Well we certainly got people’s attention with our formal complaint to the BBC Trust about the impact of BBC Introducing. Unfortunately the serious thought behind the story appears to have been somewhat lost on those Twitterers and Guardian respondents who were critical of us. They mostly thought I was after a cheap headline: what I actually wanted was a rational debate, about public/private balance, commercial viability, access to opportunity and ethics. If we, as a nation, could get that balance right, it would be brilliant for the BBC, for the country as a whole and above all for our musicians. I’ll explain.
Before I do, here’s some ‘introducing’ of my own. I’m the last person you’d expect to criticise the BBC. Before I founded amazing, I worked in new media and broadcasting, much of the latter at the BBC. I was once, so the Head of Appointments told me, the youngest-ever BBC Producer. Before I joined as a General Trainee, I read the Annan report from cover to cover. (If you don’t know what that is – lucky you). For a long and retrospectively rather scary period, I wanted to run the BBC. I still have Reithianism engraved on my heart and sometimes wake up – 22 years after I left, fed up with the internal politics – surprised I don’t work there any more. Mostly, I still love it. I recently wrote to The Times defending the BBC, describing it as ‘one of the glories of Britain’. I meant that, because it’s true. But even a global icon needs a good slapping from time to time, especially when we own it. This fact is sometimes lost on those within the BBC, who look on external criticism as an infinitely curious but rather distasteful distraction, like a Victorian cleric stepping over an improbably-shaped turd.
So I know a bit about the BBC. Ditto music. I’ve been an intermittently working musician for almost forty years. I was eleven when first paid to play; my last gig, as timpanist with one of the UK’s leading professional orchestras, was a fortnight ago. In between, I’ve humped my share of bass bins from clapped-out vans, sat wondering if I’d survive a violent gig with my drums intact, been scared at the arrival of tinnitus, fallen asleep in damp, cheap studios, done umpteen broadcasts, appeared on a pile of rubbish records and played everywhere from The Marquee Club to the Royal Festival Hall. (If you’re interested, the high and low points were ‘Friday Night is Music Night’ and accompanying the strippers in a northern working men’s club. I’ll let you work out which was which). Realising, like millions before, that I couldn’t make a full-time living out of it, I’ve also been a radio DJ, a Producer of Channel 4 music programmes and a sound engineer. I’ve seen a bit of the music industry. Which means, I’ve seen musicians being ripped off. (I started amazing in an attempt to stop that).
Now let’s deal with some chronology. We launched amazingtunes.com in 2005, two years before BBC Introducing. They launched their upload service this February. We did it first. Amazing Radio launched on June 1st 2009, the world’s first radio station playing 100% unsigned music. John Peel started on Radio 1 forty-two years earlier. Hmm. Strange to tell, I wasn’t really suggesting we were the first people to play unsigned music on national radio. And, having spent many happy hours as a student working in local radio, I remember how the atmosphere changed (literally, too) on Monday nights, when the rather more bearded presenters of the local music programme came in.
So the BBC spokesperson’s straight-bat response to our complaint was valid and correct: the BBC has a long and honourable tradition of supporting new music, one rooted in locality and occasionally aired nationally. It should continue. As G K Chesterton said, ‘nothing is real, that is not local’.
But that’s not the issue. There’s a difference between a cassette in a jiffy bag and BBC Introducing. In the past, the BBC’s unsigned activities were a tiny dot in a healthy musical ecology. The British music industry was one of the vibrant successes of our creative economy, generating millions in GDP, even making the odd musician rich, after the pampered record company Execs of course. Peel & Co. were surrounded by a privately-owned A&R army, waiting to pick up the lucky few; there was a path, with a destination, somewhere for your manky cassette to go. ‘A deal’ with a major would pay the exorbitant cost of recording, pressing, distributing and marketing your precious record. (They took all the profit in the process, of course).
Today, everything has changed. You don’t need an advance to record exceptional music. You don’t need a pressing plant. Viral marketing is cheaper, faster and more honest than any paid-for promotional campaign. The musical world has shifted on its axis, and the shockwaves have destroyed the traditional music industry. Its slow death was largely self-inflicted, of course, brought on by a toxic combination of greed and laziness, boiled up by the new technology. While the liggers partied, oblivious to the onward march of digits, the customers decamped elsewhere. Now, the EMIs of this world are focusing on their ‘long tail’, squeezing every last penny from the back catalogue. They’ve always been more into the ‘business’ than the ‘music’. Now, they’re morphing into antique dealers.
