What is FindStream and how has it come into existence?
Behind FindStream were a few people madly in love with music & new technologies, desperate for making the world, i.e the web, a better place, and driven by the idea of creating a smart search system to locate all live media streams on air on the web. As a result of their efforts, the most comprehensive base of FM & Internet streaming radio stations has been built. And alongside to spotting the majority of all radio broadcasts, this team developed an algorithm to scan the music content inside the stream, thus knowing for a fact what is playing any minute on any station broadcasting from any part of the world. This is how FindStream has come into being.
How does it work?
Today, FindStream acts as radio airplay broadcast monitoring service which tracks radio airplay of songs on more than 30 000 radio stations.
Monitored panel includes terrestrial radio streams, as well as big and small independently broadcasted Internet-only radio stations from 73 countries worldwide. This meticulously crafted mix provides for an efficient detection and reporting of millions of titles played on the radio thusbuilding all-round picture of ever-changing music world.
What makes the technology special?
Music data & their intelligent analysis form the core of the FindStream technological know-how. Our expertise is based on a system of automatic live radio stream search that crawls the web and performs careful analysis of found streams. The ability to normalize music meta data inside the stream, quickly generate airplay report on any artist or even build a profound analytical forecast based on the broadcasting history makes the technology behind FindStream almost incomparable.
Due to constant monitoring of web broadcasting sources and database growth FindStream easily spots even newly appeared music content & opens up a new source for music search & discovery.
What are the benefits of using FindStream?
As a monitoring service, FindStream is about empowering musicians by offering them a smart tool to track, rank, and better promote music using by far the most popular source for music consumption – broadcast radio.
There are many aspects to FindStream that make it appealing to music pros, like an ever-expanding database, variety of monitored stations & reported parameters. This profound exploration of radio landscape allows us to built up an unparalleled music discovery & recommendation engine that rests on the opinion of thousands savvy music pros – radio DJ & programming directors.
With all the power that streaming platforms offers in terms of music discovery & recommendation, average music fans still have a very distinct feel to a professionally curated music experience provided by radio DJs. Their extensive music knowledge & ability to carefully piece tracks together bring out an amazing user experience that not a single even the most sophisticated algorithm can deliver.
How can it help musicians with their radio performances?
Broadcast radio is still by far the most popular audio platform, and clear understanding of the radio music world & your place there is vital for luring the audience & succeeding in a highly challenging music industry. And this is where FindStream comes in very handy.
Apart from handling real-time monitoring of regional copyright distribution across the global radios & tracking royalties due for each broadcasted title, FindStream gives musicians an exciting marketing tool that easily measures & analyzes their current popularity on the radio waves, spot the most active broadcasters & recommends the best way to improve the artist’s presence on the radio, plan concerts & marketing campaigns.
How do you want FindStream to develop? What are the future plans?
We at FindStream are very passionate about highlighting the diversity & quality of broadcast radio content, and we are looking at ways to showcase the benefits of thoughtful curation of perfect playlists as opposed to technologically created algorithm streaming services provide. We also plan to expand our monitored panel to cover all radio stations on the globe, so as not a single airplay is hidden.
Music isn’t just about job — it’s an important part of our life. And our goal is to turn FindStream into a single source of radio trends & music discovery, a tool for music pros to action the data & make the best of radio performance. A tall order, though for us it’s one worth delivering on.
Whether you are an established act or an upcoming artist, engaging a good manager is probably one of the most important things you need to consider in building your musical career. Certainly, while hiring a manager doesn’t equate success, a great manager knows when to play different roles at different stages of your career, including opening doors, pushing you to level up your game while giving you a reality check.
But what should artists consider before hiring a manager? As Syaheed of Bedsty Artist Management explains, “Make sure they understand you, and make sure they understand what you need to do. It’s a two way street. The manager is only as good as the artist. If the artist sucks, even if the manager has all the contacts in the world, he’s not going to be able to do much. You must have a manager that respects you, but you must also respect the manager, because we partake in the same risks as you. We are not going to get on the train with you if we don’t like where the train is headed. Of course, there are many types of managers, so pick one that understands you, your music and your vision.”
Syaheed, Director, Bedsty Management
With four unique acts Sheikh Haikel, Wicked Aura, Sezairi, and Kevin Lester (now known as THELIONCITYBOY) under his care, Syaheed is a partner, visionary, mentor, parent and strategist all rolled into one.
