“With 70,000 songs coming out every week, it’s a problem for the whole business: How do you stand out, break singles, work songs at radio when the label is only reactive to streaming?” says Keller, photographed on April 19, 2019 at Milk & Honey in Los Angeles.
I've always thought the ultimate panoply in business was to have a diverse collection of interesting types of clients, and that's the business we've built. Can you imagine the amount of commission the major management companies lose today by not being diversified? I mean, nobody was sitting around the boardroom table saying,"What will we do in a global pandemic?"
Maybe some 100% songs would be written without co-writers that go on to be summer and fall No. 1 hits. Maybe we would see a sharp streaming hike from all of the people being at home and not in the car listening to FM radio. Maybe livestreaming finally makes the impact it was meant to. Maybe film companies would even take a chance at premiering a big box office film at SVOD [subscription video on demand]. But it's on all of us to figure it out and not sit back.
Then there was the most exciting part. A label friend told me,"We're ramping up for more releases and we're going for it; we're not slowing down." I called another friend who told me 75% of their releases are still coming out as planned. As a small part of the wheel, I have to accept that if the majors are making content and releasing music, there will still be a need for hit records and great songs.
We all have to accept that it could be a slower year ahead. I was faced with doing the only thing I know how to do, even if it feels like most things are on cruise control -- double down. Immediately we went to our employees and 60 clients and started making plans for how we could keep business moving in these times, not knowing how many months it could last.
From reorganizing songs for pitch, to finishing or repurposing songs, to pitching for synch and strategizing with our writers to have select"every-other-Tuesday" co-writes on Zoom conference sessions -- we're out there. A lot of record labels are calling me about songs that need finishing production work. We represent a handful of producers that get hired to come in and do the last 10% of a production.
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