This is a bit of a shame for the UK. In the good times, our music business was a world leader. Not any more. Our creative industries may be the fastest-growing part of the economy, but for those mega music corporations with their impossibly-beautiful employees and their preposterous reception areas, the only way is down. The smart ones realise this. Talk for five minutes to anyone with music biz experience and a brain and they’ll say ‘we’re all looking for the answer’ ten times. They have no idea what it will be, of course – they’re too stuck in the old world. You can’t think out of the box when you’re still asleep in it, finding what’s left of it really rather warm. But the answer is obvious enough: it’ll come from some combination of downloads, mobile delivery, democratisation and social networking. When someone gets it right, it’ll be amazing.
It might even be amazing. I genuinely think we could be one of the successors to the old system. The elements are all in place. We’ve had the brand, the technology and above all the morality for some time. The ethics are the most important bit – we give 70% of revenue to artists, forever overturning the besetting sin of the old music industry (it ripped off the musicians) while removing the disgraceful moral evasion that made some deranged people think it somehow permissible to rip off music. As we’ve shown, you don’t steal from the artist whose tune you just fell in love with, when you know they need – and will get – your money.
What we were lacking, until recently, was traction. Brand presence. A USP. So we emptied all our piggy banks, tapped up our long-suffering investors and launched Amazing Radio. I very much doubt the experience of funding it in the teeth of a recession has lengthened my life.
The reaction was astounding. People get it. They love the variety, they understand the concept, they like the music: and then they buy it. With the exception of a few bloggers yesterday, they want it to succeed. If it does, thousands of musicians will make more money than we will from their music. No exceptions.
I’m the same age as Simon Cowell. There the similarity ends. We‘re not doing this to get rich quick. We get a tiny amount of cash per download. We’ll only make money if the whole thing gets enormous – at which point, thousands of amazing musicians will have made anything from a few quid, to a good living, to a small fortune. If it does work, we’ll also create more employment, in a part of the world a bit lacking in job opportunities. (Cheryl Cole isn’t the first to leave the north-east in search of work). And we’ll play a part in ensuring there’s a British, private sector component in the new global music business, which will be good for GDP and tax revenues. I do think schools and hospitals are better than the alternative, don’t you?
Then along comes the BBC, with its publicly-funded hobnail boots. Introducing is functionally identical to a large part of what we’re doing, but lacks the ultimate destination; it leads to airtime – and nothing else. This was understandable in Peel’s jiffy-bag day, when the record labels would sign up his best acts. Now, in Digitland, with the music industry dying and deserting new releases, it’s criminal – a bridge to a destination that has sunk. Worse, it’s growing. The BBC loves expanding as nature abhors a vacuum. Launched initially as a tool for local radio, Introducing is now a whole new BBC service, a pan-BBC megalith, covering local and network radio, TV, even Glastonbury. They should change its name to BBC Self-aggrandising. A greater proportion of the BBC’s gargantuan output now plays new music than ever before – Radio 2, anyone? - returning nothing to the artists except a PRS fee. (Which, because PRS doesn’t do detail and can’t work computers, will probably go to Paul McCartney. But that’s another story). In the process, Introducing attacks our USP, undermining the incentive for musicians to sign up to amazing and its myriad private sector competitors. If this continues, we’ll end up with a vibrant, publicly-owned BBC: and no music industry.
Not that they realise, of course. I talked to a senior BBC bod yesterday at a radio conference. He was nice and smart and really seemed to want to understand my issue. But he just didn’t get it, he couldn’t see the problem (which is exactly why there is one). I could see his difficulty. Inside the laager, with utter certainty you’ll get paid on the 15th of each month and a nice final salary pension to look forward to, you can’t begin to comprehend how, in the digital age, what you do could, accidentally, unintentionally, haphazardly maybe, deprive others of a living – people working in the real economy, struggling to invent something new, create employment and get their businesses off the ground. He didn’t see his associated double-think either. I asked him why they built their own upload tool when we and MySpace and others already had, why they always thought they should do it all themselves, why they couldn’t work in partnership with the private companies serving unsigned bands and trying to reinvent the music industry. He said they weren’t allowed to; they couldn’t partner with the private sector. He couldn’t see the irony: for all its life, the BBC has worked with private record companies, promoting their artists, swallowing their marketing tactics, paying for the privilege of promoting their releases. Now, they don’t think they should work with what’s replacing them?
