Keith Jopling goes on the record about the music industry 

0:12Keith Jopling:Hello and welcome to the Monaco Weekly. I am Fernando Augusto Pacheco and this week I speak with author Keith Jopling, also host of the podcast Art of Longevity. Joplin worked in the music industry for 25 years and recently wrote two books about it. Body of Work, about the music industry's most valuable commodity, the album. And Riding the Rollercoaster, about surviving the music business. Let's find out more about the books with Kif.

0:47Kif, we are going to discuss two of your very interesting books because they are topics close to my heart. and they are related to the music industry. But my first question to you is a simple one. Tell us, since when have you been involved in general with the music industry? I know you've worked for a lot of labels, but tell us a bit more about your early days in the music industry. Yeah, my career in the music industry started in 2000, so way back now. It was really by accident because before that I was working in healthcare. I was working in the pharmaceuticals industry, so I went from drugs to music.

1:21That's kind of become a bit of a joke. But I just saw a job advertised in the FT at a conference for research and strategy director at IFPI. I had no idea what IFPI was, but it turned out to be the trade association for the record labels. And lo and behold, I got the job. So that got me into the music industry and almost at a policy level. You know, it's trade associations do lobbying. they do they were doing enforcement against piracy and my job was to do market data and trends and research and it was right at the when napster first came along so i joined the industry when it was at a peak of cd sales and then for the next six years i was there i just gradually reported a ever downward spiral but since then i've worked as a consultant i did a spelled EMI, when it was bought out by Terra Firma, which I talk about in the books very briefly.

2:19I've worked at Spotify, Sony Music, and I've worked in music agencies and independently for 25 years. It's interesting you worked at IFPI at this very difficult moment for the music industry as well Napster came because I think I feel now there are concerns, but the numbers are quite positive if you look at just the pure statistics there, right? Yeah, I mean, look, great credit to Spotify. It brought the industry back. It didn't invent the streaming model. Streaming was already there. There was a couple of streaming services. One of note was called Rhapsody, very similar to Spotify, but didn't have the execution that they brought with the app that is slick to take it from your desktop onto the mobile to link it with Facebook and all of that really just brought music back to the masses and of course under a different model subscription model so it brought back growth to the business albeit in a very different kind of business model with lots of complexities to it so I think you hear a lot about it being dysfunctional or maybe not working for artists or not remunerating artists very well and that's all true but at an industry at a corporate level I guess you could say investment labels publishing platforms technology there has never been a period like this that I've seen in music and that's why I think your book I mean it's very much on point

3:51Keith Jopling:because I feel it's very much focused towards an artist or people working in the industry or even if you're a music lover and you're curious how things work it's called riding the roller coaster how artists survived the music business to become the legends we've loved? Because, as you say, there are positive numbers, but it is hard. And even when you look at Spotify, you know, you always know the top artists, Adele, Drake or Beyonce or whoever is there. But I think for an independent artist, things can be a little bit hard, right? To be discovered in a way. Yeah, it's almost like the Wild West.

4:25You can migrate there so you can upload your music. You don't need a manager, you don't need a label, so you can be truly independent and get your music out there. Of course, you need to find a way to produce it and make it in the first place. But then it's not a case of you've built it and they will come. So you can drop your music onto Spotify or Apple Music or any platform, YouTube, and it will just sit there unnoticed. so really there's never been a harder time to get noticed because the competition and the volume is incredible we've heard this statistic about a hundred thousand songs a day being uploaded now it's twice that because of ai songs but having said that you know you don't have to wait for gatekeepers to approve of your music either through reviews or through radio plays you can just get your music out there and it's up to you to decide how people get to hear it and if they like it you can amplify that so you can have that relationship with your fans that was never there before because there was always something getting in the way whereas now there's much more of a direct fan relationship between the musician the artist and their fan base particularly at the early stages but it is like the wild west and it's not any easier than it ever was and in the book you mentioned different ways, you know, to achieve that stability and that success.

5:53And I know the number one, it might sound obvious, but it's true to have a hit record, because I think, you know, you're talking about the connection between the artists and the fans. It's true. So if you have one song that does very well, not necessarily just chart related, but streaming, if it's maybe in a popular film, then you created that connection. And that will probably stay, right? Yeah. So for the book, I thought about these routes to longevity and came up with five and tried to kind of put them kind of in order although you really can't put them in order but still number one is to have a hit song and then again in the book I'm trying to explain the past present and future of each one of those roots so in the past the hit song was undisputable because you get into the charts the UK charts or the billboard charts or around the world and it was really regarded as a hit if you got into the top 40 certainly in the top 20 and that would get you into the public consciousness it would get you onto radio and those songs that are from that era are still relevant now they tended to stick around forever so what's changed there is that i mean hits don't really matter anymore from the perspective of the charts but the equivalent is a big song on streaming the kind of song that gets pinned to the top of your profile as an artist and there are levels but it sort of starts at 10 million which is a big number but if you can get that as you say a lot of this comes through having a sync with a tv show or having a meme viral video and then that translating to streaming that one song is what kind of sets you up for building.

