This article first appeared in Music Business Worldwide, which you can read here.

The digital music market continues to grow, but life remains tough for music tech start-ups. Rdio bit the dust before Christmas and Cür Music, had a fight on its hands to meet payment deadlines to labels, which it has now done. Even some of the bigger players are not without their problems as MBW has alluded to.

Many within the music industry have little sympathy for the tech sector, yet the fact remains hardly any fully licensed music start-ups have achieved either profitability or a successful exit after almost twenty years of trying. It is worth asking, why?

The table below compares the biggest music tech start-ups of recent times against three of the biggest tech start-ups overall during the same period. It compares their launch dates, early fundraising and current valuation.

The Series A is the key line to focus on.

This is the funding round that enables a start-up to launch its product or to scale to a meaningful level once in the market through hiring a team, product development, marketing, etc.

Rdio, Deezer and Spotify required a Series A funding round that was more or less double the Series A for three of the most successful start-ups of recent times.

Spotify is by far the most successful music tech start-up in terms of scale and impact. It was founded in 2006, launched in late 2009 with a Series A of $21.6m. On this funding round Spotify concluded deals with all three majors and Merlin. Reports suggest the company burned through $8m prior to the Series A, so Spotify was $30m in the hole pre-launch.

Compare this with Uber, AirBnB and WhatsApp and some interesting points emerge:

• All three raised much smaller Series A rounds, less than half what Spotify did.

• AirBnB and WhatsApp launched two years before raising their Series A, valuable product development time in the market prior to scaling properly.

• These companies are superstars, yet their initial steps were broadly in line with most start-ups. The typical Series A round falls within the $2-10m range,

• AirBnB launched in 2008 with an initial Seed round of $620k, waiting over two years to secure a Series A of $7.2m.

• Uber and AirBnB have valuations far in excess of Spotify’s while WhatsAppachieved an exit more than double Spotify’s recent valuation.

Even leaving aside the headline grabbing unicorns (the billion dollar start-ups), a more typical goal for a founder or investor is a $100m+ exit.

Over the past five years, there have been around 100 or so tech start-ups achieve such an exit per year either by IPO or acquisition.

These include SaaS, FinTech, AdTech Social Media start-ups but no music tech start-ups and certainly not ones that are fully licensed.

Asking around amongst well-placed friends, who have held senior global digital music roles, between us we can only think of two successful exits for music services in the past fifteen years or so:

• MusicMatch selling to Yahoo for $160m in 2004
• Last.fm selling to CBS for $280m in 2007

Last.fm was not fully licensed but a number of rights owners managed to close deals around the time of the acquisition.

So that means only one fully licensed music start-up has achieved a successful exit and that was in 2004!

What would you do if you were a founder or early stage investor? Go for music and swallow greater dilution of equity with greater financial risk? Or target other sectors that require less dilution with less risk and, potentially, offer a much greater return?

Bootstrapping and lean start-up methodologies have been widely adopted within the tech sector. Yet, applying these methods to music tech start-ups is problematic.

The benefits of the lean start-up model are very simple: eliminate waste and focus on product development. Build, measure, learn and repeat in short iterations until the product is sufficiently developed to scale. Balance the risk and pick more winners.

The business development model that rights owners apply to licensing digital services is well established (equity, advances, minimum rates, etc). Yet this approach places a huge burden on music tech start-ups before they even launch.

In fairness to the music industry the tech mantra of scale first, establish a business model second should be given short shrift. No AirBnB host would want to give free accommodation to strangers just to help out some tech entrepreneurs. Why should rights owners give anyone a free lunch? They should not.

Streaming is fuelling a growth in recorded music revenues but there is still a long way to go to get the market back to where it once was let alone to where it could be.

Moreover, the market is dominated by a handful of major tech players. Yet corporate tech companies cannot always be relied upon to innovate. In the music tech space for every Apple there is a Mircosoft or Nokia that does not quite hit the mark.

Time and again, start-ups innovate and create new markets across a range of industry sectors. The music sector, however, remains problematic.

Leaving aside the actual deal structures for music licensing, the costs associated with negotiating the deals, managing content and reporting usage are substantial whichever side of the table you sit on.

Of course, some would point to Blockchain and GRD as solutions, certainly the tech industry has proved adept at collaborating at an infrastructure level to enable more innovation in the market.

