BMG PRODUCTION MUSIC LAUNCHED IN CANADA, WITH ANNA ANDRYCH AND MATT CANSICK AT THE HELM. MARATHON ARTISTS’ JAIMIE HODGSON FORMED ARTIST MANAGEMENT FIRM FOUND MANAGEMENT. CONCORD MUSIC PUBLISHING HIRED DUFF BERSCHBACK AS EXECUTIVE VP LEGAL AND BUSINESS AFFAIRS. WARNER RECORDS NAMED STEFAN MAX SENIOR VP A&R.
with being the first to do something. In the case of
Swedish House Mafia playing Madison Square Gar-
den the first time around, we were in a record deal
that was giving us tour support, and they actually
said, “If you do this, then Amy, you personally have to
underwrite the financial cost because we think you’re
absolutely insane.” We sold it out in four minutes.
We crashed Ticketmaster. But did I understand fully
how the show costs and finances of Madison Square
Garden worked? No, I did not. (Laughs.) So you make
some mistakes there, and then the next time you play
Madison Square Garden, you get that bit right.How will management evolve in the next five years?
The older you get, the management side is really
crafted by having good lawyers, having good business
managers. In the future, there will be two kinds of
record contracts: a license deal and a relicense deal.
And record companies are going to have to offer a
whole new service to get you to keep your back cata-
log with them, which is a huge portion of their rev-
enue. There will have to be promises of how they’ll
keep servicing the records, transparent accounting,
better royalty rates. And for me, that whole sector of
how to service that is not just the catalog sales that
you’re seeing now, but the hundreds of thousands of
artists that will have a pension.
If you think of the average car, it’s $20,000. Well,
a song is five cars over the period of 100 years. And
that’s a small song. If you’re looking at a song like
[DJ Snake’s] “Taki Taki,” you’re talking about houses.
So people are gathering asset pools of cars and hous-
es, but they don’t have the paperwork for them. And
when they pass away, do they think their families
are going to have the first clue?
Over the next five years, you’ll see a huge shift
of people coming forward to ... organize their
catalogs and have a real sense of, “Everything I’m
owed, I get paid.” And not going to bed at night
wondering, “What’s neighboring rights?” And I
think that great management now is about chang-
ing the rates of pay because of the sheer volumes
of money involved, because of what Spotify did to
the music business.How do the skills that managers have apply to deal-
ing with these issues?
In the last three years or so, I inherited a catalog
to work on — 200 songs, with some really big ones.
And when I started to work on it — and as a new
manager, you don’t take a commission on the songs
you didn’t work on — I could see there were some
problems with it. We found that 50% of the songs
were not registered correctly; 29 were missing
featured artist agreements, which meant that once
the repertoire comes back to the artist, he may well
have real issues owning that catalog and reupload-
ing with a distributor. We found so many issues
— we won a huge lawsuit against a major company,
which we signed an NDA about, so I can’t say who
it was — and we won the catalog back.
I think that gap in the market is going to be the
organizing of an artist’s asset portfolio. I can’t
say too much about it now, but me and the three
biggest investors that I have are going to launch
what we think is the solution to that in September.
And when we do, it will be something that manag-
ers [will utilize].Why did you close ATM Artists?
It just got to a point where I turned 45, my daughter
finished school and one day I just woke up and was
like, “I’m done.” It took two years to actually be able
to do it because you don’t want to leave people high
and dry. It was a hard decision, because it’s scary. It’s
scary to change what you’ve done for 25 years.What advice would you give managers and artists to
survive this pandemic?
I think how you behave as an employer right now
will be remembered for several years to come. If
you can’t afford to pay people, then that’s down
to how you communicate that to people. But then
don’t just tell them and not support them after;
people are going to be devastated. If you’ve got the
budget to keep people on, then keep them on in
some other way. You’ve got photographers who’ve
been on the road with you and earn a daily rate;
when was the last time they archived all your pic-
tures? Should the videographer be putting together
a miniseries or documentary? There’s a million
ways to be creative.
And for artists, [engage in] just as much positive
fan communication, making sure that the fans are
being safe and following the rules and showing
empathy. If you’ve got a set of stems from a song
and you’re OK with letting them have it, let the kids
remix you, upload it on SoundCloud, do a competi-
tion where you’re going to FaceTime them if they
win, or they’re going to get a big package when
deliveries are allowed next. This is the time to
invest in yourself while staying at home and being
responsible to everybody else.1. Thomson’s Billboard Women in Music Awards, which she earned
as CEO of ATM Artists. 2. A plaque commemorating Swedish
House Mafia’s first sold-out Madison Square Garden show from
2011. “We sold it out in four minutes actually, not 10,” she says. “We
made the artwork too quickly.” 3. A draft of her book, which is less
a chapter-driven guide than a 250-slide peek into the mind and
process of one of the most successful managers and marketers in
dance music history. 4. Framed artwork, signed by West, of “when
we went No. 1 on iTunes in every country with no radio play ahead
of the album Yeezus,” she says.
142 3MARCH 28, 2020 • WWW.BILLBOARD.COM 237market_ftdo_lo [P]_27836096.indd 23 3/25/20 4:55 PM