Interested in A&R?

Slightly hungover today. Ugh. :-/

I spent yesterday at an out of office session with my dept in a workshop. Got to get to know a couple more people which is always nice. Doing this job I spend most of my time with headphones on in my corner, or heading out to gigs so I don't really speak to my colleagues that much. I must make more of an effort to wander around and say hi. Went to Jujitsu after and had a really good session, went through some bag work with some new starters.

The bits arrived for the DV cam I'm going to start using for bigger gigs. So I can properly have a play with it today.

Just read a comment on a post suggesting that as I look only about 23 and how could I possibly know anything about finding good music. I don't know if that's the case, but apparently I look 23! Get in! That made my morning (I'm 27). :-)

It did make me wonder if anyone really knew that much about me or why I do this job. I have written something in 'About Me' but I haven't updated that in ages. Perhaps I should do that now.

Potted histrory - I started by studying Music Industry Management at uni. Whilst there I joined a band (The Approach). On leaving we toured for a couple of years, couple of singles a video but nothing big happened. I spent a brief stint as a plugger (getting new music on the radio). I also worked for little while booking bands at The Water rats, The Pheonix, The Marquee before I went indipendent. So got to hear a whole load of new music, find the better stuff and get them gigging. Plus got to know a lot of the bands on the circuit at the time. It was around the time The Rakes, Dogs Die In Hot Cars, The Libertines etc were kicking off.

On the band folding up, did a few sessions here and there on piano/hammond and then got into royalties. Which is basically working out an artists wages. Calculating how much they've made from sales, the costs, their advance etc. Really excellent experience as you couldn't have a better guide to what happens in the industry, how money is made, understanding record contracts etc. I worked for the PPL, Trojan (Sanctuary), Warner Music, then here at Sony BMG. After a while I started getting involved in other areas of the company and had discussions with the management about my ideas/views on the industry. Usually after a couple of glasses of wine.

Ged suggested that I get involved in this. I jumped at the chance but didn't realise what would be involved. I knew I would be going to gigs, listening to new stuff, and spending time online. But didn't realise how involving this community would be and the dramatically contrasting views that I read. A couple of months back I read a post specifically about me! I thought that was insane, why would they write about me? As it turns out it was quite damning of what I was doing, or not doing in that case. I've read quite a few since good and bad. The bad tend to be around "Why didn't he comment on my track" or "It's obvious that I should have a record deal, he must be an idiot". Everyone's entitled to their view, I guess some people need a pat on the back from time to time to get on with it.

If you're interested, an average day starts with me trying to clear all the blog messages. I usually start at the oldest and work forwards although I do keep my eye open for replies from certain people I've contacted previously. I listen to their tracks aswell as I get many "Check this out" emails. Then I start listening to the new submissions. This can take any time between an hour or several depending on the activity from all you creative types. I comment sporadically as I really want to get through as many as I can and put the better ones to one side. Though I've been commenting more as recently loads of good stuff has come in.

There's also a couple of people in Vox who forward on the better stuff that they find too, I guess they've become scouts really. Often they'll send me stuff I've already put to one side so it's nice to see that other people think those tracks are good. I'm going to start asking them to come to gigs with me if they're local. Infact, if you're interested in doing that kind of thing let me know.

Once I have my pile of Vox demos that I want to present, I start to whittle them down to the very best ones and have an A&R meeting with the heads of Columbia and RCA once a week. We listen to the stuff, discuss the artist, look at their blog and info and decide which gigs need checking out. There is so much on outside Vox aswell, it's difficult to judge who to see when. I was speaking to one of the chaps the other day and he had been to Northern Ireland, Wales and then Newcastle over a period of 3 days. Crazy. I'm more restricted to London and head North from time to time. But there are other scouts who cover the various areas of the country.

Anyway, I hope that gives you a better idea of what I do. There'a a bunch of other areas I get involved in but it's not the more interesting