The 51st State

Why Warner UK’s restructure is a bad thing for British music.

Last week Tony Harlow, the highly respected exec who led Warner’s UK business for the last six years, announced that he’d stepped down from his role. Implicit in Warner Music Group’s accompanying announcement was that there’d be no backfill for Tony; no standalone lead for the UK’s recorded music business. Warner’s frontline label presidents would now report into the respective US-based CEO’s of Atlantic and Warner Records.

Mull that over for a bit. The group of British labels that either birthed or subsequently managed the repertoires of Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Iron Maiden and Radiohead, and has since released records from Muse, Biffy Clyro, Ed Sheeran, Charlie XCX, Dua Lipa, Stormzy and Fred Again, no longer has a standalone leader.

There’s no figurehead at Warner to engage with other industry stakeholders, external partners and government. No British exec to defend how they operate in front of parliament. This isn’t just a commercial challenge; Warner’s size and the repertoire it owns imbues it with cultural responsibility. This shouldn’t be outsourced abroad.

Warner has no leader in the UK ultimately responsible for the identification and representation of the best of British music. The digital world means great new music can be discovered by talent scouts from anywhere. Yet, the development and release of those artists and their music must be sensitive to the idiosyncrasies of British culture for those releases to be authentic. Anywhere in the world, the artform of music is best developed and promoted by those who understand the cultural context from where that music emerged. To magnify that artistic vision, those individuals working with artists need to reflect the values and identities of the core fanbase that their music will initially garner.

Do we need label representatives to badger the representatives of streaming services in London, if what’s presented to streamers is dictated either by automation - or a curator based in the States? Perhaps not. Do we need label staff who understand the aesthetic idioms of specific cultures that birth new music, to connect artists that make it with other creative people who also understand those idioms to represent and amplify them? Yes, we do.

Would Bowie’s success have been the same without the influence and interplay of British suburban culture and London’s queer nightlife? Would Iron Maiden have become so massive without their unique identity forged in the punk clubs of the East End? Would the success of No 6 Collaborations have been possible without Ed Sheeran’s appearances as a featured vocalist on UK rap and Grime records earlier in his career? Would the coke-and-ketamine gloss of Brat have manifested without the artist’s roots in British nightclubs?

Perhaps Warner has considered this and has a process lined up to ensure that British artists can have their art developed and represented in a way that’s authentic. Even so, the challenge comes at points of tension, when things are sent up the chain for approval, when the label disagrees with a manager, or when there’s a need for internal prioritisation of one artist over another at a point in time. How do individuals without that local cultural sensibility make a clear judgement, devoid of cultural context?

The issue of prioritisation is most acute for British music and British artists, not only at certain pinch points but more widely throughout the management structure. In effect, British label leaders join an American team that, while relatively novel in that it also restructured in the last 18 months, still has cultural and organisational cohesion. They will need to try and immerse themselves in this environment and bring their authority, all the while working on the other side of the Atlantic, with few opportunities to build better in-person relationships. As Darcus Beese laid bare in his biography, success in the US record business is tough for British executives as it requires a span of influence in a geographical terrain that way exceeds what we’re used to in the UK. He had the starting point of an office in New York.

This change appears to be evidence of a belief within the company that the UK’s infrastructure for breaking and developing new music is meaningless. That the elevation of British artists to the point they’re widely popular is no longer dependent on the skills, relationships and influence of British employees of the company, but can be controlled and dictated by a centralised process pulling the levers of the big tech machines, themselves also managed in Los Angeles and New York.

If you’ve read my articles about the end of the Water Cooler Moment, the lack of domestic success on the UK’s charts, or the major label Record Label Crisis, you’ll understand the different factors that have de-powered the UK’s ability not only to launch artists onto a rapidly- evolving global stage but also to break artists at home. You may have seen me comment on the trend for British artists to be signed by the US major labels, bypassing local affiliates. Implicit in the media coverage of the Warner changes is the notion that it’s a reaction to these trends, a reduction of friction between American repertoire and the public that wants to hear it - and between British artists and the US market they’re desperate to break. This implication will be a worry to those working for the other majors based in London. Reacting to these trends through restructures, rolling up UK teams to their US label counterparts is one way to gain a few short-term points of margin.

Since the fifties, we’ve taken the music the Americans gave us, have recreated it in our own frame of reference and have sent them back something radically better. British majors were proficient at finding and investing in the most commercially promising of these reinventions. Warner’s move signals that this proficiency has gone, another chapter in the Record Label Crisis that suggests something fundamentally terminal in front line major labels. Perhaps I’m a deluded optimist, but I have a fundamental belief that there’s something inherent to our culture that means the music we make in the UK will find new and different paths to our music fans and to the world. Independent record labels have at many points been the incubators of new and unique British sounds; brand new Indies that look different to the successful ones we have now will play a role in the next wave of great British music. Perhaps we’ll also develop different ways to connect music to fans, to allow this rebirth to happen.

If the way we discover and consume music results in the consumption of American pop, that isn’t evidence of an innate desire to listen to it. If the high street’s full of chicken shops and hamburger joints and nothing else, that doesn’t mean no one wants to eat a healthy meal. Our job in the UK isn’t to accept global trends that mean we’re assimilated as an extra segment of the US market, but to find ways to let the idiosyncrasy of our music culture be expressed. Otherwise why work in music?