NEAR TRUTHS BY I.B. BAD
| Label heads on both sides of the Atlantic have long been evaluated—and paid bonuses—based on the performance of their own signings; consequently, U.K. acts have gotten short shrift in the U.S., and vice versa. But at UMG, that thinking has changed radically since the 2011 arrival in America of Lucian Grainge, who has stated repeatedly that this is a global business. For Capitol Music Group’s Steve Barnett, that shift in strategy has a practical application, in that when he took the reins of CMG, it lacked a competitive artist roster. So while he was getting CMG’s U.S. A&R team up and running, Barnett relied heavily on UMG’s highly effective U.K. A&R operation. The approach appears to be working; Bastille and Emeli Sandé have broken in the U.S., while 5 Seconds of Summer and Sam Smith have huge upsides based on the early analytics. At UMG, the choice of U.S. label by highly sought-after acts signed in the U.K. is generating some lively in-house competition. Specifically, Island President David Massey plans on challenging Barnett for the U.K. spoils and currently has Sweden-signed artist Tove Lo on the verge of breaking simultaneously in Britain and the States. Also in play is a strategy that has been employed from time to time in the past, wherein U.S.-signed acts are initially released in the U.K. in an effort to create some momentum to cross over to the U.S. Such is the case with Island U.S.-signed Kiesza, whose single hit #1 at iTunes U.K. last week. Massey’s newly minted affiliation with Lipman and Charlie Walk’s promotion unit should give him a persuasive talking point in his future deal making. Throughout the Doug Morris era at Sony Music, the aggressive U.S. label heads have been frustrated by the inability of their U.K. counterparts to compete with the David Joseph-led UMG U.K. team. But Sony insiders believe that the combination of newly named Sony U.K. chief (and onetime UMG U.K. player) Jason Iley, SYCO’s Simon Cowell and Sonny Takhar, Columbia’s Rob Stringer and RCA’s Peter Edge will pose a threat to the UMG U.K. juggernaut—and having Adele and One Direction in their stable is a great selling point. Will the new Iley-led Sony team try to poach some key UMG U.K. players? Presently, according to U.K. site The List, Grainge and Cowell are engaged in a battle for the production services and label of Naughty Boy (real name: Shahid Khan), who’s signed to Universal as an artist—a microcosm of the heightened competition between the two major music groups as a whole, the intensity of which can’t be overstated. Indeed, industry veterans can’t remember a time when the rivalry between Universal and Sony was quite this heated or so multileveled, with skirmishes over executives as well as acts. One attorney notes that the difference between the current situation and the past is like that between the NBA Playoffs and the regular season—it’s the same game with the same rules, but with far more drama, which ratchets up the blood pressure of all concerned. Names in the rumor mill: Ted Cockle, Darcus Beese, Nick Raphael, Ferdy Unger-Hamilton, Nicola Tuer and Christian Tattersfield. |