Not that any of this is new, of course. BBC 7 did it to One Word. BBC Jam nearly did it to the UK’s e-learning businesses. They planned to do it to regional newspapers with their online news plans. Now they’re doing it to the incipient new music business – the one the British economy, thousands of musicians, and millions of fans need to be created, to grow and to succeed. Each time, well-meaning BBC employees are motivated by a genuine desire to serve their audience by doing more and more stuff. They never consider the impact on anyone else. When we complain, they pause, consider our comments, reject them, then carry on regardless – thus failing in their public service remit to serve the whole community, or engage in genuine debate.
When I was in the BBC, I once made a film with a pig farmer. He described how a corpulent sow would sometimes roll over and crush her little piggies to death. It’s not the sow’s fault, he said. She doesn’t know they’re there. She doesn’t realise she’s doing any harm.
Paul Campbell
amazing founder
© The Amazing Media Group 2009
What a fabulous blog about why we should all fear the BBC. Not because of any intentional desire to destroy others, but that does not excuse them. The BBC need to look at themselves and this issue immediately. Well done Paul
Thanks, I really appreciate the comment. Let’s hope they listen, and maybe even think … for a change. PC
What a fabulous blog about why we should all fear the BBC. Not because of any intentional desire to destroy others, but that does not excuse them. The BBC need to look at themselves and this issue immediately. Well done Paul
Thanks, I really appreciate the comment. Let’s hope they listen, and maybe even think … for a change. PC
Don’t loose focus Paul, never mind what the BBC does, or anyone else for that matter, just carry on being Amazing. Imitation is the best form of flattery! UkJay
Thanks Jay – we will!
Don’t loose focus Paul, never mind what the BBC does, or anyone else for that matter, just carry on being Amazing. Imitation is the best form of flattery! UkJay
Thanks Jay – we will!
As Paul seems to have stumbled across a sarcastic and critical tweet of mine sent to a colleague last Monday about his complaint to the BBC Trust, I feel duty-bound to comment here and amplify my thoughts which were compressed into the phrase “sour grapes”.
Please note these are my personal opinions, though clearly they have been shaped by my employment history.
My employment history gives me a unique perspective. I’ve worked for the BBC off and on since 1992. I’ve also worked for Paul Campbell from 2000 until 2001.
Now, as Executive Producer for Syndication, I’m the person responsible for forming editorial partnerships between BBC Audio and Music Interactive and external companies, this includes BBC Introducing, and could even include Amazing Radio.
Now I have to say I disagree quite strongly with both the overall thrust of Paul’s remarks above, and the facts he’s drawn on to form his opinions.
Paul is right to say that Amazing Tunes was launched before BBC Introducing, but he misunderstands how BBC Introducing formalised activity that had been going on for a very long time – much more than cassettes or singles sent to John Peel.
He’s wrong when he says BBC Introducing “lacks the ultimate destination; it leads to airtime – and nothing else” ask the Ting Tings or Florence and the Machine who credit BBC Introducing with helping their rise to prominence (and an audience, a deal, sales of physical product and downloads).
I also think that Paul’s claim to know the BBC needs rethinking – I understand that Paul left the BBC in the late 80s or early 90s. The BBC has changed quite a bit since then, and Paul’s analysis of our motives is incorrect. He’s simply wrong when he says “They never consider the impact on anyone else” … One thing I know from my time working in the BBC, especially in my most recent role, is that the BBC spends *a lot* of time thinking about the effect its activities have on everyone else. It’s why I spend so much time on the phone to Fair Trading. It’s written in very big letters on every project approval form I have to fill out. Lot’s of things get stopped because they’ll have an effect on the public sector …
I don’t know who the exec Paul spoke to at Radio at the Edge was, but somewhere down the line someone’s got their facts wrong. There’s nothing at all wrong with the BBC working with external companies, we do it all the time, it’s what my job is. Mark Thompson has spoken at length about how the BBC should put partnerships at the top of the agenda. We can’t favour one individual company, but we can work with a range of partners across an industry or market sector.
