#11.2.22

NOVEMBER 2, 2022 | BY MARK SUTHERLAND 

[This article originally appeared in the latest (Q3/Q4 2022) issue of MBW’s premium quarterly publication, Music Business UK, which is out now.]

Matt Vines and Louis Tomlinson were sat watching the news.

The  star – who found worldwide fame as part of One Direction – had just  kicked off his 2020 solo world tour in Spain, a moment he’d been waiting  for ever since the band went on hiatus in 2016.

But,  four years after that bulletin broke a million teenage hearts, the  world was changing fast. Tomlinson and his manager watched helplessly  as, one-by-one, all the countries the long-planned tour was due to visit  started shutting down as the coronavirus swept the planet.

“We  had the buses all waiting when we made the call that everybody was  coming home and it was game over,” sighs Vines, two years on. “That was  incredibly devastating. Louis had waited years to do that tour. Coming  out of the band, that was all he wanted to do, because that was his  favourite part of being in One Direction, touring.

“It  was over in a heartbeat,” he adds. “But it took us months to unravel it  all, work out what to do and keep rescheduling and moving things.”

Fast  forward another two-and-a-bit years, however, and the picture looks  different again. After being rescheduled numerous times, Tomlinson’s  2022 world tour – which began playing in smaller theatres – was upgraded  to arenas in many territories, and visited several countries that even  One Direction couldn’t reach.

It  finally wrapped with a stadium date in Milan in front of 35,000  screaming fans. That show sold out in less than 36 hours – a sure sign  that Tomlinson’s career is, once again, only going in, er, one  direction: up.

MBW catches up with Vines,  founder and CEO of Seven 7 Management, at 5.30am New York time, the only  window in his hectic schedule as he and Tomlinson trek across the  States on a whirlwind promotional trail pushing the singer-songwriter’s  forthcoming second album, Faith In The Future, due in November.

So far, Louis has starred on The Late Late Show with James Corden, Good Morning America  and a host of radio and press stops, proving that Harry Styles isn’t  the only One Directioner capable of stopping media traffic Stateside.

And alongside him every step of the way has been Vines, a manager who, on Instagram, bills himself as an ‘amplifier of musicians and occasional  troublemaker’ and is adept at keeping his artists in the spotlight while  he himself remains resolutely in the background.

That’s an art he learned throughout his early career, including a stint at the “Caroline Elleray finishing school” as a BMG Publishing A&R assistant while still at the Liverpool Institute for  Performing Arts. After that, he worked with Estelle Wilkinson as part  of Coldplay’s management team.

“One of the first things  I did was Coldplay at Crystal Palace athletics stadium,” he remembers.  “It was very much an eye-opener, like, this is what you can do. It made  me think, ‘I want to get to this point, but not just walk into it, I  want to do it from the ground up.’”

To that end, he  then went to work with Mark Gillespie at Three Six Zero, where his  alt-rock knowledge perfectly complemented Gillespie’s electronic music  skillset. There, he rose to VP, co-running the UK company, and started  working with synth-pop duo Hurts, still a management client today,  before leaving to set up Seven 7 in 2016.

Seven 7 is  more than just your typical music management company, with interests in  everything from eSports and gaming to digital strategy, social media  management and production/library music. It has a new studio partnership  in Tileyard with Theo Hutchcraft from Hurts, which will allow all Seven  7 clients access to state-of-the-art recording facilities free of  charge, meaning they can develop musically without having to rely on  external financing.

But Vines’ work with Tomlinson remains a key calling card. Tomlinson was  the last 1D-er to release a solo record but, after a couple of early  electronic pop singles and an album, Walls, on Syco, he has now headed down a Britpoppy, alternative route that more accurately reflects his own music tastes.

A  lockdown livestream saw him break records by selling 160,000 tickets  across 110 countries and raise a huge amount of money for charity and  his own road crew. And since life returned to something approaching  normality, Tomlinson has appeared on the cover of Alternative Press magazine and curated his own international Away From Home festival, featuring the indie-rock likes of The Vaccines and Hinds.

Tomlinson’s  festival is now set to be an annual event and, with a new album on BMG  that’s likely to take both label and star to new global heights, it’s  time to finally pin Vines down for a chat…

How did it feel to finally get Louis’ world tour done?

