Concord Music Group President/CEO Glen Barros has presided over the growth of what was an independent Jazz label into one of the largest independent label groups in the world, with imprints that include Hear Music, Fantasy, Telarc and Rounder. And he’s done it during one of the toughest decades the industry has endured. Barros talks with FMQB about how values, vision and passion have given Concord the strength to grow and prosper.
Glen Barros
Glen Barros has been President/CEO of Concord Music Group since the mid-’90s, overseeing its growth from a Jazz label defined by artists like Count Basie, Miles Davis and Joe Pass, to a full-service collection of labels that includes Fantasy Records, Hear Music, Telarc and Rounder, with an ever-expanding roster that includes 2010’s Grammy-winning Best New Artist, Esperanza Spalding, as well as Paul McCartney, Paul Simon and Robert Plant. As Concord continues to expand and succeed in an ever-challenging marketplace, Barros talked with FMQB about the company’s growth over the last two decades, and the values that have fueled that growth.
Concord is approaching the end of its 40th decade; how has a little Jazz label not only survived the industry changes of the last 20 years, but thrived?
That’s a great question. It’s certainly with forethought. The first two decades in its existence it was under its founder, Carl Jefferson, and it was meant to reflect his personal taste and interests. He wanted to keep it somewhat contained and focused because he defined success a little differently than building a big business. Thereafter it was meant to grow, and to do so being true to our musical roots but very much also a company that continues to make a bigger impact on the music world. So, I think we’ve managed to focus on that and, being a values-based company, by focusing on a specific strategy we’ve been fortunate to keep growing. We’re now many multiples of where we were sixteen years ago, when Carl unfortunately passed away.
You talk about being a values-based company. What are those values are and what do they mean to your operation?
I believe the core of any business’ success comes down to how much trust it creates with each of its partners; in the case of a music company it’s the artists. You have to have an honest, open, aligned relationship with your artists, which we try to do, and of course with our customers as well as our employees. It comes down to how do we be true to ourselves: Who are we? What do we do? And then, working with any of those stakeholders, how can we be true to them? What are their interests? What are they after? What matters to them? Can we create a relationship where we’re achieving mutual goals together? So at the heart of it, and certainly from the artist’s perspective, we try to work with artists and understand what their goals are at whatever point in their career they’re at, and try to take it to the next level, or to honor what it is that they are looking to achieve.
Which opens up a door to a whole lot of questions, but you asked a very good one in there, which is, who are you and what do you do?
Well, we’re certainly not trying to be all things to all people. We have no designs on being a major label and covering all bases. We’re now in many different genres of music, but there are a couple of common threads through them all. One is that we’re always looking to create great music, but also timeless music that has an indefinite shelf life and will be around for a very long time. So that is first. Clearly, because of the genres in which we operate, and many of the artists that we work with, we tend to appeal to an adult audience. That’s not to say that we don’t look at any possible audience, but we do feel the adult music market is underserved; that the industry has, to some extent, ignored the adult audience. While it may be of a lower priority to life’s other priorities with adults, we know that music is still important and people still want to be engaged with music, so we look for ways to do that. That’s really what unifies the company; focusing on great artistic timeless music and finding ways – interesting, creative, innovative ways – to connect that music to its widest possible audience. That audience, typically, is an adult audience.
We talked about five years ago, and one of the things you said at the time was that to survive in the future delivering music to consumers, you need to get a real understanding of what the end user wants. So what does the end user want these days?
There’s a different answer for each different end user. There are many things that people want from music, and they really haven’t changed a whole lot, although probably the way people listen to music has changed dramatically, not just the way they access it, but the role it plays in their lives. Some people want the sentimental angle to music, but there’s an atmospheric angle to music and there’s an energetic angle to music. But deep down, they all want engagement. They want it to enhance their lives in some way, whether it’s the person who leaves music on all day long and just wants that atmospheric presence that it creates, or the person who, when they’re exercising, really wants to be into music they love, or somebody who wants to sit down with a glass of wine at the end of the night and unwind and get lost in sentimentality. They want that connection where they feel a true connectivity to what the artist is trying to do.
I recently read something you wrote a couple of years ago, talking about the challenges in the industry of investing in artists and experimenting with new ideas. How does that play into reaching the consumer?