Facebook helped established the Open Compute Project that has signed up just about every major tech giant except Amazon. The reasoning is very simple. Tech giants are not competing on their server capacity, they are competing on the next wave of innovation around VR, AI and so on that sits on top. So collaborate on the back end to enable a higher level of competition where it matters. Brilliant thinking.

In fairness to the music industry, it has picked up the mantle to fight online piracy and address issues such as the value gap and safe harbour. Such work creates a fairer environment for innovative music tech start-ups seeking to launch fully licensed legitimate digital music services. This is something the tech community, as a whole, should recognise.

Coming back to the music tech start-up looking to strike deals with rights owners, how might the business development teams approach these opportunities and back more winners?

For the sake of brevity, let’s consider three key components: cash, equity and debt.

Ask for too much cash upfront and the start-up struggles before it even gets going. To the extent at advances are applied, many observers say advances should be proportionate to the likely earn through especially in the early stages.

Entrepreneurs often complain this does not happen and advances can be too aggressive. But what is the alternative? Cash is less risky and if rights owners are assuming more risk, then the overall compensation should reflect the level of risk.

Equity is well established in licensing deals, usually on the first round of negotiations and that equity dilutes over further funding rounds until a final exit is achieved. But only one such exit has ever been achieved.

How might the equity piece be approached differently? Perhaps there is an argument to take more equity earlier, divest a proportion of that equity on later rounds and retain the remainder until final exit?

Such arrangements are not that common but do happen. There are all sorts of permutations.

Debt finance is often overlooked, but it has been brought into prominence on account of Spotify’s latest funding round. The debt piece can be structured in all sorts of ways, interest can be applied and it can be converted to equity on pre-agreed terms. For a start-up low on cash, it is an alternative, but it is still risky for the rights owner.

These thoughts just skim the surface of a complex problem, but a problem exists and it affects all of us in the digital music value chain. There are no easy answers.

Provided the start-up is on the hook one way or another for the music rights they use from day one, are there more creative way to strike these deals to enable more innovation and growth in the digital music market?

If Spotify does achieve a successful exit, then it will only be the second fully licensed music start-up to do so. We need more.

This article first appeared in Record of the Day magazine here.

The music industry has a tendency to pigeonhole people. This is especially so when it comes to jobs and job titles.

Different roles attract different characters. Within labels, roles traditionally fall into a few key strands: A&R, product manager, plugger, press officer and around them: sales, international, digital and business affairs amongst others.

One role that cuts through all of the above is the analyst. It is a role I have a lot of love and affection for because that is how I first started my career.

The life of an analyst in the music business:

What is an Analyst?

Analysts cover a very broad remit in the modern music industry. Artist Insight details where an artist sits in the market, identifying their audience and how that audience behaves. At market level, broader trends can be established: where does streaming adoption sit? Who is still buying CDs? Etc.

We should all be familiar with social media stats, streaming stats, YouTube stats, all of which can be analysed on a per territory or global basis. Cause and effect can be easily monitored, layered with digital marketing and advertising spends. Taking it to another level marries usage and impacts with revenue generation to assess engagement and monetization.

In a world of big data, those who complain of too much data don’t know what they are doing. Or they need to hire an analyst. Someone who can make sense of complexity and cut to the essence of what is required to aid better decisions that drive an increasingly sophisticated business. The role of the analyst has come of age.

A good analyst is a match for any management consultant or MBA graduate.

What makes a good Analyst?

Analysts need to be smart and probably degree educated, they certainly need to be trained how to think. Some have quantitative degrees, but that is not a prerequisite.

Some come to the industry having worked in insight roles elsewhere. Some, like me, had a burning desire to work in the music business and fell into it.

A good analyst can zone in on mirco level issues such as a specific artist campaign, while understanding macro level trends of where the business is going. Most of all they have to be able to filter and interpret in a manner that connects with decision makers who have notoriously short attention spans.

Analysts need to understand the broader creative and social context of music (it helps to be on ticket allocations). They also need to understand the fundamental drivers of the business they are in. The latter comes down to reading the trades, Don Passman, Dissecting The Digital Dollar, etc. It also means getting to know their stakeholders and what they do.

Having being in the role of a decision maker for far longer than I was even an analyst, I can always tell industry newcomers because although they deliver great analysis maybe their context is not quite right. This is easily fixed through constructive feedback. Decision makers need filters too.

