I
have been in the music industry for the best part of my
adult life and had my first record deal in 1987. I have
taught voice/singing to aspiring artists since 1989, and
in the mid 90’s I went back to university to study
marketing and quickly realised how important it was for
music makers from the Black music industry to understand,
embrace and adopt the key principles of music business and
marketing in order to evolve. Following my studies I developed
my vocal training courses into a career preparation program
that focused on the artistic, creative, business and consumer
aspects of the entertainment industry.
In 1998 I started teaching at university, and a year later
was honoured to be involved in the partnership that founded
the Business of Black Music course at City University, alongside
my business partner Kienda Hoji.
Between
us, we manage a number of ‘credible’ artists who
don’t necessarily fall into line with the aesthetic
and materialistic views of the recording industry in the
UK, which is dominated by European personnel with typical
European taste. Faced with these barriers to launching careers,
we “brush our shoulders off” and do what feels
good to us. And my main tasks have involved coming up with
marketing plans and strategies to get them to the position
we feel they warrant.
Part
of the problem with the music business in the UK is that
we fail to recognise the relevance of our own achievements,
and continue to adopt the ‘myth’ that there is
no market for Black music in the UK. I have seen the progress
that we have made in the UK over 15 years. From Soul II
Soul and Sade, to today’s stars like Lisa Maffia, Mis-teeq,
Dizzee Rascal, Ms Dynamite, etc.
The
All-Star concept was born out of the desire to recognise
their achievements, and out of the recognition that there
needed to be a focused and sustainable combined effort by
entertainers and business people within the UK Black music
scene to develop the identity of UK music, and provide a
platform for International exposure.
The
key issue when trying to promote our acts has been “where
do we pigeon hole them”? The term Black Music has always
been deemed to be exclusive rather than inclusive, and therefore
doesn’t provide the basis for universal ‘BRAND’.
Sustainable business is about developing loyalty. Loyalty
is achieved through creating brands that people are aware
of, identify with, buy into and feel a part of. My aim was
to build a brand that had a broad commercial global appeal.
We
used the term ‘All-Star’ to define the ‘pick
of the best’ philosophy and the term ‘Urban’
because of its all-embracing, broad appeal. We could not
have gone to MIDEM with a compilation album titled ‘UK
Black All-Star’s Volume I’ and expected to do
business. We can put exactly the same product out with the
term Urban instead and be part of the commercial, mass market.
When
I was signed to Shut Up & Dance in ’89, there was
a very small specialist first generation British-born Black
market for Black music in the UK, and Soul II Soul was as
big as it got! Caucasians were, and are still not comfortable
with, using the word Black in the presence of Black people
and we have come too far for them to go back to calling
it Negro or sepia music.
So
today the word Black has been replaced by Urban as a descriptive
word for a ‘lifestyle’ influenced by Black Culture
and black people, and has become a multi-billion pound industry
because the consumer profile is now three generations of
people who identify with this new lifestyle. They are Black,
White, Asian, Hispanic, African, American, European, South
American etc. If you call the lifestyle and music Black,
you alienate 90% of your market. Urban makes pounds, shillings,
pence and sense!
Source BBM - British Black Music
