2 MusicWeek 28.06.13 NEWS
‘Every penny really makes a difference’ GUEST EDITORIAL
Neil Warnock, Founder and Worldwide President of the Agency Group, has been supporting music therapy charity Nordoff Robbins since its inception. As the 38th O2 Silver Clef Awards ceremony arrives this Friday (June 28), he gives an insight into why he feels so passionately about one of the music industry’s favourite charities...
I’VE BEEN SUPPORTING Nordoff Robbins since the start. I initially became involved in backing the first Silver Clef lunch in 1976 after Andrew Miller and Dave Dee convinced me of the amazing work of the charity - and I’ve been hooked ever since. Nordoff Robbins’ work has grown enormously over the last 40 years. Back when I
first got involved, they worked just with children – but now they also work with thousands of adults too. They raise £3 million annually to fund their music therapy services and are lucky enough to receive support from across the music industry. I sit on the O2 Silver Clef Awards Committee of 13 that represents a cross-section of the music industry from agents to labels, promoters to publicists and is chaired by David Munns. The 2013 Silver Clef Awards take place on Friday (June 28) at the London Hilton on Park Lane. Pre-announced award winners are Alison Balsom, Alison Moyet, Barry Gibb, Coldplay, The Clash, Ray Davies, Vampire Weekend and Labrinth. A whole load of other famous faces will be in the room too, including senior members of the music industry. It is a really incredible event which pays tribute to the work of Nordoff Robbins in using
music to give something back. This is the 38th Awards ceremony, and to date, the event has raised an incredible £8 million for the charity.
High Fidelity Pure Audio can be
“I have always been inspired by the work of Nordoff Robbins. It is not easy to explain how powerful music therapy can be, but it’s important the music industry gives something back”
I have always been moved and inspired by Nordoff Robbins’ work. It is not easy to
explain what music therapy is or how powerful it can be - conveying the importance of their work is one the charity’s biggest challenges. The best way to understand it is to see their work for yourself, or to hear a parent talk about their child’s music therapy. At last year’s Silver Clef Awards we heard from Sherrie, the mother of Declan. Declan was three when they found out he had a rare type of cancer. He spent several months at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and whilst there he had music therapy from a Nordoff Robbins therapist which his parents described as a “dream come true”. Declan really loved music. Tragically, he died but his mum spoke at the Awards last
year about music therapy being the one thing that helped his parents to remember “their happy, lively little boy”. She said that it gave Declan a chance to “express his feelings, escape from his illness and cope with what he was going through”. Cases like this that demonstrate how amazing Nordoff Robbins’ work is and how music can really help like nothing else can. As well as being part of the Silver Clef Committee, I chair the committee for the
Nordoff Robbins boxing fundraiser. Frank Warren is putting on this year’s event, which takes place on October 7. The fighters and titles will be announced later in the summer at a press conference. All the money raised goes to Nordoff Robbins. I have attended hundreds of Nordoff Robbins fundraising events and heard
from many parents about how music therapy helped their kids and provided a lifeline when nothing else could. Coming together as an industry, I think we owe it to this charity and their thousands of clients to continue supporting their incredible work and to help them use music to give something back. I got married in May: my wife Christa and I asked all our guests to donate to Nordoff
Robbins in lieu of gifts. We were overwhelmed by their generosity and I know the money raised will make a massive difference to the charity. I know the charity would be made up if anyone else wanted to choose to give in this way or in any other way. They are not a big organisation, so every penny really makes a difference.
Do you have views on this column? Feel free to comment by emailing
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intentmedia.co.uk
played on any Blu-ray player or PS3 console and will launch in the UK before September after a pilot in France. “There is no product like this,” said
Olivier Robert Murphy – global head of new business at Universal Music Group and chairman of the High Fidelity Pure Audio Industry Group. “High Fidelity Pure Audio allows
music lovers to experience the work of artists in a way that has never before been possible. The format will appeal firstly to those people who have an expensive hi-fi system at home - and there are a lot of them - so you start with a niche and then you extend to the mass market because the sound is so good.” Releases are created from studio master recordings at a minimum of 24bit/96kHz
Germany and 32% in the US. Pure Audio will also be brought to Japan, Germany and the US in the coming months. Last year, The Rolling Stones album Grrr! was released in Pure Audio format (as well as standard) in the UK and has sold 1,926 copies so far. It was priced £12 at Amazon.
Most discs offer an option to download the same content in either FLAC lossless or MP3 digital formats – but the compressed format means the file loses that ‘pure’ quality. One song in Pure Audio format is the
size of around 1GB (1000MB). A standard MP3 download is around 3MB. That size, however, means that the format is unlikely to appeal to a mass market anytime soon as broadband speeds and mobile phone memory capacity remain limited.
New Warner/Chappell signing
Warner/Chappell UK has signed a publishing deal with London Grammar. The Brit trio consists of vocalist Hannah Reid, guitarist Dan Rothman and instrumentalist Dot Major. Their debut offering Hey Now achieved
over 260,000 plays on SoundCloud and the resulting online hype led to radio support from the likes of Zane Lowe, Gilles Peterson and Annie Mac. This was followed by debut EP Metal & Dust in
February, which received its first play on Radio 1 as Lowe’s ‘Hottest Record’. Richard Manners, MD
Warner/Chappell UK said: “We haven’t fallen so deeply in love with a band for a long time and we are so thrilled to be working them and with Big Life.” London Grammar released EP Wasting
My Young Years via Metal & Dust Recordings on June 16. They also feature on Disclosure’s No.1 album Settle.
Industry heads back Pure Audio
BLU-RAY HQ FORMAT TO LAND IN THE UK
AUDIO BY RHIAN JONES
S
enior music industry execs have formed a group to drive the development of the Pure Audio listening format – which allows fans to listen to music in ‘recording studio’ quality. Universal Music Group, Warner Music
Group, LSO (London Symphony Orchestra) Live, Dolby, Bang & Olufsen, Bose, Metropolis and more have joined together to support the format, produced directly from original studio master recordings.
digital high definition, compared to 16bit/44kHz with CDs, and then encoded in three lossless formats: Uncompressed PCM, DTS HD Master Audio and Dolby® TrueHD. The sound quality is ‘a ten’ says Murphy, where mastered for iTunes is a ‘five/six’ and standard MP3 files are a ‘two’. According to research undertaken by
Universal Music Group’s Insight team last year, the proportion of music consumers who said they were fairly, very or extremely likely to buy a high definition format audio product within the following six months was 21% in the UK, 28% in France, 31% in
[L-R] Laurent Villaume, QOL; Olivier Robert Murphy; Jonathan Jowitt, Dolby; Jim Bottoms, High Fidelity Pure Audio Industry Group
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