It’s  been a great tour. It’s had its challenges; we were one of the first  world tours to go out in January at the height of the Omicron part of  the pandemic, which was incredibly hard. We put a lot of back-ups in  place, which allowed us to continue without dropping a show, but it was  probably the most stressful touring climate I’ve worked in. And when  you’ve been at home for two years, it was tricky coming back out again  and doing that. But it’s been a great success and all credit to the fans  for turning up as well.

Obviously,  Louis has a huge platform from his One Direction days. But how difficult  is it dealing with the preconceptions that come with that?

We  spend our life slowly re-educating people on who he is, to try and  remove any preconceptions about what he might be, what he wants to do or  even who he is as a person.

The  tour has helped a lot because, as we go round the world, we meet media  and label partners locally who engage with him and come to the show. The  show always gets the same reaction: ‘That’s not what I expected’. So  having the tour before we go into the campaign for the new record has  been really helpful. It’s been a case of slowly opening the doorway to  what he does.

How difficult has it been moving him into a world where he can be on the cover of AP magazine and curate his own festival?

They are things we’re massively proud of on this campaign. Getting the AP  cover felt like a big moment for him, because a lot of the reaction  was, ‘I didn’t expect that’. But actually, when you listen to the music,  it does fit perfectly with that demographic.

I’ve  worked with guitar-based acts for 20 years and one of the biggest  challenges you have with a British guitar-led act is traveling  internationally. To be able to do that with an artist like him, who has  that footprint already and can give you those opportunities globally,  gives you a really exciting platform to build a campaign around.

How do you take his original fanbase with you?

Well, the campaign always starts with the fans. They’re the most important  part of this process. It’s community-led and that very much comes from  Louis. Every night on stage, he says, ‘I need you and you need me’. And  when you’re in the middle of this, you see that as well, it’s very much a  two-way street. So everything we do is geared around what’s good for  the fan experience. There are only so many places we can go on a tour,  but we make sure they feel included on a global level.

The  livestream actually gave us a lot of confidence on pushing the  capacities in some territories. It really helped with some of our  promoter conversations as well. One suggested we should come and play a  3,000-cap venue. We shared the livestream data and said, ‘Look, we think  you’re really under-estimating this’. We ended up selling 20,000  tickets in that city.

Is it difficult facing comparisons to One Direction’s achievements?

We  don’t really compare to what One Direction did. What Louis does and the  music he makes is very different from any other members of the band,  and indeed the band’s music. So it’s less of a comparison and more that  it’s helpful to us. We use the data from what he did in One Direction,  look at the activations they did and how they ran their campaigns and  use elements of that which we feel will work within his campaigns. It  gives us a healthy understanding of the audience.

How about the comparisons with the other members?

You  do get it and he gets asked about it quite a lot. What Harry’s achieved  is absolutely phenomenal this year, you can’t deny it’s absolutely  incredible. But that’s exciting – and it shows the power of the fanbase.  That’s one thing that Louis has and the band had – the audience is  incomparable to anything that I’ve ever seen.

With  every promoter we’ve ever worked with, we say, ‘You’re going to have to  prepare for this, because the fans will be there a week before the  show, we have to put on facilities and security – you’re not ready for  what’s going to happen here’. And every time they say, ‘Yes we are’ and  afterwards they go, ‘Holy shit, we didn’t expect that to happen’!  There’s a duty of care that comes with that that we put a lot of time  into.

Does Louis actually want that 1D-style mania now?

Absolutely,  he loves it. But he’s definitely got an executive head on him. Within  One Direction, his role was not only chief songwriter, he was also the  decision-maker. That’s something he wants to employ going forward,  whether it be managing artists or from a label perspective and those are  all things we’re looking at doing.

With  launching the festival last year and expanding it this year, we’ve seen  an interesting opportunity where we could help new British acts and  give them a platform they wouldn’t traditionally get.

BMG has had huge success with older artists. What made you sign with them?

BMG  was an exciting choice, because Louis didn’t want to do the  conventional major label deal set-up that he was used to before, coming  out of Syco. What took us about BMG is that it’s very much a  partnership. With the way the deal’s structured, we’d go into this  campaign where we have complete creative control and essentially control  over the entire campaign on a global level.

They  work with us as partners and with an artist like him, who is so global,  having complete oversight over the whole campaign has allowed us to be  quite nimble.