This year, some of his biggest achievements include signing a major label record deal for Sezairi on the back of producing RoomToBreathe series on his YouTube; signing a landmark development deal for THELIONCITYBOY with Apl.de.ap’s BMBX; turning Wicked Aura around financially to make possible their next record; and having Sheikh Haikel re-enter the Malaysian market, appearing on Maharaja Lawak Mega – with a weekly viewership of 1.5 million viewers.
He added, “A manager only truly becomes a manager when he has things to manage. At the very early start, the manager is a promoter and talent developer, but a manager also has all these other little functions and roles too. Once the artist becomes slightly more successful and in demand with more clients seeking for him, then the true manager roles starts to come in; because you’re managing the information in and out, delegating where necessary, and finding the partnerships where necessary.
So at the start, you will probably need a person who is more promoter and talent developer more than a manager, but of course unless he’s a friend, you’re probably seen as a commodity with so many other artists out there, and you probably need to pay a bit of money or cut him in. Meanwhile, if you have a best friend-type of guy who has ideas and can help you out, rope him in!”
MBIA interviewed Syaheed to share his thoughts on what makes a great artist manager, his relationship with his artists, his marketing strategies, and in particular, the long and hard efforts put behind THELIONCITYBOY which eventually caught the eyes of Apl.de.ap’s team and offered him a label deal.
How did you get started as an artist manager?
I stumbled into it. I really wanted to get involved with the band SIXX that Kevin Lester had started. Back then, I was producing Hip Hop & R&B music and was pretty successful at it. But handling live production for a band was not my immediate strength. I really wanted to see this band make it because they were so good, so I literally willed myself into their fold by making myself very useful by utilizing the relationships I had already in Malaysia and Singapore to get them seen. I landed them a spot on Sunburst KL Festival. From then on, it evolved.
I then realised I was pretty good at it. I felt I was adding even more value as a manager then I would as a producer. I had learnt a lot hanging around established Malaysian artists and their managers and that was my education, a class I am still attending
Describe what kind of manager you are. Are you a promoter like Simon Fuller? A mentor like Jon Landau (managing Bruce Springsteen)? A partner like Albert Grossman (with Bob Dylan)? Or an autocrat like Tom Parker (like how he visioned and shaped Elvis)?
I’d imagine I’m a hybrid of all four – playing different roles to the needs of my artist. If I had to pick one, I would believe I am a partner in their development, a part of the process. But one thing is consistent is that I always let my artist have their creative freedom, giving my two cents when needed, but they would have control of that. I just lay the facts and manage the expectations.
How do you manage their expectations?
Every artist has this dilemma. They want to do their art, but they also need money to survive and hopefully excel. They expect to make money from doing what they want to do. So managing expectations would be in the form of pointing out the bigger challenges and opportunities on a short and long term basis, and weighing for them the consequences of putting out music that would only serve themselves emotionally but not necessarily connect with the audience.
Do you face this problem with your own artists?
All the time, and it’s fair, because music is such an emotional product, especially to its creator, but there are artists that are slightly more business savvy and pragmatic and know how to balance that. But it gets a bit more dangerous if the artist does a certain type of music and expects to do really well when in truth the music may in fact be very difficult to sell. So that’s when I need to manage expectations, so that they don’t get completely let down. It’s also partly why we are still quite broke (laughs), but we’ve come to a consensus on what they are comfortable with. After all, I’m not managing a K-pop group where we have to stick to a certain formula. I believe my artists are talented. Maybe they would be more respected when they are dead and gone than when they are alive, like Van Gough.
It’s like a parent-child relationship, where you are constantly shifting and adjusting, and getting them out of their comfort zone to try new things and evolve. Some artists are open to adjusting but some are stubborn. But it goes both ways. I’m not always right, because if I was, I would be more successful than what I am now. I learn more from every mistake than from my good fortune.
Are you a road manager? Business manager? Legal advisor? Or all of the above?
Again, a hybrid of all three. I’ve played all three in different stages of my career. I needed to, because I had to learn it – from scratch. You could say I believe in starting by washing the dishes, or in the mailroom, and earning my place and proving my worth. I have to add I am not legally trained – I just read the fine print, and understand it enough to break it down in layman terms.
These days, I have a great friend and partner in Aboo, who is basically our Bedsty Artists’ road manager. He is fantastic at what he does so I know our guys are well taken care of when they’re on the road.
What is your biggest achievement as an artist manager?
For me personally, it’s being sustainable while doing it. We could do with some growth so I can build a bigger team to amplify what we want to do even further, and that’s the goal now. But to be at it year in and year out is pretty dope.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face as an artist manager?
Resources: Time & money. We never have enough of either.
