Record companies have never been the friends of the musicians
Former Smashing Pumpkins star Jimmy Chamberlin explains how technologies are changing the music business and what he advises artists today.
Interview by Oliver Voss, published at the German business magazine “Der Tagesspiegel”, 2017/05/08
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaf.../19767146.html
English translation:
Mr. Chamberlin, you have just sold almost all your instruments. Is this the final goodbye to the music or did you need the money?
No, I wanted to get rid of that stuff, because I do not use it anyway. I have a drum kit that I play regularly. The others stood in a huge room and had been packed in boxes for years. Now we move to a new house and my wife said the stuff is not coming. But I also have no sentimental relationship to the instruments and always thought someone else should play them.
And do you invest the proceeds of sale in technology start-ups?
No, for my children's private school.
You were also active as an investor?
Yes, when it started in Chicago a few years ago as well. But I try not to build a big portfolio. It's too hard to manage and I do not have time to constantly look at and compare metrics. For technology companies, I now work mainly as a consultant.
What can you recommend as a successful Rockstar manager and company?
Mostly it's about strategic issues or about accelerating processes. Most of all, I have a good network and I can bring different people together. After three and a half years as head of the technology company LiveOne, where we developed advertising technologies, I have many contacts with publishers, media and in the advertising business.
The best way to know the music business, which runs more and more on the streaming platforms. Many musicians complain, however, the low remuneration. What is your position?
Streaming is a huge opportunity for musicians. Once the radio stations used to play a song, they paid you once. Even if 100 000 people heard the song. Today you are paid 100,000 times. Of course, there are smaller amounts, but the market saturation is only ten percent.
Nevertheless, well-known musicians have removed their albums from the platforms again.
Some have withdrawn their music and then released it again. One can only conclude that the calculation has not worked out. And you have to remember that ten years ago in negotiations, no one thought of streaming. But bands starting now know how to negotiate good deals and how to secure a good percentage of the streaming revenue.
How much do you get from Spotify?
I can not say for sure, but they are significant sums. The Pumpkins have 3.9 million monthly listeners on Spotify. And we are also at Apple Music, Deezer and the others.
Will a supplier dominate the market, and how many platforms are likely to survive?
I do not think Apple Music disappears. And Spotify as well. The rest will be shown. But the market is big enough.
Although user numbers and revenues are on the increase, Spotify is also making increasing losses. Is the business model even going on?
The users have already decided. The market is there and established, the record companies will not throw it away again. Now it's up to Spotify and the labels to negotiate the financial details and see where the sticking points are. There is no transparency for outsiders. While I see the money from Spotify and have insight into the record deal, I still do not know where the fraud is.
A strategy of stars is to take money for exclusive agreements with individual streaming providers. Is the time when you could hear almost all the songs in the world over again?
If someone gets money for an exclusive deal and does not sabotage their career, they will continue to do so. If someone does it and people do not hear the music anymore, he will let it. The platforms have developed a mechanism of disruption, and listeners are now deciding on further development. So far, there has only been Jay Z, Taylor Swift, and a handful of cases where musicians have withdrawn albums or placed them exclusively on other platforms. There is no reliable data. But in three years we will have them and know more. And anyway, it's the data that makes the model so interesting.
What do you mean?
On the one hand, this makes the music experience better and better. I was a beta tester at Spotify when the company had three employees. At that time I was offered songs that I would never hear. Now it's getting better and better and I often hear the offered playlists. On the other hand, they give a deep insight into user behavior and show what people really want. So you can try a lot and see how the users react.
One approach of the label is to no longer offer new albums for free, but only to paying users. Is this the right way?
You can not answer that blanket. It all depends on whether a musician lives off the record sales or sees the music as a business card for live performances. I know singers who do not want to go on tour. Should we tell them that there is no market because they have to give away their music? Every artist should have the right to market themselves in the way that suits him best.
But is not the trend anyway that musicians earn the greater part of their revenue through live performances?
Yes that's true. But you can not say either way it's fair, because it was never fair. The record companies have never been the friends of the musicians.
What do you advise young musicians?
If you are convinced that you are a good artist, you should write songs of such quality that people will get them, no matter how the distribution route. Kids often ask me about their social media strategy and nonsense that today is related to being an artist. My answer is always the same: if you do great art, the rest comes on its own.
For musicians, YouTube is as important today as MTV is in the nineties. What role will music videos play in the future?
MTV has made music videos an indispensable part of marketing. This is no longer the case today. We spent $ 1.1 million on the "Tonight, tonight" video, which was justifiable at the time, with sales of record sales and tour sales of one million a rounding error, visual components will always be part of the music, but I do not know in what form.
Maybe as virtual reality? With glasses and headphones you can get a concert experience in the living room.
No, that's more of a niche, like quadraphonic or 180 gram records. It will also be a while before Virtual Reality can create the emotional connections that music already has. I also do not know if the technology can do it at all or only pretend emotions.
For the ex-chief of a technology company you sound quite technology-critical.
There are people like Neil Young's manager Elliot Roberts and others from the old guard who say HDTVs were the worst thing that ever happened to rock 'n' roll. You see too much of the faces and much is too perfect. I also think that takes away some of the secrets. In the past the bands were behind smoke, with HD the curtain was pulled away.
Are you glad that there was no social media, or would you like to get in touch with the fans on Facebook and Twitter?
We would never have made our album "Mellon Collie" if we had smartphones back then. We started at noon and often stopped at midnight. We did not have a TV, just a ping pong table and a basketball hoop. If everyone keeps typing on their phone, you can not concentrate. We forget how much time we had before there were smartphones.
Will you play Pumpkins concerts again?
Yes, we will definitely play again. Probably not this year, but early next year. And we also talk about recording new music again.
Jimmy Chamberlin became known as the drummer of Smashing Pumpkins. The alternative rockers from Chicago were among the most successful bands of the 1990s. They have sold more than 30 million albums worldwide. In 2000, the band announced its dissolution, in 2007 there was a reunion. Chamberlin played in other groups in between and made music as Jimmy Chamberlin Complex.
He is the co-founder of the consulting firm Blue J Strategies, which works for companies such as Coca-Cola, Facebook or Universal Music. Prior to that, he spent more than three years managing the company LiveOne, which developed technology to incorporate social media commentary into concert live broadcasts.
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