As far as industry people are concerned, the going beat revolves around homegrown music - no longer simple, but simply 'in'
Ukrainians are making beautiful music together ,while working to develop the business side of the industry , too.
And that’s not as easy as it might sound. As with other fields, the post Soviet music industry is struggling to evolve in an environment affected by competition from abroad, outdated equipment, antiquated legislation, low purchasing power and rampant piracy, not to mention rapidly changing tastes among consumers exposed to more and more styles of music.
Asked to name the biggest challenge to his business, Volodymyr Artemenko, president of JRC Records, chose legislation and the failure to reform it.
“The people making these laws don’t seem to understand the business situation in the industry today,” Artemenko said. “If, for example, we buy the rights from a foreign company to distribute an album, the tax police have a hard time understanding what we’re doing and think it’s some sort of money laundering operation.”
Fortunately for JRC, the company itself is no longer a small, vulnerable player in the market. Since its formation five years ago as the Joint Recording Company, with offices in Kyiv and Moscow, JRC has become the biggest record company in Ukraine, producing 1,500 albums a year in Ukraine and selling some 100,000 compact discs and 200,000 cassettes every month.
“No one else in Ukraine is doing anything close to those numbers,” Artemenko said.
What’s the secret of their success? Artemenko pointed to promotion and distribution. He said JRC has built up a reliable network countrywide that helps dealers set up shop and settle pricing issues, and then rewards them with a healthy percentage of the profits, all in an attempt to try to show them how it’s done. Artemenko has even built a model retail shop he’d like to see replicated: the JRC Market, the company’s own factory outlet store on Zhulyanska. The shop sells discs, audiocassettes and videocassettes not only produced or distributed by JRC and its Orange Records subsidiary, but sold by competing labels as well.
“We do all these things not just to show how good we are, but to demonstrate how proper dealers should operate,” Artemenko said.
Art of noise
Record companies typically divide their activities among production, promotion and distribution. Ukrainian companies tend to specialize in Ukrainian artists when it comes to representing bands, and in an array of Russian and international acts when it comes to licensing and distribution. In its stable of artists, for instance, JRC numbers Mad Heads, Vist, Havana (a fledgling all girl group), Oksana Voyazh and Valery Gorlov – hardly, with the exception of Mad Heads, groundbreaking stuff. In that sense, the company relies heavily on older favorites and newer pop acts for sales. Through a partnership of JRC’s Moscow office and the Soviet era ORT Soyuz Records, the company has full access to the ORT catalogue, which includes the works of long standing stars such as Alla Pugacheva. But JRC has also scored more modern music contracts of late, gaining Ukrainian distribution rights for Mumiy Troll’s “Memoirs” and Zemfira’s “14 Weeks of Silence.”
Lavina Music, on the other hand, has succeeded in attracting some of the most well known names in Ukrainian alternative rock music, such as Vopli Vidoplyasova, Okean Elzy and Mandry.
General Director Edward Klim said the company finds artists through a combination of scouting, keeping its eyes open for bands on the move, and through newer groups offering their demo discs.
“Usually beginners don’t have their own agent or director, so they come here looking for management,” Klim said. “We come across about five useful projects a month, though with lots left over.”
Klim said Lavina’s main goal is to promote local artists, but he’s excited by the international possibilities as well. VV has long had contacts in France, where some of its members lived at one time. Klim said Lavina has taken advantage of those connections: part of VV’s last album, “Faino,” was recorded at the Capital Records studio in Paris, and there are plans to tour France, too.
But Vadim Kosyak, the comppany’s artists and repertoire manager, added that Lavina isn’t involved in everything its musicians do. Kosyak said Lavina has helped VV lead singer Oleh Skrypka with one of his many solo projects and recently assisted guitarist Yevhen Rohachevsky and bassist Oleksandr Pipa when they teamed up with a member of TNM Kongo for a concert to promote their respective Borscht and Klomuz projects. But Kosyak said bands typically organize such side projects themselves and that these don’t represent some sort of effort by the company to take advantage of the popularity of a big act like VV.
“There is no strategy behind such projects,” Kosyak said. “We can decide which ones look like they could be good and of interest, and then we can decide to help – or not.”
Of course, record companies can get a little help promoting their artists through corporate sponsorship. Ani Lorak received considerable exposure as the voice behind Nescafe coffee’s “Open Up” campaign in Ukraine; Pepsi Cola plugged into Okean Elzy; and UMC mobile communications sponsored VV’s 15th anniversary tour last year.
Like the other major Ukrainian companies, Lavina also devotes part of its activities to distribution, buying the rights to distribute the works of major international artists in Ukraine, such as Robbie Williams, as well as mixing its own compilations like “EMI Classic Rock.”
Almost all of the international labels are represented in Ukraine, Klim said, with the exceptions of BMG and Warner.
“Foreign labels look at Eastern Europe and they understand the big potential for development,” he said.
‘Sale’ ing out?
“This is really stupid music,” Vitaly Bardetsky warned with a grin, handing over several sample discs for the listening.
Commercial suicide by some standards, this admission by the owner of Sale Records comes across as refreshingly honest, if not downright intriguing, in a Ukrainian music industry where pre packaged, fashion model style pop bands seem to dominate. That’s because Sale Records specializes in electronic music, particularly of the unpolished, home grown Ukrainian variety. It’s known as one of the only independent companies in the country and, at the moment, it’s got the electronic market largely to itself.