As an artist manager, I’ve focused entirely on the development of Singapore artists, original Singapore music artists. And that also means breaking stereotypes on how dope they truly are. It’s the mindset that “local” is not good enough that is my biggest barrier. So to overcome that, I find every opportunity possible to get my artists outside of Singapore.
On hiring interns Very often, these interns whom I work with want to be artists and musicians themselves. But I don’t have the heart to tell them that, “no, your talent is here” instead. Every person deserves to sail their own ship, and if they do find that their path is in management, it’s a bonus. Just like me, I started out as a music producer, stumbled into artist management, and only decided later that I wanted to focus my efforts here.
What makes a good artist manager?
I had a discussion with Denis Ladegaillerie, CEO of Believe Digital on this actually. He told me that the role of the artist manager is the most complex role in the entire music ecosystem… you need to have an appreciation for talent, be able to spot it well and help the artist develop, be informed of new opportunities and technology, be a risk taker as you are dependent on the success of your artist, understand legal intricacies that affects the artist and the deals that come, have business acumen and manage resources to make it profitable for your artist and you.. you name it, it goes on. And obviously, I agree.
Any difference between managing a band versus an individual artist?
Definitely. With a band, there are more personalities to deal with. Income wise, there will be more mouths to feed, but fund raising is also slightly easier. If I need ten thousand dollars to be raised, I can ask ten band members to reach out to their network of family and friends for a thousand each, which on the other hand can be much more daunting to a single artist to get that same amount.
The four acts under my care have very different directions, deliberately too, because I don’t want one act to cannibalize another when it comes to opportunities. There’s also egos to manage, because they are all competitive, and they all want to succeed, which is a good thing. But I don’t want them to feel like my capacity has been compromised because I favor one over another, because I don’t. I have a professional relationship with all four of them, and we have a friendship just as much, and we take care of each other’s families.
What do you look out for when signing an act?
My baseline is that they have to be able to do fantastic live shows. If they can’t do great recordings at the moment, never mind, but you really have to be entertaining when you’re on stage. All my acts can achieve that.
Sheikh Haikel
Sheikh Haikel educates me on that as he’s a top notch live performer. His presence is second to none. Wicked Aura – a no brainer. It’s such a shame folks haven’t yet come around to experience their full band shows as much. Sezairi – I hope after Music Matters, everybody who came to watch went away just mind blown because he just raised the bar, and he’s only just getting started.
Why I got involved with SIXX was also because they’re an energetic and infectious band. They have to sound and look tight. Now, even as a soloist, when THELIONCITYBOY goes overseas to perform, he would see some of the very best acts there and think, “How do I compete on this level?”
So pushing him out of his comfort zone was part of the process. He is a really hungry guy, and if something went wrong during the show, he gets more upset than anyone else, and he would be the hardest person on himself, and I would be the one instead to ask him to chill. I guess it makes it easier for me as a manager, because he’s extremely self-driven. On the flipside, if I need to give him feedback, he would listen, and it would be up to him to digest that process. But with all the artists to a certain degree, they appreciate what I say or don’t say, and we have a mutual understanding.
Do you wear different hats for different artists?
Yes. With Kevin it has always been partnership role, because when we started on the journey, we were really insignificant, and we evolved and grew together. With Sezairi, it’s more of strategy and positioning him differently. I would like to think I have come to a point that I fully understand his musical sense to know where he would like to go with his journey. With Haikel it’s very interesting because I’ve learnt a lot from him, just as much as he has entrusted in me in shaping things for him these last 4 years. He would share how he would do things, his preference, his set and sequence, and so on, and at the same time he would turn to me and ask, “So what is your take?” He would consult me on his ideas, and for someone as senior as that, he’s mentoring me as much as I’m giving back to him. He has plenty of ideas, and from my end it would be, “Which of these ideas make most business sense?”
With Wicked Aura, creatively they are pretty much set, but it was a matter of reviving them financially. So it was cut, cut, cut, let’s not have this and that, let’s do this instead, and put them back together again, so that they can carry forward and work on the project that they have been planning on for the longest time. And I’ve heard the raw recordings and it is amazing!
Wicked Aura
How do your artists remain financially sustainable?
Our paychecks come in spikes: there are months when we make money, and there are months that we don’t, but as long as they are continuously producing good music and great performances, we can definitely expect that we can keep growing. When we are in production mode, it’s a challenge to find funding, so we need to work out how we can spread out our resources evenly.