How it used to be

Twenty years ago, there were one or two analysts in each major and a couple of people at the BPI. Very few people knew what we did.

I was referred to as “the numbers guy”, a “statistician”, “the guy who walks around with the midweeks”, or more bluntly “what is it you do again, Andy?”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I spent my university years promoting gigs for bands such as Nirvana. Solely in the interests of getting my 2:1, I searched for a music related topic for my technology-focused degree.

Peter Scaping, then Research Director of the BPI and Chris Green’s old boss, suggested: “Some people seem to think that one day music will be beamed into people’s homes. Why don’t you go away and think about that?”

30,000 words later and I had written one of the first major pieces of analysis on digital music. It got me my start, but from then on I was labeled the geek.

Charles Wood, Media And Planning Director at Sony Music, called me up about a job, but initially I wasn’t that interested. The Eureka moment came at the second interview when Charles had me do a range of tasks. I thought two things: 1) This guy is seriously smart and 2) What a great way to learn about music marketing.

Music marketing in the 90s was more sophisticated than many people realize and with a real focus on numbers. The groundwork had been laid in the 1980s by Clive Farrell (RIP), Charles’ former boss who developed a method of analyzing TV advertising spend against chart sales data by TV region.

By the 90s data was more sophisticated and way ahead of the rest of the world. There was also airplay tracking and a bunch of other sources. The whole business revolved around charts (and still does).

As many analysts will tell you, there are relatively few opportunities to be the hero. Once such moment for me was this:

On a Tuesday morning I had Paul Burger (Chairman), Rob Stringer (Epic MD) and John Aston (Sales VP and Sony COO Nicola Tuer’s old boss) all standing in my office, with Burger yelling at me “you got your numbers wrong, Andy!”

Paul could yell louder than Rob (which is very loud) and he was pissed off because I had predicted Manic Street Preachers would not be number 1 by the weekend. Their new single If You Tolerate This (Then Your Children Will Be Next) would be narrowly beaten to the top spot by Steps as things stood.

“No Paul, I got my numbers right.” Paul bought my argument and the Sony machine rolled into action. The Manics made number 1 with 146,529 sales to Steps’ 140,020. Without an analyst, Sony and the Manics would not have made it. That was a step-up moment for the band: their first number 1 single that kicked off global campaign taking them to the next level.

Moving forward to present day, the role of the analyst is better understood, better paid and better resourced although there is still some way to go. There are more career options if you intend to remain in that sort of position, but an analytical grounding has wide application across the whole music business.

Ex-Analysts

Charles has remained at Sony Music and is still doing what he does best. His predecessor, Peter Duckworth moved to Virgin Records and then become part of the senior management team at EMI and now jointly runs Now Music.
Lohan Presencer, my opposite number at Warners, moved into a marketing role, then to Ministry where he is now CEO. One of the smartest deal makers I know.

Emma Drew (nee Sharma), my opposite number at Universal, moved into digital marketing and now runs her own hugely successful YouTube channel creating nursery songs and animations for kids.

Pete Downton was an analyst at Warner Music before his elevation to VP of Digital. He is now Deputy CEO of 7Digital, another shrewd deal maker.

In making my move, the aim was twofold: 1) work more closely with artists and 2) move into digital. Since then I have alternated between start-ups and artist management. Initially marketing focused, later focused on deal making.

More career choices for Analysts

There are now far more options for those wishing to remain in analytical roles.

Fred Bolza and his team does great things at Sony and Mark Utley is building a solid team at Spotify. Tech + Music = More Opportunities For Analysts.

Another beneficiary of that crossover is Will Page, also at Spotify. An economist by trade, he presents in a hugely compelling way. On stage his PowerPoint skills possess the virtuosity of a Jimmy Page guitar solo.

Outside the corporate loop, Mark Mulligan and Chris Carey are building entrepreneurial businesses and credible media profiles as analysts.

Striking Out

For those who wish to strike out and diversify their career either into frontline marketing or commercial roles, you have to look within yourself and assess your own strengths and weaknesses. Think about how you can enrich your life and experiences through other avenues aside from your day job.

There is no reason why someone who started out as an analyst cannot make it all the way in this industry. Lohan has proven you can reach CEO level if you are smart and the right opportunities come your way.

