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TOP FIVE SIX-MONTH UPDATE

The Second in a Series of Follow-up Q&As With
the Heads of the Top Five Labels of 2013
When last we shot the breeze with Columbia honcho Rob Stringer, he was celebrating the explosion of Daft Punk and One Direction and the growth of J. Cole and The Neighbourhood. Our midyear checkup finds him basking in Beyoncé’s ongoing juggernaut (unleashed by surprise at year’s end) and monsters from Pharrell and John Legend, as well as an out-of-the-blue home run from DJ Snake & Lil Jon, among other breakouts (1D should reignite soon as well). Stringer’s top titles have given him multi-format dominance and, on occasion, an outsized share of the iTunes Top 10. With notable signings like 18-year-old Crossover artist Raury (landed after a hardcore A&R derby) and Irish phenom Hozier and fresh releases from a handful of superstars, Mr. Cool’s hot streak is due to continue, as you’ll see; his TEA marketshare stands at 7.7%.
You’ve retained your cool factor while shifting to a much more pop-driven slate of releases.
That was a conscious effort in the last 18 months. If you’ve got cool and important artists, that also allows you to cast a wider net across pop music. People are attracted to the magnetism of icon/brand artists, and I think because of that we were able to attract more pop artists. It all goes hand in hand. But strategically, about 18 months ago, Ashley Newton and I started talking about hiring more A&R people, particularly pop and research-oriented people. We’ve done that.
Ashley and Mark Williams oversee everything, but we’ve got a very zestful, youthful A&R staff, and they’re all blossoming. At the same time, it’s important to me that we remain a major destination for cool and credible music. I will never lose that.

The second stage of that was Joel Klaiman upping the ante on the number of records we could put out: working records at radio, making the system shinier to do that. So it’s been a two-pronged approach. We’ve been more aggressive in signing than at any time in my eight years here. We’re signing a lot of singles too.
Which records have exceeded expectations?
Well, obviously Beyoncé doing 2 million records at $15.99 is an industry first. There’s no comparable value record of that sales magnitude in the last half-decade. Every single album was full price. The most important aspect is the value chain on that release—I think that’s underestimated. Most competitors in that lane have been discounted down to $6.99.
Pharrell is great, almost fairytale-esque. Ashley has been close to Pharrell for a long while and signed him to Virgin; we were even thinking of him as an A&R guru. But we heard "Get Lucky" and thought, "He could be a pop star again on the back of this record."

Obviously there’s a fair degree of luck. When you go from "Get Lucky" with Daft Punk to "Blurred Lines" to Pharrell’s own "Happy," it’s just one of those things. But sometimes you earn your luck; we were fairly strategic about it. But to see that boom in his creative output is exciting. And of course Daft Punk winning all those Grammys was just great. Two French guys in helmets winning all those awards? It was just magical.

And then there’s John Legend. An artist having the biggest hit of his career after five albums is more unusual these days than in other eras, when singer/songwriters developed over several albums. John hugely deserves this success; he is so talented, disciplined and hard-working.

Those are some major highlights. But I’ve got three meetings in L.A. this week about three artists I want to sign. To be in the thick of that is still the most exciting part of this job.
Are there certain records that haven’t quite performed as you anticipated?
The difficult thing now, with the marketplace the way it is, is following up records. You can have a hit record and when you release the follow-up, 18 months later, you’re starting again. That is incredibly challenging. The numbers go up—you spend more money on the second record; the marketing costs more. It’s really hard, because people move on. We’re living in a track-based world without that much loyalty to artists. That’s not a complaint; that’s just how it is. You want things to be successful for catalog reasons, for long-term reasons, but that’s getting harder and harder.
What do you anticipate as the biggest releases for the remainder of 2014?
Obviously we’ll go back to the well with One Direction, as long as they keep making great records. "Story of My Life" is their biggest breakthrough record; we’ve proved we make them stick at radio, with more than 100m audience.
I have to be cryptic here, but we will have releases from one or two superstar artists, at least.

Does that include Adele? And will that record be a "sneak attack"?
There’s no release date for Adele yet. It’s going extremely well. That said, I don’t think it’s going to be a sneak attack when it comes out.
Fair enough. What else?
There will be a big global release from a major rock band. I have huge hopes for the next Calvin Harris project as well. In the U.S. we’ve sold tracks and hundreds of thousands of albums—around the world, he’s sold a million albums and something like 30m tracks. But I think he’s one of the biggest stars in the world. Seeing him at Coachella confirmed that. We’re Top 10 with this record. The setup before was based on being a dance-track artist and he’s become one of the best pop recording artists and writers of the current era. We’re really going to up the ante on Calvin.
We have just gone to radio with the new Train single, which is important for us. Pat Monahan writes contemporary pop hits and the band are bigger than ever.

