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If content material is king, then Warner Music Group’s WMX division has good cause for its claim that it’s the “No.1 leisure media firm” within the US for adults aged 18-34.
WMG launched Warner Music Expertise (WMX) in late 2021 and described it on the time as “a next-generation providers division” to “join artists with followers and amplify manufacturers in artistic, immersive, and fascinating methods”.
WMX, which additionally claims to be one of many high 5 leisure media firms on the earth, was born after WMG axed its historic WEA model, and consolidated its owned media firms below the management of Maria Weaver.
The new division united WMG’s owned media publishing properties with numerous different artist-servicing models, a few of which used to function below WEA.
These features included Warner’s world merch and e-commerce operations like Germany-based merch large EMP (acquired by WMG for $180 million in 2018). It additionally included a spread of providers designed to develop and amplify artists’ personal manufacturers but additionally to attach artists with industrial manufacturers.
WMX’s divisions at present function throughout Industrial Providers, Media Enterprise, Artist & Fan Experiences, E-Commerce & Retail, and Viewers Technique.
“WMX is an thrilling portfolio of verticals which are designed to drive fandom and fan engagement,” explains London-based Bob Workman, SVP, Worldwide Model Partnerships, Warner Music and Normal Supervisor, WMX UK.
“We’re the engagement engine of Warner Music. It’s the place we create the fan expertise round our artists, in music but additionally past music. We recognise that our artists exist with or with out their music in numerous totally different settings.”
“We recognise that our artists exist with or with out their music in a variety of totally different settings.”
A current instance of a high-profile mission exterior of an artist’s core music actions was the corporate’s work with Ed Sheeran to create a sizzling sauce model referred to as Tingly Ted’s. Launched by way of WMX’s new ‘Ventures’ providing, the marketing campaign, devised by Sheeran, noticed WMX herald meals large Kraft Heinz to assist develop the model.
“It’s a mission that could be a testomony to what’s doable for an artist after they’re given the best assist community to deliver their concepts to life,” says Workman.
Along with its highly effective model partnership and artistic capabilities, WMX is a content material powerhouse that operates varied genre-specific editorial properties.
WMG acquired properties like youth media model Uproxx (1m Instagram followers), which WMG purchased in 2018, and hip-hop publication HipHopDX (800,000 Insta followers), which it swooped for in 2020. WMX additionally owns and runs content material publishing manufacturers specializing in extremely engaged genres like metallic and laborious rock (The Pit), nation music (Lasso Nation), in addition to making genre-focused video content material by way of streaming channels on Roku.
“We regard ourselves now as a media firm,” says Workman. “We function on the intersection between creativity and tradition for our artists. We’re in a brand new period.”
Workman’s personal profession within the music business began within the promotions division at Island Records the place he set to work on tasks from the likes of U2, Chaka Demus & Pliers and The Cranberries.
“I had an enormous love for and admiration for [the label] as a result of I had grown up in a family the place my mum performed Bob Marley and beloved Cat Stevens,” he says. “Working in promotions was a good way of breaking down social obstacles for me. You needed to put your self on the market. You needed to meet folks and socialise and promote the artists.”
After working in promotions throughout radio and TV, Workman acquired poached by a well-established impartial promotions firm referred to as Intestine Response, the place he represented varied artists at nationwide radio. Then Intestine Response arrange its personal recorded music firm referred to as Intestine Information and he made the leap from promotions to advertising on the label.
“That culminated for me in being Advertising Director [at Gut Records], and operating an enormous album mission with Tom Jones referred to as Reload,” he says. “We actually reinvented Tom on the time.” Reload turned Jones’s best-selling album, and has bought over 4 million copies worldwide.
Workman then left Intestine Information “wanting to enter style and different companies”, however ended up establishing a music and model partnership-focused company referred to as Spin Music, one of many first companies of its type within the UK.
“This was within the very early days of brand name partnerships,” says Workman. “Social media was solely simply getting going. It was the appearance of social media that was the revolution.”
“We’re the engagement engine of Warner Music. It’s the place we create the fan expertise round our artists, in music but additionally past music.”
After roughly six years, he moved to EMI to arrange a model partnerships division. “Within the first month I used to be there we had been signing Tinie Tempah, who had 30,000 Facebook likes. That scale was thought of mind-blowing. We then acquired acquired by Warner Music, and now right here I’m.”
Workman was promoted to his twin position of SVP, Worldwide Model Partnerships, Warner Music and Normal Supervisor, WMX UK on the finish of 2022, and experiences into Weaver. The transfer noticed Warner Music UK’s Artist & Model Companions workforce turn out to be a part of the worldwide WMX division.