7:40It's the foundation on which you can build then an album and then you can go on tour and then you can start to get fans. Without the hit song, you can still do those other things, but it's a lot harder. And it's interesting what we're asking, what is a hit song these days? And sometimes I still look at the charts every week, but sometimes I'm surprised. Like, I don't know, a few years ago, why Fleetwood Mac drinks is back on the top 10? you know like we're seeing this a lot like if you look at the current top 10 you have michael jackson there with three songs in the top 10 so it's interesting how people are revisiting so people are picking so it's not necessarily the song that's been released this week that will be number one right so it's a little bit stranger the way well yeah yeah this is the thing with streaming is it removes the time stamp on music it removes the newness of music which was always an obsession for the music industry.

8:35So this is a big change. Now you drop something and people discover it when they discover it. And it might have been 1970 that you put it out, or it might have been last week. And almost there is an equal chance of something happening where someone will discover that music. So one of the challenges for you, the artist, is that you're putting music out not just to compete with music this week or this month or quarter, but the music that's been around forever. And so I write in the book, actually, that one of the themes, so there are these kind of ongoing themes as well with longevity, and one is to respect the artists that came before you, but do not attempt to compete with them.

9:17And it's quite interesting because that is from an intentional perspective. Like, don't try and compete with your heroes and your icons. Try and do something different. but from just purely circumstances and danny at ladytron when i had him on the podcast was telling me this is that you are competing with them by default so he's competing with the human league and craft work and all of the bands that influence ladytron you're all in the same pool it's very very interesting it makes it even harder for new artists though yeah it's still even in the pop world you have sabrina carpenter still competing with madonna in a way right yeah Yeah, in a way, but then also appearing on stage together.

9:58Yeah. Right? Olivia Rodrigo bringing Robert Smith of The Cure on stage. So it's this collapsing of time, which those examples show can be celebrated and can be embraced by artists. And that's really the only way to use the platforms well, is you kind of have to embrace them, but bring your own ideas to those platforms bring your own brand to the platforms don't be enslaved by this idea that you have to release music or a viral video whatever in a format on a daily basis just be creative and build the belief in your brand belief in your brand i think that's a good one and there's another one that i even made a little note here that you have to kind of hold something back.

10:48So for example, if you release your first album, you have to already have in mind, I have songs for a second album, just in case, right? I think that's also quite important in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because there's so much volume and competition. Even if you didn't want to call it competition, that's what it is. It's competition for attention. If you release all of your best music at the start, which there is a great temptation to do, right because you need to get noticed you don't want to run out of ideas or songs too quickly you need to have something in the bank in the back pocket you have to have something next because it's all about building this is a business now where you have to earn every pair of ears and every fan and it's literally brick by brick fan by fan because it's so easy to as we said not have a big hit song or even release an album that causes a buzz but it evaporates so quickly because there's so much other stuff just coming over the hill all the time so yeah it's i wouldn't say it's the necessity to kind of release every single day i think that puts too much pressure on the artist i don't think you need to release hundreds of songs but i do think you need to always feel like you have songs ready and also that your best work is ahead of you that's one of the other themes that is in the book and you have another book you released earlier this year which I love because there's a sense of optimism as well for all of us they love albums still because there was a moment people were saying oh the album or the long player is dead you know we're living in an era where only singles matter which I disagree and I think you disagree as well right your other book's called Body of Work how the album outplayed the algorithm and survived playlist culture.

12:38Do you think that's the case? Yeah, yeah. There's a survival theme with my books. One is a survival of the artist. We need to survive. It's good. The other is survival of a format. I mean, look, I was, you know, I work for Spotify. I even built my own playlist site and ran that for two or three years and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was great to curate songs. but through doing that experience what i found was that playlists although they can get big they get boring after a while you know you can be a fan of rap caviar or any one of these sort of big branded playlists or something that even you created and share with friends and it lasts so long and then you drift away from it and i think that's what happened with playlists in general First of all, they got overtaken by TikTok and viral videos that became the next big industry craze.

