Downtown Records Contact
Find contact information and address to Downtown Records and all other important record labels.
click here.
Interviews with A&Rs at Downtown Records
Interview - Josh Deutsch, A&R for Gnarls Barkley (No.1 UK) - Sep 04, 2006
"Once in a while you hear a record that is so obviously important on so many levels. If I find something I like there’s no bureaucratic process associated with signing it."
...Says Josh Deutsch on his No.1 UK hit, Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy'.
Deutsch, who also worked with Lenny Kravitz and A Perfect Circle, has been No.1 on HitQuarters' Top A&R Chart for the last 10 weeks, and it is a special pleasure to feature his story here.
Deutsch talks about combining the strengths of major and independent, the importance of the artists' clear vision, and how to prepare the market for that vision.
Under which circumstances did you enter the music business?
I started out as a musician and a songwriter. I came from the studio side of the business working as a programmer and guitarist in New York in various studios on multiple records.
So I got my first publishing deal and then I decided my dream job was to be a staff producer at a record company. I had the great honour of starting out working for Bruce Lundvall , currently the president of Blue Note Records, who at the time was running Capitol.
After a couple of hits there I became the Vice President of A&R at Capitol, moved over to Elektra for seven years, most recently as Executive Vice President of the A&R department. After that I ran the A&R department at Virgin for 3 years. I signed Jet, Jason Mraz, Third Eye Blind and worked with A Perfect Circle, Lenny Kravitz…those are some of the highlights.
Then I decided to form Downtown Records in the summer of 2005. It’s been a 15-year run along the way, there are so many people that have helped me and many of whom are in my mix today. Our label is now distributed by Warner and we have a joint venture with Atlantic. I have enjoyed a close friendship and a successful relationship with Atlantic CEO Craig Kallman for many years.
How was the switch from musician to businessman like?
Actually I’m still active as a songwriter and producer. Although this company and success that we are having at Downtown doesn’t allow me to be in the studio as much as I used to be. But while I was at Virgin I was very active as a producer on Virgin acts and for other labels.
I’m a multi published songwriter and I contributed to over a dozen of films either as a writer or a producer or as a music supervisor. I just finished supervising this Hugh Grant movie for Warner Brothers called ‘Music and Lyrics By’. While I was working as an A&R person, all of those jobs allowed me to write and produce.
How do you handle being a creative songwriter/producer on the one hand and on the other a successful businessman? Does one affect the other?
The song writing has always provided some relief from the stress that is associated with having a job like this over the last decade. Those things have always been separate to me. Sometimes it’s hard to manage the time commitment. It would be great to be in the studio now working as a producer with some of the artists I signed.
But at this point that I have a company to run I’m hiring my friends to produce these records that I would love to produce myself. Other than that, as a writer, and particularly for film where you are not necessarily limited as a writer to a hit song format it’s a great way for me to not loose touch with all the things that got me started and that make me successful as an executive.
I think if you really understand music on some basic level, it can be helpful in terms of signing artists and helping deliver their record in a way that is very true to what it is that they are trying to say musically.
So what exactly is it that makes being a musician helpful to you as an A&R?
I definitely can relate to bands and artists in a variety of genres musically. It’s a question of whether or not you can speak the language. No matter if you are making an urban record or a rock record, people can tell if you’re input has meaning.
Some really successful A&R people come out from a different way, they learn through the process of making a record and doing it over the years without actually being musicians. I’m not saying that this is the way to go; it’s just the way that it always worked for me. I feel like if you can contribute to the process musically it does definitely allow you to have a kind of a relationship with the artist, either if you are trying to sign them or when helping them making the right records.
Much in the same way that the fact that Jimmy Iovine produced Patti Smith, Tom Petty and U2 gives him a level of credibility. Or I would say the same thing about Clive Davis, who wasn’t a musician but has been so active in the A&R process musically that he has tremendous credibility with artists.
How did you come up with Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’? How did you find it?
When we decided to start our own label it seemed to me that it’s an amazing time to be an independent. We sat out on the course of raising money and finding a distribution partner. One of the first things you have after 15 years of doing it is a wide spectrum of relationships in all aspects of the business.
From managers to attorneys, artists, producers, mixers and programmers on the radio. You have to have a certain network. In this particular case I have a long history with Danger Mouse’s manager who sent me the song. They were looking for an independent label that has the same resources as a major. I heard the record and signed it after one listen.
I had the same experience with Jet although it took me many trips to Australia to sign them to Elektra. But once in a while you hear a record that is so obviously important on so many levels. The beauty in my position is that it's very direct. If I find something I like there’s no bureaucratic process associated with signing it.
What happened after you signed it?
Well, this song has an interesting life of its own. Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo had such a success for years on other projects with Cee-lo writing the Pussycat Dolls number one record and Danger Mouse with Gorillaz, that there was already a lot of awareness online. The record really began to break in England even before the deals were done.
