Industry Profile: Larry Weintraub

— By Bob Grossweiner and Jane Cohen

Larry Weintraub, the 33-year-old former vice president of Artist Development/Artist Relations and A&R at A&M Records, spent eight years at the label, where he was instrumental in developing the careers of Sheryl Crow, the Gin Blossoms, Blues Traveler, Soundgarden, MxPx and Dishwalla. He is still passionate about artist development and has created a new venue for himself and partner, Terry Dry, another A&M alum, called Fanscape.

Not unlike many of his industry peers, Larry Weintraub got involved in the music industry while still in high school. At Santa Monica High he started managing bands and put on his first show at the school's Greek Theatre. He went on to manage more local bands in San Diego while he was at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he booked shows for the campus for over three years. Among the bands he booked and promoted were Jane's Addiction, Crowded House, 10,000 Maniacs, Soundgarden, Replacements, Squeeze.

Larry's experience in the music industry encompasses nearly every area including marketing, sales, artist management, production, recording, radio promotion, advertising, and merchandising.

Simultaneous with his A&M employment, Larry was operating a personal management company that oversaw such multi-platinum clients as Korn, the Offspring, and Social Distortion. Larry co-founded Fanscape in 1998 to focus on the need to handle the mail order and fan club businesses that artists rarely have time to develop. As a former artist manager, Larry was frustrated by his own lack of time to focus on these areas. Spotting a large void, he created Fanscape after the closure of A&M Records following Seagram's purchase of PolyGram.

Larry is the two-time recipient of Pollstar's Artist Development Executive of the Year Award, voted on by his music industry peers. He has a degree in Economics from the University of California, San Diego.

Describe Fanscape
The service that Fanscape provides is called Fan Management. When my partner Terry Dry and I started this company nearly three years ago, our goal was to build a company that truly connected the fans with the bands. We both come from Artist Development backgrounds and we spent years trying to help bands keep track of their fans on the way up. We'd give them mailing list sheets, or mailing list cards, and these things would come back and no one would enter them. So, Terry and I started helping bands keep track of these fans and then responding to them. It sounds like common sense but most bands, managers, and labels just can't focus on this. So, we started the company to do just that.

Now we have numerous clients that we assist with this service. Some of our clients are multi-platinum artists and some are just starting out - A Perfect Circle, Smash Mouth, Lit, Eve 6, American HiFi, Sum 41, A*Teens, Weezer, 311, Craig David, Sunshine Anderson, Doyle Bramhall II, and Sheryl Crow.

We're hired by labels, bands, and managers, to manage their fan bases, and to utilize grass roots marketing techniques to inform the fans about new releases, songs on the radio, tour dates, and every other event that an artist is doing.

While at A&M, what was your relationship with booking agencies like?
I had a really good relationship with almost every booking agency. The great thing was that I started at A&M as an assistant. My best friends in the early days at A&M were assistants at many of the agencies. So, a lot of us basically grew up in the business together.

I learned some lessons the hard way too. The main one being, don't do the agent's work. I used to get really caught up in helping our bands. I'd route tours, talk to promoters about availability of their rooms...Not a good idea! A good slap on the hands by a veteran agent set me straight.

Part of the art of working with an agent is getting them to respect you. Many don't like the record companies for obvious reasons. No one likes to get hyped on a project that doesn't stand a chance. You have to be honest and then stand by the artist and the agent. I felt like I built many a strong relationship because of my honesty.

Do you think you would ever get back into managing?
Yes. I actually do some now. Managing is in my blood. I've been doing it for over half my life. I've been lucky in my life to have managed some of the biggest acts in the world. But it's the development process that I love. The two bands I co-manage with my partner, Jillian Newman, are small bands with great loyal fan bases. There is nothing more exciting than watching the band you manage sell out small rooms all over the country. It's like watching a career blossom right in front of your eyes.

Will record companies and promoters ever close their gap?
Well, I think they did for a while and now it might have opened again. That's just because it's really hard for labels to focus on the touring world. They are generally geared towards selling albums. They don't make any money selling seats, just albums.

