Steve Vining
Steve Vining began his music career in the 1970s as a studio manager for budget label Pickwick Records. After designing and building the label’s studios, Vining went on to head A&R for the company, producing and performing on many of the label’s releases. While Vining would go on to marketing and VP positions with major labels like RCA Victor and BMG Classics, eventually becoming President of The Windham Hill Group, his budget-line and small label experience would eventually inform his work as President of Savoy Label Group.
When Vining joined Savoy, he took over an independently run subsidiary of Japan’s Columbia Music Entertainment, which boasts the legendary Savoy Jazz label, as well as Denon Records. Upon his arrival, Vining launched the new SLG, LLC, and the group relaunched the catalogue series on Savoy Jazz, revitalized the Denon imprint, launched a Triple A/Pop-leaning brand, 429 Records, and began a string of signings and business deals that would bring new success to the label group. Among Vining’s accomplishments were the signings of Jim Brickman to SLG, Joan Armatrading and Steve Forbert to the 429 imprint, and the release of The Band tribute, Endless Highway. Vining was also an early believer in online music sales, in many cases being the first independent label to work with the leading online stores.
All of this has spelled success for SLG, which increased sales in Vining’s first fiscal year with the company by 600 percent. Those sales have since risen to a level that surpasses the label’s best years in its first two decades of its U.S. operations by five times.
Vining recently talked to e-QB about the philosophies he applies at SLG that keep the label prospering during a challenging time in the music industry.
Since you arrived at Savoy Label Group, the company has seen a period of remarkable change and growth. Talk about the philosophy you’ve applied to achieve this level of success.
I came in about August 2001 to run the non-Japanese repertoire assets. That was Savoy Jazz catalogue, the Denon Classic and Jazz catalogue, and a few other things. We felt we had the same opportunity we had with Windham Hill. We had a great brand. We had a catalogue of very strong legendary recordings, but they were getting old. In some cases in Europe, some of the recordings had gone public domain, so they were available for anybody to release. The brand was aging, we needed to reinvigorate it. Our approach was Jazz, primarily an over-30 music commodity. We will be a record company that sells music to people over 30 – Jazz, Smooth Jazz, World Music, Classical Music and Adult Pop. Over the last three years we’ve really worked to grow all those different areas, and bring in artists to work with us who will appeal to that demographic group. We’re not so restrictive that we say we’re a particular style of music label. What we’re really good at is understanding how to expose and market music to people over 30. They’re buying music at the bookstore more and more, and some of the more technically savvy ones are going online. They like to listen to Triple A radio, they will read reviews and go to concerts. Music is still an active and passionate part of their lives. But they’re not buying Rap anymore. We wanted to build a company whose expertise was helping artists connect with that demographic.
Was there some concern of diluting the brand for the people who love the Savoy Jazz identity as you were expanding the label?
We spend a lot of time discussing what the impact of an artist’s new release is on a certain label. It’s one of the reasons we’ve got the different labels. Savoy is for Jazz things. l’ll give you an example. Milton Nascimento came to us and we handled his last record. He wanted to be on Savoy. Now my election would have been to put him on 429, because we felt as a World artist, he was more of a 429/Triple A artist. Milton knew the Savoy legacy. He revered it, and discussed with us how the early Savoy recordings had an impact on him. We had a long talk about it, and he was adamant he wanted to be on Savoy, so we allowed it. Milton’s record received tremendous reviews, but for the most part, we try to aim things at the label affiliation that retail, radio and press would all naturally associate them with. So Joan Armatrading is on 429, as is Steve Reynolds and Endless Highway. Jim Brickman is on SLG, which we use as our Adult Pop outpost. We try and do that because, for better or worse, press, retail, and radio become a little fixated and think in boxes. We don’t want to restrict the opportunities of the music, but if we can help it by having the appropriate box, we’ve helped everybody by the label and brand association.
One would think that the Savoy catalogue is an amazing branding tool. What was the strategy to use the catalogue to promote what the label was going to be going forward?
The very first thing we did was review what had been a hodgepodge philosophy of repackaging and releasing the back catalogue. One of the first things we did is create what we call the Timeless Series. Timeless had consistent art look and consisted of those great moments from the Savoy catalogue by Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Earl Garner. Also, for an $11.98 series, it had the best audio quality of just about anything on the label. That kind of thinking has rolled forward since. We’ve initiated two or three other lines that package the music in a way that it can be easily consumed by a particular type of consumer. Timeless was more for the novice Jazz collector. We’ve got what we call Jazz Master Series that is really much more for the collector
Retail is clearly an important part of the equation and Savoy was an early adopter of digital distribution. What did you see early on that the majors may have missed that made you want to stake out that turf early?