Make no mistake. All four of them – they are the best in what they do, but our economic situation means that even at that level, they all struggle financially. Wicked Aura is healthy, but I cannot get all thirteen members to commit full time to it, so they have other jobs, because there’s simply not enough money for each person to earn a decent salary for them to commit 100% full time. So there’s a dedicated structure and understanding that if we need to activate Wicked Aura, there’s a priority for everyone to come together.
Sheikh Haikel is a different case. He has regular gigs, he’s on Okto, he has started a wonderful school at Balmoral Plaza called School of Music, and we would try to find ways to fund his next album. It’s a chicken-and-egg scenario. We want to commit more time, but hey, where are we going to find the money?
There are government grants that can help. But we look at it as help rather than the first place to go to, because from my point of view, if at anytime they decide to switch that off, and we are only reliant on one source of funding, then we would be in deep trouble.
Wicked Aura already has a model that was generating some cash, but not in a way that I wanted them to, because they were not playing as a full band, but as a percussion troupe. Now we are in the midst of transitioning them into a full band, but they could still make money performing at corporate events. After all, they were the ones to make Batucada performances popular during corporate events, but with so many similar acts coming up – and these are the same acts which they helped to mentor and grow – they are now competing for the same business, and Wicked Aura will need to do something different. And because Wicked Aura is at this level, we will not reduce our price, even if it means accepting fewer shows, so everyone needs to bite the bullet.
I suppose this ties back with how you build them as a brand.
Yes, in the performance space, your value is measured by how much entertainment you can bring. Usually it’s by word of mouth – that you guys are the best – and also pitching them actively to event organizers. I may not have the time to put in as much effort as I want to, but to overcome that, we work with various booking agents to refer them back to us. Every single live show is advertisement for the next gig. In Singapore, it’s all about how entertaining you are. There are times when we turn an event down because we can’t reasonably achieve a good sound from that show, so we had to respectfully decline. If we are going to do a gig that doesn’t sound good, that’s going to do us more disservice than anything. So maintaining that kind of standard would help us get the next gig or show. Very often, our potential clients see us on YouTube or live and then decided to hire us.
On Sezairi
When Sezairi first came to me, I told him that unlike with his previous arrangement, there is no safety net. There is no magical funding machine behind me. We had to start from scratch. After considering carefully, he took the leap with me. Sezairi is now on a completely different path. It doesn’t matter that he was a Singapore Idol any more. Sezairi has proven that he has the talent, capacity, charm, stage presence and creativity. If we open the right doors, I truly believe that he will be something legendary. He is not an artist that can be easily copied. He’s not just a musician, he’s not just a singer. He is an artist. He’s got a wonderful voice. His tone and style is unique. He can straddle between the English, Malay and Indonesian markets really well. He has the ability to appeal to the mainstream market, yet he also has an edge that the indie folks should appreciate as well. He’s got it in all these different areas, the challenge now is to take those ingredients and make it seen to his current fans, so that they love him more, and also to a new audience so that they can discover him.
What is your marketing strategy?
Our strategy is to refocus on the fans, using every opportunity to engage them and reach out to new audiences, getting them excited and to support us. For example, for Sezairi, the priority is to change people’s mindsets of him. He had an idea to take his music to really interesting locations and spaces, and we did it with this in mind: refocus on fan engagement and have them subscribe to him on his YouTube channel so that any future material that he’s putting out, people can engage with him. We wondered why is it that although he’s on TV half the time, he’s only had two hundred subscribers when we started his YouTube channel. This means that even if he were to put out any video, there won’t be much impact. So we had to start from scratch, pull his audiences back to his own spaces. It gave him the ability to present himself in his natural environment (as opposed to what people only see him as on TV), and also engage his fans on a closer, more personal level.
We produced our pilot with the help of No Average Joe, the one where he was playing in the living room of his grandmother’s house. We did a total of four episodes last year. In order to encourage people to subscribe to his channel, we did teasers, created a hashtag to engage them, and gave viewers goals to hit, like setting a target of 500 subscribers and promised to release a new video immediately.
That was what we did for THELIONCITYBOY too recently. We started with about 300 subscribers during Music Matters week, and we put a goalpost of 800 for JAMA. Never mind if we don’t hit the target, we would release it on 1st June. But if we do, we will release it earlier and reward those people who have subscribed. After that campaign we shot up to 560 subscribers. Not so bad for one week’s work. For THELIONCITYBOY’s channel, every week since last month, we dropped a new song. Sometimes it comes with a video. It may not be a full length music video, just a teaser or jif image for fun, so that they could be shared.