In recent times, the UK Artist & Model Companions workforce at Warner has labored on main artist campaigns with the likes of Ed Sheeran and Kraft Heinz, Dua Lipa and TikTok, a marketing campaign for Clarks Originals with Liam Gallagher, and plenty of others.
Right here, Workman tells us extra in regards to the firm’s artist model partnerships, its new Ventures providing, and extra…
You oversaw the marketing campaign for Tom Jones’ Reload album. May you discuss a bit in regards to the transition on the finish of the Nineteen Nineties and into the 2000s, from booming bodily gross sales to the arrival of downloads as bodily revenues declined. How necessary did model partnerships turn out to be for artists and labels to generate revenues?
It turned wildly extra necessary however not till the late 2000s. In 2008 or 2009, that’s after we actually began to see artists having affect with their audiences past music.
When Tinie Tempah signed to Parlophone, for the primary time we had an artist for whom manufacturers had been simply as necessary as Radio 1. It was a unique set of manufacturers, like BlackBerry, however these had been manufacturers and aspirations that helped flesh out the artist’s proposition. It helped create further engagement and extra funding that enabled our artists to do greater than they might in any other case.
“For the primary time we had an artist for whom manufacturers had been as necessary as Radio 1.”
Music advertising budgets are restricted. Music firms rely closely on editorial protection and the media to drive a variety of engagement round our artists and our music. Manufacturers opened up one other lane of funding.
You talked about Spin Music as being one of many early UK specialists in music and model partnerships. Was it initially tough to promote the idea of partnering with manufacturers to sure artists within the early 2000s?
It was, yeah, notably within the UK. There have been sure artists for whom the thought of ‘promoting out’ to a model was thought of a factor.
It has taken fairly a very long time for an artist like Coldplay to have interaction with manufacturers. They usually have solely performed it for very deeply genuine causes that relate to their values.
What actually drove it was hip-hop and R&B tradition, notably from America, and notably with luxurious or aspirational manufacturers.
When the buyer or the fan felt that the model was including some worth or contributing to their fan expertise with the artists, that’s when it turned acceptable and defendable to work with a model.
What are the expectations in 2023 that artists and their followers have of one another round model partnerships within the social media age?
We should always by no means get too distant from the truth that we’re within the leisure enterprise. So being entertained, knowledgeable, and engaged by the content material, or the output of a model partnership is totally essential.
As a result of there’s a lot content material on the market on daily basis, what manufacturers need basically is to pop up in your social feeds and to get inside that slipstream that exists between the artist and the fan.
That’s what social media has supplied manufacturers who wish to interact with artists and music, that very privileged, ‘by-invitation’ alternative. Artists have turn out to be influencers for positive, however they’ve turn out to be their very own media channels, too.
Offered the curation is completed rigorously, [along with] the [right] messaging, language, visible cues, and cultural cues, then the model is welcome [on artists’ channels].
However it must entertain, inform, shock and delight. Typically it pertains to the artists’ recorded music and their releases; typically it doesn’t. Very often, followers are simply as engaged with artists round one thing that’s acquired nothing to do with music.
You’ve just lately launched a brand new Ventures providing and labored on the current Ed Sheeran sizzling sauce marketing campaign by it. How did that come about and what was the temporary from Ed?
We had been working with Kraft Heinz on an enormous [Tomato Ketchup] marketing campaign with Ed again in 2019. We had been contemplating shifting on to do one other marketing campaign.
We did the Kraft Heinz Ketchup marketing campaign as a result of Ed loves ketchup. He’s acquired a tattoo of the label of the Kraft Heinz Ketchup bottle on the within of his left arm. It couldn’t be extra genuine, rooted in an enormous reference to the product. It was all about bringing two icons collectively.
Then off the again of it, Ed was like, ‘I’ve acquired an thought, I’d actually love to do a sizzling sauce’. He had the thought and the identify of the model. He already had a way of what he wished it to be. He talked about democratising sizzling sauce. He wished it to be the Ketchup of sizzling sauces.
It was not removed from the way in which he acts as a musician, which is that he needs to entertain at scale. It was the identical for Tingly Ted’s. He had the thought, and we talked about it to Kraft Heinz, like, ‘Would you wish to companion with us on this?’ They had been like, ‘Completely, we’d like to’.
They had been brilliantly proactive. They went off and created some early samples to show that they might do that. In February final 12 months, we did a workshop with Ed and some folks from Kraft Heinz. We had a kitchen scientist from Kraft Model Partnerships are available in and he was an professional in ‘style elevation’ as they name it.
