Tell us a bit about yourself?
PC : My name is Patrick Cohen an entrepreneur , music lover , blogger, writer, songwriter, transformational activist from London UK . I am the founder of Yinc Ltd a group of business trading in varied industries and YZ Records is arm operating the music industry alongside Yjukebox the recently added marketing and Video distribution branch.

Have you signed your artists internationally? 
PC : Yes although we relatively new on this market I have signed and licensed an artist internationally ,I would say worldwide in 2013 .

Which country do you think is the best to license music to? Why?
PC : Commonly the US is the best to license music to because of the size of the market and the importance of the opportunity in the entertaiment industry, but I personally deal a lot with the UK because o the variety ad flexibility of the demand, however countries such as Germany France and the scandinavia , Japan, New Zealand as well as Australia have good niches if you want to expend.

If you were to partner with someone to license his music / sign up his artists for your region, what sort of music are you looking out for? 
PC: For the UK Pop music and urban music in general but I work almost in all style excepted Heavy metal and gangster rap which I have not exploited yet for parental advisories reasons . I am also working on experimental musics such urban classic , and Reggazz (Jazzy Reggae ) because the UK is one of the most open when it comes to innovation , experimental music.

 

 

Notable projects you have completed??
PC : I have released a single titled Liberator with the premier Afro- European Jewish hip hop act in 2013 who developed under YZ Records; but I got seriously burnt by some so called independent music industry professional who supposedly want to help the independent music . As you can notice no release since then and the business almost closed down, thanks God the business has more than one leg. The reason why we added our own distribution in partnership with well established company to prevent this big scam going on right now in the music industry.

Before the restructuration of our business the Record label lost all of the artists in the course of resolving the infrigement of our copyrights resulting in non payment of royalties , As matter of fact we are still in litigations on that issue.

The coming projects are Elle the princess of Life Music from London UK . 22 years old who work on vintage soul music with urban flavour coupled with substantial lyrics . Life Music is about bringing back to like the vintage musically and souls which are buried in dead hopes. Release late this year.

Then Jahmarya who is a Reggae artist from South London to be reeased next year .

Haute Gam is the haute music band working on making world Music luxurious . The band led by Lazare Gaman aka music factory the former keyboard player of the international Reggae artist Alpha Blondy , to be released late this year as well .

Then have the 3G who are 1 twin(brother and sister) James 13 years old and Martha 13 years old and their younger sister Faith 11 years old , James is a Genius producer, drummer, Martha plays bass guitar , keyboard and does backing vocals, Faith plays keyboard , a bit of violin and is lead singer, We also have their older brother  the already legendary Percussionist, Drummer, producer, Music teacher Steven G Legend who worked for;Rihanna, Rita Ora, Ghetts and Kano to name a few. His main

influence is his father Lazare Gaman, a producer, who he saw making music as a young child. At the age of 8, his parents bought him his first ever drum kit and since then he’s never looked back. His musical styles include jazz-fusion, RnB, Funk, Neo-Soul and Gospel. In February 2011 Steven performed for Rihanna at the Brit Awards and the following year went on to work with Rita Ora and Ghetts. In April 2013 he completed his first European Tour with Conor Maynard and
also supported Will.I.AM in December later that year.Steven is a co-founder of the CUPC Charity who attend the needs of privileged children in Africa. He will be Launching his own Music Academy very soon and releasing his own music. on YZ Records .

He is currently touring worldwide with Kwabs (Atlantic Records),

Steven G Legend has become too heavy for the size of the label so we are looking for major to take over his coming projects with his collective Legend City .

I am meanwhile open to collaborate with any artist on various projects since I am partnering with 4 production companies.

What do you think is the single largest problem faced by the music industry today?
PC: The largest single problem we face is of moral order , “Greed” which birth, deceit , corruption , envy ,as I said earlier we were burnt by people who pretended to help the independent music professional survive the cannibalistic environment of the industry yet they happen to be worst than the majors . Some conspiration theorists believe such people were sent by the major to create an atmosphere of insecurity and fear so the only safe way for music would be the majors . I do not know but something is sure I am right now partnering with major or sub major who seem safer.

How do you think it can be resolved?
PC: Organisations such Music2Deal could be a way to resolve this issue by exposing the rotten apples get them to fix themselves or else have the same sanctions as criminal or sex offenders . Through this strong network of morally fit real music lovers who understand the power of shared economy we can make a big change at the point of influencing the music industry worldwide . If we have a well organised professionally and morally competent group of Music2Deal ambassadors we can influence  bigger organisation and governments to implement change.

Your plans for 2016/17?
PC: As I pointed out previously I have few releases coming up at the end of 2016 and in the spring 2017 music wise .

A good word on Music2Deal.com
PC: What if Music2Deal was the hope of the independent Music industry ? We can make it happen, if to change the world we need to change our mentality Music2Deal has done a bit more than that by putting in the hands of Independent music professional the tool to make a change. And I am not only wishing all the best in succeeding in that task but I am dedicated to be involved to make it happen. All the blessings to Mario Christiani and his collaborators .

