Cliff Burnstein

If there's such a thing as "the gold standard" in the business of rock, it would have to be Q Prime. On top of managing superstars the likes of Metallica, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Muse, The Black Keys and Cage The Elephant, Q Prime also finds and develops up-and-coming talent such as 19-year-old Declan McKenna. But they do more than manage their clients; they can provide everything from radio promotion and sync rights to product management and publicity - whatever it takes to optimize the chances for success. Here, co-founder Cliff Burnstein offers more insight into their efforts and the challenges they face in the current business climate.

You mentioned in a past interview that Q Prime has essentially been assuming more record company functions as the music business has evolved over the years. Has that continued today and how do the major labels fit in?

Yes. Just to make things clear, when we said we have been assuming many label functions over the years, what that means is that we essentially have been doing things like radio promotion, product management, sync rights and publicity for our artists who aren't on labels, and we also do it for artists with labels as a back-up insurance policy. It costs us money to do it, but our job is to do the very best we can for our artists, to represent them in the best way possible, so we consider handling these functions almost as a requirement.

As far as the current and future role of the major label, it kind of depends. It's always good to have extra help. It's so hard to succeed these days; you want all the extra help if you can get it. The major labels do some things very well, and they still have a lot of clout. Naturally, we still want to be involved with them, especially when we're working the right artists and formats.

You also predicted that labels will spend more of their efforts on proven mainstream names and less on breaking new talent. Will the latter be up to companies like Q Prime, too?

If we're lucky enough to find some young untested talent, yeah, it's incumbent on us. It's not like the labels have gone out of the business of breaking new talent, but for the kind of stuff we generally gravitate toward -- a wide spectrum of rock, and even our Nashville country artists -- we consider ourselves primarily responsible for moving these artists up the ladder. If part of that can be facilitated through a strategic partnership with a label, great. If not, that's our problem.

The old axiom of it taking a band three albums to break seems to have been rendered obsolete. How do you define artist development these days?

We've always been of the mind of just putting one foot ahead of the other, one step at a time. We manage Declan McKenna, a young British artist who recently turned 19. What we've done is try to expose him to as many audiences as possible at an early age. We made sure his social media stuff was good; we made videos for pretty much every track on his album, and we worked a number of tracks to radio. We did pretty well in the U.K. with a single called "Brazil," and we keep doing something for him all the time. He's got two shows in England that have sold out -- in Manchester and London - 2,500-seat venues without having a hit, per se, over a period of 18 months. Being that active has had him move up from 500 to 1,500 to 2,500-seaters. That's how we measure meaningful progress. He's been to Japan couple of times. We've brought him here to the U.S. a few times; he did Lollapalooza; he's about to start a two-month tour primarily in suburban all-ages clubs, including acoustic performances at high schools with student Q&As, and he'll do Coachella. Ticket sales are surpassing expectations and all this has seasoned him tremendously.

We're managing everything internally because we want to move the needle. The record has only sold 3,000 in the U.S., so you can't expect Columbia to put a huge number of chips on Declan's square on the table. But we'll put out the chips in the meantime because his songs are generating over a million Spotify streams a week in total, including a couple of B-sides, too. Those numbers just keep getting bigger and the income flows from that. It's going to be a year or so where we'll keep doing stuff that combines streaming, touring and sales, so the next album will start at a much higher level than the last one ended up. If the artist is willing to put in the time, then we'll keep coming up with ideas and keep trying stuff. That's artist development.

You've been quite bullish on radio in its power to take artists to next level of popularity. What about breaking new artists - especially those rock acts that you represent?

It depends on the artist and the music trends of the time. Our artists are more guitar-oriented. There aren't that many new guitar bands right now, but there is still a huge demand for artists like Cage The Elephant. No doubt having radio hits has meant a tremendous amount to them.

Having radio hits can help a band that's playing a festival. Say, for example, you're not a headliner but third or fourth on a bill. When you get on stage, you've got to get people fast with a couple of songs they know early on. That keeps them riveted to the stage, then you can build the show out from there. Cage has had so many radio hits they can play a long set where even casual fans would frequently hear a song they probably know. That's a tremendous advantage for a band that sounds like nobody else and are great performers. Having all those songs on the radio makes a big difference for them. No doubt about it.

For somebody like Declan, who's very British in his sound, he may not exactly be au courant today because he hasn't had more radio songs besides "Brazil." We feel he's written two more of them on his album, but they couldn't get traction on radio. We'd be so far ahead of where we are now if radio played those songs; it would've made a huge difference.

Are you encouraged by the handful of stations that have recently flipped to the Alternative format?

Of course, we're very excited about the new stations, although some are still in the early stages, playing 10,000 songs in a row commercial-free. That's great for the Chili Peppers, Muse, The Black Keys and Cage.

Some of those markets hadn't had an Alternative station in years, which made it hard for our bands to perform there. For example, there hadn't been an Alternative station in Miami for ... I can't remember how long ... but when they switched formats two years ago, it totally opened the market for us when it came to live music. We could barely do any business in south Florida, but now with WSFS, the market is totally alive for us. It's a huge difference. Naturally, we're bullish about having more Alternative stations, not just for the music they play, but for the promotional aspect of it. It creates a community of people who want to see these bands.

What also helps us is that Warren Christensen runs a pretty substantial radio promotion department here; he oversees a team of 11 people, including five incredible regionals who have done very well on their own. We've had many #1 records in every Rock format over the last 15 years - and we also do Triple A promotion, so we know the radio people well, and we have done so many things that have been mutually beneficial with their stations.

How has streaming impacted the way you work for your artists?

Obviously, we're very statistically minded and we're very competitive. In the same way we want to have #1 records, get more spins on radio and reach the largest audience possible, we also work to generate as many streams and get on as many playlists as possible. We worked with iTunes during the download sales heyday, and we do the same now with Apple Music and Spotify when it comes to streaming. The medium may have changed, but we take the same approach.