Currently we are shifting away from Facebook. Instagram is still very strong, but Instagram is quite hard to grow because it’s not an immediate sharing type of platform. What we try to do is to build a central point, which is the artist’s website that will aggregate content from YouTube, Instagram and Tumblr, which are our points of creation that feeds and populates the website. Twitter and Facebook are outpoints for communication and sharing. If folks follow us on YouTube and Instagram, technically they get the best of everything. We are also trying to build our mailing list. That takes a bit more thought, because we want to give more value to the user rather than just sending them updates.
Who manages the social media?
Some of the artists are more hands on in execution, but I think a lot about the strategy usually. The whole point of social media for us is to create and facilitate conversations. You want people to not only converse with us, but also to each other. That’s the ultimate goal – for fans to talk to each other and doing things for us, with us. That’s what they do for the very popular artists. Currently, it’s still heavily driven by us, pushing out content consistently. Sezairi is very good at it, THELIONCITYBOY content keeps getting better, Sheikh Haikel is always on Instagram.
Our current project is for Wicked Aura to synergize everyone. Individually they use these social media points, but they all don’t post to Wicked Aura’s accounts for now. They thought that the Wicked Aura account must only have official Wicked Aura stuff. I said, “No, no. Whatever rubbish and nonsense that you’re doing on your own, throw it into the Wicked Aura account too because it is who you are.”
Do you practice putting a budget to promote your campaigns? How do you decide when to spend and how much to spend?
It depends. I decide by looking at how much impact it can make; if that campaign can potentially reach out to 10,000 more people than we could before. For example, if Sezairi or THELIONCITYBOY is going to be on TV, or Haikel is going to drop something out; if there is attention on the project like if there’s a picture of them with another famous artist, so you can target not only your fans but also the fans of the other artist. It’s not about hijacking, but about creating conversations. Why were they pictured together – get fans to talk about that. Then it makes our artists and our pages more socially relevant in whatever algorithm that exists in the underbelly of these social networks, so you can come up more in search in future. Rather than posting for the sake of getting 1000 likes, which is not the goal, we want to seed the conversation, to share that moment with more people and fans so that he gets more exposed. Even if you were to get a question like “Who’s this guy?” That’s good enough, because he took notice, and hopefully he’s inquisitive enough to find out more.
On maximizing resources I have this theory which I share with everyone: because we have so little resources, we really have to maximize its impact. If I had $50,000 to buy a billboard ad, I wouldn’t choose to spend it on placing my ad on Ion in Orchard Road. I would choose to spend it on a billboard in the middle of Times Square, New York city where I can gain more eyeballs, and even take a photograph of that and send it back to the media press in Singapore and create a buzz on its own.
Could you share with us Kevin Lester’s journey to being signed to BMBX and what role did you play in this whole journey?
It’s never a single moment that results in outcomes like this. It’s the 6 years we’ve put in together, investing in the music we create, the journeys and tours we broke the bank on to get overseas, to get better that gets you noticed, and respected, and worth other people investment in you, with their time, with their money, with their support.
On THELIONCITYBOY At each of his live performance, his fans would be there, but about 80% of the crowd has not seen him before. Regardless of that statistic, every time he performs, the crowd just goes bananas and it becomes a party at the end of the day, so there’s always that impact. He may not be part of the current Indie Rock trend, but the indie kids still like him. And they follow him on his socials thereafter.
Kevin Lester, now known as THELIONCITYBOY
I already have heard of BMBX previously because when they were working on a charity project for Typhoon Haiyan victims, they worked with JD from Pop Shuvit, whom I knew. Then I got a call a few months ago. They told me that they saw Kevin’s stuff, and have been sharing it with the whole team and everyone loves what they have been seeing. This was just after Overdrive had been released. They said the feedback for Overdrive was very positive.
THELIONCITYBOY has been to the US four to five times already. The first time was April 2012. We managed to get a couple of small shows linked up from a friend, Fiona Bloom, and that was his first couple of performances in New York. Subsequently, he performed at A3C (All 3 Coasts), a top hip hop festival in Atlanta, and moved on to CMJ (College Music Festival) in New York, and things were picking up. In 2013, we went SXSW (South by Southwest, Austin) and CMW (Canadian Music Week, Toronto), took a break, and this year he went back again.
As they say, and especially in the music industry, it’s very important that first, you show up. The more you’re there, the more people take notice. Showing up was half the job, and he was showing up at all these different places. He was doing very good shows, and had this little thing going on. We escalated our efforts with his EP Everything You Love, You Hate, released in April 2013 via Vertusent Music Group/Sony RED. By May, he had his new track called PYCO (Put Your City On), which he wrote and produced out of his love for the football team, the Lions XII, just before they won the Malaysian Cup. He first performed it at Music Matters in 2013. It generated some buzz and later in January, when it was used in the promo video for the football team, it won many people over.
