a hit song
was at least 10 minutes, you went on stage, sang it
and got the audience to join in... three minutes was
ridiculously short, but with the technology of records
three minutes became acceptable and so on until the
writer in the present day.
The idea that the industry somehow screwed the
artists' wonderful art just isn't true. The artists were
willing cooperators and entered into the business,
albeit from another angle. So I felt much more
sympathetic towards the business [after researching
for Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay].
The other thing that came up really clearly is
that everyone who moved the business forward
from the beginning right up until recently, all of the
figures who were respected and revered on both the
music and industry side, did so because they were
hedonistic, greedy and self-interested. I couldn't
find anyone who we respect who sat down in an
almost charitable sense and said, "I want to improve
the industry." One or two people were like that but
they were so boring we can't remember them.
Duke Ellington was asked at The Cotton Club,
which only had white audiences, to write jungle
music because that's how they saw black people. So
Ellington invented in his mind what he thought
they meant by jungle music, which became Duke
Ellington's music. That was Duke Ellington
entering into the commerciality of music and, if
you like, going along with their racism. Then, if
you come forwards to the Erteguns - wonderful in
business - but [Atlantic Records founder] Ahmet
was so respected and was basically a guy who loved
a good time, loved black music, loved drink and
drugs and didn't like getting up in the morning. He
was a very fun-loving, much loved person but there was no,
"I've got to improve the music industry and make it a
place to be proud of." All of the recent
people as well, had this self-interested attitude
which created their success. So the music industry
is one unlike any other, because it hasn't been
created by dedicated people specifically educated for
that industry, it's been totally dominated by free-
wheeling, fun-loving, slightly greedy, sometimes
corrupt people who love music.
So, when executives say it's all about the artist and
letting their creativity flow, do you think that's
probably a bit disingenuous?
Look what vinyl was. It was gift from heaven - a
quarter of a penny's worth of vinyl could be pressed
and turned into a record that could be sold for five
shillings. Nowadays, one penny's worth of vinyl can
be pressed and sold for £10. It's a 10,000% profit
margin and nobody wants to give up on it. That's
why they all have huge buildings and limousines.
Who would want to lose that?
The music publishers have always had to deal
with a tiny bit of money coming in from lots of
places and slowly making a big amount of money.
The record companies just got a big bit of money
right from the beginning.
Of course you need a label, but do record
companies care about the artists? Ask an American
record boss how many artists they pay private health
insurance for. Not one. How many employees?
Every single one. They treat artists as an ingredient
of a hit record.
That's not how it started. I do agree that in
the '50s and '60s the people who started record
companies in England and America, like Tony
Stratton-Smith or the Erteguns, loved music and
artists. Some might have been a bit sharp with
their practices or careless with money, but they did
love music.
But records were this gift from heaven and as
the corporations were taken over by the people
who cared most about the money and least about
the music - with the 80s being the big switch time
when the accountants came in - everyone thought
in units and the artist just became this thing that
had to be dealt with. I can't believe that's all turned
around all of a sudden. What happens when an
artist makes a record [the executives don't like]
and asks for it to be put out because it's their art?
It doesn't go out, they're told to go away and
make one that will sell. And so they should be!
I'm not objecting - the artist should be part of the
business. I'm not objecting to the attitude where
the artist is seen as an ingredient - artists should
see themselves as an ingredient. But for a record
company to pretend that they only care about the
artist is a bit disingenuous.
Has your view on all of this changed compared to
when you were a manager?
Well, I'm not anti-record company, as a manager
I loved the record companies but you loved them
like an enemy - it was a game! You went to war on
behalf of the artist but without an enemy you didn'l
have a war to fight. It was a permanent battle to
get what you needed and wanted and the end result
was benefit for both sides. I always enjoyed it and
I had loads of friends at record companies. Both
sides knew it was a battle that had to be fought and
compromised on. Writing the book hasn't changed
any of that, but I do look at the artist as much less
put upon.
We have musicians complaining about getting
a bad deal in the new age, but musicians have
always gotten a bad deal. Artists have always come
to a compromise with the music business to make
themselves into stars and, frankly, in the future
they'll always get both ripped off and looked after
to some degree. If they aren't looked after then
there won't be any new stars and the record industry
relies on star musicians - but the regular, back-up
musicians have never really benefitted.
I don't think anything will change much. There
will be entrepreneurs who make the money and
artists who are prepared to compromise to make the
most money they can.
How do you think the consumer perceives the
music industry today?
Much more cynically than it deserves to be seen,
probably. To see it cynically you'd have to think
it was highly organised to cheat, corrupt and lie
but actually it's not like that, it's rather a mess. It's
not a huge corrupt machine and I don't think the
business is nearly as cynical as the public thinks it is.
