Dammit Zammit: The Weekly Publisher's Warble, September 5

05 September 2011

by Adam Zammit

The announcement last week of Denis Handlin’s appointment as the Chairman & CEO, Australia & New Zealand and President, Asia, Sony Music Entertainment is one that could be too easily considered an expected completion of his increasing leadership of the Sony Music business in the vertical regions above us here in Oz, after his appointment in 2010 to the Chairman & CEO, Australia & New Zealand and President, South East Asia & Korea in 2010, and long serving role heading up Australia and New Zealand.

Australia, despite its relatively small population, has always been an important Western market and an increasingly lucrative touring market for the acts that have done the job establishing themselves here. Denis Handlin has played a crucial role in breaking and maintaining the Australia and New Zealand territory for a great number of international artists. handlin’s much respected and long earned reputation within Sony Music International has led him to the top of the fastest growing regions of the world, leading an organisation and industry with so much up against it in regards to the successful establishment of, not just Sony Music market share, but market share at all for the makers of music.

Quite simply, the culture of consuming music product legally does not exist in a number of the neighbouring countries to our most immediate north. South East Asia, the Middle East and China continue to struggle as an emerging territory for the Western music industry due to very basic copyright laws or inadequate enforcement practices in these region. Piracy in all its forms makes up the vast majority of the total consumption of recorded music product, with ringtones the only growth area of recent years, of which a great majority of revenue is collected by telecommunications giants like SingTel.

With Apple’s iTunes the biggest retailer of music in the world it does seem incredible that there is not a single territory in South East Asia (including india) in which residents can buy tracks or albums directly via the iTunes store interface. Without an industry authoritative chart it then becomes impossible to use the chart standard on which all other countries measure success, build marketing momentum and drive audience affinity with an artist.

The chart-marketing process is not just used by the record industry. The live touring industry has long relied on it to inform them of the commercial possibilities of an artist in each territory. having tracked illegal music download data in Australia for the last three years, i am convinced that physical sales - combined with airplay data - remain the only true lead indicators of an artist’s potential live- ticketed market. Can a South-East Asian chart be established, even with shared data from companies like SingTel to, at the very least, begin the process of educating new audiences and slowly building a relationship with the emerging middle classes?

Handlin’s success as the Chairman at ARIA over many years must have the big man contemplating what possible tools are at his disposal in the enormous territory he now presides over, and what new tools will need to be developed in order to allow Sony Music (and all artists) to gain a greater profit- share of the consumption of music product in South East Asia.

Back on the homefront, Denis and new ARIA CEO Dan Rosen are undoubtedly working toward a big ARIA Awards for 2011; with Denis back in the Chairmanship and Rosen taking over from Stephen Peach, there is much hope and anticipation of their combined skills producing an awards everyone can be proud of.

Finally, the end of a ten-year-run in breakfast radio for my friend Merrick Watts last Friday cannot pass without much deserved recognition.

I was publishing Revolver magazine in 1997 when Merrick and Rosso first started playing the Harold Park. To have watched their progression: from stand up comic duo, to Triple J jocks, to launching a whole new FM network in Sydney, Merrick’s final show ends an incredible and unmatched decade-long run in FM breakfast radio. For it to have been achieved by a bogan from Melbourne with a weird head, squeaky voice and most un-masculine name says much of his ability to have found great affinity with the geographically dislocated Sydney radio audience.

You are a legend Merrick, congratulations for outlasting and outplaying so many others.