A lot of significant programmers in the UK like Steve Lamacq, Pete Tong, and Zane Lowe were all playing the demo on Radio One, which fuelled a big online interest in the group. We helped navigate the deal through the Warner system to the rest of the world.
What happened with ‘Crazy’ is, it became the most downloaded song ever in the history of the UK music business. It went to number one in the strength of downloads alone. It was driven by early radio interest in the UK and a tremendous online interest. When it came to release the record in America we tried to take full advantage of what was becoming a kind of a phenomenon in a business point of view and also just in terms of the song success in Europe.
Our plan here was making people aware of the record. We didn’t work a single for a while. We had an incredible amount of mystery in the press surrounding the group. It’s amazing when you have artists who have a clear creative vision. Danger Mouse and Cee-lo never came out of character. They would do things like only photograph these famous historical duos from a movie.
This is all very endearing to their online audience. We really believed that this record would find a tremendous amount of success in different formats over here. So we got an early look from K-Rock in L.A. and fromHot 97 in New York. And I think that maybe since ‘Heya’ there hadn’t been a record that wasn’t remixed, yet launched by the biggest rock station and the biggest hip hop station in the country at the same time.
People were saying it’s too urban for rock, it’s too rock for urban. It is very different than anything else modern rock radio would play. I think in this particular case they took a chance with us and once the record got on the air, it did exactly what it did in England. Now we are charting on nine formats in America. We are the No. 2 song in the country, No.1 on iTunes, Top 10 on over six formats without making any compromises.
We never did a single remix. The record does a lot of the talking. We haven’t had to do a lot of the things that major labels do on the spending side of promoting records. This one is very much a word of mouth record. At this time we have a 100 million in audience so it’s easy to hear about it. We are only on our first single and are almost platinum.
It’s only three months into the project. This is totally driven by the artist. From an A&R point of view if you have an artist who has a very clear vision it’s the biggest gift in the world. We try to develop their own mythology. It was very important to us that it’s not only one song or a kind of superstar producer project. So we went to create effort to make sure that it will be perceived as a band and people would buy into it at that level.
Which is why we made the video that we made, the band is on a sold-out American tour right now. Every night they perform in a different costume. Their audience never knows what they are going to look like or play. We wanted to create a community for them. I must also mention Atlantic, who has been an incredible partner to us on this particular project.
Do you think the song would have worked with another group, too?
It’s impossible to separate it from the group. It’s been covered by a ton of artists already. Ray Lamontagne, Nelly Furtado, Billy Idol…everybody is covering the song. It’s a classic song. You can play it on piano; you can do it on guitar. It's one of these timeless songs.
But the mix of Danger Mouse’s production and Cee-lo’s vocal gives it a very modern and very timeless quality. I think the song will be around for a long time. Maybe someone could have had success with this song but I think it’s the sound of it, how it is produced and presented.
Did you give the song a certain push somewhere in the beginning?
We did what we normally do. We have a number of online promotion partners but there was an incredible amount of organic online interest in the band. Danger Mouse has a very rapid Internet following and Cee-lo is such a pioneer in terms of really defining the whole southern sound.
We were able to build on a very passionate underground interest in the band. What we tried to do is make it possible for people to discover it without hyping it. Before the album came out, the single was streamed over millions of times in Myspace, which is absolutely incredible. We did little posters, trying to mysterious, a little snippet saying ‘Gnarls Barkley is crazy’.
No one knew what Gnarls Barkley or even the song was. Then we found the kids on Myspace were making their own versions of the original poster, submitting them. It took on a life of its own. We were trying to feed that interest very carefully, so as not to get in the way of what was building organically.
Where did you put the song the first time?
In America everybody was aware of the success in the UK. All the blogs were very early on it from Pitchfork to all the significant Internet sites that kids go to in order to find new music. They were very early on the demo that was floating around. There was a lot of awareness across a number of sites like Yahoo, Myspace, and iTunes.
MTV also gave us a tremendous early look with the video, long before we had much airplay. They just really wanted to be a part of it. They put us on the MTV Movie Awards show one month after the release and that was a big breakthrough moment for us. The first spark really was in the blogs picking up the demo and Radio One in England playing it.
Does this now affect your future work a lot?
In the sense that it is fantastic to come out of the box with a new label with such a significant success. But the reason I signed is some very fundamental things: great songs, amazing production, great vocals, and real artists.
We had a lot of success already with some of our other artists. We shipped almost 100,000 Eagles Of Death Metal records, which is Josh Homme’s side project. We have a lot of new releases to come that we have very high hopes for. It doesn’t change my approach at all. It reinforces what my philosophy is as a label and an A&R person.
When you found Jet, how did you make the connection to the popular Vodafone add?