We  can adapt the campaign on a granular level within various territories –  that’s tricky to do within major label deal constructs. It’s the  biggest thing that BMG have done, it’s their global priority and it’s  been great working with them on that level.

Is it difficult to keep such a low profile when you work with such a high-profile artist?

I’ve  always had the mentality that I let the artist do the talking, that’s  what people want to see. But there’s an interesting side to it that  people don’t really know about, it’s a fascinating project to work on.  People don’t see the intensity of the demand and the audience – the  chaos, essentially, everywhere we go.

One Direction fans can be very vocal online about the people who work with their idols…

It’s  water off a duck’s back for me, I don’t really pay attention to it.  Obviously it’s there, and I do spend a lot of time talking to my team  and the people who work on the project on what to expect, because it is  different from what you might have seen before. It can be positive and  it can be negative, so it’s just something to be prepared for.

What made you want to start Seven 7?

The  reason that I did it, and what I’ve tried to instil as we’ve grown, is  very much the feeling of a boutique operation, where we work as a team.  When we do company calls, be it about Louis, Hurts (pictured) or anyone  we represent, everyone has the opportunity to input on how those  campaigns work. We have actually taken things we’ve done with Hurts and  applied them with Louis, it’s interesting the effect you get – we  essentially move as a unit around the different campaigns.

As well as very successful artists, you’re also involved in the less glamorous world of production music…

That  was something borne out of the pandemic. We spotted there were huge  opportunities in that area. ASMR music [Autonomous Sensory Meridian  Response sounds that help listeners relax] is one of the fastest-growing  areas of playlisting with Spotify.  So, throughout the pandemic, we formed partnerships with a lot of music  makers to release that music, whether it be white noise or nursery  rhymes. What struck me is when you see a white noise tune on Spotify  with 300m plays. That was a bit of an eye-opener so. At that point I was  like, ‘We should be doing this’.

What’s your management philosophy?

It  would be lovely to do a deal, take a big advance and spend three years  developing an act, but the business doesn’t work that way anymore. It’s  all-encompassing.

I have  this conversation with all the artists I work with, the idea of a  ‘manager-artist relationship’ is a bit outdated and, actually, we’re  simply partners in running a business. It’s a very transparent  partnership and, when you put that mindset on things, it gives you the  opportunity to do things differently. Louis has done everything and he  knows how the business works; he’s incredibly intelligent and street  smart.

Same  with the Hurts boys, we’ve done this for nearly 15 years now and  they’re very well-educated on how the business works. So it’s very much a  partnership and, at times, about keeping the train on the tracks.  You’re 50% business manager, 50% social worker!

If you could change one thing about today’s music industry, right here and now, what would it be and why?

I’d  allow visa-free entry to major touring markets for artists performing  smaller shows. In particular, the US and now Europe as we are seeing the  effects of Brexit, so we can aid the promotion of international touring  businesses for UK-based artists who don’t all have the benefit of major  label tour support.

And I’d remove  default merchandise concessions at venues. The concept that venues take a  gross percentage of an artist’s merch sales for no input, when the  venue is already being hired for a fee, and keep all food and drinks  sales, is outdated. When you take into consideration that a lot of acts  are subsidising their touring losses via merch, and the manufacture and  delivery costs for those items are going up, it’s just putting more  financial pressure on the artist.

What’s the proudest moment in your career so far?

More  than anything, I’m proud of working with artists where – and I’ve seen  this with Hurts and Louis – you sit with them and have a simple  conversation at the start of everything: ‘What do you want to do? Where  do you see this going? What do you want out of this? What do you want to  achieve?’

When I met Hurts (pictured), they had nothing. They used to get the Megabus to London overnight, put their second-hand suits on and we’d go and take  label meetings. I remember them editing demos in my flat in London and I  gave them money for a loaf of bread and a Pot Noodle.

And  seeing them now, five albums in, they’ve got a multinational arena  touring business and are well-respected musicians with a long-term  career. Do they still eat Pot Noodles? I don’t know, maybe!

And what’s been the biggest challenge?

One  of the biggest challenges currently is the well-being of artists and  the demand on artists through social media. As a manager, you see the  effect of that first-hand. It’s something we all need to be aware of,  and have best practices and duty of care in place for, because it’s easy  to see those demands consume artists.