There’s also no reason why a band shouldn’t upload their tracks to both Amazing Tunes and BBC Introducing and MySpace and Google Music and Bebo and anybody else they choose to. If I was in a band (I’m not but plenty of my friends are, I’ve been a music journalist and I’ve also sung in a choir so I’ve got a pretty good knowledge of the music biz too) I’d be uploading my tracks pretty much everywhere. The idea that BBC Introducing undermines Amazing’s USP is simply nonsense, if anything it’s giving services like Amazing a massive shot in the arm. By raising the profile of unsigned music we’re bringing it to a mass audience who can then go away and discover specialist services like Amazing. I strongly suspect that were BBC Introducing to be shut down then Amazing would wither on the vine within weeks.
Paul also misrepresents the BBC’s legal duty to serve the entire population, because we’re funded by the licence fee we have to develop services that appeal to everyone so that everyone gets value for that licence fee. Trying to walk the tightrope between developing services that are popular across the board, and not crushing small businesses like Amazing Radio is pretty tricky – but it’s one thing the BBC thinks long and hard about.
What irritates me (and I speak personally) is when people like Paul use phrases like “BBC Self-aggrandising” and then goes and makes a complaint to the Trust before actually speaking to us. I don’t understand from Paul’s blog post whether he thinks we actually want to crush him, or that we’re ignorant and don’t care … or even worse, well-meaning and don’t care …
I don’t know whether you’ve spoken to Justin Carter, the head of BBC Introducing, already, but if you haven’t why not give him a call? If that doesn’t work call and discuss how BBC Introducing and Amazing Radio might work together. Perhaps it’s best to talk first and complain later – or does that generate fewer headlines?
Richard Leeming
Hi Richard, Many thanks for the comments – it’s good to hear from you again. I’ve published your blog as is, and am not going to respond to your points here right now, as I think that would mean I dominate the debate too much, which would be unfair – although I do have some thoughts on them! It would be better to let others have a say first. (If others respond who are BBC staff, please say so – there are 26,000 of you after all!) Thanks in any event for taking so much time to respond so thoughtfully, I appreciate it. ATB, PC
As Paul seems to have stumbled across a sarcastic and critical tweet of mine sent to a colleague last Monday about his complaint to the BBC Trust, I feel duty-bound to comment here and amplify my thoughts which were compressed into the phrase “sour grapes”.
Please note these are my personal opinions, though clearly they have been shaped by my employment history.
My employment history gives me a unique perspective. I’ve worked for the BBC off and on since 1992. I’ve also worked for Paul Campbell from 2000 until 2001.
Now, as Executive Producer for Syndication, I’m the person responsible for forming editorial partnerships between BBC Audio and Music Interactive and external companies, this includes BBC Introducing, and could even include Amazing Radio.
Now I have to say I disagree quite strongly with both the overall thrust of Paul’s remarks above, and the facts he’s drawn on to form his opinions.
Paul is right to say that Amazing Tunes was launched before BBC Introducing, but he misunderstands how BBC Introducing formalised activity that had been going on for a very long time – much more than cassettes or singles sent to John Peel.
He’s wrong when he says BBC Introducing “lacks the ultimate destination; it leads to airtime – and nothing else” ask the Ting Tings or Florence and the Machine who credit BBC Introducing with helping their rise to prominence (and an audience, a deal, sales of physical product and downloads).
I also think that Paul’s claim to know the BBC needs rethinking – I understand that Paul left the BBC in the late 80s or early 90s. The BBC has changed quite a bit since then, and Paul’s analysis of our motives is incorrect. He’s simply wrong when he says “They never consider the impact on anyone else” … One thing I know from my time working in the BBC, especially in my most recent role, is that the BBC spends *a lot* of time thinking about the effect its activities have on everyone else. It’s why I spend so much time on the phone to Fair Trading. It’s written in very big letters on every project approval form I have to fill out. Lot’s of things get stopped because they’ll have an effect on the public sector …
I don’t know who the exec Paul spoke to at Radio at the Edge was, but somewhere down the line someone’s got their facts wrong. There’s nothing at all wrong with the BBC working with external companies, we do it all the time, it’s what my job is. Mark Thompson has spoken at length about how the BBC should put partnerships at the top of the agenda. We can’t favour one individual company, but we can work with a range of partners across an industry or market sector.
