Remake, Remodel: The Evolution Of The Record Label

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The use by John Lewis of Ellie Goulding’s version of ‘Your Song’ gave the artist a #1 hit
and enabled Universal to extend the sales-life of her debut album. Derek Allen cites the
example of the brand deal with Rimmel which forms a key plank in the marketing plans
for Parlophone artist Eliza Doolittle. On top of this, the BlackBerry partnership with
Tinie Tempah gave additional and complementary exposure to the artist throughout his
debut album campaign. As Allen says, ‘All this stuff is at the front end of a campaign now.
It’s not an afterthought.’
Compared with decade ago, the teams who deal with commercial brands and
synchronisation are now much more involved with the day-to-day marketing teams
in a label as they command the power to provide crucial profile (and income) to a
launch campaign, rather than being seen purely as a form of secondary
exploitation.
TV, movies and theatre
Increasingly, labels are actively involved in the production of properties that involve use
of their music in other media such as TV, film and theatre.
Over the years, labels have dabbled with theatre, mainly through providing investment
in other people’s projects. Examples here include Universal’s long-running involvement
with Mama Mia and EMI’s stake in Queen’s We Will Rock You.
Neither of these productions used the original recordings that the labels had rights to
but the interest and profile resulting from the productions gave a marketing platform to
the catalogues of Abba and Queen in the same way that a traditional tour might have
done. It also created a further income stream for the record company in each case.
More recently, Universal has taken a more proactive approach, being instrumental in the
launch of the West End musical Dreamboats & Petticoats, which was inspired by the
compilation album series of the same name.
On TV, the most successful music-related show in the UK, X Factor, is produced by Syco
in a JV between Simon Cowell and Sony Music. As well as being an income stream in its
own right, the show produces a stream of new acts (voted for by the public), many of
whom sell significant quantities of music and are released through Cowell’s JV label with
Sony.
The trend is for labels to bring in expertise in these areas to maximise their chances of
making work. Universal Music brought in Lesley Douglas from the BBC to run its global
department where she and her team are active in the production of TV and radio
properties related to Universal artists (e.g. Take That, Girls Aloud, The Saturdays) as
well as working with third-party brands and broadcaster.
As music production budgets in TV are increasingly under pressure, this type of
programming serves a purpose for the broadcaster, as well as the label. As labels get
further into their own TV production, the danger of record companies restricting artist
performances to their own label TV properties, or at least prioritising these over similar
third party opportunities will need to be monitored.
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