Various Artists Management CEO David Bianchi has told Music Week that he believes there is no “traditional” way to break an artist in 2018.
Bianchi is interviewed alongside management client and 2017 Music Week Sync Awards Sync Artist Of The Year Barns Courtney in the new issue of Music Week.
With contributions from Gerard Philips, general manager of Songs Publishing, who publish Courtney, the pair discuss the singer’s sync success.
Courtney’s track Fire, which featured in Burnt, starring Bradley Cooper, hit No.1 on Spotify UK’s viral chart, reached No.3 at AAA radio and spent 57 weeks on the US Alternative Radio chart.
Glitter & Gold has been used on the trailer to Matthew McConaughey drama Gold and an ad for Renault cars, while Courtney recorded a new version, Green & Gold; at the request of NFL team the Green Bay Packers. Elsewhere in the sport world, uses of Courtney’s songs range from the BBC to EA Sports.
“I don’t think there is a traditional way to break an artist anymore,” Bianchi said. “This [campaign] shows that, in the UK at least, where we’ve barely taken Barns to radio, streaming and sync are now definitely selling tickets. He has doubled his venue sizes in the UK every five months.”
“You can imagine me working in Currys PC World for three years with no success and suddenly being picked up in this whirlwind by a huge Hollywood movie,” Courtney told Music Week. “I mean, it was a very sharp learning curve…”
The Virgin EMI artist said sync has “had a firm grip on my career from the very start”.
“I’ve been hugely lucky, the stream of syncs certainly hasn’t slowed down, it might even be increasing. The added hype due to the Sync Award has been a massive help, too.”
Courtney, who released debut album The Attractions Of Youth last year, has reinvested much of his seven-figure sync income in touring. “There’s much less money in the industry these days as people don’t buy physical records as much, so sync has enabled me to basically break this band like an old school artist from the ‘70s, ‘80s or ‘90s, to just go out and tour, tour and tour,” he said.
Subscribers can read the interview in full online here.
Read an interview with 2016’s Sync Artist Of The Year, Jamie N Commons, here.
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