Friday, September 10, 2010

"The music industry as a standalone industry is a dead duck. It will always be an interesting part of a multimedia future, but that is where it’s going"


As Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark break a hiatus of 14 years with the release of their 11th album ‘History Of Modern’, RotD asks frontman Andy McCluskey about his experiences in the music industry, and his hopes and expectations for the new album.

This is your first album since 1996 – what inspired you to release another record now? 


At the end of ’96 when we released Universal it was at the height of Britpop and we were banging our heads against a brick wall. Along came all these bands who were re-creating the 60s and early 70s – that became the future and we as modernists became the past. Move forward 10 years however and people had started asking us about playing live and, as the electro things started to grow, we began to get asked to produce new artists’ records. We went to do a TV show together for a laugh and we had so much fun that we decided to do a few gigs. The gigs went so well that we kept on playing live and now we’ve made the stupid and dangerous decision to make a new record.

RotD remembers working with you in 1996 on the international promotion of Universal. Is it fair to say things didn’t go well? 


It was painful because it was patently obvious that OMD was no longer a priority act for Virgin Records. It’s quite soul-destroying when you know you’re visiting a country for promotion and they’ve thrown together a short campaign to make you feel they’re doing something, but in reality they’d really rather not pay for the airfare and the hotel. Added to that, we were finding it difficult to connect with radio and other media who had decided that we were old and they wanted something else. To be fair, the record companies were just responding to the market forces that were happening at the time.

16 years on there have been seismic changes in the whole record business. Does it feel like a different business to you?


The bottom line is that popular music as an art form is old. It’s done its thing, there is nowhere new to go. The generation of young people for whom music was the instrument by which they defined and created themselves is no longer there. I’ve got kids – they like music but they’re not one trick ponies: they’re much more savvy, they’re much more multimedia. Essentially music is not a product any more to the younger generation – it’s a file, it’s an icon that can be copied, attached or deleted and they don’t treat it as having any great value. My son doesn’t see why he should pay 79p to download something but he’ll quite happily pay £50 for a game for his Xbox. The music industry as a standalone industry is a dead duck. It will always be an interesting part of a multimedia future, but that is where it’s going.

Even despite these changes, we’d argue that the power of a good song hasn’t been diminished. Does that still motivate you?


We did the album because we wanted to have a conversation with ourselves in the voice of Orchestral Manoeuvres in The Dark. We made the record we wanted to make and if other people want to listen to the conversation that’s great. If they don’t, they don’t. We believe that we still have something to say and can produce songs that will be strong and worth listening to. But we also realise that we’re not going to sell what we used to sell. If we’d made this album in 1985 it would have sold millions. We won’t sell millions, but if Coldplay or Lady Gaga released these songs they might still sell millions. We think it’s a fucking great record, but we know it’s not going to sell millions.

You’re releasing the album through the indie 100% Records. How did that relationship come about?


We are very fortunate to be personal friends of Mirelle Davis, who is probably the best international licensing and marketing person in the UK. She had interest from lots of labels for the album. She has a close relationship however with Toby Harris, who had just started a new label called 100%. They had been mostly doing distribution deals but when they heard the album they offered us a JV.

The position we were in is that there are these days essentially three types of records: there’s the big ones on the big labels where, if they sell millions, every one makes money. Then there’s the little ones - and this is where we saw ourselves - which might sell 10-15,000 and if you’re careful with your costs you’ll be all right. The bit in the middle: from 20,000 sales to half a million – everybody’s fucked. You
need a big budget, big PR, big record company and nobody makes any money.

The marketing campaign for the album feels modern and comprehensive. There are five different formats of the record, there’s active online promotion and there’s a direct to fan feeling too. Have you had to adopt a whole new approach? 


When you make a record you ultimately do it for yourself, but if you’re going to release it, you want as many people to hear it as possible, so you look to find people who know how to do this in the current market place. We’re very fortunate in that the people we’re working with know what they’re doing and there’s no doubt that the arketplace needs different techniques from what were used to in the old days. But we are also prepared to go back to basics. The artist has to be prepared to work for every little victory. You can’t just parachute in, expect to get three top TV shows and a couple of major interviews and sell a million records. You’ve got to be prepared to go out there and nickel and dime every radio station, every interview, every internet site and say “if 5,000 people go there, a percentage of them might be interested in buying the record.” You do the work and you hope that word of mouth will spread, that people will read some good reviews, and that maybe they’ll buy the record.

A History of Modern does have the feeling of being a ‘proper’ album. You’ve clearly put your hearts into creating a set of songs that were designed to hit home and last the test of time. What are your hopes for the release?

The reality we face is, why would any one want to buy the 11th OMD album? We’re trying to convince them that we’ve still got something to say and at the age of 50, it’s quite a hard thing to do. I’m sure you must receive records from people and think ‘Why did they even bother? Why have they made this?’ There are a lot of wrong reasons to make a record, especially for acts with some history behind them. But hopefully we’ve managed to confound some expectations with this one. And when we hear people like you say, “you know what, this album is a lot better than I was expecting”, that makes us feel like we’ve got something right. I’m feeling good.

American anti-piracy law is certainly pretty useless. Will the new UK legislation offer a better deal for rights holders?

26 August 2010 - The RIAA has over the last 10-15 years acted in ways which have often left it appearing anti-consumer, stuck in the past and blind to change. It’s fair to say we’re not the RIAA’s biggest fans but this week we find ourselves completely in agreement with statements made by its president Cary Sherman.
He complained that the USA’s current copyright laws are unworkable, placing an unfair emphasis on rights holders to police and respond to infringement, whilst those site hosting the infringements are protected by safe harbour allowances. Specifically, he complained that current US anti-piracy legislation as detailed in 1998’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act needs to be re-assessed.
Any one who has ever tried to send DMCA takedown notices to infringing sites will know that it can be hugely time consuming and often ultimately ineffective. The scale of piracy is so massive that unless those hosting the illegal content are held responsible in some way, there is no realistic chance of copyright owners seeing their ownership of the works respected. The legislation certainly works to the advantage of companies such as Google however, which recently used DMCA safe harbour provisions as the key tool of defence in its court battle with Viacom. The balance is not right.

No doubt the RIAA is quite envious of the UK’s new Digital Economy Act, which places considerably more pressure on ISPs and other intermediaries to actively engage in preventing access to pirated content. The DEA calls on rights holders, ISPs and the media regulator Ofcom to each play an active role in implementing a system which monitors levels of copyright infringement, as well as warning and ultimately taking sanctions against persistent offenders. The legislation also crucially includes powers which could see the blocking of access to websites which systematically engage in copyright infringement. There are heavy burdens of proof to be met before sites can be blocked, but at least the possibility is there. Whilst the measures outlined in the DEA undoubtedly appear to work more in favour of copyright owners than the existing US legislation, those measures are as yet untested and there’s still a considerable way to go before the DEA becomes effective. We are soon however to reach the first important landmark since the passing of the Act, when Ofcom publishes by the end of September its statement on the consultation process about the Initial Obligations code. This will provide the first concrete intelligence on how the DEA could be implemented, what the costs involved are likely to be and whether the legislation is workable in real terms. The DEA has many critics, mostly those who fear the persecution of individual consumers. We prefer to focus on the desperately needed measures contained within that could provide a way to deal with organised piracy or complicity with it. There are undoubtedly businesses which profit from currently weak legislation on online piracy, and it’s about time they lost the ability to do so.