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Speaking at music events: The Uganda edition

May 13, 2013 | 0 comments

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I just spent a week in Jinja, Uganda, speaking as part of the Doadoa East African Performing Arts Market. I gave a presentation about music marketing.

It was, it has to be said, a very different presentation about music marketing than the one I gave at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival the previous weekend – though I guess some of the key principles remained the same.

Chances are the vast majority of African musicians you’ve actually heard of are West African musicians. In East Africa, generally speaking, there’s very little in the way of infrastructure, not much happening in the way of performance opportunities and hardly anything you could call an independent music industry.

There are, of course, some fairly big name pop stars in Uganda, and indeed, one of them played out the back of our hotel at deafening volumes until 2am on Saturday night – which seems an odd thing for a hotel to allow. But in general, there’s not a great deal going on for most people.

If you want to start a career as a musician or you want to be a music industry worker in Uganda, then your options are fairly limited in the grand scheme of things.

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The big tip-off for me was the complete lack of record stores. This is the first place I’ve ever been where vinyl shopping was simply not an option. Nobody owns record players, and nobody sells records. Seems it’s always been this way. You can buy a CD – burned to blank disc according to your specifications from an old PC in a small roadside store. But other than this – no music retail. And not much else in the way of music business either.

However, there are, of course, musicians. Great musicians. Some good producers too. A couple of really wonderful venues.

Here’s a brief sample of some of the music we encountered or caused to happen.

There just hasn’t been any real consolidation of the pockets of activity happening around East Africa or any clear route to market. So one of the things that Un-Convention has been involved with here for the past year has been the establishment of the Bayimba Co-op, which brings musicians and other artists together to share knowledge and contacts – the idea being that collaboration provides an opportunity to build sustainable careers within the arts for local people.

To see musicians working together towards the creation of a whole new industry, built on principles of cooperation rather than competition has been fantastic to see, and it’s an amazing place to be – for all sorts of reasons.

It’s my first time in Africa – let alone Uganda – and it’s been a fantastic introduction.

Relax

I’ve been very busy the whole time, of course. I swam in the Nile, hiked alongside waterfalls, watched some of the most incredible percussionists I’ve ever seen, danced to one of the best live reggae bands I’ve heard, won hundreds of thousands of shillings at the roulette table (nearly £30), and saw some amazing animals.

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I was there with a fantastic bunch of people and have many, many stories to tell…

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I also took about 500 photos, which you’re welcome to wade through, if you feel so inclined…

The next 100 artists

Apr 4, 2013 | 0 comments

I’ve been looking at music business figures in the news today. I really shouldn’t.

The problem is that macro-economics tell a story without meaning. There is no useful knowledge that can be gleaned from Online music licensing revenues pass radio for first time. Why? Because the fortunes of a very few artists skew the results every single time.

So focusing on online music licensing as a business strategy only becomes a reasonable response if you’re Ed Sheeran, Adele, Coldplay or Mumford and Sons. It’s not just unhelpful information, it’s scarcely even descriptive.

Take, for instance, a headline like “UK album sales up on previous year”. That might simply mean “Adele released a record recently”. In aggregate, it gives a false picture.

Or what about the idea that physical sales for music are down? Other than in aggregate, maybe, it’s nonsense. It might say something about the fortunes of a sector, but it’s no basis for strategy for an individual act.

What if the sales of physical products are actually UP for the top half a dozen acts, significantly DOWN for the next 100 artists or so, and UP for pretty much everyone else (the so-called ‘long tail’)? The fact that those 100 next-tier artists are collectively so significant financially means that the overall aggregate is down.

My point: it adds meaning to the results when you start to slice the data up. Even only a little bit. Even with an arbitrary, rhetorical number like 100.

Coincidentally, I also received a press release from the PRS this morning, claiming that more money had been paid out to their members over the last year than ever before. I sent back an email asking if that information could be subdivided so we could see the relative growth between the top 20% and the bottom 80%. They declined.

But without even very simple analytical dividing tools like that, aggregation is utterly meaningless as a method of understanding the music business. If one artist (or five, or a hundred) can utterly skew the overall results, then a total is empty information.

And that’s what nearly every ‘state of the music business’ report is based on.

Going Global in New Zealand

Sep 9, 2012 | 0 comments

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I’ve been back in New Zealand this past week speaking at an event called Going Global. It’s been great to spend time in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch with some really lovely people, talk about music online, see a bunch of bands and, where possible, catch up with some friends.

A bit of a whirlwind tour, unfortunately, but I have managed to do some of the things on my must-do list – including spending some time (and money) at Conch Records, seeing a bit of each city (and, in the case of Christchurch, some of the incredible scenery of the surrounding areas), and doing some of the radio and press interviews, I said I’d do while I’m here.

I absolutely, positively loved Wellington – and it more than lived up to its windy reputation (in fact, we were lucky to get out, as they closed the airport not long after we left due to extreme weather), and going to Auckland felt like coming home – even more than I thought it would. Christchurch has been bittersweet of course. It’s lovely, but it’s heartbreaking to see so much devastation.

I don’t know Christchurch nearly as well as I’d like to – and now I feel like there’s a large part of it I’ve missed out on and will never get a chance to experience. But the overwhelming feeling here seems to be one of optimism and normality. Absolutely loved the shopping mall made of shipping containers, and hope that stays around as a landmark and a testament to the people here. Inspiring stuff.

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The MA in Music Industries – Planzai’d

Nov 15, 2011 | 0 comments

I’ve been running the MA in Music Industries (as well as the MA in Music Radio) this year at Birmingham City University. We had our first intake in February, and things really kicked in for the September intake.

From September we’ve also been offering the course as a distance learning programme, which is great because it means that people from anywhere in the world can do the degree without having to move to the UK (or, if they live in the UK, without having to move to Birmingham – though why wouldn’t you want to?).

We are in week eight of the program at the moment, and I have to say that I’m really pleased with how it’s going – particularly the online component, which has been so helpful that the students who are doing the course with attendance are also making use of the materials online to supplement what they’re doing.

The students are also running a blog together, in which they talk about their research, their reflections upon the readings that they’ve been doing, and their critiques of happenings within the music industries.

The point of the blog is to invite others from outside the course – and particularly, within the industry – to get involved, comment, and add their thoughts and reflections as well. Hopefully, in return, the work that the students produce will provide helpful reflection and interesting discussion points for the music industries at large. Go have a look.

One of the most useful things we’ve been using, though, is Planzai.

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