Adele's Manager Discusses Streaming, Spotify, & Taylor Swift As Jonathan Dickins Says 'Streaming's The Future, Whether People Like It Or Not'

Adele's manager, Jonathan Dickins says music streaming services are 'the future' as Adele’s manager has backed streaming services like Spotify as the future of music, but warned the company that it may need to change its policy of insisting all albums be made available on both its free and premium tiers.

That means, Jonathan Dickins wants Spotify to change policy of not allowing some albums to be restricted to paying subscribers only.

Back in 2012, Adele was willing to have her album "21" available on the streaming music service. But Spotify would have had to change its whole strategy to accommodate her which is why Spotify turned down Adele’s 21.

So what does Adele’s 21 end up? In 2011, Adele released her critically-acclaimed (and high-grossing) album, 21. Adele and her label held back on releasing the album to the free service because Spotify refused to temporarily lock the album under the service’s premier tier subscription level ($9.99 a month). So in the end, Adele famously wouldn’t let her album 21 be streamed on Spotify until long after it was released which is why Adele’s 21 went on to sell more than 30 million records worldwide. Smart call, Adele. Let’s continue.

Adele‘s manager Jonathan Dickins is speaking out to discuss the situation with streaming, which he calls “the future, whether people like it or not.”

“Personally, I think streaming’s the future, whether people like it or not, but don’t believe one size necessarily fits all with streaming,” said Jonathan Dickins, speaking at the Web Summit conference in Dublin this afternoon as he added (via Billboard). “To get around the situation with someone like Taylor Swift — and Spotify won’t do it — is that maybe there is a window between making something available on the premium service earlier than its made available on the free service.”

“What’s interesting is that people take things down off Spotify, yet if I search now for Taylor Swift on YouTube, within the space of 30 seconds I can have the whole Taylor Swift [album] streamed. Some of it is ad-supported, so there is revenue, and some of it’s not,” Jonathan continued as he was responding to a question about Taylor Swift’s back catalogue being removed from Spotify earlier in the week.

“Spotify have always been pictured as the bad guys in this, but the biggest music streamer out there is YouTube, without a doubt,” he said, pointing out that when artists or labels remove music from Spotify, it is often still easy to find it on YouTube.

“If I make a search now for Taylor Swift on YouTube, give me 30 seconds and I can have the whole Taylor Swift album there streamed. Some of it’s ad-supported, so there is revenue, and some of it’s not,” he said.

He elaborated on his theory that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to streaming, suggesting that Spotify could “make it easier for themselves” by relenting in its policy of having albums available to all its users, rather than allowing some to be restricted to its paying customers.

“On the one hand, the labels are trumping YouTube as a marketing tool and 10 million views is [hailed] as a marketing stroke of genius,” he continued. “On the other hand, they’re looking at 10 million streams on Spotify and going: ‘That’s X amount of lost sales.’ So I think there is a lopsided effect. For an artist that needs discovering, anyone who has got a real good album, but is very niche, I think streaming is great for them. Taylor Swift probably looks at it and thinks, ‘There is an element of cannibalisation. I am a brand. People know who I am and I want to protect the record sales.’ And that’s fair enough.”

It’s surprising to see Dickins make such claims. Arguably, Taylor, Adele, and Beyonce are the only mainstream artists who can guarantee millions upon millions of records sold. Taylor’s latest record broke first week sales records for the first time since 2002 as Jonathan Dickins also criticized Taylor's hypocrisy for singling out Spotify.

Maybe Dickins is simply able to see the forest for the trees. Just like the rise of mp3s before it, streaming services are the new method for people (especially young people, the kind that make up the primary bulk of Taylor’s fans) to access music which is why Dickins has first-hand experience of this policy, with reports in 2012 that Spotify refused to allow Adele’s last album 21 to be made available in this way. The album was added to the service later that year.

Even so, he was positive about the prospects for streaming overall, and Spotify in particular. “It’s all about scale. Spotify will work if they get enough payers.”

Dickins, who also manages artists and producers including London Grammar, Jamie T, Rick Rubin and Paul Epworth, was speaking as part of a panel of managers alongside Jeff Jampol, who manages The Doors and The Ramones, along with the estates of other artists.

Jampol talked about the changing nature of the music industry, suggesting that record labels are no longer at the centre of an artist’s business.

“Here’s the way an income pie should look for a successful or current artist: 60-65% of their income is going to come from tickets, 15-25% from tour merch, 10-15% from publishing, 2-4% from ancillary and 2-4% from record sales,” said Jampol.

Dickins agreed that touring is becoming hugely important to most artists. “Adele is the exception not the rule. The record 21 came out in 2011, we’ve sold 30 million copies of that album,” he said. “We haven’t toured that much, for many different reasons. But I think touring has become a major focus point for 99.9% of current artists’ careers.”

Jampol talked about the importance for managers of being able to handle many different business areas, from books and merchandise to publishing income and even museum partnerships – he’s worked on several for his artists.

“The record business is a key but small part of it. A book publisher knows nothing about the record business, who knows nothing about the apparel business, who knows nothing about museums, who knows nothing about publishing,” he said.

“We’re in the middle. We’re the quarterback, and the artist is the CEO... We have to get all these players to work together.”

Dickins talked about the importance of turning down opportunities, rather than trying to do everything. “The one thing the internet has done: content is everywhere.... and part of the hunger for content is we’ve reached saturation point. and when you reach saturation point it cheapens it. And one of the things I do is say no,” he said.

“That might be ‘no, I don’t want to do an Adele perfume, we’re not doing a nail polish’. Or ‘that ticket price is too expensive’. Whatever it is, the power of saying no, and being the gatekeeper to these opportunities is key.”

He said that major labels nowadays “live under a culture of fear... people live with these two-three year deals, whatever they’ve got, they’ve got kids at school, and they have to produce hits. And if they have a hit - which are few and far between – there’s the opportunity to kill: to rinse every last bit of blood out of a record. And I think it’s dangerous.”

Jampol agreed: “Labels are all about getting their profit and loss for the third or fourth quarter. We’re about the long-term vision. We plan in decades!” he said.

“Having an artist legacy is kinda like walking up a down escalator. If you’re standing still, you’re not standing still, you’re moving backwards. You have to find that sweet spot that’s not doing nothing and not doing too much. And over-saturation is a big problem.”

Meanwhile, Dickins said that managers are getting to grips with the biggest change in the music industry, which is its transition from sales to streaming.

“The business was always about buying stuff. When it was cassettes and vinyl, then it became about CD, then the disasters like DCC [digital compact cassette] and mini-disc,” he said.

“Streaming will be ubiquitous in five years. We are going now into a streaming model. Whether you want to be in it or not, within five years it will be everywhere. That something does not become about buying any more. It becomes about consumption and it becomes about access... and that hasn’t been done before.”

Sounds like a good strategy, heh, Jonathan Dickins and Jeff Jampol? Come on, music industry, stop going by repeat hits/top 40/radio/promote singles/publicity and evolve into streaming music/music videos/MTV/internet like Vevo.

What do you think? Is Taylor in the right with her decision to withhold her music from Spotify? Is streaming music the future? What do you think about about Adele’s manager’s view on the streaming situation? Sound Off below!