ARCHIVED NEWS

With nearly a decade of experience under his belt working in the A&R department for Bad Boy Records, Conrad Dimanche is no stranger to the inner workings of the professional music recording process and the financial structure built around the process. In our third installment of Real Talk we chop it up with Rad about Universal Music plan to reduce their CD prices, the success of Lady Gaga, the current dance run on the pop charts and the real meaning of being a producer. This is Blue Magic, no cut!

The success of Lady Gaga has proven that it's possible for a new act to sell huge amounts of digital downloads as well as albums

Besides having some great records she's also a real artist, something that's missing from most acts coming into the market nowadays. She's real colorful and is basically a character that a lot of people are getting into...it could be part gimmick but at the same time it feels authentic. A lot of artists come off dry and predictable so people are only interested in the hit record and if they can't bring the hits on a consistent basis then they drop off the cliff. If this was lets say seven years ago the type of all around impact an artist like Lady Gaga is having from the airwaves, touring, etc her sales would have been much higher but in 2010 sales alone is not the sole determining measure of mainstream success.

So what in your opinion are the most accurate measurements of success in 2010?

Honestly I don't think that's been fully defined as of yet. The labels can look at their bottom line across the board and they'll know but there isn't anything out there that has replaced the Gold/Platinum album sales mark in terms of marketing success back to the public. What the industry is not doing is putting that much emphasis on album sales like they used to. Nobody it out there in the mainstream media talking about how 50 Cent's last album didn't go Gold but had he went 5X platinum you would have heard about that every other day. It's not like the talk of album sales was replaced with ringtone sales or digi-download sales, it's just not in the equation no more. Right now for example the kids will say that Waka Flocka is successful even though he hasn't drop an album yet or sold millions of download singles. It's more about popularity amongst the fans than anything else now that the era of big album sales is over.

Universal Music recently announced a new initiative to lower CD sales to $10.00 or less in hopes of boosting sagging sales. Do you think this will work or is it a case of too little too late?

Yea it's definitely too little too late and even if it bounces back your probably looking at the increase in sales only making up for the lost in profit margin. Maybe its part of a ploy to keep the consumer in the habit of buying CD albums because if you drop the cost to lets say $8.00 then you're going to need to sell over 30,000 additional units to break even which may work on some projects but probably not all. I can tell you one thing, once you start doing things like that it's a definite sign of the labels dropping the prices because the demand of the product has also dropped so does that mean the following year you have to drop it even lower? In terms of supply and demand there is so much music available naturally the price has to drop indefinitely until one cancels the other out.

Moving forward should we expect to see the bulk of new projects being handled by the independent/consultant A&R or will the majority of the action still be in the hands of the A&R that is working full time at a record company?

I would say on the independent label side because the majors are not really doing P&D/JV deals like that so it becomes more important to have those guys on the ground that can take an artist, nurture and develop them. Moving forward it is going to be very important to have on board that independent A&R who could also be a producer (hint hint producers) that has the skills of an A&R to fill the void in the artist development part of the game. Dudes that hear the talent, love it and want to rock with the performer not just for a song or two but for years and help them grow as an artist will become even more vital as the traditional label A&R role continues to change because they're no longer in the business of artist development. Their job is to find talent that has already been developed and run with it, as oppose to developing it from scratch.

Dance music has once again returned to the forefront of popular music. Is there any real science behind the cyclical nature of music?

There have always been shifts in music since the days of early rock-n-roll so this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that knows their music history. Sometimes all it takes is for one particular artist to set it off and once that new sound blows the labels are already in the habit of looking for the same sound because its working on radio already and it's a safer bet. They'll go get a similar artist and develop a similar sound often using the same producer or another producer that can imitate that sound and ride the wave until it crashes on shore and then look for the next wave.

That of course has lead to a lack of music variety...

Absolutely, that comes from the business approach more than the artistic approach. The days of being true to whatever great talent comes your way and trying to get that out to the masses are over. We lost a lot of that mostly due to financial greed.

With access to quality instrumentals via online some argue that the artist is actually doing more 'producing' than the beat maker. Your thoughts?

Yes you do have more artists doing their own thing nowadays...they'll have their little setup in their crib and are getting beats from all over the place so the recording is then left up to them and the engineer or just them. I think that's cool but it's always good to have some guidance when it comes to putting a record together.

When is the guidance just a 'helpful advice' as oppose to actually producing the record?

On the real business side dealing with the record companies if you have anything to do with the structure of a song or putting together the song then production credit would be in order even if you didn't write anything. That's why you have a lot of executive producers also because it's more than just making the beat or putting the hook together it's putting together the business aspect of the album that can earn you the credit/points. Similar to a director of a movie, he didn't necessarily write the dialogue but he's watching all the action and working with the actors on how they should be moving, expressions on their face, etc...being a producer is about which giving direction to the talent.

A coach on the team isn't on the court shooting the rock instead he's telling the players what they're suppose to be doing and letting them know when they f**k up. The end result of course is to win the game and even Michael Jordan couldn't win those rings without a proficient coach. More people in the music game need to look at it from that point of view because for example as great as B.I.G. was he still needed that guidance from Puff.