There was a time when we had budgets to really fund tours and work with promoters on advertising and retail tie-ins. Now those funds are tighter and the artist development departments are spread too thin. My goal at A&M was to make sure that every promoter knew who to call at our label when they needed information, tools, or help. We were focused on breaking bands from the ground up. You won't find too much of that any more. It's sad, but it's all an offshoot of the state of the business.

How do you feel about record companies these days?
If you want to be a huge artist, generally you need the backing of a major record company. Why? Because it is incredibly expensive to get a record on the radio and to get the right price and positioning in retail. For a band to have a hit record on the radio and in the stores, that's an investment of at least $1 million. And that is VERY conservative, it's usually several million. Are there exceptions? Sure. But generally that's what it takes.

Major labels have huge overhead and require huge funds to break artists. Plus, they are owned by major corporations, which need to show growth every quarter, and every year, which is very difficult in an artistic environment. Thus, when people consider them machines that don't develop artists, that's just an offshoot of those huge expenses and structure. Are they evil? No. They are what they are. If you are a band and you want to be signed to a major record label, then you just have to know what you are in for.

The flip side to that is the independent label. There are some really good independent labels out there. These labels often find a niche and learn to market and service their core buying audience. The upside - you get attention and the opportunity to tap into a set audience. The downside ñ low funds mean small chance of major stardom.

What was your master plan in trying to create your department at A&M?
A&M had a great reputation for Artist Development. Though it wasn't always an actual department, there were amazing people at A&M who had basically nurtured artists since the birth of the company. Bob Garcia was the man behind the Police, Styx, and Supertramp long before I got there. When we created the Artist Development department, we did the same thing for artists like the Gin Blossoms, Blues Traveler, Sheryl Crow, and Soundgarden.

Basically, Artist Development was the department that was in charge of handling all the artists that no one knew what to do with yet. It was our job to give them a place to start, or focus on, until a buzz was created and the other departments at A&M could take a story to radio, press, and retail. Much of this was focused around touring. That is usually the way we started new acts, by putting them on the road.

There was no master plan. It was just my personal goal to know every concert promoter, independent retailer, and radio station programmer in the country. I needed to tie them all in to every project we were working on. If the Gin Blossoms were going out on the road, I needed to make sure that their full potential in the market was realized. I needed to coordinate with the promoter to get the ticket price low, and support the date with advertising, and promotions. While they were in town I needed them to visit at least one retail outlet, if not many. And, if possible, I needed them to visit a radio station to do an acoustic performance, or interview. This needed to be done with several bands in multiple cities constantly. Not to mention the most important part, which was to make sure the A&M field staff was adequately prepared with all the relative information for these events.

All I wanted was for A&M to be the best. I never wanted a promoter to claim that they didn't know who to talk to at A&M. I never wanted a band to feel unappreciated. I think we did a good job.

How do you feel about the promoter consolidation?
To me, it's always been about the relationship. I think the world of Paul Tollet at Goldenvoice. If he's being consolidated I don't care. As long as I can work with Paul then I know my artists will be taken care of. Same is true with many of the promoters out there. I'm sure the bigger picture is scary, but I've always been focused on developing artists as opposed to major artists. So, I need to know that the promoters I'm working with can fill the club or the theatre. If promoters become like major record companies and can't focus on the developing business then that could be a problem. But if that happens, then there will be plenty of small promoters that will move their way up, just like independent record companies.

Do you believe there will be a managerial consolidation?
I don't think so. I do know this - there are very few great managers. This is unfortunate but true. The good ones will continue to grow, and in order to grow they will need to hire more managers to expand their companies. To some extent this is consolidation, but not like one company gobbling up another, more a natural growth of a successful company.

What's your reaction to the Napster ruling?
I'm really disappointed in this. Napster is one of the best things to come to the music business in years. It shook up the business, which was overdue. Basically, while all the major record companies battled over who should control what, a 19-year-old kid came up with a music distribution system that 70 million people wanted to use. Now, instead of the music industry saying, "Wow, let's utilize this amazing new format to distribute music, break new artists, and provide new revenue streams to our bottom lines..." they decided to shut it down instead. I don't understand this.

