Last summer, a global independent music powerhouse was born.
The Secretly Group brought together a trio of highly respected US record companies - namely, Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian - with catalogue specialist The Numero Group.
The company’s combined roster, which includes Bon Iver, Antony & The Johnsons and Phosphorescent, is mainly as American as Apple Pie. But this year, TSG is really starting to make an impression on Europe, with its nascent London office enjoying a promising purple patch in the UK.
Hannah Overton is in charge of the firm’s European HQ, based in Shoreditch, London. Overton, who previously worked in A&R at XL/Beggars for 10 years before joining Secretly in 2012, has overseen a run of solid success in 2014. The flagship has been The War On Drugs’ acclaimed third LP, Lost In The Dream, which entered the Official UK Albums Chart at No.18 in March - and looks a dead cert for many an influential ‘Best of 2014’ end-of-year lists.
“That was definitely a big moment,” Overton tells Music Week. “We’ve been making baby steps this year, and we’ll keep on making them. For us it’s about taking one rung of the ladder at a time.”
Other recent ‘baby steps’ have included the release of Sharon Van Etten’s self-produced fourth album, Are We There, which hit No.27 in May, plus singer/songwriter Damien Jurado’s brilliant 11th studio LP, Brothers And Sisters Of The Eternal Son - which entered the Top 100 in January.
Overton is aware these chart positions aren’t going to leave any major label MDs sweating over their market share, but says they offer real optimism for a US label group still in the process of building media and retail relationships in Europe.
“A result for a record like Damien Jurado’s might not seem huge in the grand scheme of things, but for a niche singer/songwriter on his 11th album, it was a big victory for us - we sold nearly as many units in the first week as we did for the entire last record,” she says. “Similarly, Angel Olsen’s [second album, Burn Your Fire For No Witness], which came out in February, charted in the Top 50. We had very little radio play but very good press. We gradually built to the point where we could chart The War On Drugs album - an alternative record - in the UK Top 20. To enter the chart at No.18 exceeded our expectations, which is obviously something we want to repeat. That success has been mirrored across Europe as well: the album went Top 20 in the Netherlands and Belgium and the band had a Top 10 in Scandinavia.”
The mission now for Overton is to build on these mini-triumphs, to keep on aiming for the Top 10 without ever compromising Secretly’s steel-riveted reputation for quality output.
Music Week caught up with Overton to discuss the Secretly Label Group’s prospects in the UK and Europe, her ambitions for the company - and how much competition it will bring to other leading lights of the British indie label world…
Can you explain the structure of the Secretly Group?
The Secretly Group consists of four labels. When I started here there was three: Secretly Canadian, Jagjaguwar and Dead Oceans. The partners have since bought a stake in Numero Group, which is primarily a reissue label based in Chicago with an incredible catalogue. There’s been [Secretly] staff in the UK and Europe for about six years now, but it was previously a couple of people working freelance or part-time - firefighting, really, and making sure the distribution setup was working. Two years ago, the label partners decided to expand and become a truly global company. I came in as GM for Europe. I’m managing a staff of eight, which we plan to add to in the next few months.
What’s been your main objective at the company since taking the position?
I was very familiar with the label group when I worked at Beggars, but they felt a bit like American labels for an American audience. Picking up one of their releases always felt a bit like picking up an import. There wasn’t really anyone waving the flag here. We’ve been out there speaking to media, retailers and making people a bit more aware of our releases, and how good they are. You can’t deny that the releases at this label are all very high quality and very well respected. Now we just need to get them noticed by a UK and European audience.
Is building relationships with UK radio particularly important for you?
Yes, and we’ve got a long way to go. Obviously, BBC 6 Music is brilliant. They’re big supporters of our releases. Taking our priorities to them so they can understand the quality artists we’re bringing through and what we’re spending our effort on really helps. We really couldn’t ask for better radio partners. Our next step is pushing into Radio 1 land. We understand that we don’t always have the right records for Radio 1, but with some of our new releases, I hope we’ll be making in-roads there. We get a lot of love from the Radio 1 specialists, but I have an eye on our first playlist.
Has your experience with Beggars and XL helped fuel your ambition?
Yes, absolutely. From 2002 onwards, I saw that company be hugely ambitious and grow. They were aggressive in their signings and with their marketing. That is very inspiring; I learnt everything I know from XL and Beggars. They taught me it’s possible to succeed. If you’ve got the A&R ears within the company and you hone your marketing expertise, anything is possible. The indies are going to be a very powerful entity in the coming years, because we’re the ones with the taste.
