WHY SPEND $4.1BN ON A&R? BECAUSE NEW ARTISTS ARE ACCELERATING STREAMING’S GROWTH.
It’s always an interesting debate within record labels: with all the resources dedicated to ‘frontline’ A&R in the music business how much is new music actually worth versus catalog material – i.e. the stuff that’s already been recorded, and is already popular? Last month we discovered, via the IFPI, that global record company A&R expenditure – the money that goes on signing an act, then recording and mastering their music – has greatly escalated in recent years. According to the data, record labels spent $4.1bn on ‘A&R’ in 2017, significantly more than the equivalent figure in both 2015 ($2.8bn) and 2013 ($2.5bn). This isn’t the only eye-popping stat about A&R to arrive from the record industry of late. An RIAA-backed report, published earlier this year, showed that US-based major labels signed a total of 658 acts in 2017, up 12% on the same figure from 2014. It’s worth pausing on that number for a second: six hundred and fifty eight. It means ...