There was a lot of advertising interest in Jet after it was a hit in America. The link was not done by myself.
What do you think is important for an artist to possess?
I’m always interested in unique voices and perspectives whether it’s a rock band or an urban artist. We have an urban artist we signed, this 19-year-old kid from Philly called Kevin Michael. He sounds like a young Prince or De Angelo, with a full voice like Stevie Wonder. He has an incredible voice and is an incredible performer. He has a point of view so he’s making a record that is very unique urban record.
He is working with all the top producers in the urban community. I look for the same thing in every artist. I don’t care what the genre is. Are the songs great? Is s/he a star? Do they have the ability to communicate directly with an audience? We have the band Art Brut which is successful across Europe right now, and just signed a band called Cold War Kids.
That was the first time we really competed with any labels, because generally our goal is to get in earlier and have a different model for our business, mostly in terms of having other revenue streams, other than just record royalties. We have an A&R person on the West Coast in addition to me, who I worked with at Virgin, and a couple of scouts here and there.
I look for the unique combination of song writing and presence and unique voice. Right now it’s an exciting time for us because bands want to be here. We have a veteran staff of 11 people. We are actually truly independent and enjoy an unbelievable relationship with Warner and Atlantic.
But we are independently financed so the decision making process is very direct between the artist and us. But you also get the resources and the reach of a major label through our partners.
How do you go through demos?
I listen to music constantly. I listen to everything. It’s hard to do that during the day because we have a business to run. But I’m loading everything into my iPod and spend all my time during the weekends going through demos. I’m out at shows all the time now and I love it.
Technology makes the A&R process much easier then it used to be. Every band has a video up on Youtube, a website, a Myspace page you can check out. So if you hear something you like and someone sends you an MP3, it’s very easy to get more material. It’s so easy to get information on artists so quickly that now the process is more efficient than it was 10 years ago.
As usual I’m totally swamped with demos, happily.
Particularly because these kinds of bands that we signed make other bands think that we are a good label to be on.
Do you pre-select stuff somehow?
Not really. Right now the volume of material is very high for us so if there’s stuff coming from somewhere that I’m not aware of I do have a couple of people who I worked with for a while on the A&R side and we go through stuff together just trying to make sure we are able to really handle the volume. But we are still a small label.
Do you listen to unsolicited material, too?
Yes we do. We have a lot of interns doing that. We try to. That was always something I had trouble with at major labels, because it’s very difficult to manage the amount of unsolicited material that you get.
At a major label, if you open the doors to unsolicited material, it’s almost impossible from a manpower point of view to handle all of it. But we are trying to. Generally you just go to our site, send us material and we try to listen to everything.
Do you go out to certain places to look for bands?
No, I go where the bands are. Working the records, particularly the successful ones, takes a lot of time to maintain. I just randomly go out. Every night there are multiple things to see at multiple clubs. It’s hard to find really important ones that way. The problem is finding artists as compelling as the ones we’ve found already. Maintaining our standard of uncompromising artists.
Is the style of music somehow important for you?
No, we are not a niche label, which obviously presents challenges for every label, but if you look at the range of artists on our rosters and soundtracks that we are doing, we have so many different styles. We’ll sign something when we think it’s important. For the moment we are not signing any jazz or country artists but who knows. We are definitely interested in having success in pop, rock and urban.
... to read the continuation of this article, click here.
_____________________________________________
How to benefit from HitQuarters
HitQuarters is the world's most extensive directory of A&Rs, managers, publishers and producers, based on their track records. We also publish the weekly World Top 20 A&R Chart and in-depth interviews with people in the music industry. As a HitQuarters member, you can send your music to our A&R Panel, which includes several of the world's most successful A&Rs, and present it on your own web page at www.HitQuarters.com/TheNameYouChoose.
Artist
Find the contact information to the world's most successful A&Rs, managers and producers in the HitTracker (top left of the site). You can also send your music to our A&R Panel, which includes several of the world's most successful A&Rs, and present your music and photos on your own web page.
Reading the in-depth interviews we regularly publish will provide you with a great deal of knowledge on the music industry. You can also discuss the issues that concern you with other members in the HitQuarters Forum.
To become a HitQuarters member for only USD15 per half year, please click here. To gain a better understanding of how HitQuarters works, please read the Advisory Text.
Producer
Find the contact information to the world's most successful A&Rs, managers and producers in the HitTracker (top left of the site). You can also present your music and photos on your own web page.
Reading the in-depth interviews we regularly publish will provide you with a great deal of knowledge on the music industry. You can also discuss the issues that concern you with other members in the HitQuarters Forum.
To become a HitQuarters member for only USD15 per half year, please click here. To gain a better understanding of how HitQuarters works, please read the Advisory Text.
