🔵 Universal/Downtown: a note from Martin Mills

The Beggars Group head dropped me a line with his thoughts, shared in full below

Hi there - and Happy New Year!

As you may recall, the last big story we covered in 2024 was Universal’s acquisition of Downtown Music. I speculated a few things within that: whether the term “independent” meant anything anymore, whether the majors had both won and lost the battle with the indies, and whether trade bodies were best equipped to tackle these issues.

Subsequent to that article going up, Beggars Group founder and chairman, Martin Mills, dropped me a line back with his thoughts, which - with his permission - I am republishing in full below.

Have a great evening,

D.

🎶 Listening to “Repo Man” by Ray LaMontagne & The Pariah Dogs. I dug out the album this opens a few days ago, and was so enjoying revisiting it that I wound up also writing a Missed Listen piece for it - which you can read here. Wonderful, upbeat, funky vibes from one of the finer voices on the block.

📺 Watching “Using AI To Detect AI Music (and other music industry data-porn)” on YouTube. Another terrific exposé from Benn Jordan, showing how - among other things - out of 5,560 top generated songs and staff picks scraped from Udio, only 11 were not being monetized by posing as a human artist on a digital streaming platform. Essential viewing.

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Hi Darren,

Interesting timing for that statement, and interesting reaction.

Plenty of criticism, some neutrals, no supporters… and that will have been fermenting over the holidays.

What or who is this deal, and its PIAS predecessor, and whatever deal we’ll find out about tomorrow, good for? They both duplicate what the parent already does – the kind of duplication you can already see being erased down the line. Duplication designed to appeal to independents – indeed, astonishingly, being described by its progenitors as, itself, independent.

As you say, the identifier “independent” has a problem. We’ve been pointing it out for some time. Ruth Barlow addressed it at the AIM AGM. The term now covers independent labels such as ourselves, aggregators and long tail distributors (many controlled by VC’s), DIY artists, and miscellaneous others, all of whom have very little to do with each other, and certainly not enough to be collectively represented. So independent meant everyone except the majors – until now, when Universal tell us, they’re independent too.

So – hallelujah – 100% of the market is independent. What a result.

Except, of course, it is a meaningless one.

Does it matter? Well, the term “major” arose in the fifties, and defined companies that owned distribution. Ownership of distribution was that era’s equivalent of access to market. You had to use a major’s distribution to get into stores. When Beggars started, we couldn’t get that, so we shipped our releases via a company that supplied record player styluses instead.

The genius of Geoff Travis and Richard Scott at Rough Trade was to apply Marxist theories of control of distribution to the record market. Between them, their successor The Cartel, and Pinnacle, they proved you could have a number one record independently. Time after time. Equivalent structures emerged overseas. When the digital world arrived, indies had learned their lesson, and created Merlin, to make them competitive in… distribution.

Since then, until now, the majors have not had total control of access to market. And they hate that. And this is all about that same old struggle. And it is as important as ever.

The majors have created many, many pretend independents over the years. Production outfits, labels, distributors – some have succeeded, most have not, and in the end they mostly lose money, and the majors go back to being majors. But this time, it’s different.

As you suggest, the majors’ model has its issues, so they’re taking out costs that don’t deliver results any more, and training their guns on what they see as their new market du jour: independence.

It probably won’t work. It never really has, because musical diversity is really what independence is all about. That rarely comes on the scale the majors need. That’s not their fault, it’s just a fact.

So yes, I think you’re right about them losing. Whether you’re right about them winning too depends, at least partially, on all of us.

Our Trade Associations are well used to dealing with competition issues – not just Impala, who know this game so well. We’re equipped to fight, and given what the regulators imposed on Universal last time, it is hard to see how they can fail to respond to such an arrogant challenge.

Can we win ? Yes, but almost more important is how the world of music thinks of Universal v2025. To be a market leader you need the respect of your market.

Is that the sound of a tide turning I hear ?

MM

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Notes in dispatches:

• I will be delivering a presentation at Music Ally’s Connected event on Tuesday, 21st January. The subject is “Understanding The Music Fan in 2025”, and following it will be a panel discussion on the same topic. If you’re headed down, be sure to say hello. And if you’ve not bought a ticket yet, grab one here! 🗣️

• I’m now posting over on Bluesky too, so if you want hot takes on stories as they break etc, follow me over there. 🦋

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