With each solid song created and produced, there would be a strong idea or visual concept behind it, and each song would be released as a single about every 4-6 weeks, shared on YouTube, topping Deezer Singapore charts, shared on Spotify and other channels. The idea was to create so much content consistently that more fans will start to take notice.
I believe, that was also how BMBX got interested. They looked at the content, the music, the videos of him performing live, and they saw the potential he had. They wanted to invest in South East Asian artists, and we were in the right place, in the right time, doing the right things. And now the goal is to take it further, by developing him as a regional force. This includes putting resources behind him, getting interesting producers that we probably not have access to, to work with him, and this will help him expand creatively as an artist.
Ultimately, THELIONCITYBOY was engaged in the deal right from the start, because this is his life. My role was to make sure that we cross all the “t”s and dots all the “i”s when the deal seals. He has to look at it from “Hey this is my life, is this right for me? Do these people have the same vibe as me?” Ultimately it was his decision. Even if I were to convince him night and day to do it, at the end of the day, I would still hand the case over to him to make the final decision. Going back to the first point, and that’s why it’s a partnership between us.
The way I see my artists is that they are the value creators. They are the reason why all of us have jobs, right? And there’s a difference between if you’re an artist versus a musician. If you’re a musician, you’d still have to rely on the artist to make sure that you have a job, because it’s the artist that create the value, the fan following who would pay tickets to come through the doors. That’s why artists need to have that high level of control over their destiny. But the best artists would also know that there are some technical and legal burdensome things they would rather let folks like us handle.
On staying independent Even after signing the (BMBX) deal, we still hold a mindset that we should never depend solely on one party for support. There must be a way which we are working and giving just as much as we are receiving. It’s in everybody’s interest to make Kevin succeed. If I find funding sources to support this, I would bring it to the table too. It’s a two-way contribution.
About Syaheed
Syaheed is a central figure in the entertainment ecosystem in South East Asia. He has produced award-winning music, launched long running event franchises, and grown the careers of artists like Sezairi and THELIONCITYBOY.
Other than his role as Director at Bedsty Artist Management, Syaheed is also Country Manager & Trade Marketing Manager for Believe Digital and Vice President, SGMUSO Council for The Music Society, Singapore.
For more information on Bedsty’s artists, please visit http://bedsty.com/
This interview was conducted by Emily Haw. Reach out to her on Twitter @emilyhaw
Richard Rogers (RR): Tell us a bit about yourself Karel, your chart successes etc.
Karel Fialka (KF): Well I’m probably most known for the song Hey Matthew which was written about my son young Matthew and my thoughts about his obsession with TV and what TV showed and how kids interpreted what they were exposed to. Obviously things have changed dramatically now because what they were exposed to then and what they can be exposed to now since the advent of the Internet is so hugely different. Anybody of any age can now have access to stuff that, frankly, you could only find in the most discreet of private clubs.
Prior to that my better known chart success in Britain, at any rate, was with the song The Eyes Have It… and I’ve had some other success in Germany with the song Eat Drink Dance Relax, and in Holland way back in 1979 with my indie release of Armband on the Red Shift label.
RR: Was the Hey Matthew song a hit outside of the UK?
KF: Apparently it was a big hit in Ireland. I never found out about the Irish success untilafter it had been and gone … andfranklyit seems daft as a quick Aer Lingus flight over to Dublin to do a bit of promotion would have made a lot of sense if IRS had been on the ball. But IRS, the record company I was signed to then, was not particularly well-organized.
Neither of the major record companies I’ve been with in my career, IRS and Blueprint, were particularly good in terms of certain kinds of structure and obviously not in the long term promotion of my career, or anybody else’s who was signed to them. It is interesting to see how a real record company and also management can consolidate and prolong an artists’ career and aid the public perception of who and what the artist is and does. I had none of that from the companies I was with. I have also never had management. The only offer of management was from Miles Copeland who did suggest that he might be interested, but I said no because I thought there would be a conflict of interest as I was already signed to his companies both as a writer and artist. (bar 68)
RR: And was it a hit anywhere else?
KF: There was a lot of radio promotion and TV’s in Germany and France.