How do you judge success at Secretly Group? Some in the industry base it on sales, others on chart placings, others on market share…
Market share’s certainly not something we obsess about, that’s perhaps something for long into the future. I was at XL/Beggars for ten years and I hope I’m at Secretly Label Group for just as long, building a healthy and happy company. We’re creating a really great team in the UK with some brilliant staff. I want to be able to sign more bands, slowly but surely. And I want to make sure each of those bands is successful, especially in the UK. I want the company to keep expanding and keep making money so that it can operate as a viable creative business. It’s exciting for me to lead that.
How can the indie labels capitalise on their structural differences to the majors?
Music’s all about taste. Obviously marketing muscle is important, as is finance. But at the end of the day, people just want to hear good music. They want a quality track on their mp3 player or their turntable. I put faith in that. By signing and developing someone like Adele, XL have proved that it can be done - she’s the biggest global pop star in the world. I was lucky enough to see that whole campaign progress across two albums. If you’ve got the right instincts and the right artist, anything is possible.
The Secretly Group and Glassnote have both entered the UK market in the past couple of years. Is there now a little bit more healthy competition in the domestic indie label sector as a result?
Competition is what this market is all about. Glassnote are a brilliant company - I know the people that run it in the UK and they’re doing really well. As much as we’re competitors, we’re good friends. We go to other indie labels for help when we need it, and I hope they’ll come to us now and again. Certainly, Beggars has been very good to me since I left and given me a lot of support. Between us, it’s like family rivalry.
Are you confident that streaming will reach a point where it will offset a drop in physical sales?
Now that physical decline is slowing, we’re actually selling more physical records than we ever have before. Meanwhile the vinyl market has gone crazy; so crazy, in fact, we can’t physically keep up with it. We’re putting in three or four vinyl represses at the factories before our records are even released. We’re in a very good place: we’re making more money, selling more units and making more income from streaming than we ever have. I think the market will reach a nice equilibrium: I don’t think people are just going to listen to music through one medium. I use Spotify, I listen to Deezer, I buy vinyl and I buy CDs. I might be a special case because I work in the music industry, but I believe people will adopt that attitude more and more. Sales of turntables keep growing. Now we’ve got a healthy HMV, there’s optimism around a very strong physical market in this country.
What are the defining characteristics of Secretly Group compared to other labels?
It’s got to be taste; the A&R taste of the four label owners [Chris Swanson, Ben Swanson, Darius Van Arman and Phil Waldorf] built the foundations of this company. That’s what all great independent music companies are based on. And there’s also very strong ethics within [SG] about treating artists fairly. We do very artist-friendly deals; we don’t touch an artist’s live income. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing for every company but it’s not something we do - although we work very closely with managers, agents and promoters so we have a holistic approach to building a career. We have a very strong global setup, including tertiary territories like Poland, Russia, South-East Asia and Korea - we make sure our records are all released in those territories simultaneously. There are a few other independent companies that do that, but across the board, it’s not a whole lot.
And your London office is a European office?
Yes, it’s not just about the UK. The UK’s integral, of course, it’s the lead territory across Europe. But it’s important for bands to have a global perspective and so that’s why we focus on Europe. We’ve changed our distribution setup in France in the last year and we’ve seen our sales and income increase. Because of the setup we have, we have quite a lot of freedom to sign artists who are incredibly creative and influential, but who might not be selling tens or hundreds of thousands of records. Our setup gives us the ability to work with brilliant people; if we’re able to sell a decent amount of records across ten territories in Europe plus the rest of the world, it gives us and the artist a basis on which to do business.
How would you define your long-term commitment to your artists?
If you look back at our roster, you’ll see artists we’ve worked with for five albums, for ten albums… that shows a lot of faith and commitment to the staff and the founders of the label. Also, we don’t have any shareholders to report to. I don’t think a music company where you report to investors every quarter is a viable creative business; it’s not how you develop artists, and it’s certainly not how successful album campaigns work. If you’re developing artists from scratch and they have a brilliant debut album, that album campaign should really last 12-18 months, depending on the artist. It’s not until the end of that campaign that you can work out where you’re at financially. But, more importantly, you’ll know if the artist has the drive to develop themselves with you over more albums in the future.
Can you tell us anymore about your artist-friendly deals? The streaming income split particularly.