You need to find ways of getting that music to its ultimate audience and you can’t rely solely on all the ways you used to do that in the past. It’s finding some other outlet, some other way of giving the music a chance to be introduced to that audience, whether it’s with an alternative retailer, or for promotional angle, or ensuring there’s an on-line campaign, or any of these very different and new ways to get the music connected to that ultimate consumer.
One of the things you been very involved in during the last few years is acquisitions, bringing in Fantasy, Hear Music, Rounder, in many cases companies people might not have really looked at as something to expand their business model. How have those acquisitions strengthened Concord?
Well, all of these acquisitions we’ve made have been with consistent with who we are. We bought Fantasy in 2004, Telarc in ’05, and Rounder just coming up on two years ago. The three main acquisitions we made really did strengthen Concord in a number of ways. One is they all had serious catalogues attached to them which gave us depth. They were also in different genres, with Telarc bringing Classical, Blues and World music, and Rounder bringing us all the Roots genres that they’re in. They’re highly compatible and complementary to what we do.
While a lot of labels have shied away from signing “heritage” artists, Concord has signed a lot of them and found commercial success with them. Explain that approach.
All we did is realize that and really understand what each of those artists, in their own ways, were trying to achieve, and worked with them to get them where they’re going. I mean, every one of them has a lot of people who just wanted to love them for nostalgia, but each of them is producing great music right now that is very relevant and will connect, given an opportunity. So for us it was getting really excited by that opportunity to do this, to take the challenge on and try to meet the goals with each of those artists. They still have something to say and we can see it. So again, it’s all about finding the different strategy with each project and trying to make sure we do the job to give each recording an opportunity to find its home and its audience.
Industry standards in everything from artist deals to distributing the product have been changing. How has Concord stayed on the front end of those developments?
It’s just being in tune with what people’s needs are. We’ve always felt the traditional label deal was sort of ridiculous, and that it actually misaligned interests. Labels would give artists big, giant advances and then if the sales didn’t meet expectations, the next advance was too big to afford to continue, so the label would be unhappy because they lost a bunch of money, and the artist has to find a new home. Then if the artist hit, the label makes a bunch of money and the artist feels cheated because they got their money up-front and they’re not seeing royalties on the back end. So it was a misaligned interest. We’ve always said we’ve got to find a better way to work with an artist and have our deals reflect what we’re really trying to do, which is a mutual effort to achieve success, and not just for us. We wish to continue with an artist. We wish to continue forward even if we’re not getting any commercial success yet. That was something we’ve always believed in. It’s a partnership of sorts. We work together to achieve a common goal. I think now, as you look at the world changing and all the different ways its changing, it comes back to just that concept.
How do you interpret the 360 deals that are being struck with artists in recent years?
When you look at 360 deals, even the way the industry has approached them, it’s with that old mentality where people have looked at it and said, “Hey, look, we’re just not making enough money off of recordings anymore, so we need to, and I quote, ‘Take a piece of the touring and take a piece of the publishing and the merch, and all of that.’”
To me, that’s not what it’s about. A 360 deal is really a holistic approach to a career. You say, “I believe in you as an artist. I believe you may have many ways of generating income and I want to invest in you. Let’s create an equitable deal structure that works for everyone.”
If we’re investing in you, we’re better aligning interests because now it’s not just about selling records, it’s about promoting your career. If you become an accomplished songwriter and everybody is recording your songs, we’re happy. If you have touring business that’s going gangbusters, even if record sales aren’t happening the way we thought they would, we’re happy. As long as there’s an equitable split and we’re honest about it , and everybody’s clear on what that is, it’s a better relationship because we’re aligning interests, and we’re being true to each other. It’s not a conscious effort to stay on a cutting edge. It’s just a conscious effort to create deals and arrangements and an approach to business that makes sense relative to each circumstance.
Are you still as optimistic about the industry as you were a couple of years ago?
Despite all the changes in the business, despite all the turbulence, at the heart of it all is optimism. I really feel a great optimism about where music is headed now. We’ve had a decade worth of really troubled times in the industry, but we’ve managed to push forward through it and approach it with joy because we’re in the music business. And despite all the business challenges, it’s still a great thing to work with great artists and great music and bring that to the world and create a really positive vibe. That is the spirit in which we move forward. It’s still very unclear as to how it’s going to develop, but it’s developing in a positive direction now. And so, with a little wind at our backs, we’ll be able to move forward as an industry and we at Concord certainly believe so as a company.
[eQB Content by Jack Barton]