 

Link: Patrick Cohen (ZY Records, UK)

 

 

Music2Deal members can obtain a discounted registration code for a Reeperbahn Festival Conference Ticket by sending an email to registration@reeperbahnfestival.com mentioning “Discount Music2deal“ (deadline Sept 16). They will then receive a discount code including instruction to register online.

The discount will be €155,00 net (plus 19% VAT and sales fee) instead of regular fee €230,00 net (30% off).

The Reeperbahn Festival Conference Ticket contains the following services:

• Access to the Conference programme (sessions, networking, awards)
• Priority access to the public programme (concerts, showcases, film, literature, and arts programme (subject to capacity))
• Access to the Reeperbahn Festival Lounge (incl. delegates bar)
• Access to the password protected delegates database
• Access to the Hamburg Metal Dayz
• Free local public transportation

 

Music2Deal connecting music professionals and then staying in contact about music opportunities to make deals happen.

 

by  Richard Rogers, Ncompass Music/Silverscope Records

New post in the A&R Topics group on Music2Deal

This week I spoke to a couple of A&R colleagues and I asked them what they felt was one of the biggest changes in the last ten years. The answer was tie-ins, link ups and more marketing deals than ever before but cross merging from music into other creative areas rather than selling packets of crisps a la SpiceGirls. So artists have gone for more kudos and collaborated in areas such as art, photography, installations, sculpture, film making etc. Basically music is working in tandem with other art forms. Why?

Because the amount of money has dropped significantly from selling music only. The physical formats are making a pittance in the short and long run and obviously the world and his wife have been downloading a majority of music for free particularly these last ten years. Therefore artists such as Coldplay, Kate Bush, David Sylvian have led the way for UK artists by working with other creative artists to form a different revenue stream. Recently Lady Ga Ga and famous artist Jeff Koons have worked together on her Artrave evening where a statue was unveiled of her by Koons.for her Artpop album. Jay Z worked with Serbian Marina Abramovic on her instillation of ‘the artist is present’.

By working with an artist in another creative field you are addressing two audiences, firstly your own and secondly those of an artist in a different creative area whose own fanbase will undoubtedly in some degree or another be interested in what you are producing musically thanks to the collaboration with one of their favourite artists.

In my opinion this has all been done to some degree over the last 50 years, think of the graphic designers doing monumental sleeves in the 60’s and 70’s. The dancers and choreographers, video directors used in the music videos of the 80’s and 90’s. The list goes on, For A&R people this has been creative license for those 50 years but in the last ten years this has changed to the fact that now the artist needs to make money in different ways therefore the onus is on ensuring that the A&R is still creative but money can be made at the same time so the goalposts have moved to a degree. So more tie-ins and link ups are needed. More pressure for the poor beleagered A&R person. I went to an exhibition of paintings in 2002 in the UK, saw an amazing painting of the Easter Islands in vivid gregarious colours and attempted to buy the painting (5 people had already done the same). Although I didn’t buy the painting I did buy the rights to use the image and used it as a cover sleeve for a promotional album called Shallow Vessels that featured four artists each performing 4 songs apiece. One of the acts were signed up via Music2deal to City Canyon Records in New York, a good Music2deal user and two of the other acts were signed through distributing the promotional CD at Music seminars such as SXSW and Popkomm where the cover sleeve caught everyone’s imagination. I still believe the sleeve was fundamental in acquiring people’s attention in the first place and to an extent getting those acts signed to deals. After all there is nothing worse than a boring promotional or demo sleeve.

On a personal note I went into a secondary area a number of years ago after lecturing for the PRS that artists needed more than just music and required a second bow to their strings through collaborations because simply put ‘music itself wasn’t selling’. After studying art, it took me another 6 years to devise a 6 formula system called ‘Canvas Music’ of painting any song ever written in any style and each painting would be unique (checkout http://www.bourneart.com for more info). Artists such as Muse and OMD have acquired ‘Canvas Music’ paintings of their own songs. Apologies for a bit of self promotion but if anyone would like to commission a song to be painted either a song written by themselves or any other song by any other artist then please contact me.The song is painted on 12 inch square (old vinyl size) stretched canvas and I am offering them at a discount of only 450 euros each (plus postage) for any M2D member that uses the code ‘Link Ups’.

My advice to music artists and managers is find people to collaborate with at an early stage, find an artist, photographer, installation artist, sculptor, anyone on the creative side that a) you admire and like their work b) are at basically the same stage of their development and career as yourself where you can work together for the mutual benefit and development of both creative artists despite being in two separate creative areas. They say two heads are better than one.

Possibly Music2deal is the best launchpad for finding that creative being?

Richard Rogers

A&R Topics group on Music2Deal