In some ways, Downtown Music Services is a very different company from the first half of last year.
That’s because its parent company, Downtown Holdings, sold all Its proprietary copyright for Concord for around $400 million in April 2021.
In another sense, however, Downtown Music Services hasn’t changed one bit; it only becomes more important to the owner’s mission.
While the rest of the music business seems to be leaning on the future value of copyright, Downtown Music Holdings is betting on building the best company possible to deliver those rights globally. . Expected to generate more than $600 million from its music services businesses in 2021 alone, it is clear that it is already on the rise.
One move the parent company made after last year’s sale of the Concord rights was collect two of its main subsidiaries – Downtown Music Publishingand indie artist and apparel distributor/marketer DashGo – to form Downtown Music Services.
Over the past year, DMS has made interesting moves such as dealing with French band Airwith some LoFi record labeland with Daniel Lopatinexecutive producer of The Weeknd’s recent No.1 global album, Dawn FM.
Perhaps DMS’s most exciting deal since selling the Concord rights came last month, when it was announced “Big Expansion” Its operations – including many new employees – are in Spanish-speaking Latin America.
Perhaps DMS’s most exciting deal since selling the Concord rights came last month, when it was announced “Big Expansion” its operations – including many new employees – in Spanish-speaking Latin America
DMS is run by its CEO, Mike Smith (formerly director of Downtown Music Publishing), along with its COO, Ben Patterson (President and Founder of DashGo).
Here, Los Angeles-based Patterson (pictured, main) answers MBW’s questions about DMS’s place in the global music business, its ambitions in the LatAm area, and how he believes that the industry will grow in the coming years…
What two or three changes/developments to the music copyright business do you expect to most dramatically transform the industry over the next decade, and why?
A decade in music is a millennium in other industries. Ten years ago Spotify Not yet launched in the US, TikTok doesn’t exist yet. [So] It’s hard to predict these changes with confidence, but I’ll try.
Something that has been slowly gaining momentum over the past ten years is now really booming and that is the interweaving of remix, interpolation, sync, sampling, and sharing permissions. YouTubeContentID’s created a gold standard for identifying music used in User Generated Content (UGC) videos and indemnifying copyright holders – but now everyone who licenses music wants to have it. broad permissions to allow users to tune in and re-share music on their platforms.
“The artists and their attorneys don’t want to give the rights to sync, mix, or even pre-remove pre-removed cuts. But for some artists, it’s a career change. “
Are from Instagram auto-generate Stories from official music videos, to Spotify and Apple seeking rights to Tik Tok’s popular DJ mixes, mash-ups, duets and remixes – all of these claim broad permissions and rethink how those rights are granted, monitored and compensated.
The artists and their attorneys don’t want to give the rights to sync, remix, or even the pre-removed cut-off rights. But for some [projects] – as Imanbek handles SAINT JHN’s Rose – it changes careers.
Recently we have seen [this trend] live as Sadie Jean trended Duets on TikTok and made her debut WYD right now? via SELENE.
She recently released a remix version that included some of those duets, but removing those features – which were spontaneous on TikTok – took real human time, phone calls phone and legal work [which took more time] than any artist predicted.
Make artists, brands and partners comfortable with this evolution and find affordable ways to grant, track, and pay for these uses and reuses in close ways Like no friction, but honoring the creative integrity of artists is an ongoing challenge and as a Downtown group of companies is committed.
It will continue to expand to web3, metaverse, blockchain, and other innovations in distributed data tracking that are happening right now. DMS is committed to supporting its clients’ creative and entrepreneurial goals in all of these areas.
Who will these developments benefit and what models do they threaten?
I love seeing winners everywhere in music and think this is something that can benefit all parties – even if the balance of income shifts in the process.
Artists have mostly gotten comfortable with remixes of their music on social media. Platforms love the interactions and streams that user creativity can create, and fans love (and expect) flexibility in sampling and interpolation.
“Artists have mostly gotten comfortable with remixes of their music on social media.”