13:35So they were pushing lots of content into that. But formats, they don't easily go away if they work so well in the first place. And the album was just the perfect vessel on so many levels. it was kind of 40 45 minutes of that's just enough attention to focus on a piece of art or it used to be that's this is the question that we need to talk about more but you also divided into sides in the vinyl years and many artists from that era continued to think about vinyl side one and two even through the CD era. And then recently, even as playlists became prominent and clips, you know, sounds, snippets all over the web, the artists still understood that to write their best songs, they'd have to write a batch of songs together.

14:32Often it's a hundred or a hundred ideas, then it is reduced to kind of 40 or 50 and then it's the best 10 or the best 12 for the album and again those other ideas can be worked on and revisited later which is something we just talked about but the album is just the perfect vessel then you pick the hits from it but the album itself can represent a theme or a concept and be more like the book whereas the song is just the chapter and that's something that appeals to artists and the industry forgot that so the industry is having to relearn this i think now and we're seeing the growth of listening parties we're seeing albums released in vinyl in all their splendor in different colorways and all of this stuff with the artwork back so i think it is coming back and i think the last thing i'd say about it is that young people who we assumed old guys like me have worked in the industry for a while or if you've been a legacy artist, you kind of assumed that people under the age of 30 would not adopt this format.

15:38Either they didn't have the attention, they didn't have the money to buy vinyl or whatever, or they've forgotten about it. They are discovering how great it is. So I often talk to people who run record stores and I tell them who's buying your records and now they tell me their older traditional customers are coming in less and less. Maybe they're just getting too old but now it's teenagers people in their early 20s people bringing their parents into the shop asking for the michael jackson albums not the greatest hits obviously not a playlist they want off the wall they want bad they want thriller so there is a reason why the album was the greatest format in the history of music it's not going to go away just because someone writes a piece of code.

16:24I love that. And it's true. I mean, the pleasures of listening to albums on a Friday night with a glass of wine at home, there is something, there is a ritual. It's a ritual. Yeah, yeah. And I'm a big advocate for this ritual. And this is really important point. I'm glad you mentioned this because I still think it's hard to do. So I say to people are doing talks for the book and presentations back in labels and things like this. and I often ask the audience like when was the last time you listened to an album that people put their hands up and I say when was the last time when you listened you did nothing else and everybody's hands go down because it's the distractions it's the getting restless and fiddly and I think that's what the modern world and technology has done to us so you have to recondition yourself to have the discipline to just enjoy and listen.

17:20Do it for a while, and it becomes like an addiction. But it's a much better addiction than a doom scroll. You feel good after listening to a record. You feel better, not worse. I'll tell you my last thing you have to tell me, yours. Just because I knew the answer already, I think it's a Brazilian musician called Silva with his new album, Holiday, which is quite as Short is a 30 to 35 minute. It's very summery. It's very easygoing. That was the last one I've heard. I think maybe because of the sunshine today, I was a bit inspired. Okay. What about you? Well, I have been recently obsessed. To your point about when you discover music, I've become obsessed with an artist called Laura Groves.

18:04And she has done EP. She's done a few albums. But a couple of years ago, she had an album called Radio Red. and that's the last album i've played on vinyl in that kind of okay put it on get on the sofa do nothing else and i've played that album now 10 times in that way and it's not getting boring it's just getting better and better that's perfect kiev first of all thank you so much and your two books are out now so people can go and buy they can also listen to your podcast right So tell us where people should go in case they want to find out more about what you do. Yeah, the Art of Longevity podcast has been going for five years.

18:46That was the inspiration behind the book, Riding the Roller Coaster. And it was also the inspiration behind Body of Work, because all of the bands that come on the podcast have been around in the music industry for a long time. So it is about how they did it, how they navigated all of the pitfalls and the traps, all of the stuff that the industry sets out for you that is both good and bad in equal measure. So they've survived it. And I was fascinated that artists are continuing to make their best work in album format. So it inspired both books. I think I'm on episode 90, 91. We've just done Broken Social Scene.

19:25We had Lady Tron. We had Oliver Arnold's. We have Kurt Weill coming up. always really interesting artists. I'd love to broaden it to artists from around the world in different genres. We'll get there in the end. But we're on our way to 100 episodes. You can find it on Spotify, Apple Music, anywhere, The Art of Longevity.

19:46Keith Jopling:Thank you, Keith Joplin, there. Both Body of Work and Riding the Roller Coaster are out now, published by Repeater Books. I'm Fernando Augusto Pacheco, and the show was edited by Jack Jewers. Thank you for listening. Thank you.