Very often analyst types let themselves down through lack of confidence or lack of self-promotion. Super smart people can be their own worst critics when they need to be more brazen. They don’t see the big deal in the amazing things they do, while others make the mundane appear remarkable.

You have to have self-confidence, and be able to stand up for yourself. Not to be obnoxious, but knowing when to stand your ground and to know your own worth. At other times you have to be charm personified.

Analysts can over think things, but when they do make decisions they tend to be good ones. Backing up a decision in advance of achieving an outcome requires conviction. Those are the moments that test your mettle.

Some people in the music business get paid a lot of money not because their job is inherently difficult on an intellectual level, but because they are under enormous pressure to deliver results. Moreover, they have to do so in what can be a highly political environment.   That could be managing a band constantly on the verge of breaking up or running a corporation with numerous stakeholders, either way it requires nerves of steel.

Knowing your worth

The difficulty with analyst roles is while they are incredibly demanding they are often undervalued. Analysts lack the professional status of lawyers and accountants or the frontline kudos of product managers. I would argue they are equally valuable and that value is now more apparent than ever.

To HR people and senior executives I would say: value proven analysts and do your best to retain, motivate and promote them. To the analysts reading this: don’t quote me (ha!) Only you can weight up your own situation, but consider your options and know your worth. This is your time.

This article first appeared in the Record of the Day weekly magazine, but can also be viewed online here.

Lawyers and accountants are traditionally singled out as the “bad guys” within the music business. Andy Edwards challenges this assertion, outlines what they bring to the table and offers suggestions of how get the most from your lawyer and accountant

“The music business was ruined by lawyers and accountants” is a well-worn line used by speakers at conferences, pundits and commentators alike. It may play well to the crowd, but the assertion is not backed up by facts.

The line is usually in the context of consolidation and corporate culture within the industry. It is just easier to label lawyers and accountants as the “bad guys”, rather than the somewhat amorphous concept of “corporatisation”.

The trouble is the line sticks in people’s minds and induces either disdain or fear depending on whom you speak to. The recent Music Week 30 Under 30, aside from its lack of diversity, did not contain a single lawyer or accountant.

Where is the next Gavin Maude or Sonia Diwan? Where is the next Pat Savage or Lisa Morris? There are plenty of candidates out there both in-house and in private practice.

On the label side, it often seems accountants get overlooked, but when they do get the opportunity they can really shine. Island Records under the Ted and Darcus co-presidency was a joy to work with. Not only did the co-presidents compliment one another beautifully, they arguably had a third co-president in David Sharpe whose background in accountancy equipped him with solid operational and shrewd deal making skills.

It was no surprise to me when Darcus ascended to the sole presidency of Island and Ted took the reigns at Virgin, that David became COO for Universal overall. That is strength in depth in practice.

Lawyers have been far more high profile on the label side than accountants, many with larger-than-life characters and incredibly sharp minds. Paul Russell, who ran CBS Records, Sony Music and Sony Music Europe during the ’80s and ’90s is one such character, often referred to by rank and file as “Mr Scary”, bear in mind his boss was Walter Yetnikoff then Tommy Mottola.

It was in the mid 2000s before I worked closely with Paul Russell at a music rights start-up. The pressure was on. He and I ended up having a massive stand-up row one day about a “stupid fucking deal”. It was a one hell of a show down, but next day we sat down and like a true gentleman Paul gave me all the respect in the world as we discussed our differing points of view on the matter in hand. Paul was persuaded and everything was resolved.

The point being: learn when and how to pushback. Even the toughest of corporate lawyers can be swayed if you have the courage of your convictions and a reasoned argument. Paul Russell wasn’t that scary, he even said “calm down, Andy, luv” at one point in his gruff voice, cigar in hand. We got there.

In artist management, lawyers and accountants play a huge role. Some have become managers themselves, such as Sarah Stennett or Anthony Addis.

There are no restrictions on who can become a manager. It really does take all sorts. You can be a former publicist like Andrew Loog-Oldham or a former merchant banker like Prince Rupert Loewenstein, both of whom managed The Rolling Stones. Andrew made them famous, Prince Rupert made them rich.

Whatever your background, for the benefit of your artist you need to learn to work effectively with the artist’s lawyer and accountant. A good lawyer will protect and enhance an artist’s interests. A good accountant will always save the artist money. A good manager will ensure both are well briefed and well informed and the whole team delivers great value to the artist as client.