There’s also no reason why a band shouldn’t upload their tracks to both Amazing Tunes and BBC Introducing and MySpace and Google Music and Bebo and anybody else they choose to. If I was in a band (I’m not but plenty of my friends are, I’ve been a music journalist and I’ve also sung in a choir so I’ve got a pretty good knowledge of the music biz too) I’d be uploading my tracks pretty much everywhere. The idea that BBC Introducing undermines Amazing’s USP is simply nonsense, if anything it’s giving services like Amazing a massive shot in the arm. By raising the profile of unsigned music we’re bringing it to a mass audience who can then go away and discover specialist services like Amazing. I strongly suspect that were BBC Introducing to be shut down then Amazing would wither on the vine within weeks.
Paul also misrepresents the BBC’s legal duty to serve the entire population, because we’re funded by the licence fee we have to develop services that appeal to everyone so that everyone gets value for that licence fee. Trying to walk the tightrope between developing services that are popular across the board, and not crushing small businesses like Amazing Radio is pretty tricky – but it’s one thing the BBC thinks long and hard about.
What irritates me (and I speak personally) is when people like Paul use phrases like “BBC Self-aggrandising” and then goes and makes a complaint to the Trust before actually speaking to us. I don’t understand from Paul’s blog post whether he thinks we actually want to crush him, or that we’re ignorant and don’t care … or even worse, well-meaning and don’t care …
I don’t know whether you’ve spoken to Justin Carter, the head of BBC Introducing, already, but if you haven’t why not give him a call? If that doesn’t work call and discuss how BBC Introducing and Amazing Radio might work together. Perhaps it’s best to talk first and complain later – or does that generate fewer headlines?
Richard Leeming
Hi Richard, Many thanks for the comments – it’s good to hear from you again. I’ve published your blog as is, and am not going to respond to your points here right now, as I think that would mean I dominate the debate too much, which would be unfair – although I do have some thoughts on them! It would be better to let others have a say first. (If others respond who are BBC staff, please say so – there are 26,000 of you after all!) Thanks in any event for taking so much time to respond so thoughtfully, I appreciate it. ATB, PC
The thing about introducing is that actually, a lot of the acts it promotes are already unsigned. The BBC would shake things up a lot more if they played the signed ‘introducing’ acts on daytime shows and kept introducing for new acts. To be played on introducing you need to pay to record a good demo or pay for your own equipment to record with – it ain’t cheap!
The regional BBC Introducing shows have often been set up by producers who were already at the BBC (And of course worked hard to get their regional show commissioned.) This is great on their part – BBC WM’s Brett and Louise do a great job. In an another region however, not mentioning the station or the DJ, they would play the same bands each week (sometimes different songs, sometimes not) claiming that ‘their audiences need to get used to them. This limited other acts from their ‘moment.’ If an audience likes an act they can check their myspace or site, they don’t need to hear them weekly to ‘get used to them.’
I have worked for the BBC (when I witnessed the above,) Channel4 (including 4music.com) and run a student radio station. I’m also a 20 year old musician working harder on my back up career than playing the music that drives me.
So introducing I think is a good thing, it just needs some kind of ‘mission statement’ that explains how it promotes unsigned artists as well as the lucky ones already with a deal.
The thing about introducing is that actually, a lot of the acts it promotes are already unsigned. The BBC would shake things up a lot more if they played the signed ‘introducing’ acts on daytime shows and kept introducing for new acts. To be played on introducing you need to pay to record a good demo or pay for your own equipment to record with – it ain’t cheap!
The regional BBC Introducing shows have often been set up by producers who were already at the BBC (And of course worked hard to get their regional show commissioned.) This is great on their part – BBC WM’s Brett and Louise do a great job. In an another region however, not mentioning the station or the DJ, they would play the same bands each week (sometimes different songs, sometimes not) claiming that ‘their audiences need to get used to them. This limited other acts from their ‘moment.’ If an audience likes an act they can check their myspace or site, they don’t need to hear them weekly to ‘get used to them.’
I have worked for the BBC (when I witnessed the above,) Channel4 (including 4music.com) and run a student radio station. I’m also a 20 year old musician working harder on my back up career than playing the music that drives me.
So introducing I think is a good thing, it just needs some kind of ‘mission statement’ that explains how it promotes unsigned artists as well as the lucky ones already with a deal.
[...] As Paul Campbell, the founder of Amazing Radio, pointed out in a recent blog, “The musical world has shifted on its axis, and the shockwaves have destroyed the traditional music industry.” (Bringing Home The Bacon) [...]
Brilliant blog about Amazing Radio » Blog Archive » Bringing home the Bacon, it’s keeping me from working