Young Songs MD Gerard Phillips and COO Chloë Roberts have shared their ambition to turn the company into "the best boutique publishing company in the world".
The firm, which counts artists such as Arlo Parks and Sampha as clients, capped its first five years in business by triumphing in the Independent Publisher Of The Year category at the Music Week Awards.
“It’s an amazing thing to have achieved,” said Phillips. “We’re five years into our tenure as a new publishing company so it’s a big achievement, [considering that] obviously there was a lot of stellar competition on the nominee list."
Speaking in the July edition of Music Week, he continued: “Our dream has always been to be the best boutique publishing company in the world and we think we’ve had an amazing start, but we’re still far off to a degree. The next steps are to continue to build the roster writer by writer, employee by employee.
"We’re going to invest more in the publishing company through staff and through roster. It makes you feel, ‘This is something we can build that’s a true legacy, rather than just building a cool publishing company.’”
We have very strong intentions and we know exactly the type of writer that excites us
Chloë Roberts
Young Songs is an arm of Young, the music and arts organisation that grew out of the record label formed by Caius Pawson in 2006 (the label abbreviated its name to Young in 2021).
Phillips co-founded Young Songs with Pawson in 2019 and advocates a less-is-more policy, with only nine creators on its roster: Parks, Bkay, Cadenza, Fred Macpherson, Holly Fletcher, Koreless, Kwes Darko, Sampha and Taylor Skye.
“We go against the grain of the traditional publishing model, which is to sign en masse,” explained Phillips. “Our idea was that there are a lot of publishing companies out there, and the one thing we could offer that not many others could, if any, was that if we signed very few people and worked really closely with them, then they would have a much stronger chance of success. We’ve managed to achieve that with all of the writers across the board.”
Chloë Roberts, who previously worked at First Access Entertainment, summed up the strategy as "very considered".
"We have very strong intentions and we know exactly the type of writer that excites us," she said. "It’s someone who’s more brilliant than we are, who’s incredibly social and is going to get in the rooms they want to be in and where we can amplify everything around their work.
"When you have a very clear idea of who you want to work with, it makes everything a lot easier. It obviously limits the signings, but that’s very intentional.”
She added: “From day one, we’re invested in artist development, in any of our artists’ businesses but particularly the publishing, and so the deals are modelled in a way that allows the artist to live but [also] allows the company to invest over a long period of time.
“I think because the roster is so small or selective, even though it will grow, Gerard is able to really work with them to ensure the decisions that are being made in alignment with their artistic vision allow them to live and hopefully to live well. We’re very skilful in how we manage financial modelling and the creative direction.”
The biggest achievement for the company so far is that the first signing to the publishing company is now working for us as an A&R
Gerard Phillips
Flagship signing Darko, meanwhile, has gone on to join Young Songs' A&R team.
"The biggest achievement for the company so far is that the first signing to the publishing company is now working for us as an A&R, because that tells me that we’re doing a good-enough job rather than the flipside, where they’re trying to get out of the deal,” asserted Phillips.
The company's various projects are housed in Young Space, the building it renovated in De Beauvoir Town, East London.
“We have five studios; Kwes was looking for a new one and we wanted to have our studios for our artists, but also as a nurturing ground for the A&R team and Kwes is someone who naturally develops artists, he really enjoys that element,” said Roberts. “It wasn’t necessarily strategic, but it’s almost in the ether at Young. There’s less of an employee/artist divide in general across the roster. At lunchtime, we’re all together."
Young Songs also benefits from its partnership with Sony Music Publishing, whereby the company can sign composers directly as Young and run them through Sony on an admin level, or sign acts on a joint basis with Sony - giving the company the best of both worlds.
“It gives us the ability, from an artist perspective, to really offer something that a lot of independents can’t, which is amazing DSP rates around the world at source deals,” reflected Phillips. "As an indie that works with a select number of artists and writers, [this arrangement] enables us to have the back-end side looked after in the best way possible, which I feel a major can do way better than an indie, in terms of the DSP rates, admin, registrations and collections worldwide."
Subscribers can read the full interview with Phillips and Roberts here.