The conceptual album that could do really well is the Barbra Streisand duets album. So far the list of duet partners includes Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, John Mayer, Billy Joel—a really good list. We know how to market these projects really well, from our knowledge of Tony Bennett and SYCO albums. Bob Dylan’s album will also come out in the next few months. With the benefit of hindsight, how do you feel about the "sneak attack" as a tactic? Only a tiny number of artists can do it. And the Beyoncé project was different because it was also a video album. There was an enormous amount of quality content, and most artists would find that difficult. The creative and physical elements of that campaign couldn’t really be repeated.
Can people put out records without announcing them beforehand?
Of course. Bob Dylan put a new track on his website a while ago, which was cool—we didn’t compare it to Beyoncé, but we liked the idea of giving Bob’s fans something to be excited about. And we did it earlier last year with David Bowie. I like the element of surprise, but I don’t think there’s some standard formula. The number of artists who could really pull that off could be counted on one hand.
Say a bit about Ashley and Joel, both of whom have really stepped up in the last year or so.
They’ve both really stepped up, as I would expect them to, in terms of finding more exciting new talent and making that talent run through the system. That’s their brief, and they’ve truly delivered. That’s why we’re more aggressive, in terms of our chart share, than we’ve been in the last few years.
For a label based in New York, we have a very strong West Coast presence. Despite the traditional view of Columbia as an East Coast label, the majority of our A&R is on the West Coast, and I think that’s very important in terms of the writers, studios and other creative factors being there.

New artists are really driving the marketplace right now.
New artists aren’t starting from behind anymore. Previously, established artists filled up 80% of the chart. But because of what I mentioned earlier—consumers’ lack of "brand loyalty" where artists are concerned—now it’s anybody’s game. So you have to have an emphasis on new artists. You can’t expect a band to go away for two years and come back to the same level of excitement.
But developing a new artist takes time.
We worked The Neighbourhood’s record for a year before that broke through. We worked MKTO’s single for six months before that broke though. Having said that, some records go incredibly quickly— we put the DJ Snake record up on iTunes and it was Top 20 first day. It can be that inspiring and reactive quickly. With some artists you want to build and create something—if they come from the left particularly. Some pop records you’ve got to nudge to get in there. MKTO were triple platinum in Australia, so we knew it would work in the right radio market.
The sort of instant reaction you describe with DJ Snake was never possible before.
You’re right, because formatting dictated how records were worked. And I think formatting goes out the window now. The kids know—and when DJ Snake came out, they told us. The record’s now at 100m audience. It’s been in the Top 20 for seven months.
Would you like to comment on the reshuffling of UMG East and how it’s altered the playing field?
Obviously it’s perturbing, because I haven’t had any bolt-on marketshare— most other labels have in recent years. I’m not saying it’s not a smart, strategic move, but to find out in the middle of the year that other labels have bolted marketshare from a corporate rearrangement—well, it just makes me more competitive.
What about the Apple-Beats deal? That seems likely to benefit labels across the board.
The more threads we can have in terms of getting music to the public, the better, and I think this is a bold move in that direction. Record companies aren’t going to have the only solutions in terms of how we get music to the consumer. Jimmy Iovine being a music guy with tremendous experience going into a big technology company is pretty exciting.
Do you think Jimmy’s leaving Interscope levels the playing field?
I don’t see it as that. Interscope is a great label with a very solid roster, so I’m sure they’ll continue to be successful.
As a Brit, can you say a bit about the U.K. as an A&R source?
There have been periods when English music was huge in America, and periods when it’s been extremely fallow. Now it’s going through a particularly good time, but I think that’s partly because the world’s a smaller place due to the digital landscape, and the gatekeepers aren’t in as much control anymore.
Ashley and I are naturally going to have some advantage there, because we’re from that marketplace, and we have experience, contacts and knowledge going back 25 years each.
What are your thoughts on Jason Iley in his new role as head of Sony U.K.?
Jason’s been extremely competitive and knowledgeable about that explosion of music. His time at Roc Nation, understanding that market, has stood him in good stead. Because Roc Nation are on the cutting edge of what’s happening musically. Jason understands the U.K.— he’s aggressive, he’s competitive and he’s gonna get us a bigger proportion of the deals that work in the U.K. than we’ve had recently.
It’s an extremely vibrant marketplace at the moment and we want a bigger share of it. We have artists where we’ve gone outside of that relationship, like London Grammar and Ministry of Sound. Going back to Adele from XL. We have Hozier, who’s on another major altogether overseas. So we’re aggressive on that score but we wanted someone internally who shares that competitiveness and aggression, and I think we’ve got that in Jason.

It’s rather stunning how many Brits are having great success leading U.S. labels.
It goes back to the world being a smaller place. And I think that when some of the traditional structures of the U.S. marketplace broke down, it became more amenable to British people working there. I mean particularly when retail and radio changed direction. It required tremendous knowledge to understand how they worked before, and I don’t feel that way now— iTunes is a global company. And there are global companies now involved in radio. I think it’s easier to navigate. And a hit can come from anywhere now.

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