Producer Manager - Stephen Budd

Stephen Budd, Managing Director of Stephen Budd Management, part of the Mama / Channelfly Group of companies in London. SBM is Europe's largest producer management company representing many of the most successful and influential producers, songwriters, mixers, engineers and programmers from Europe and the USA.

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When did you start working as a Producers’ Manager?
I started managing record producers in 1985. Just up the road from here, in Dean Street in Soho. I managed an American producer called Tony Visconti who was David Bowie’s producer. He was the first producer that I took on. At the time, the idea of managing producers was quite foreign concept and record companies hadn’t quite got their heads around it. But they soon did and I’ve been doing it ever since.

What do you do - what’s your typical day?
I’m the MD of Stephen Budd Management / record-producers.com which manages producers, songwriters and programmers so, in that role I’m responsible, with my team of people, for trying to find the right work for the producers that we manage. We then introduce them to the artists and try to set up the actual recording projects; negotiating the deals for them, working out what the budgets are going to be, the contractual details - what royalties are going to be paid and when etc, when and where the recording procedure is going to happen, which studios are going to be used, whether they need other musicians or arrangers – just generally all about the business of record production.

How does it differ from a record company?
We’re at the coal-face of making records. We get hired by the record companies who are looking for the right producer to work with their artist. We find them for the companies and organise all of the technical aspects of the actual recording process. Quite often if an artist is looking for songs, we manage songwriters who are pitching songs specifically for those artists in the hope that they’re going to record them. We’ll earn money from the publishing as well then, but our guys will also often end up producing them so we’re very much about being in the studio.

What made you go into Producer Management?
I was running a recording studio in Soho, Good Earth and it was one of the first SSL recording studio sin the world (which is a computerised desk). It was really, really expensive to run that studio and I thought ‘How am I going to keep this studio busy 30 days a month?’ I thought if I can influence producers to come and work in that studio by managing them and finding them work, that’s going to keep the studio busy. And very soon the whole business model flipped around completely and it was more important for me to manage the producers than it was for me to manage the studio. So I found about seven or eight producers and went off and started marketing them and selling their services to record companies.

What was your first break, and did you need any experience?
I started when I was 15 as a roadie for Motorhead at their first ever gig ! I continued roadie-ing until I was about 19 or 20 when I started a little label, putting out my own records. Some of the majors wanted to get involved with some of those bands so I sold them the recording rights and started managing the bands instead. When I needed a producer for one of the bands, the first person I thought of was Tony Visconti, so that’s how we started our relationship. Eventually he asked me to manage him so one thing led to another, led to another, led to another until I thought ‘Wait a minute – I’ve got an idea for a business here’, and I put that into practice in the late 80s. It’s continued to this day

What was your best day on the job?
Of course, when you have your first number one record that’s a really special day, and that’s happened quite a few times. When we had our first number one record in America it was particularly exciting. The excitement of these things doesn’t last a long time but it’s a wonderful thing to have done. I can remember back to when we’ve had really big records – Dido, Madonna – when something you’re involved with blows up worldwide, that’s a really wonderful experience. Knowing that if you had not been there to introduce that person to that producer or that songwriter to that artist then that piece of music would not have been created. And when that goes on to be a worldwide hit, like say ‘White Flag’ for Dido, it gives you a certain sense of satisfaction.

What’s been your worst day?
Worst days on the job are if a recording project that you set up goes badly wrong – if the artist freaks out and doesn’t get on with the producer and you’re having to find out what the problem is – and hopefully deal with it. Luckily that doesn’t happen often, and when they do they can usually be dealt with sensibly. But sometimes artists - and producers - can be unpredictable and if they go off the deep end, that can lead to a serious amount of mess that has to be cleared up. You have a lot of people involved in planning, working on the recording and the studio’s booked, and people have flown in from around the world and occasionally when the artist doesn’t turn up or throws a wobbly… it’s not a good day at the office.

If you had any handy tips for young people who wanted to do your job, what would they be?
I was desperate to be involved in music – I had to be in one way or another, there was nothing else I wanted to do with my life and there was a passion that had to be expressed. So I’m not quite sure what I’d be doing if I didn’t do this. But in terms of getting into the business these days, it’s really about making yourself indispensable, I think. Students are always looking for work experience placements and of course that’s a great way to start. A lot of the people we’ve gone on to employ full time in our group of companies – and it’s quite a big group, about ten companies now - have come out of doing work experience with us over their summer holidays or at college. The people we hire end up being management assistants, then they take on their own clients. It’s about commitment and it’s about willingness to learn. And it’s about passion. I would say that if you don’t have a passion for music, an absolute heart-throbbing passion for music, don’t even begin to think about going into this business because you will be cut down painfully and very quickly, or painfully and very slowly…... which is worse.

How did the advent of digital in music change things for you?
Music is the thing that makes me get out of bed in the morning (that and cereal!). It’s the thing that touches me the most. I can probably think of ten pieces of music that will actually send shivers down my spine and cause tears to roll down my face – that’s how much music means to me. It’s a privilege to be involved in making it on a day-to-day basis. It’s a privilege for anyone in this industry to earn a living making music. The living for me comes second and the music comes first.

How did the advent of digital in music change things for you?
The impact of the digital world has been very, very dramatic. A simpler example is not receiving CDs in the post any more, just receiving mp3s. But also it has enabled, in our corner of the business, a lot easier access to musicians from across the world, allowing them to interact with each other. We can send files across to America instantaneously, and they’ll come back the next day completely transformed. For us this was a radical, radical change, especially if you’re dealing with record company or A&R people on the other side of the world who want to hear mixes in progress. Obviously this has become something that we’re used to these days. In terms of the economy of the production, it has had an impact. Budgets are a lot less than they were 10 years ago. Having said that, even though music can be made more cheaply and you don’t need big fancy recording studios, you still need the talent of the songwriter and the producer in order to be able to make a really wonderful record. That’s never going to go away.