A Christmas eCard from a law firm, full of creativity and humour! 

Accountants need to be involved in deal making from an early stage. They may not be driving the deal but they need to know what is going on. The deal must fit the artist’s business structure and be tax efficient.

In a negotiation, some conversations are best handled lawyer-to-lawyer, at other times the manager should speak to the other side. Be clear with one another about what is happening and work as a team.

Depending on the politics of the situation, it may be necessary to play good cop/ bad cop. Very often the lawyer gets labelled “bad cop”, not an easy role to play but it enables the manager to smooth things over with the other side while getting the right result for the artist. Sometimes I have played “bad cop” from the management side. What that really means, for me, is being firm and direct about whatever needs to be resolved, without too much drama.

A common accusation levelled at the professions is that they create work for themselves. If you think that is so, come up with a solution. In one instance I persuaded a major music corporation to reduce a 23 page boilerplate service agreement to a much shorter 12 page document before involving the artist lawyer. My argument was simple: the boilerplate was not appropriate to the situation and my counterpart on the other side was very accommodating. It saved the lawyer’s time and the artist client’s money.

Lawyers and accountants usually charge by the hour, so use their time wisely. By all means socialise, but on a business call keep things brief and to the point. If the Partner involves a Junior Associate, embrace that. It saves the client money and in any event the Partner will oversee the Associate’s work.

Specialist music accountants and lawyers may charge higher hourly rates compared to general firms, especially those outside of London, but they almost always deliver better value. They understand the business, are more efficient and avoid pitfalls that a non-specialist might fail to recognise.

Most people are wise enough to use specialist lawyers, but I have seen major problems arise when non-specialist accountants have been appointed by music clients trying to save money. It simply is not worth it in the long run.

How do you find a good lawyer or accountant? Ask. Give me a call!

The announcement last week that Warner Music will share the proceeds of its equity stakes in digital music services with its artists, quickly followed by a similar announcement from Sony Music is hugely significant. The artist community has been in the dark about these equity positions for years and it has taken a great deal of persistence to reach this point. Universal Music is the only major not to formally state its position on equity but one would hope it is only a matter of time before it does so.

A number of commentators most notably Mark Mulligan and Tim Ingham have made the point that the net value of these equity stakes to the artist may not be that significant and that the real battle lies elsewhere. Mark suggests that streaming is not a license or a sale and that the correct remuneration for artists’ lies somewhere between the 50% rate for a license and the (roughly) 15% an artist might receive for a sale. The midway point between those two figures is roughly double what most artists currently get paid on streaming income. His point is this argument is worth more than the fight over equity.

EQUITY – THE BACKSTORY

Coming back to equity, it is worth remembering the reason major labels took equity in start-up music services in the first place. During the first dot.com boom, founders were exiting at huge valuations either by sale or IPO, very often without generating any revenue. It made sense to grab as much equity as possible as part of the music licensing negotiation and Jay Samit and other label digital executives at the time quickly set a precedent that has continued to this day.

In the case of Spotify, it was reported at the time by Techcrunch that the majors and Merlin collectively received a 17.3% shareholding on the Series A funding round and paid an aggregate €8,808 for that shareholding. It is worth pointing out that Techcrunch questioned this number at the time believing the amount paid was ten times that amount had the music companies matched what other Series A investors actually paid for their shareholdings. Clearly the majors did not do that and these were peppercorn payments as part of a broader licensing negotiation.

What also needs to be understood is the extent to which those original shareholdings have been diluted through subsequent funding rounds, of which there have been eleven. Further clarity is needed on this.

Where equity is a more valuable element for artists are companies such as Soundcloud in its present circumstances. Soundcloud is striking deals with music companies, but it has a long way to go to generate the sort of revenue numbers Spotify is already achieving. Accordingly, if Soundcloud is acquired, which is a strong possibility, then equity will form a greater part of the total value accounted back to the artist relative to advances and earnings.

ALIGNMENT OF INTERESTS – is what it is about

Equity is still hugely important for artists. Start-ups will come and go and each takes their own path. In certain circumstances, the equity piece will derive the greatest value, in other cases not. What is most important – and which Stephen Cooper of Warner Music stresses – is that the interests of the label and the artist are aligned whatever the outcome. This is an important step in the right direction and is greatly welcomed.

@andyedwardsbiz