France was an interesting one. In those days, as far as records were concerned.. and I don’t know how it works now.. but back then you could be promoting a record for a whole year. French record companies would expect this because of the size of the country and because everything was very regional. So regional TV and regional radio were very important and I did a lot of them.
I was with IRS Records who went through MCA in the UK and CBS in Europe and unfortunately their licensing deal ran out at a critical time in the promotion of Hey Matthew….so very unfortunately, no more input from CBS in Europe, and the upshot was lack of real success.
RR: For anybody on the Music2deal site looking for management would you say you regretted not having management over the years? Bar 118.
KF: Yes I would say so, definitely.I didn’t try to avoid management, that wasn’t the case at all but I never had management and I still don’t have management. I would say if you are an artist and want to have a career, that management is essential. Obviously bad management can totally screw you over, but good management is worth its weight in percentages, or gold, or pounds of flesh. Management is very important because they are the interface between you and the business, which means record companies, promoters, etc.. And no matter how they are criticized, record companies are very important if you want to have real success. You need to have the mechanisms and mechanics of a company to promote you across borders internationally, and the promotion side is most important because the general public have got to know about you and what you are doing, and of course they have got to be able to buy what you are selling, whatever that means…including your live gigs etc. Record companies, and let’s not beat around the bush, are a business and they are there to make money. In essence they are not there to promote, from my point of view, an artists career, per se.The promoting of the artists career is peripheral to the fact that it is beneficial to both parties i.e. that the record company is going to benefit from it too. But being a business, the record company prefers to do business with other people who are doing business i.e. the management. The record company would feel there is somebody else also looking to make money out of involvement with this artist, this band, whatever it might be; and also somebody who would have a more objective view of a decent career path for the artist.
Frankly if I was a record label, I don’t know if I would want to deal or do business directly…artists and musicians can be a funny lot!
RR: Did you get into music at a fairly older age in regards to the younger age that artists are starting off their careers with record companies nowadays? So what was happening in your early twenties? Were you involved in music or not?
KF: Throughout my teens I was involved in music. I was in London at the height of swinging London in the 60’s and through to the flower power thing. I was on the periphery, I was not one of the leading lights but I was at the heart of things. We used to go the UFO Club on Tottenham Court Road and see Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Tomorrow or Fleetwood Mac at The Electric Garden in Covent Garden. At that time I was at Film School and my Art School friends had a band. I was writing lyrics because I fancied myself as a poet and couldn’t play an instrument particularly well and still can’t, more enthusiasm than skill believe me. They had interest from Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert at Track Records, and Pete Townshend very kindly lent us his loft at the top end of Wardour Street where we went and strummed guitars and tried to write songs.
RR: Did you get a deal with the band?
KF: No they didn’t get a deal but they played a few gigs. They were called The Dreamland Express. The name came from a painting by Maxfield Parrish. The two main guys from the band later found a temporary shelter with Peter Jenner and Andrew King at Blackhill.
Then I spent many years in clothes and fashion in London and also hanging out in Ibiza having a good time. But always writing. Sometime in the mid 70’s, two friends of mine who knew I was so deeply into music suggested that I should really concentrate on it. One of those was Mike Smith who used to work for Martin Goldsmith, Harvey’s brother, who I’d known since his days with Bruce Findlay, who managed Simple Minds, in Edinburgh. Motorhead’s Lucas Fox was the other who told me to get my act together, and that’s when I started writing songs.
The other thing that happened was that at the same time I got liberated by the fact that punk had happened and as I’ve said before, I didn’t feel any longer that I needed a PhD to pick up guitar, or huge amounts of musical knowledge… and also I’d been exposed to the first easily available synthesizers, and a whole new world opened up…wow!
RR: For any of the artists on Music2deal looking for a deal what would you recommend is the best way to get a producer or a deal in the first place?
KF: I’ve no idea. I couldn’t even think. Get a manager.
I’ve pursued my own path single-mindedly you might say, but in retrospect I have to say that despite having my music tacked firmly to the electro mast I think it is beneficial to have guitars as part of your aural palette because at least 90% of all the music on radio is guitar driven. Also probably important are live drummers because they add a certain kind of energy to a track, which is also beneficial . So to reiterate.. guitars, drummers and management. It sounds like a T-shirt slogan doesn’t it.
RR: What are you currently working on?
