Vancouver's Nettwerk has plan to restructure recording deals
Nettwerk Music Group's Terry McBride believes he's hit on the formula for selling music and protecting artists in the post-downloading world.
Vancouver-based Nettwerk Music has entered a deal with ATC and MAMA Group of Britain to promote this new model.
The joint company is to be called Polyphonic and its business model involves leaving copyright in the hands of the artist, McBride, chief executive of Nettwerk Music, told CBC News.
"The way that Polyphonic works is we would enter into a joint venture with the artist, with all the interests going into a [joint venture]," he said.
So instead of giving up copyright to a record label to get the funding to get their music onto the market, artists would keep it, but all the profits from their music, including live and merchandising profits, would be shared with Polyphonic.
"We would then fund the [joint venture] which would be the traditional role of the record label. The traditional copyrights would stay outside that of the [joint venture] and stay with the artist," he said.
Polyphonic would then work with the artist's management to select the internet marketers and public relations companies and other partners that would see that the music comes to the attention of the right audience, he said.
McBride foresees working with independent companies such as CDBaby, which already have a track record in marketing music in electronic forms.
Each artist could choose a different ways of working — incorporating limited free downloads or even free albums if the artist sees that as a way of building an audience.
"It's really artist specific, because different musical genres are marketed differently," McBride said.
Offers an alternative
Polyphonic offers an alternative to a traditional record label, he said.
McBride says he believes the model will work, because Nettwerk, which represents artists such as Sarah McLachlan and Stereophonics, has been experimenting with it for the past six years.
"We as managers touch every part of the business, every income stream the artist goes down or is associated with. We're really the only players in the business who do that. The rest of the business is fractured," he said.
The record label, the publisher, the songwriters and the merchandisers have until now been different players, all wanting to make decisions on behalf of artist.
"You have all of these interdependent functions that are not aligned. You're never going to get a record company saying yes to giving away music," he said, adding that traditional recording labels are roadblocks to innovative ways of marketing music.
It's taken six years for Nettwerk to get to this point, McBride said.
"It really accelerated in the last 16 months when Mama group and ATC were thinking the same way Nettwerk was," he said.
One of ATC's partners is Radiohead manager Brian Message.
'Now we're out there talking to a floodgate of artists and lawyers who are knocking on the door."
McBride expects to have firm deals with artists within three months and be a force in the marketplace within a year.