Do you think artists are getting long enough now
to establish a career? It's something that a lot of
people ask these days, but is it necessarily just a
modern problem?
It's always been cut-throat but situations affect
things. If you go back to before the 20s, when
there was no radio and a hit song usually took a
year and a half to establish, the stars then were
the songwriters not the people who sang the song
because there was a whole variety of people who
sang the song.
Then radio came along and people said, "That's
the end of the music business, music is free, no-one
will ever buy anything again." Suddenly with radio
the cycle of making a hit came down to about three
months. Hits came and went much quicker and
sold only a fourth or a fifth [of what they used to].
The overall money in the industry was the same but
each song was earning less, which in a way is what
we're talking about with artists now. More artists
get access now because of the internet but far fewer
of them really get to that big stage of being a major
worldwide name. The ones that are signed up to
record companies are getting less time to develop,
that's for sure, but they're not usually signed up
until they've gone through some development stage
in what they do on the internet. I don't think many
people are going to get signed absolutely cold,
which in the past they might have been, so it's just
that the chance to develop has to happen before
they sign to the record company rather than after.
I don't think it's any more or less cut-throat than
before, it's just that the timings are different.
Recording artists were totally huge in the 70s,
80s and 90s because [of the nature of records]. If
you had an artist coming out with a big new album,
you'd do a huge multi-million pound campaign
and you had to be sure that records were ready
to be sold when that promotion started, so you
had to press a million or two million in advance
and you really couldn't afford to get it wrong too
often. So artists were really pushed by the record
companies to become broader and broader in their
appeal. Cynical critics said they were pushed to the
lowest common denominator, but I don't really
think that's true - they were pushed to refine and
refine until they found a way to express artistry
with the broadest possible appeal. Huge artists
like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Crosby Stills &
Nash and probably acts as recently as Oasis went
through that. That's going to go away because
record companies don't really care about doing that
anymore. A record company now is quite happy to
sell a million downloads whether it's through 50
artists or just one, whereas in the past it really had
to be through one.
Shep Gordon told us a few weeks ago that the
record label's role these days was as a marketer...
In the 60s the managers found the artists,
developed their public image, worked with them on
their music and the record companies didn't have
anybody. In the 50s the chart was the top 10 most
popular songs judged on the sale of sheet music. In
those days a top song was recorded by five different
artists because the important thing was to sell
sheet music. When that chart changed to records,
the record companies didn't have any marketing
because the marketing had always just been the song,
there was no notion of building the
artist. So as that switched, it was the managers that
took over and conceived and developed marketing.
Well into the 70s, it was mainly the managers that
were doing this and some of them became record
executives. Then record companies began to get
very good A&R people.
So what we're seeing now is that it's sort of
going back to what it was in the 60s - the record
companies want someone outside the company
to do all that development and then bring them
something like the finished package. Instead of
being all depressed about it, you should look at it
as much better. Artistic development was always
better in independent hands, rather than corporate,
so it's actually a big step forwards. The thing is
[independents] do need the marketing corporations
For five or ten years now everybody has been saying
that record companies are finished, but if you look
at the Top 20 charts on both sides of the Atlantic,
it's all major record companies. They're not dying.
Do you think the track has become a promotion
tool for other revenue streams?
Well that would be going back to the beginning
wouldn't it? Way back before radio, and even up
until the rock era, as long as the chart was made
up of the Top 10 songs based on the sale of sheet
music, the music was more important than the
artist. Streaming is going to make the actual music
more important than the artist at least for a while
for lots of reasons, a simple one being that you don't
hold a cover in your hand and look at the artist or
read the sleeve notes while you listen to it.
Do you think that owning rights today has become
more important again with the slide away of
physical product? It seems everyone is keen to
retain their rights more than ever.
I think everybody always wants to retain their right:
it's just that if you need money to finance your
career and you don't have any, you take what is
offered to you. From the beginning of publishing,
a songwriter would be offered as little as possible
to get as much as possible - buying the song
for a month's rent or something. That's always
gone on: in the 70s and 80s, admittedly, it got
to new heights, unproven artists and songwriters getting
unbelievable amounts to give away their rights.
I don't think anyone is sure where the industry is
heading, but for sure the $68 billion that's swirling
around isn't going to go down - where it's going
to go and for what, I don't know. Over the last few
years the money has mainly come from live, but
you can't really say it's healthy when most of that
has come from acts that have been around for 20
years. And records aren't healthy when nobody's
buying them, but the industry as a whole continues
to thrive.
Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay, published by Unbound Books, available from Amazon