For Downtown, as well as other rights regulators and distributors, the complexity of tracking and calculating usage was an extra burden, and negotiating revenue allocation was the task we chose. take on and be really good.
The challenge remains for the artist: to build a sustainable career is not a song that explodes because of reuse, but the artistic leverage of that to create a wave of fandom supporting the name. entries, future releases and tours.
Can you summarize the experience and success of DashGo/DMS in Latin America to date? Why is that part of the world particularly exciting to you, especially when it comes to the role of the service model?
I am extremely excited about our and our team’s success throughout Latin America and Spanish-speaking Brazil.
This is nothing new to DMS, we’ve supported Musica Mexicana’s catalogs and artists for over a decade, and we’ve also been deeply involved in Central and South America over the past decade.
In addition to being a fast-growing listener and streaming territory, artists and labels [in LatAm] very independent. The values of retained ownership, strategic partnerships, and support fit very well into Downtown Music’s structure.
“I am extremely excited about the success of us and our team throughout Spanish-speaking Latin America and Brazil.”
Our sister company, CDBaby, has also been in the area for over a decade, and we can support the continued growth of some of those customers as they graduate beyond DIY.
Labels like Alzada have grown exponentially, and artists like Santa Fe Klan, No Te Va Gustar, Johnny Hooker and Illapu have all trusted us with their music. We were able to expand staff across the region to support them locally.
Musica Mexicana has long been our driver; we are proud to represent Los Tucanes de Tijuana and have worked closely with them to triple their streaming audience over the past few years.
How can DMS compete with the global scale of big companies like Universal/ Virgin Music / InGrooves and Sony/ Fruit garden?
In many ways, we have compete surname.
It’s hard, but it’s great to see those companies gearing up for our releases for A&R.
Christian Nodal’s “Adios Amor” was originally powered by DashGo. Ultimately, I think that by taking a long-term, service-oriented view, rather than an ownership model that focuses on current hits, we can attract and retain great artists.
A curated list allows us to focus more deeply on longer timeframes, but we must carefully maintain the staff to deliver on our promises.
That’s why I’m so excited about our recent list of suggestions and promotions to fill it up. [LatAm] group out – from Estefania Parra Lora to Daniella Gutierrez, Martin Liviche and Juan Nunez, we are building an extensive list of creative support for artists.
What do you see as the biggest growth opportunity for DMS in the coming years?
I believe we will continue to see global growth as streaming accelerates in Southeast Asia and Africa, while continuing to grow in Latin America.
Additionally, our genre management has worked well for LoFi – where we’ve built a creative network of artists, brands and playlists backed by editorial and advertising. strong strategy.
“We will continue to see global growth as streaming accelerates in Southeast Asia and Africa, while continuing to grow in Latin America.”
There are many other adjoining genres that I believe we can apply our knowledge from [LoFi].
Ultimately, continuing to focus on creating and enhancing services around UGC-driven platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Meta and others, I believe will pay off as the scope of use music, integration, and monetization continue to grow on those and new platforms.
Agility and attention have informed our strategy from the start and there is no sign of slowing down in musical innovation.
A year on, what do you think is the defining difference between DMS and any other operator in this market?
Our commitment to over-delivery and promises has served us well.
Everyone on the team has visibility and awareness of each client’s music and goals and expectations, and we consider ourselves partners with them – so customer wins are ours I.
It’s hard to include a brief pitch, but our customer services, whether you’re a producer or a publisher, an artist or a writer, are truly outstanding and we strive to try to keep improving. We focus on areas where we can significantly impact a project – streaming, digital advertising, release strategy and support.
If there was one thing you could change about the music business right here and now, what would it be and why?
Just go to sleep, and the music business will be different when you wake up! It changes all the time.
In some ways, I’ve been doing the same work for almost 20 years, but it’s also always new – as artists, DSPs and fans create new ways to discover and enjoy music.
On a superficial level, I advise all artists: stop dropping waterfalls. They really enhance distribution, impacting the algorithmic plays of [your] songs have been released and customers are often disappointed with the results.Worldwide music business
