Made in Germany: The Business Magazine

CEO of Universal Music GermanyDW-TV: For more we're joined by Frank Briegmann, CEO of Universal Music Germany. How do you feel about this software? Does it affect your business? Frank Briegmann: Not really because Ableton is a software for composing and producing music and because we are actually in the business of selling the music of our artists I think it takes something more from the artists, charisma, virtuosity, everything. If you consider Mark Knopfler for example just standing there with a guitar and getting people to buy his music...I think it needs more but it could still be a great product. DW-TV: Artists have started producing their albums at home. They use internet platforms to market and sell their products... Do they still need a Label? Frank Briegmann: Well I think the task of a label never changed, no matter if there is an internet or not an internet. Our task and our passion is really to find new artists, to break and make them successful and to help them in marketing questions and in promotion questions and distribution questions. That's what we have been doing and that's what we are going to be doing in the future no matter if there's the internet. So the question is yes, now that the artist is able now to distribute his music by himself, but availability is not the same as awareness. So we help people to find the music in the internet. DW-TV: So you can work in the business without a label, but if you want to make it you need a label? Frank Briegmann: Well I could not agree more on this one. No, really, the majority of artists are still with labels, of commercially successful artists. And there is a reason for that. Because they want help from us in getting all the business sides of the music together...to think about how am I going to make my money? How am I going to design my marketing? How am I going to design my product? And so on and so forth. Artists want us to answer all of these questions. DW-TV: The popular music industry is usually about being cutting edge - how does the industry react to new technologies and media? What are the new business strategies? Frank Briegmann: Oh yes, absolutely. The internet offers us many opportunities in the new digital world. We are working together with all kinds of technology companies. For example when YouTube came up we were one of the first companies to cut a deal with YouTube. They streamed our videos and you know we found a business model for that. And that is the same for so many other internet technology companies that we are working with closely. DW-TV: So you are not worried about technology. Where do you see the industry in the next ten years. Frank Briegmann: The good news for our industry is that the demand for music is greater than it has ever been before. More people want to hear music. Now the question is how are we going to monitor this and how are we going to pay our artists in the future. So we need to find business models in the digital world. We have been developing very many of them but I think as technology moves on we will keep on developing business models and also we need protection in law and by the politicians for the intellectual property of our artists so it is not going to be illegally downloaded. Interview: Monika Jones