Google player: YouTube’s Helen Marquis
combination of the two has been a great formula for me for this year.”
Why are so many British executives doing well in the US at the moment?
“I guess it’s because we’ve got experience in markets beyond the US. The US is such a huge market that there is a potential mentality that the world begins and ends there. Whereas I’ve worked in markets like Japan, India and all across Europe. There are artists that are absolutely massive in their local market but not even registering in the US. Look at the sales on Johnny Hallyday in France. He in one country has outsold the Drake album!”
What do you miss about the UK biz?
“Well, the weather is definitely better in California! But I love the family feel of the UK industry. You know everyone, you go to shows and you always see people you know. That’s harder in the US with it being spread between LA, New York, Miami and Nashville. Plus you’d go to a meeting back in the day in Kensington and you’d bump into people outside the tube station. You’d always leave a little time in between your meetings because you’re bound to bump into someone you know and have a chat. I do miss that.”
Was your first job in indie retail a good grounding for what you do now?
“Yes, because anyone who is in the business of promoting any kind of music service to anyone, be it selling CDs, selling vinyl or promoting a streaming service, you need to know who your customers are. A lot of people tend to be a bit sniffy about popular music and actually understanding that audience is where a lot of us get our money from. [You have to] understand that there are people who will be obsessed with Justin Bieber, just as there are people who will be obsessed with Bonnie Prince Billy. Knowing how diverse the audience is is a real founding in really knowing your user when you get to a streaming service. When I worked in Number Nineteen, it was the summer of Bryan Adams’ (Everything I Do) I Do It For You and, in Guernsey, stock has always been hard to get. All we had left was the 12” vinyl and people were so desperate to own that song they were like, ‘We’ll take whatever format you have’. That obsession with a song is something never to be missed. You see it in the listening patterns today, people play the same song over and over again.”
Moving to Amazon’s fledgling operation from HMV was a bold move. Had you spotted how things were moving? “To an extent, yeah. But I think it was more pre-millennium fever. My parents had both died in the mid-to-late ’90s and I decided I needed to get a more regular job then just working in the shop. I went to speak with the guy at Amazon and I did see the convenience of online retail because I thought, ‘Well, I know I’d use this because I work 9-5, a lot of people do’. I saw the whole convenience of having things delivered to your door and thought, ‘There must be something in this’. But it was a super-risky time to make the jump. Someone even wrote on my leaving card from HMV, ‘You’ll be back’! [Laughs] It was the era of the dot bomb, we had
Bol.com and Jungle, that were both operating as I joined Amazon. Watching both of them go under, there was a slight undercurrent for all of us of ‘Are we next?’ But obviously, Amazon connected and has been an absolutely phenomenal success story. It’s still kind of crazy, how big they got, so quickly.”
You then worked at
Play.com, which ultimately didn’t work, before joining Google Play...
“I had a baptism of fire at Google! We launched a movie offering to Japan in my first week. Everyone was like ‘Oh, hi. We’d like you to sort out movies in Japan’. I managed to work
musicweek.com
my way through that. That’s how we do things: give people impossible tasks and they deliver! (Laughs)”
In your previous jobs, you had great relationships with the industry. Was joining Google, which hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with the biz, more difficult?
“Not at all. There was a huge amount of excitement previously about Google Play Music and now about YouTube Music and the potential, I think everybody sees that. It’s going to be an incredibly exciting time both for us and the industry in general. We are working super-closely with them, launching a whole lot of new products so that they can get more value out of YouTube and it really demonstrates our commitment to growth. There are two parts of the business now [free and subscription], both of which we’re invested in. The industry wants us to succeed so it’s a really exciting time. People want another player in the market and they genuinely feel that, with YouTube as a format, we can succeed and be a really significant player.”
Can you really compete with the established subscription streaming services?
“There are enough people out there who haven’t even tried a subscription yet. We’re looking at people who use YouTube and haven’t necessarily committed to a subscription service yet. There is a huge audience of people who are yet to embrace digital and the product we have will hopefully appeal to a different sector. There is room for everyone to grow but also for us to actually corner our own sector of the market.”
Tech has a reputation for being male-dominated... “Actually, my career has been spent surrounded by men until I got to YouTube! Google in general has a lot of strong female leaders. But, if I think about the retail sector, it would always just be pretty much me and Mel [Armstrong] from HMV at all of the events. My dad was a huge [Henry David] Thoreau reader, and one of his favourite quotes was about hearing a different drummer [“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer”]. That’s kind of how my life has been! It was like, ‘I’m clearly the only one here of my kind, but is that actually the end of the world? I love what I’m doing and I love music’. But it’s great that the diversity is starting to come through. We should be a reflection of the people who actually listen to music and that is starting to happen now.”
You work a lot with video at YouTube. How do you feel about sexist music videos?
“We represent the audience that we have and that is how some artists choose to represent themselves. Is it still necessary in this day and age? I honestly don’t know. It’s interesting, there are a couple of senior record execs who have said to me, they sit in meetings now and another video comes on with the scantily clad women, and they have been thinking, ‘This is getting a little tired’. It is going to be interesting to see how the industry changes on this one. Do the artists feel they need to still represent themselves that way, or are there going to be more people like Adele who don’t find it necessary to take their clothes off to be successful?”
So, will you be staying at YouTube for the long haul or is your sixth sense telling you to move on to the next format? “(Laughs) Who knows what the future holds but, right now, I am incredibly happy where I am. I work with an amazing team, for an amazing company, so I’m hoping that will continue. I only tend to get itchy feet when I get a bit bored, and I have certainly not been bored the whole time I’ve been at Google, from the Google Play expansion to YouTube Music increasing its footprint. So, yeah, as long as people keep me interested, they’ve got me committed.”
12.11.18 Music Week | 29
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64
