James McGuinness is a prime example of the work that goes into creating the image of the MCs and teams we follow behind the scenes. He’s worked in the industry for 20 years and, with the rise of grime across the country, is a key player in bringing it to our screens and ears. As Senior Label Manager of Absolute Record Label Services, James is a huge part of the force behind the use of innovative marketing that has helped the likes of Jammer and Lord of the Mics, Skepta and Krept & Konan.
So, what’s the standard day in the life as a senior label manager?
“Well, the first thing I do is check sales on out system and look for any daily sales uplifts, I go through my emails when I wakeup and make sure there’s no overnight panics, so everything’s alright with my clients, or that anything’s gone wrong. Normally that doesn’t happen, but every now and then you gotta make sure that someone’s product has delivered to digital stores or has come out.
The biggest days for us used to be Monday – release day, but now it’s Friday, just making sure that everything is correct. It’s mostly checking emails to make sure everyone’s happy and then getting on with my to do list which is usually quite big on a Monday and hopefully smaller on a Friday!”
What have you and Absolute done for grime so far?
“I personally have been working with grime artists since 2010/2011. We first started working with Ghetts and we did his mixtape for Channel AKA. They set up an imprint and were looking for distributors to distribute. As they were a TV channel they weren’t set up to be a record label, so as we offer label services we give additional services to labels that don’t have the infrastructure for setting up a release and taking it to market. We run that label for them, allowing them to do the more creative things, radio play, all the stuff that artists want to do, we take away all the hard manual stuff of running a record label; building marketing timelines, all that stuff that goes with it.”
So it’s all the stuff that you as an artist would like someone to help you with?
“Absolutely, it’s making sure that the mundane boring stuff like ISR codes, CAT numbers, and barcodes are prepped, making sure all the neighbouring rights are properly looked after, making sure they’re getting paid for all their digital sales, and making sure all their streaming’s sorted. We make sure if they’ve got physical product that it’s in-store, that the manufacturing and artwork’s correct. You know, just doing all that background work you need to make sure you’re successful as an artist, we take that away for our labels and look after it.
With the grime artists we’ve been working with, we’ve been lucky to work with quite a few of the substantial larger acts. I think the reason they’ve gravitated towards us is because they’re generally very busy people. A lot of them are working 24/7 maintaining their musical career. Be that shows, recording, whatever – they don’t have the time as a boutique business to be running all that. They need to know they’re going to get paid on time and be looked after so that they can keep that business going. And we’ve been doing that successfully with them for a long time now.”
Do you find that you have to market different genres differently?
“Yes, the marketing is the different thing in the process. Retails is pretty much the same, but how you reach the audiences and how you market those records once they’re on those different stalls or in those different places does differ. That’s normally dictated by traditional promotion, so if they’re not going to get radio play, they might get some online press or they might get some printed press.
Usually social media and online marketing are the best for reaching fanbases if some records are too hard for radio. If they can get radio as well, it’s even better because radio is such a huge driver of sales. We do campaigns with Spotify to try and get the tune out on playlists, Facebook/Vevo/YouTube campaigns… it’s really asking where are their fans? Where are they listening to to the music?
Lord of The Mics is a really good example of us doing everything for a brand across the board, because we really had every angle covered. You aren’t going to get those traditional methods of promotion. We aren’t going to get on the radio with clashes, so YouTube is huge for us and so is Spotify because we’ve got loads of playlists. We had Logan Sama come in for us and do a special playlist which he updates every month. Jammer does one, Ratty [co-owner of LOTM] does one, and they use that for a jukebox to promote grime to people.”
“What we did with LOTM had never been done with Vevo before, we built it up from a channel that had 0 views, to 1.1m views in a 2 month period, just from a dormant channel with 7000 subscribers. It’s not huge figures in the YouTube world, but from 0 in 2 months it’s a strong way of building a brand, and they’ve just built and built up their Vevo from there.”
For an artist like KSI who’s come from a different fame, how would you go about extending his marketing from YouTube to music?
“We used his YouTube channel to do that – he had 8.8m subscribers when we did the P Money single, and we were just looking at percentage views of that. But what was more interesting about him was that downloads wasn’t where he was making his numbers – it was streaming sites. That was where people were going to for his music, so we were just getting him to make playlists on that. And then his tracks were getting put into other playlists because it was becoming a viral hit on various streaming sites, so the more we kept him working on streaming and YouTube the more streams we built and the higher his chart sales went.”
Would you say things are easier when they’re digital?
“It’s easier to reach people, but it’s harder to be spotted within the noise of the internet. It’s diluted where you can actually go, but you need publications to still back you, and radio stations. We do a lot of work developing engagement with fans on social media, not necessarily numbers though. We’d rather have a small amount of really engaged fans that are active with that artist than thousands of people that have just clicked because they’ve got forced love. It’s the quality of the fans we’re going after these days and trying to engage with artists, so we know that when we do any campaigns, they’re actually going to buy some thing or download something, get involved with that artist and be a fan, a true fan.”
Do you think that mobile and apps are essential when it comes to music marketing now?
“Mobile is definitely really important, I wouldn’t say apps so much.
LOTM is unique in that it’s a brand and that there’s enough going on. I don’t think individual artists’ apps would necessarily work because you need quite a lot of information. If you’ve got a brand like LOTM, there’s so much going on with so many different people that you can keep it going.
I’d say mobile is definitely the way to communicate with your fans because that’s a huge way of getting in touch with people. When we do notifications on the LOTM app that’s when we see the traffic – people are on their phones, they’ve got time, they want to go in and check out what’s going on. Everything we do has to be able to be viewed on mobile because most of the young people who are looking at grime are on their mobile – they’re listening to music on there, there’re watching videos on there, they’re shopping on there.”
What do you see in the future of music marketing?
“Everyone says it’s mobile but I think it’s the internet as a whole. Nowadays the bit that really interests me is what’s going to happen with streaming and artist engagement, where’s that going to take us? There’s still going to be people buying CDs, there’s still going to be people buying vinyl, there’ll still be downloads, but how big will that streaming world become?
And then we’ll have brands, like GRM Daily, curating music for other people, but does this make radio suddenly lose it’s power? That’s the unknown bit that nobody knows, that’s the bit I’m interested in. As things like the internet advance and when wifi becomes free everywhere, when you can have it everywhere you walk, you’ll be able to stream everything be it videos, music.. it’s about how we are going to consume that and how we’re gonna get through the noise of the internet and reach our fans, that’s the bit that interests me.”
Because grime fans are generally younger people and are less likely to buy CDs, do you think this will go on to damage the industry?
“I don’t think it will, these days digital is so simple that it still works and for an artist, an album on iTunes is pretty much making the same money back as they are from a CD, unless it’s a deluxe version. The big thing that’s been concerning everybody is the drop off of digital that’s not filling the gap for CDs at the moment and the hope that streaming is going to fill that gap. But for a grime audience, a younger audience, it’s more about making fans not want to pirate music, making them want to buy it and giving them a reason to buy it.”
Yeah, grime is much more accessible than other music in that sense as you feel like you’re from where they’re from and you can relate to them more.
“Yeah and in that sense, if someone really rated someone and really backed them, they’d support them. A grime audience is unique in the fact that they really support one of their own – look at Stormzy for example. He’s done it without a deal without anything. He puts out good music, he’s a really genuine guy and everyone likes him. It’s why LOTM does really well because Jammer’s such a character, everybody really likes him and embraces him in that genre and everyone backs LOTM. They love battles, there’s banter and relationships there for them. There’s a family environment in grime which gets missed in other genres. I love it.”
Thanks, James!