Ask someone within the song enterprise how to promote a new single, and also you’ll get rambling solutions that go on for days — but ask them a way to encourage a unmarried that was launched 25 years ago, from an artist whose handiest ever placed out one five-song LP and because dwindled deep into obscurity. Also, you’ll get far fewer thoughts. Thanks to the invention-led nature of song streaming, older music is ripe with new opportunities for the first time. Record corporations must be nimble sufficient to find them.
Tim Fraser-Harding oversees such out-of-the-ordinary tasks as Warner Music’s president of world catalog of a recorded song, where he’s helped shape new marketing techniques for legacy artists like Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac. Fraser-Harding spoke with Rolling Stone approximately the trials and rewards of reviving old hits.
How do you view your function relative to the tuning industry at big?
I’ve been inside the tune enterprise for 30 years, and it’s a specific precious time to be in the catalog right now because you need to discern out the balance. Streaming continues to construct and build, assisting our usual business to grow — but you have background acts who’re strong in physical income. In addition, you’ve got this type of extensive range of clients: hardcore fanatics who’ve usually supported specific actions and those who’ve located them.
I suppose the catalog crew has also got a different activity from the rest of Warner because so many of our key artists are now not with us or have broken up, moved on, or are honestly no longer involved or available. A lot of the time, we’re figuring out approaches to create an advertising buzz without the artist. We need to produce other humans speak on their behalf or percentage thrilling new pieces of them that aren’t just rehashing the same things people have visible time and time again. Sometimes, it’s a question of the way we make something out of not anything.
How has the catalog changed through the years? It’s no longer simply straightforwardly selling box units on anniversaries.
We now must make sure we’re devoting our advertising and product improvement time flippantly: We must maximize the repertoire maximum amenable to streaming, which tends to have a more youthful target audience, however additionally recognize that our heritage acts might also have had 40 years of making music and are continuing to push the dials. Take Fleetwood Mac. They’re one of the fastest-growing streaming artists but selling physical on the street. They’re attractive to an extra diverse target market than they ever have done, in phrases of age. They’ve discovered a way to train a more youthful demographic and keep attractive their older consumers.
The more youthful demographic poses a better opportunity in terms of revenue, proper?
What we’ve effectively were given is a streaming environment wherein you could have a younger character fixated on whatever today’s hot music is and needing to concentrate to that 30 times an afternoon — but their parents might have “Hotel California” as their favored tune of all time, but only need to listen to it three or four times a yr to get the same kind of repair. We recognize that a more youthful demographic is out there, so we ought to get them to get right of entry to all our song.