I'm old enough to have gone through so many formats - vinyl, eight-track, cassettes, CDs, downloads and now streaming. And we still do the same thing we've always done: find quality talent, a label to work with them, have them do a lot of touring and encourage them to make the best records they can. We've done all those things for 35 years, and we'll continue to do them no matter what the mode of delivery is.

In streaming, I believe that hip-hop generally comprises 49 of the 50 most-streamed songs at any time. That may be an exaggeration, but not by much. But we still have eight artists who have around a billion streams or more just on Spotify, which is a pretty good indicator that our bands have big followings who like a lot of their songs. We're happy with that even though we don't have any Hip-Hop artists.

Remember, the U.S. represents only a third of our artists' worldwide sales. There are plenty of people in Latin America who stream records, for example, but have never actually bought a record.

Do you feel your artists are getting their fair share of streaming revenues?

"Fair," of course, is not an objective measure. "Fair" to one guy is "not fair" to another. I would say that many artists who have signed deals with major labels are not really getting their fair share, because streaming is treated the same as single-track sales under a lot of those contracts.

You have to start with the whole pie. Take the revenue generated by the streaming company, then a percentage of it is paid out to the labels. That percentage was pretty high, but even though they just cut it by three points or so, it can be an enormous amount of money. I'd say the total amount is fair in that the ratio is comparable to wholesale and retail prices we've had over the years with physical product. Digital downloads also had around the same percentage of revenue going to the labels.

But the streaming business model is not inherently super-profitable when paying all that out to the labels, because Spotify has yet to make money. So is that fair to the streaming companies? Spotify may say it's unfair, as would Apple Music. From my perspective, if artists are only getting 15% of what comes in from Spotify to the label, that doesn't seem fair to me. I don't know what the exact percentage should be. It depends; some labels have done almost everything for the artist, while they have done hardly anything for others. The thing is, if the music world becomes entirely based on streaming, then the labels would have little if any manufacturing and distribution costs, and getting 85% while the artist gets 15% wouldn't seem fair to me.

Touring has become even more instrumental in an act's success - especially for rock bands. Yet you have to choose between doing your own tours, performing at a growing number of festivals and even doing station concerts. How do you figure out what's best for your artists?

(Laughs) Life is complex. It hasn't gotten any simpler as we've gotten older. Although we do employ more people to help us, my partner, Peter Mensch, and I are still primarily responsible for making the final decisions here - and we have a lot more to juggle than we used to have. We have to weigh all the possibilities and in each instance, do what's right for each individual artist. Sometimes that means we have to turn down offers, and that will make some people unhappy, but we have to maintain a vision of where we want our artists to go, and we have to stick to that no matter what monetary considerations we have to pass up at the time.

When you think about the big picture, the long run, sometimes you have to be willing to give up a good festival date because doing that fest may eliminate headlining in three or four different cities where the artist needs to develop their own following. You can't do that by playing a festival.

Statistically, at least in rock music, there are fewer headliners being minted than at any time in the last 50 years. If that's the case, then you have to ask why. Is rock not as popular as it used to be? That may be true. But it may also be true that by attending festivals, people aren't coming to see specific bands, but to just be a part of the overall environment. How can you build a fan following if you're part of a festival or a radio show where people are coming just to hear hits from different artists and just have a good time? How do you build a fan base by doing that? All these are subjective questions and we've got to come up with a new approach to answer each one.

If you have to book tours so far out nowadays, how can you book dates to capitalize on the new airplay in certain markets?

It depends on the artist. Let's talk about how much in advance we book Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Muse. Their audiences are everywhere; they have a ubiquitous presence. We have to book way ahead for them -- years -- because there are only so many available buildings and stadiums, which also book sports teams and other major events.

However, for a band of the stature of Foals, a relatively new British band, we can do smaller venues in more targeted places on a shorter time horizon. We don't have to have it all booked six to 12 months in advance. Foals already has a worldwide presence, so we still have to determine a time period to play England, a time period for the U.S., one for Australia and one for the European fests. We have to sit down and figure out the time periods pretty much a year to 18 months in advance, but we don't necessarily have to have each city in America booked that far ahead. We still have the luxury of booking markets where we're getting more airplay. The best part of the booking process comes after our promo team gives us their input. They've seen the numbers and stats and give us qualitative information -- how the audience in a certain market really feels about the artist and the songs, and how we can make our artists a core part of the station's programming.

We take all that into account when we bring someone over to play. Maybe we only have two months to play 35 shows, but there's 60-90 markets to choose from. We consider the best 35 markets, which may include a lower ranked market, but one that holds more attendance potential for the band in that market. It's never too early to reach the audience; you want them to see the bands early on so they can grow along with them. And to do that, you need to have them get on your train early on and build some level of interest.

After all you've accomplished, do you have any more goals or challenges you'd like to conquer?

Nothing personal, no. The stuff that means a lot concerns the people at our company. I don't think we're going to grow much more beyond the 49 people we have, but I feel a lot of responsibility to provide our employees with secure positions where they don't have to worry about whether the company will be around in a year or two, who get paid better than the living wage, get benefits and are encouraged to build savings and retirement accounts.

I'd also like to see all of our artists reach a higher level, from clubs to theatres to arenas to stadiums. We're delighted to see them break house records. I'd like them all to make their best records of their careers, and be recognized for that.

I love the fact that Metallica and the Chili Peppers are in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame, and I'd love to be around to see the The Black Keys, Muse and Cage The Elephant get in some day, too.

For Peter and I, we really haven't changed our approach from day one. Every day we come here to do the best job possible for every artist and make our employees feel valued.