There’s absolutely a tremendous stability to be struck when launching non-music manufacturers related to superstars, so that you simply don’t put followers off and as a substitute amplify the artist in entrance of followers?
The fashionable artist, and with that the fashionable fan, are rather more open to the 360 [view] of the artist. After I was rising up, artists thrived on having mystique and also you by no means pulled again the curtain, till perhaps later of their profession. You may learn their biography or no matter and discover one thing out.
Now the curtain is continually pulled again with an artist like Ed. It’s truly that visibility and intimacy that the fan will get with the artists that drives a brand new type of dedication.
“It’s that visibility and intimacy the fan will get that drives a brand new type of dedication.”
[Fans] genuinely really feel they know the artist they usually’re nearly like mates with them in a manner. That wasn’t the factor to do 10 or 20 years in the past.
We’ve discovered that it doesn’t harm the magic of who the artist is. It doesn’t undermine them and make them any much less particular. If something, it truly elevates them.
Followers have sufficient capability to exist in several lanes with the identical artist. They’ll love the brand new music, wish to purchase a ticket, go and see the present. However they’ll additionally have a good time in the truth that [the artist’s] soccer workforce simply gained a cup, or that they’ve simply performed a marketing campaign with a model that they like.
We’ve gotten over our nervousness as a enterprise that now we have to only do one factor extremely effectively. It’s now a way more portfolio method. If we don’t try this, the artist will do it with out us. It’s actually necessary that we’re there to assist them.
What are your ambitions for the Ventures unit following the success of this marketing campaign?
Our ambitions are to work in numerous totally different lanes by way of product improvement, but additionally with a various vary of artists.
We already work in a really numerous method throughout our partnerships enterprise and never simply with superstars.
We just lately launched a marketing campaign with Rachel Chinouriri (pictured), who’s a tremendous younger artist who did an important collaboration with Converse.
We introduced PinkPantheress into a very huge marketing campaign with Bose within the US, which was throughout the under-representation of girls in music manufacturing. We developed that concept and the artistic for that after which took it to Bose.
For Ventures, we wish to signify that very same method, which is, sure, we’d like to develop high-profile merchandise with high-profile artists, however there’s a possibility to start out at a extra grassroots stage, and to develop at a decrease scale.
We’d like to work in style and wonder. There are additionally alternatives within the foods and drinks house. We’re exploring numerous issues with artists in any respect ranges.
WMX claims to be one of many high 5 leisure media firms on the earth, and the No.1 Leisure Media Firm within the US amongst adults aged 18-34. These are gigantic achievements for a division of a significant recorded music firm. May you speak about WMX’s positioning within the world leisure media panorama?
What we’re witnessing is a transition from a world the place music firms produced pretty generic artistic belongings, which had been then pushed out to the media and to platforms and publishers, who would then editorialise round these issues, and promote promoting round them as effectively.
There was a powerful sense that we had been disintermediated by a variety of these platforms. So, rigorously and regularly now we have been both buying companies or creating companies inside our personal ecosystem which are driving and establishing audiences round ardour factors round our artists and so forth.
We had been constructing big audiences round our artists, notably on YouTube, and different social media platforms. We have now the chance to harness all of that viewers not simply to advertise, market or drive audiences round our releases, however to doubtlessly monetize that viewers as effectively.
The worth of knowledge is one thing that we’re actually keen about. It’s taken a second for us and our rivals within the business to place in the best mechanics, to herald the best expertise, to reap and perceive that knowledge, in order that now we have actually good insights.
Notably with first-party knowledge, now we have the chance to talk to the viewers and talk in a manner that we weren’t capable of so clearly earlier than.
If there was only one factor that you could possibly change in regards to the music enterprise proper now, what wouldn’t it be and why?
To untangle among the restrictive components of a rights business. We’ve more and more been doing that lately, however in a world of entry, something that restricts entry is an issue that wants resolving.
One of many issues I’m actually bold about is our catalogue, our iconic artists. Though it’s one of many smaller catalogues globally, we’ve acquired greater than our fair proportion of genre-defining artists.
We have now all of [David] Bowie, all of Prince, now we have Fleetwood Mac, the Grateful Useless, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and extra. It’s wildly thrilling. What I want to do is unlock and liberate the tales, the values of these artists, alongside the music. Due to the entry [to music via streaming], actually the youngest technology of music shoppers know the music.
We’ve acquired a duty and a possibility for [fans] to turn out to be conversant in the total story of our artists. There are companies and merchandise that we are able to develop round these legends of the previous, a few of whom are nonetheless with us, some aren’t. Let’s liberate these tales.
Let’s liberate among the nice belongings which are hidden away in vaults. It’s tough, however there’s a very nice alternative to try this.
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