music to the ears
David Foster is well-known to all who love good music, top performers and high-quality shows. He shares with us some insights on how the music industry has evolved into something more than simply selling records.
There is probably not a single business in the world that hasn’t been touched or transformed by the Internet. The movie business, for example, is going through what we went through some 15 years ago.
In the last decade as a record company (Foster is chairman of Verve Music Group), we tried to do 360 deals with the artists. I think that this is the future. I have always envisioned a modern record company that provides everything an artist needs: a manager, an agent, a public relations team. I would describe us as an adapting dinosaur delving into the digital world.
So if somebody asks whether the music business is good for investing in, I would say yes but I’m not so sure that the record business is good to invest in.
To illustrate what could happen to your investments, I would tell the story of how I discovered Michael Buble, who was then a wedding singer. I snapped him up but his singing style was unique for that time and I wasn’t sure whether Warner Bros would want him. So I considered putting my own money into his career and to become partners. That partnership now would have been worth hundreds of millions. But I did not do it.
I’ve been discovering talents all my life, telling myself ‘wow, I love it and I think that millions of people will love it too". So if you find somebody and have money to form a partnership, it could be very rewarding. Every artist needs a partner. There are shining examples throughout musical history: Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis, Brian Epstein and the Beatles, just to name a few.
In Asia, my business has been great because the people here read the credits on the back of a CD. The person who makes the music is just as interesting to them as the artist on the front cover. That has given me this robust career that I don’t have in America where I mainly just run a record company.
David Foster
Chairman, Verve Music Group
David Foster is a Canadian musician, record producer, composer and songwriter. He has produced music for award-winning artists such as Celine Dion, Josh Groban, Seal, Michael Buble and Alice Cooper.
