Top tastemaker Annie Mac juggles a BBC Radio 1 show, promotions company AMP and a DJ career to great success. Here, she reflects on what she’s learned from the industry so far...
What excites me most about the music biz is…
“That it has given power to the people, in that the music industry is now following what people want. Yes, there are algorithms and yes, there are playlists where music is put in front of people, but essentially streaming is people choosing what they want to listen to. You can’t predict what’s going to be in the charts like you used to be able to, because you just don’t know what people are listening to on streaming, which I think is quite exciting.”
Streaming is not a threat to radio because…
“Radio can represent a communal experience more than any streaming service can. When you’re used to radio being the sole way that people listen to music in a public sphere, it can be scary when other things come along. But YouTube was there before any of them and there is always going to be something. To have someone you listen to, love and trust, introduce you to new music is a very beautiful thing. There’s always room for personal curation. For instance, if you listened to BBC Radio 6 Music when David Bowie died it was just wall-to-wall interviews, documentaries, reflections and music, it was incredible. Then when Prince died we had a dedicated hour where I called the biggest Prince fans I knew. You can’t get that kind of personalisation on a streaming service and I think there’s still a need for it.”
Annie MacManus became Annie Mac when…
“I got my BBC Radio 1 show. It had a more of a ring to it on the radio and I’m glad because it’s nice not to have your full name out there and be shouting it every day.”
The gender-balance at music festivals will improve because…
“The bottom tiers of electronic festivals are packed with women, which is great and will hopefully flood up to the top tiers in the next few years. As someone who runs a festival myself, I am super conscious of wanting to support women in the top tiers. I think it’s right to expect festival promoters to be looking at their line-ups and making sure, not in a quota type of way, that they’re booking women.”
Chart hits are no longer the be all and end all because…
“A song like The Man by The Killers [which failed to make the Top 40 but was voted Mac’s Hottest Record Of The Year in 2017] can still penetrate and be huge for a very long time in other ways, even though that’s not reflected with a No.1 record.”
The biggest lesson I’ve learned in my career is…
“That I’m very impulsive. I like to do things now and I think that’s a good thing, but my manager Lucy [Coates, Locket Management] is the opposite and we work well together because of that. A very simple lesson is, ‘Don’t do anything until tomorrow. Don’t react until you’ve slept on it.’ That’s a very sensible approach because it gives you time to reflect and get a different perspective on something. So I’ve learnt to leave it and not be impulsive in that way.”