Songwriter
If you are a songwriter, we suggest you use SongQuarters, our music publishing and songwriting service. In it we present the recording status of the world's 500 most successful artists, including who is currently looking for songs, in what style, whom to contact and their contact details. SongQuarters also features information on newly signed and developing artists who are currently looking for songs, and samples of these artists' songs.
The SongQuarters membership includes HitQuarters membership, which gives you access to in-depth interviews that will provide you with a great deal of knowledge on the music industry. You can also present your music and photos on your own web page and discuss the issues that concern you with other members in the HitQuarters Forum.
Manager
Find the contact information to the world's most successful A&Rs, managers and producers in the HitTracker (top left of the site). You can also send your music to our A&R Panel, which includes several of the world's most successful A&Rs, and present your music and photos on your own web page.
By reading the in-depth interviews we regularly publish, you can gain further knowledge of the music industry. You can also discuss the issues that concern you with other members in the HitQuarters Forum.
To become a HitQuarters member for only USD15 per half year, please click here. To gain a better understanding of how HitQuarters works, please read the Advisory Text.
A&R
If you are an A&R, find a wide range of artists presenting their music at HitQuarters: you can either search for an artist or view the artists that have previously been chosen by our A&R team as Artists Of The Week.
If you are a HitQuarters member, you will find the contact information to the world's most successful A&Rs, managers and producers in the HitTracker (top left of the site). By reading the in-depth interviews we regularly publish, you can gain further knowledge of the music industry. You can also discuss the issues that concern you with other members in the HitQuarters Forum.
To become a HitQuarters member for only USD15 per half year, please click here.
Music Publisher
If you are a music publisher, we suggest you use SongQuarters, our music publishing and songwriting service. In it we present the recording status of the world's 500 most successful artists, including who is currently looking for songs, in what style, whom to contact and their contact details. SongQuarters also features information on newly signed and developing artists who are currently looking for songs, and samples of these artists' songs.
The SongQuarters membership includes HitQuarters membership, which gives you access to in-depth interviews that will provide you with further knowledge on the music industry.
SongQuarters - Songwriters & Publishers!
Get your songs recorded by record releasing artists. SongQuarters is the most extensive song pitching service around.
SongQuarters gives you constant updated information on which of the world's Top 500 artists are currently looking for songs, including contact info, deadlines, song samples and more. SongQuarters average more than 50 quality leads per month to high-profile, newly signed and developing artists worldwide.
Other Useful Links
HitQuarters
SongQuarters
Submit your songs to an A&R Panel (with dozens of platinum credits)
World Top 100 A&R Chart
Record Label Vote
A&R Interviews - Read 100's of interviews with the most successful A&Rs, managers and music producers.
Advisory Text for artists and musicianss - Get professional advise for free when building your music career.
Music Record Companies
Songwriter Submissions
Clive Davis, A&R
1000 Record Labels
Contact Record Labels.biz
Contact Record Labels.info
Contact Record Labels.name
Contact Record Labels.net
Contact Record Labels.ws
Songlocation.com
Song Tip Sheett
All Songwriting Contests
Music Publishers Resource
Song Pluggers
Song Pitching
Songs Wanted
Songs Wanted.net
Diane Warren, Songwriter
Songwriters, Music Publishers
Songwriters Wanted
Songwriting Contest Links
Submit Music
Wanted Songs
Songwriting
Address Atlantic Records
Address Def Jam Records
Address EMI Music
Address Interscope Records
Interscope Records Contact
Address Jive Recordss
Address J Records
Address Sony BMG
Address Syco
Address Universal
Address Warner
Record Label Contacts
Record Label Contacts
Music Publisher
Music Publisher
Music Publisher Directory
Music Publisher Directory
Music Publishing Info
Music Publishing Info
MySpace Artists
MySpace Artists
MySpace Bands
Songwriter Competitionn
Songwriter Competition
Songwriter Competitions
Songwriter Competitions
Songwriter Contest
Songwriter Contests
Songwriter Contests
Songwriter Songwriter
Songwriter Songwriter
Songwriters Wanted
Songwriters Wanted
Songwriter Wanted
Songwriter Wanted
Songwriting Competition
Songwriting Competitions
Songwriting Competitions
Songwriting Contests
Songwriting Contests
Songwriting Songwriting
Songwriting Songwriting
Submit Songs
Submit Songs
Song Dealer
Song Dealer
Song Market
Songwriter Forum
Songwriter Forum
Songwriters Market
Songwriters Market
19 Records Contact
Def Jam Records Contact
EMI Records Contact
19 Records Contact
Jive Records Contact
J Records Contact
Sony BMG Contact
Syco Contact
Universal Records Contactt
Warner Records Contact
Atlantic Records Contact
Aftermath Records Contact
Bad Boy Records Contact
Bad Boy Records Contact Info
Contact Def Jam
Domino Records Contact
Downtown Records Contact
Downtown Records Contact
|
|