“I’m probably still producing the only electronic contemporary music in Ukraine, so there’s no competition at the moment,” Bardetsky said. “That also means there’s no label specializing in one particular kind of electronic music, like house or tribal, so that I can release compilations which include really underground electronic tracks and a mix of house and techno, free style and jazz all on the same disc.”
Because Sales Records is a small, three man operation, Bardetsky’s personal taste and enthusiasm shine through, as well as his sense of humor. When the company started up in August 2000, he landed upon its tongue in cheek name.
“I just got the idea that I should choose a really commercial sounding name for a really uncommercial [sic] style of music,” he said, adding, “though I’m not sure how it’s worked out.”
Sale Records’ first compilation, “Summer Salection 2000,” was mixed by Kyiv’s DJ Derbastler and DJ Dinilkin, featured the work of artists like Max Chorny, and came with an eye catching red and yellow cover designed to resemble a “sales” style advertisement. Chorny, meanwhile, has succeeded in bringing Sale Records its first taste of success. Accompanied by a live band, Chorny has been playing around Kyiv more often, the video for his song “Where’s the Grass?” premiered at last year’s Dreamcatcher video art festival, and the song also appeared on a July 27 compilation released by celebrated French deejay DJ Ravin and the Paris based Buddha Bar club.
Sale Records also gets publicity at home through two main channels. There is the symbiotic relationship it enjoys with FDR Radio Center, a production and promotion company, and Bardetsky’s own PR firm, Promo Ocean, which pays the bills.
“Basically it works out so that I make some money through Promo Ocean and then invest it in Sale Records,” he said.
But Bardetsky harbors bigger ambitions than simply subsistence. He’s working on the release of albums featuring German techno and British rag beat artists to be released later this year. And in the opposite direction, he’s working to export a distinctly Ukrainian sound to the West.
“I’m trying to create a particular sound from the Ukrainian electronic scene; it has nothing to do with the folk element but has a warm and positive sound while being a little bit low budget, very fresh and very honest,” he said. “That could be a big advantage to me because no one is very honest in the West right now.”
Borne on a pirate ship
As to the subject of dishonesty, if you want to learn about music piracy in Ukraine, ask Andry Dakhovsky. The founder and general manager of Ukrainian Records, Dakhovsky views the fight against piracy as a personal crusade.
“When an artist releases a new product, it represents the end of a long and exhaustive process,” he said. “When [the artist] sees a pirated version of his album available on the street, he understands immediately he’s earning nothing.”
But Dakhovsky described that long creative process as also involving the composer writing a song, the artist singing it, the studio recording it, the promoter marketing it, the manufacturer producing it, the distributor arranging its sale and the retailer selling it.
“So when the pirate comes along, he breaks in between the manufacturer and the promoter and arranges for his own manufacturer and retailer,” he said. “But that’s the nature of piracy; to steal something he can sell.”
Olena Chebotayeva, senior legal adviser at Ukrainian Records, also cited the effect piracy can have on an artist, as in the case of Katya Chili, once known as “The Bjork of Ukraine” and one of UR’s best known acts. In Chili’s case it was not a record pirate, Chebotayeva said, but a vodka producer who lifted a song from her in production “Dream” album for use in a television advertisement last year. Chebotayeva said Chili was shocked by the theft. Legal action ensued, but Chebotayeva said work on the album has stalled.
“[Katya] once said that to be an artist you have to either be suicidal or crazy,” Chebotayeva said. “Or strong like she is, I can add; but she is also a very vulnerable person, like many artists, and couldn’t continue with her album after this incident.”
Dakhovsky said the standard argument to justify piracy – that Ukraine is a poor country and can’t afford to pay Western prices of up to $30 per disc – doesn’t hold water. He said such discs represent only a small part of UR sales, with cheaper audio cassettes making up to 80 percent of the total. Moreover, UR has also been involved in the production of so called Cyrillic discs featuring Cyrillic language packaging, which cost as little as Hr 15 wholesale.
Other companies are largely in agreement with Dakhovsky’s assessment of the situation. Yekaterina Sudorhina is public relations manager for Hunter Music, which represents Sony Records in Ukraine. Hunter Music works with VIA GRA, Bi 2 and Spleen and distributes Las Ketchup, Jennifer Lopez, Patricia Kaas and Celine Dion. She confirmed the two biggest challenges to the music industry today remain “pirates and flawed laws.”
Money matters
Though the piracy situation remains bad, company management appears to agree that the situation is improving. Yes, there are sanctions in place against Ukraine over the issues of intellectual property and copyright infringement, including those of the U.S. government, which total $75 million per year. But two of the reported three Ukrainian factories producing pirated music are reported to have been closed down, and the majority of pirated material currently comes to Ukraine courtesy of Russia.
Dakhovsky said Lavina is a member of IFPI, a London based federation representing some 1,500 record producers and distributors worldwide. Artemenko said JRC is a founding member of a Ukrainian association working toward similar goals and with “dealers overseeing what’s going on and representatives of the association monitoring the situation everywhere, in the stores and in the markets.”
Though still a major concern, Klim said piracy is no longer big enough to pose a threat to the existence of a company like Lavina. He said he’s more concerned about purchasing power.
“I certainly believe that the market is big and that there’s no problem with artistic potential.”
Klim said. “People are beginning to understand that this is a legitimate business with solid artists, the one problem being the development of the economy.”