I had the benefit of being in the inside of a multi-national major at the time that Napster began. Since I started out life as a recording engineer, I like technology, so I got into Napster pretty early. It was very evident to me the damage it could do very quickly. I remember sitting in the meetings at BMG, and you would have the senior executives in the company, worldwide, in a room, and as soon as the digital discussion came up, they’d break into two groups. You’d have the Business Affairs guys standing on one side of the room, deciding how tight a box we can put this in. You had the creatives on the other side of the room going, “It’s being stolen every day while you decide how tight and unworkable you can make this for the consumer.”
It looked to me like the beginning of solving the tremendous problem that had begun in 1999. We were one of the first indie labels in America to sign with iTunes. The only thing that may give you some creative or commercial pause is that everything was available a la carte. But I understand why. We can say as an industry that we hate it, but on the other side, we as an industry killed off the single. You can’t eliminate a format through greed. Yet we managed to mismanage the single to the point where it became economically non-viable for us as a business. But the consumer’s thirst for it didn’t go away. It was also pretty obvious that retail shelf space was shrinking. If you are the steward of a catalogue like Savoy and you have these classic, timeless, critical, important recordings. You also have to be realistic enough to realize that yours aren’t the only ones. There’s a large catalogue of this type of music and the practical reality is you’re not going to find it on most retail shelves going forward. As the industry gets more competitive, you will continue to get pushed out. So it seemed to be a tremendous answer to be able to access that deep catalogue without having to spend the money to manufacture and fight to keep a CD on somebody’s shelf.
As SLG has expanded into the Pop and Triple A worlds, you’ve signed artists like Joan Armatrading and Steve Forbert, who have had major label success, but – on a unit sales level – have reached a plateau that makes the majors less interested in them. What does Savoy do differently to make artists like this viable for you?
It’s what every successful independent does well. You control your costs. You have inspired people that slavishly work every day to promote the artist’s work and support the artist. Because of that cost structure, scanning 50,000 units of a CD is very successful here. The kinds of artists and records we work with, major labels will look at as a distraction. Regardless of how good a job they do – even if it has unparalleled success, it can’t save their year. What they’re going to focus on are those recordings that potentially could do three million units. Therefore, more and more of the folks we desperately want to work with are becoming available. And because of the way they’ve handled their careers and the fact that they still have a voice, they’re still viable. They like touring and they are looking for a partner in the process to continue to market music. We hope to become one of those “first call” opportunities for these folks when they come off a major label. We’ve built our economics to be successful at reasonable sales levels, yet we want to push beyond them. The core expertise here is all ex-major label people. We love the music, but we thoroughly understand and grasp the business elements. So we can come at this music with a level of professionalism that this size of company doesn’t have on a regular basis.
During a time when the industry is changing dramatically, and some pundits are questioning the longevity of it, what are the keys to being an independent and staying successful?
You have to keep your eyes open and take care of your business. You have to make sure you are not wildly overspending in any area. You can’t overspend to have the artist join you. You can’t overspend at retail. You don’t want to put too many records in the marketplace, and have more manufacturing than you need on a record that didn’t require that kind of volume in the marketplace. You really have to keep a sharp eye on your expenses, but you watch for those opportunities for the kinds of artists you want to have here. We’re not appropriate for a lot of people. It’s a very thin strata of repertoire we want to be looking at, but happily, inside the huge record industry, right now and going forward, that thin strata is going to have a lot of artist opportunities for people that really, legitimately belong here. I almost think it’s going back to the ’50s and ’60s, where a lot of the smaller genres – Classical, Jazz, World and even some of the early Pop things – came out of independents. It just feels like a lot of the smaller music genres are going to become dominated by the indies over the next three-to-four-years. Then, when the industry upsurges again, maybe the majors go around and begin acquiring indies the way they did in the early ’60s. But until then, a good, well-staffed, aggressive, competent independent company can be as good or better than a major because you’ll get much more attention. If the core competency of the label has good professional people, and they know what’s going on, it’s really a better environment for the artist than to be struggling at a major trying to get their message heard.
** QB Content by Jack Barton **
– See more at: http://www.fmqb.com/article.asp?id=378751#sthash.CTxxUL6Q.dpuf
