Eamonn Forde Meets… – each month, the veteran music business journalist speaks to a senior industry figure about the topics that really matter – and gets the opinions of the people who make the decisions that count.
May 2024: Colleen Theis, president and COO of The Orchard. She talks about why some type of label (or at least label-like) system remains essential for acts to get beyond a certain level, where compromises still have to be made, why the narrative around streaming is what is really broken, how indie indefatigability can still exist within a major-owned entity and why Japan is going to be the next big indie exporter.
In digital terms, The Orchard has been around for several lifetimes, founded in 1997 when digital was very much happening on the periphery while the record industry was rocketing towards what would soon be the peak of the CD business. Colleen Theis joined as COO in 2012 at a time when the market was heavily digital but shifting from ownership (downloads) to access (subscription and ad-supported streaming). That was the same year Sony took a majority stake (51%) in the company as it merged with IODA, acquiring the remaining 49% three years later.
In The Orchard’s lifetime, the major label world has moved from six to three and there has been the concurrent rise of independents, given a collective voice through AIM, Impala, WIN, A2IM and more. There has also been ongoing debate about what a record label is as well as if a label is even necessary (a debate that went mainstream around 2007 with MySpace and has never really gone away).
“The Orchard has built its business by partnering with successful indie labels and entrepreneurs that have a strong vision for their brands,” says Theis. “I think it is more that the definition of what a label is is shifting.”
“The more you ask for,” says Theis, of artist demands, “the more you have got to compromise: if you want that, you have to give us this”.
As one would expect her to, she argues strongly that a label, or at least some sort of structured team of professionals and experts, is still essential for artists to move up the gears. “A label is always going to be necessary,” she insists. “What the definition of that label is could be a little different.”
The notion of total DIY autonomy is, she feels, somewhere between utopian and quixotic. Plugging into some sort of third-party structure is still essential. “Anyone who thinks that they can go and conquer the world alone is being penny-wise and pound-foolish.”
Trade-offs and compromises
The music industry has always been about trade-offs, but new distribution and service deals mean that acts do not have to trade everything away in an onerous and often iniquitous deal; but they still do have to trade something. That might be around ownership of rights, advances or royalty rates.
“The more you ask for,” says Theis, of artist demands, “the more you have got to compromise. It’s like being married. The compromise is: if you want that, you have to give us this. It’s not like we’re going to have a two-year term and a low fee and put all our resources towards you. That’s not the way the world works.”
I ask her if she thinks the streaming model is skewed toward a handful of high-earners while those in the middle and at the bottom of the economic pyramid are in varying flavours of dire straits.
Streaming is not, she asserts, broken… but the narrative around streaming is.
She says The Orchard model is working for acts of all sizes and quotes numbers to support this. Their five biggest artists “are making eight figures” and 127 are “making over seven figures”. Around 2,000 acts distributed via The Orchard made over $100,000 in the past 12 months.
Streaming is not, she asserts, broken (“streaming, by nature, is inherently democratic”); but she feels the narrative around streaming is.
“You always hear about the sad stories or the bad stories,” she says. “But then you don’t hear about the success stories. For us, building a sustainable career for an artist, so they can live making their art as a full-time job and not have to wait tables or do whatever they would have to do a side hustle and live a meaningful life, that’s a huge win.”
Indies’ global future
We speak before Warner pulled out if its bid to buy Believe, but the issue of the majors steadily buying up distribution companies is something the indie sector has been expressing its growing concerns about for several years, especially as it could mean majors using indies’ market share to strengthen their own negotiating positions on DSP deals.
Theis suggests that, despite being owned by the second-biggest major, The Orchard is net positive for indies.
“The Orchard has invested more in the independent sector probably than any other company in the industry in terms of financial advances through the 27 years that we’ve been in business,” she says.
Conceived from the off as a global business, handling music on independent labels from around the world, The Orchard has unique insights into what is happening in a range of markets globally and which are tipped to have growing international export success. Latin America, China, India and sub-Saharan Africa are all commonly cited as where the next explosions will come from.
Theis, however, suggests it is the IFPI’s long-standing second-biggest music market that will become a new export superpower. Traditionally Japan was a heavily domestic market that did not export acts much beyond pockets of Southeast Asia. That is, from what The Orchard is seeing, about to change dramatically.
“Japan is really starting to have a strong international moment for us,” she says. “We’re seeing that Japanese artists are now exploding beyond Japanese borders.” She points to 88rising’s presence at this year’s Coachella where the 88rising Futures stage was pushing acts like Yoasobi, Awich, Atarashii Gakko! and Number_i.
“Sony Japan is working with us to help identify artists that have global appeal,” she says. “We’re releasing them via The Orchard, sometimes on a label and sometimes direct with the management company in Japan.”
Indie labels have redrawn music culture over and over again. Now the global map of the music industry is being redrawn as whole new centres of gravity appear. The lingua franca of the music business is shifting. Having indies at the forefront of this, with proper distribution power and reach, is more critical than ever.