Do I think it is right to give away music? No way. Do I think artists have the right to control how their music is dispersed? Of course. But I also think that a user base of such huge proportions was perfectly set up for the first true music subscription service. See, you can control Napster. Napster sits in one place and gives people the opportunity to trade music. You can charge for this service. Napster was easily on pace to have 100 million users by the end of the year.

If one-fifth of them - 20 million - stayed around when it went to a $5/month subscription price, then that would mean a revenue of $100 million / month and $1.2 billion in the first year of business. Split that up with the artists and the labels and there are hundreds of millions of dollars that don't exist right now. Think about what that could do for labels and artists. I don't understand how you don't give this a shot. It was a gift. Tens of millions of people were already sitting in one place Ö do you know how long it takes to build and manufacture something like that? Imagine the advertising dollars that will have to be spent by the record company versions to build their subscription environments.

Now comes the bigger problem. You strike a big blow to Napster and what happens? Tons of little Napster's start showing up. File sharing networks that don't sit in a central area but on each user's individual computer. How do you shut that down? How do you monetize that? You can't. Basically file sharing will continue and the record companies will have a hard time capitalizing on this.

Favorite industry memory/experience
My favorite memory was standing on stage at Woodstock in 1994 while Green Day was playing. Everyone in the crowd started throwing mud on stage and it turned into this huge mud fight. Billy and Mike from the band were sliding all over the stage and having an amazing time. I was crouched in a corner wearing a rain poncho loving the spectacle and trying not to get pegged with a dirt clod. Ahh, good times.

Best business advice received
I can't put my finger on one specific bit of advice, but I can say that I've had the opportunity to work with some of the smartest music people in the business. I have tons of respect for people like Bob Garcia, Larry Butler, Jim Guerinot, Marc Geiger, all of whom have given me tons of advice over the years.

Industry trends you foresee
The Napster situation should show us all that the power of this business is really in the hands of the public. We've lost sight of what the fans want, meanwhile they tell us every day. Whether it's on the Internet or in a nightclub, we will soon spend a lot more time listening to the public.

Business advice to share
To the artists I say, do it yourself. Make your own albums, book your own shows, design your own t-shirts. Don't expect others to do everything for you. You'll be let down every time. If you know the business then you'll have a better chance of not getting burned. And take your time, there isn't a hurry. Find your audience and nurture it. Your fans will stay around a lot longer if they feel like you care.

To the frustrated industry executives, take a chance. I did. If you work for someone else and you aren't happy then you have no one to blame but yourself. If you've got a good idea, give it a shot.

One more thing - work hard and treat everyone with respect. Sometimes the business doesn't feel like it rewards people for this, but trust me, it does.

First industry job
I managed my first band and promoted my first concert while I was in high school in Santa Monica. My first real industry job was also in high school. I worked at a record store in Westwood, Calif. called Music Plus. I started as a clerk and worked my way up to assistant manager before I went away to college.

Best business decision
Going to work at A&M right out of college. I had opportunities to go into concert promotion, merchandising, and booking. I'm very glad that Jim Guerinot plucked me out and taught me the record company and artist management business.

Worst business decision
I'm sure there are a ton, but I can't remember what they are. I've been very lucky.

Greatest challenge
Starting my own business. It always sounded like a great idea to start my own company, but you never really understand the challenge of paying the bills and keeping employees happy until you do it. But it's working, so I feel like it is all paying off.

Outside of music, what's your passion?
Well, anyone who knows me knows that I'm a die-hard Los Angeles Clippers fan. I inherited the company seats for the Clippers when I was at A&M. Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, who founded A&M, bought season seats right on the floor when the Clippers moved from San Diego to Los Angeles. Over the years they got handed down, until they finally reached me. I've been going to Clippers games for about 10 years. There was a time when I couldn't give those seats away, now my phone is ringing off the hook. We've finally got a great exciting team and I've got the best seat in the house.

Industry pet peeve
People that work in the music business that don't love music. I've seen too many. Once you forget why you got in this business then it's time to get out. Music is one of the best things in the world. It sets moods, conjures memories, and provides the soundtrack to our lives. We're very lucky to work in this business. We should never forget that.

Larry can be reached at 323-851-3267; e-mail: larryw@fanscape.com.