LIFE IS SWEET
So the record industry is in meltdown. Who cares, says Jah Wobble - veteran of many deals - when going it alone is much more fun (and you get to keep the change)
Rock on: Jah Wobble, above, plays
the record industry at its own game.
Personally, I’m not too bothered about the decline of the record business. It always was a silly and rather un-business like business. To be truthful, I’m more interested in my imminent ascent up nearby Kinder Scout, (I moved from the east end of London to Cheshire four years ago).
The malaise in the music industry has been well documented over the last couple of years. This is the state of play in a nutshell. CD sales were already falling drastically when, to make things worse, Napster came on the scene. But if anything, Napster - a portal that allowed consumers to copy music off the internet - has proved to be a red herring. According to the industry itself, the real threat to music is people copying from CD to CD. As if this wasn’t enough to contend with, the CD-buying public is getting ever more fickle - established stars with big sales histories no longer sell big. Hence the cull in recent years of these artists, who have been ‘let go’ by their record companies. And that’s not to mention the smaller fry, the music industry's bottom feeders such as your humble narrator. Some commentators fear not only the end of the CD, but of all the music carrying formats we have grown accustomed to buying over the counter. In the future, we'll just download or pay-per-play. This is good news for music publishers, (who have always had it easy) but death for record companies.
Another pressure has been caused by the increased corporate nature of the business. Put simply, large independent companies such as Island Records sold out to large corporate companies like Polygram. These in turn merged with the likes of Universal, who then merged with Seagram’s (the booze company), before they merged with Vivendi, (originally a public utilities company). In this kind of scenario the gobbled-up small company may keep a nominal degree of autonomy to begin with. Sooner rather than later though, the bosses of the small company realise that they are now accounting to the share holders and accountants of the ‘daddy’ conglomerate, who in turn have no understanding of the music industry. A modest £500,000 profit on an artist is no longer enough. The city expects ........ Hence the current mood at record companies which is, generally speaking, anxious and depressed. Jobs have been lost. Increasingly, senior record company staff remind me of gambling addicts, sweating over mid-week chart positions, as if they were the results of the 2.30 at Kempton Park.
All that ever interested me about the music industry was getting the money to make a record, and that’s all I’m interested in now. The form wasn’t hard in the old days. Eventually, after wining and dining with A&R men, you get to meet the MD of the company and tell him that “yes, of course I want to sell lots of records too!” and “no, I realise I can’t go on making un-commercial records!” I’d make a few more noises about how grateful I was to be given the chance to salvage my career (again)…and then I’d naff off and make another record that 5000 to 15000 or so people around the world would levitate to. That might not sound like a lot of people, but imagine waving a stick at every one of them. Your arm would go numb.
This was a hustle that I managed to pull off every few years. By about 1996 I realised it was going to be virtually impossible to carry on with this record-deal caper. For one I’m not getting any younger, (although I hasten to add, I am still extremely good-looking, with a body both lithe and sensuous), and for another, it was getting harder not to laugh out loud at the absurdity of it all.
Actually, I realise that my circumstances were better than many artists. I was under contract to Island. I had given them a reasonably commercial album 2 years previously. Since then I had finished and released one very un-commercial record. I then presented them with three albums, one after the other in quick succession; an album inspired by William Blake, a Requiem Mass and an album of Celtic poets. The company’s response to these records was like mine to a Jehovah Witness at the front door.
Quiet understandable really. Putting out those records probably brought the employees closer to the sack. The question was, what next? Would they fund my own label? "No” they said. “Would you let me go then?” “Yes” they said, with barely concealed delight. So unusually I was ‘up the road’ inside a fortnight - the quickest response I’ve ever had from a record company over anything. If I hadn’t known better I’d have said they were glad to see the back of me.
I had always though it was just a matter of time before I had my own label - there's none as mad as the self-published, and all that. And I’d had the luxury of a dry run back in the early Eighties, when to my delight I found that I could record an album in my bedroom for virtually zilch. You could spend another £100 cutting it before ordering 2000 pressings at around 35p a shot. I’d pick up the records from the manufactures and deliver them all myself to various distributors, exporters, wholesalers, as well as specialist shops. I found that I'd come out of it with a good few quid. Remember this was over 20 years ago, when you could buy a gram of coke, two flights to New York on Concord and a Ford Capri and still have change over from ten bob. Unfortunately, instead of reinvesting the profits, I had a tendency to spunk the money down the pub. In this respect, at lease, I was way ahead of the game, in looking to merge my business with that of breweries and distillers.
So anyway here I am, all these years later, doing it again. It will have been six years and 20 releases on my label, 30 Hertz, come June. I’m making a pretty good fist of it, if I do say so myself. Then again, it’s a lot easier now. Nowadays there are brokers who offer all-in packages. They will take care of printing covers as well as pressing CD’s and vinyl, and they will deliver the product to your distributors.
I must admit it’s tricky, at times, reconciling the running of the label with continuing to work as a musician/producer/composer, as well as being a bandleader. There can be violent right -versus-left hemisphere of the brain conflict when, in the middle of writing a vocal melody, you are asked to compare tour bus prices, or agree to a discount on a bulk buy of CD’s from a Greek distribution company. Having said that, it’s generally fun, and it doesn’t have to take up 15 hours a day, seven days a week. I’ve learnt to work a lot smarter. And not only in regard to business. With the odd exception there is no longer any need to do 17-hour sessions in the studio.
I can’t pretend that I do everything single handed . I’ve got a good team of people working for me - my wife in particular is a great help. However, when I’ve tried getting people to run it for me it was a disaster. In fact, that was the original idea, that I would, as usual, be allowed to do the sexy bit, and leave the running of the thing to some one else. Naive. Nobody is going to care for 30 Hertz as much as me.
I suppose that in a way I’ve done the classic Nineties downsizing thing. I don’t even live in London any more. The operation is run from a leafy Stockport suburb. “Location, location, location”, I tell myself, as I wander the Peak district. It’s a funny era this one, volatile and unpredictable. Yet on the other hand, as long as you’re not in the poverty trap, you can invoke change, both rapid and radical in your life.
Spiritually speaking, owning a label has much to offer artists. As William Blake said, “Create your own System or be slaved by another Man’s”. Also, before you consider it, check your (primary) motives. Are you doing it as a purely business thing? If you are, you're nuts. Or are you, like Blake, doing it for eternity? I’m doing it for eternity. However, if any major record companies out there want to save my career again, well, I’m always ready to talk. But I will keep my label, thank you very much.
Wobbleworld: a brief guide
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