KF: Well currently I’m over here in Gozo. I’ve been doing a project that came out of the blue which is quite interesting really, working with a couple of people I didn’t know…namely Music2deal’s Richard Rogers who is well known as a songwriter, producer and former major A&R man and the Scottish singer/songwriter Kevin McGowan. We initially had no real starting point apart from the invitation to come over. We discussed everything vaguely through skype and a couple of emails and the concept was basically to make the three of us work as a band with each person providing specific input and I wanted to focus on something rather just writing songs for the sake of it i.e. love songs or whatever it might be…so we used the working ethos of protest songs. I feel that one way or another, protest songs have been sadly neglected and everyone’s been far too accepting of all the crap that’s happening in the world. And the CRAP really is happening now, it’s absolutely outrageous and we can’t avoid this and it’s very pernicious as well. As well as liberating us, the internet has made us the target of constant streams of disinformation and bile and hatred. One of the songs is called Political Animal…oddly enough my IRS album was called Human Animal. In theory the songs are political, i.e. protesting, and cover specific subjects…the baseness of so many politicians in Political Animal; religion in Synthetic Sin; ecology in White Gold in the Aral Sea; and the thin veneer of civilization in Scratch the Surface. The concept may be taken further and become an E.P. or an album title… I hope so anyway…or whatever happens!
But it has been fun and very liberating.
RR: Do you have an all time music industry story?
KF: Er…no.
RR: If you had the chance of working with one artist dead or alive who would you choose?
KF: You are asking me on the wrong day. (laughs)
RR: Did you have a mentor when you first got into the music industry?
KF: Er, nope I don’t think so.
RR: What do you think is the single largest problem faced by the music industry today and how do you think it can be resolved?
KF: The music industry is still on the back foot from a lot of expensive poor judgement in signings and also an inability to adapt to the pace of rapid technological change. It did not keep up with events and was a little bit too self-satisfied, but that was the mood of the times in other fields too. I don’t think it’s caught up with what’s happened in the market and things and I really don’t know how they are going to resolve the situation but I don’t think it will ever be as big as it was.
Maybe it will have to look at capitalizing on a range of smaller cash cows.
Things are changing all the time.. for example vinyl has become popular again. I know it’s a niche market but sales of vinyl curiously enough have expanded hugely.
My pet theory is that from at least a decade ago, the industry should have been aiming at the mature market. Young people and kids as a rule of thumb don’t expect to buy music, they pretty much expect to get it for free or cherry pick the odd download here and there. Mature people, older people, firstly have the money to spend, which is great if you want to make money from music which is what the music business is there for. They also have the desire to spend it and they also like retaining or holding a physical artefact. I don’t think that the correct way to the mature market is by re-treading i.e. re-releasing old vinyl on CD or trying to keep the conventional blue chip oldie market. i.e. “Oh yeah they’re gonna buy the new Clapton CD because it is the new Clapton CD” or whatever. They should spend some time looking for what I and millions of others who still have “rock’n’roll” in our souls are looking for. I’m not interested in only looking for young bands because frankly I don’t believe in young bands being better because they’re young.
Personally I don’t necessarily want to just buy the new Eric Clapton album. I’m not saying I like it or dislike it but why should it be assumed that’s my natural constituency. So I would like to have new, interesting bands presented to me and those bands don’t have to be young. There are a lot of bands around with older musicians that are doing a lot of interesting stuff in different combinations but because of the set-in-place structures for marketing to youth, it’s a bit hard for them to be recognized or get exposure. In regards to the mature buyer that’s one place that I think the music industry has completely missed the boat.
RR: And they are the people with money.
KF: Yes they are the people with money and they are the people who want to possess an artefact so you are talking about the sales of a physical format like a CD or an LP or whatever plus the machinery on which to play it. Of course sales are one thing, and you’ve also got gigs and merchandising.
RR: Which gets me nicely onto the final question of whether you intend to do any live shows particularly if there any live promoters on Music2deal looking to promote you?
KF: Personally live shows are my favourite. I’m tired of being in the studio, I’ve been in the recording studio for so long. Political animal, human animal, studio animal. I’ve been a studio animal for so long. I’ve got a backlog of songs that are pretty good and robust songs, and I enjoy playing them. I found an easy and cost effective way of touring using, guess what?…me and a guitarist and a drummer! I live up in the Highlands of Scotland so the process of rehearsing a band up there and then having to cover transport and accommodation costs had to be made manageable. Sometimes I rehearse with people in London and then move on from there. Basically I feel that touring is where it is at and I’ve found a good way that satisfies me for touring and I really enjoy touring and playing live.
RR: Karel Fialka – thank you very much.
KF: No, thank you very much.
I should say that I checked out the Music2deal website and thought it offered a lot of potential, so I joined. If anyone out there wants to get in touch with me to pursue a project, performance or management
The Music2Deal Blog 