00:00You can't really pretend to be a global music company not being significant enough in the number one market in
00:05the world.
00:05We build a number one, two, or three position in 12 to 13 markets in the top 20 markets in
00:11the world.
00:18Our market share globally in digital music is close to 10%,
00:21which means that when we are talking about doing specific things,
00:26they translate in tens of millions of dollars of value.
00:29We are now number one, two, number three player in Asia.
00:33We're now number one, two, three players across Europe and the Middle East.
00:37Now is the right time for us to start looking at North America.
00:51Just to give you a sense, when we started in 2005,
00:55the belief was, I think the belief name and the belief first was we want to sign new artists and
01:02we want to provide access and the market would create an opportunity for some of these artists to develop.
01:08So it was really artists first and we believe that in a technological world, technology could democratize market access.
01:17This was still a very heavy, CD-driven world at the time.
01:22In France, we were quite successful very, very, very early on for one single reason.
01:29We made a bet on hip-hop.
01:36At the time, no major were interested by hip-hop anymore.
01:41If there's one genre and one community of artists that's going to switch to digital faster than any others, it's
01:49hip-hop.
01:49Why? Because their demographic of audiences is younger.
01:52Those will be the first adopters of digital and the streaming era and the YouTube consumption and everything.
01:58And second of all, they produce more music than any other.
02:02A pop artist releases an album every three, four, five years.
02:05A hip-hop artist, every six months.
02:06We need to stay agile because the ecosystem and the artist needs us to remain agile and we need to
02:12be more agile than the majors because this is going to become one of our USP.
02:16We need to move faster and we need to be more agile about it, to be more adapted to what
02:22the artistic ecosystem and the markets and the artist community need.
02:29We received a call from, I think, Oliver at the time, who was still leading at Apple and he was
02:35telling us, look, Apple is going to open in 53 new territories on December 12, 2012.
02:46And we have selected three companies.
02:49We're not going to sign any direct deals with any artists and labels in all of these new countries.
02:56We have selected Believe, TuneCore and The Orchard.
02:59So, if you want, we need your help to be able to source content in all of these territories.
03:06We wanted to double down on our original belief of we want to be able to take artists from entry
03:14level all the way to the top.
03:16We acquired TuneCore to be on the DIY market, to step into the number one market in the world in
03:22the US and to source artists.
03:24So, we are sourcing artists from TuneCore because some of them also need more services.
03:29Some of them don't need and they are very happy on TuneCore and this is great and we need to
03:34develop them within the TuneCore ecosystem, which is fantastic.
03:37We love that, but some of them need more.
03:39So, why would they go elsewhere?
03:43Well, they can move elsewhere and continue to develop further because they need more expertise services people to talk to
03:49and marketing investment advances, etc., etc., within the belief ecosystem.
03:54When we are having conversations with all of our partners right now, these are meaningful conversations because our market share
04:02globally in digital music is close to 10%, which means that when we are talking about doing specific things, they
04:09translate in tens of millions of dollars of value.
04:12The way that we describe today as our objective is to build one global artist development company and what I
04:20say is it's we build locally and we connect it globally and technology empowered.
04:30The bet, which is proven being the right one, was that the growth of each market, more and more, is
04:39going to come from local music.
04:40It's about Thai music in Thailand, Mexican music in Mexico, Philippines music in Philippines, Polish music in Poland.
04:48Mainly, the growth will come from the independent sector, from the local music, from the local entrepreneur, from the local
04:55artist, as opposed to the old model, which is still there mostly with the majors of building global careers and
05:04global stars.
05:11If I take France, we are the number one, 225 charts, we have 47 albums, 29% market share in
05:18the top 200 yearly, 32% market share on the single charts with 57 plus single charted.
05:25We are bigger than anyone else.
05:32India, the biggest population in the world, 1 billion plus, the majors are not there.
05:37The ecosystem is about local music in India is consumed by the language of the states.
05:42People in the South are consuming music from the South.
05:45People in the North, music from the North.
05:47We've been operating in India since 13 years and we are very successful there.
05:53Vivek, our head of India, is an incredible executive.
05:56He is entirely responsible with Silva, our head of APAC, on building the success that we have had.
06:02The core is really quality of your local teams in understanding the market, being able to build relationship with the
06:09right people because we are in a people business and if you don't build trust relationship with the ecosystem, you're
06:17not successful at doing the right acquisition, which is instrumental for us in India and understanding market evolution.
06:31Now is the right time because we were well positioned with leadership position in as many as possible of the
06:39markets where we invested. We are now number one to number three player in Asia. We're now number one to
06:45three players across Europe. Now in the Middle East, now is the right time for us to start looking at
06:51North America.
06:52You can't really pretend to be a global music company not being significant enough in the number one market in
06:57the world. Number one market in terms of exporting outside of the U.S.
07:01We are already the fourth largest player in the U.S. We do about 4% market share. We're the
07:07largest players after the major record labels. When we look at the offering in the U.S. on distribution, we
07:14think that we believe as a company are positioned much more as a premium distribution company than some of the
07:21companies existing in the market.
07:22So we already have TuneCore and that's great because that gives us some market share again on the U.S.
07:28soul and as we're going to bring our office services business in the U.S. as well.
07:37Our view is on the distribution side, distribution, it is no longer about access. Distribution, like artist services, has to
07:48drive success.
07:49That's why your strategic plan is called from access to success. Our first base of success three, four, five years
07:54from now is being able to have built a great portfolio of label on distribution and artists that we're proud
08:03on, that we've helped develop and then build a portfolio of 10 sub labels that we have co-invested in
08:11that we're developing successfully.
08:13We want to be able to achieve global coverage. Not only do we want to build in the United States
08:18for American artists in the U.S., but we also want to be able to have a capability that allows
08:25us to develop U.S. artists globally.
08:29People often ask me, who are your competitors? My answer is we don't have any. With that view of addressing
08:35all those business lines with that local approach, I don't think so. Not at the level we do it.
08:43It's not a two-year game or five-year game that we're playing. It's a 20-year game that we're
08:48playing. We want to empower the next generation of ANRs and executives who are building labels to become the future
08:56winners in label development of tomorrow.
Comments