Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur: Origin early 19th cent. (denoting the director of a musical institution): from French, entreprendre, ‘undertake’Gabriel Prokofiev – grandson of the Russian composer Sergei – founded the British label and club-night Nonclassical...

Entrepreneur: Origin early 19th cent. (denoting the director of a musical institution): from French, entreprendre, ‘undertake’

Gabriel Prokofiev – grandson of the Russian composer Sergei – founded the British label and club-night Nonclassical in 2003. With five albums released to date, Nonclassical produces contemporary classical music and invites musicians and producers from different genres – Thom Yorke, Hot Chip, Simon Tong and John Maclean – to remix them. The club-night in London showcases contemporary music being remixed live by DJs. In January, Prokofiev’s Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra won the contemporary classical album of the year at the Independent Music Awards, USA.

At the root of Nonclassical is the concept of presenting contemporary classical music in a ‘non’-classical way. It seemed like an obvious and quite natural idea to me, but somehow not many people have done it in a natural and instinctive way. Nonclassical is a very unique label and brand in the music industry and that uniqueness has been one of the biggest keys to our success.

It is important to have the right people involved in the business. Recruiting label manager David Halliwell three years ago was something I’ll never regret. I wish I’d had an experienced business partner earlier on. His drive and commitment to making everything on the business side move forward, and getting all negotiations done fairly and as water-tight as possible, has made an incredible difference.

I am creatively involved in the product as well as setting-up/owning the business. It is the creative side that fuels my own enthusiasm. Each album becomes a personal project: I stay involved in the process of making it, releasing it and marketing it, and try to keep it true to the concepts behind Nonclassical, but it is still a learning process and we are constantly trying to improve our creative approach.

Word of mouth and the usual social networking sites are the biggest tools in attracting new audiences. Once people have been to a Nonclassical night they usually come again. Online-marketing is very effective – there is a huge audience out there who can be reached directly, but online marketing is very time-consuming. Flyers and posters sometimes feel like a stab in the dark – but you never know who might come across them on street level.

When one of our distributors, Amato, went bankrupt three years ago, that hit us very hard financially, and in the current climate we are continually faced with tough decisions about how much money to invest in each release. Without enough invested in publicity, a new release might not get the exposure it needs to reach its audience and sell enough units. But nowadays people are actually buying less and less music, so sometimes even if an album gets great reviews and media attention that doesn’t necessarily guarantee breaking even!

In the record industry we’d like to see a fairer split on revenues from Apple, Spotify and other companies for downloaded/streamed music. At the moment there is virtually no money to be made by artists on downloads unless they are selling/streaming very large quantities. As the physical product is no doubt soon to disappear, this issue will become more and more heated.

In five years’ time, I would like Nonclassical to be an internationally recognised independent record label, whose new releases are highly anticipated across the globe and whose live events are always sold out. To achieve the renown of legendary labels like WARP or Factory would be amazing. I hope in particular that we will continue to release convention-breaking, innovative music. nonclassical.co.uk

Published on 1 February 2010

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