Obviously I don’t want to go into confidential individual artist contracts, but our standard is that we do net profit share deals with our artists, where their share of streaming income is 50%. Our company ethos is based on collaborating with the artists we work with financially and artistically - we see no reason why we can’t keep this structure into the future. It’s a really fair situation. It cuts down on the wastage; what was the Guy Hands quote? ‘Throwing out the fruit and flowers budget.’ If our artists want to be invested in their own album campaigns, they have a say in what gets spent - and what doesn’t get spent - and therefore what they earn. It’s not like that at a lot of labels. That sort of thing becomes a dark art when you’re signed to a bigger label, especially a major: you don’t necessarily have a say if they’re spending £100,000 on a video. Which is particularly annoying if it looks like it should have cost £5,000!
Do you have a publishing arm to the company?
We are affiliated with Secretly Canadian Publishing, which has a separate staff from the label group: a general manager and staff in Bloomington, Los Angeles and New York City handling administration and sync licensing. There is also a management company that is affiliated with us called Fort William Artist Management, whose clients include Grizzly Bear, Jens Lekman and The War On Drugs. And then there is an affiliated distribution arm, SC Distribution. They distribute up to 30 independent labels, globally and have distribution partners in each territory: [PIAS] here and in France, Cargo in Germany, Border in Sweden, Playground in the rest of Scandinavia.. It all makes us a very strong proposition.
How many acts do you expect the UK office to have signed by the end of 2014?
My idea of A&R is quality, not quantity. I’m sure the label owners would be very comfortable if I wanted to go on a signing spree but I want to stay close to the artists we have and make time to work with all of them so they develop properly and have time and attention. I’d love to sign another act this year, but I have to make sure that I have time to focus on it. That focus is very important to the way we work with our artists.
Woman's Hour: 'They've made an amazing record and we're very proud to be working with them'
Secretly Canadian’s next big project is Overton’s first UK signing for the company, Woman’s Hour. A hotly-tipped four-piece from Kendal, the band’s debut LP, Conversations, is out now.
The Guardian says that the group’s “refined blend of yearning bedsit indie pop and sleek ‘80s soul is meticulously smooth”. Pitchfork has noted the influence of The xx, Bat For Lashes and Jessie Ware on the group, commenting: “The results are erudite, slim dream-pop, made distinct in its best moments by an open-hearted sweetness and innocence.” Clash called Conversations: “An impressive album, in many ways a unique one in this current landscape – though you sense that the best may be yet to come.”
Woman’s Hour will play domestic festivals including Kendal Calling, Beacons Festival and Green Man in August. They will head to the US for a short tour in October.
“They’ve made a really amazing record,” says Overton. “The whole team is very proud to be working with Woman’s Hour, they’re incredibly hard working, extremely uncompromising when it comes to their art and visual representation, they’re very resourceful and creative and to top that they’re all lovely, very down to earth people.
“The album has received great praise, it’s our hope to work with the band to slowly and steadily build their audience across this and future albums. They’re doing the a great run of festivals and gigs across the summer and play at Village Underground in London on 23rd September as part of a wider European headline tour. We’ve got high hopes. It’s important for us to feel like we’ve developed and broken a British band.”
Who Are Secretly Group?
The Secretly Group is headquartered in Bloomington, Indiana, but also has staff in New York, Chicago, Austin, London, Paris and Berlin.
It is made up of four divisions: Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian, plus The Numero Group. The latter became part of SLG last year when company partners Ben Swanson, Chris Swanson and Darius Van Arman bought a stake in the reissue specialist and brought it into the Secretly family.
Jagjaguwar was founded in 1996 and merged operations with Secretly Canadian in 1999. The label’s present roster includes Bon Iver, Dinosaur Jr., Foxygen, Sharon Van Etten and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Also founded in 1996, Secretly Canadian counts Antony & The Johnsons, Major Lazer, The War On Drugs, Yeasayer, the catalogue of Jason Molina (Songs:Ohia, Magnolia Electric Company) and the recordings of comedian Tig Notaro amongst its roster.
Meanwhile, Dead Oceans was founded in 2007 by the owners of Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian, alongside Austin-based Phil Waldorf. It is the current home to Bleached, Bill Fay, Phosphorescent and The Tallest Man On Earth.
The Numero Group was established by Tom Lunt, Rob Sevier and Ken Shipley in 2003. In addition to Grammy nods for their Light: On The South Side and Syl Johnson box sets, Numero is home to the Cali-Tex, Numerophon and Jr. sub-labels, and the renowned Eccentric Soul, Cult Cargo, Local Customs and Good God! compilation series.
Affiliates of SG include SC Distribution, an independent distribution company serving not only Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian but also independent labels such as DFA, FatCat, Asthmatic Kitty, Captured Tracks, Constellation Records, Sacred Bones, Ghostly International and Temporary Residence Limited. It now also distributes Numero Group throughout the world.