Scruffy Bird

Interview with Duncan

- Can you tell us a little bit about the history of Scruffy Bird and what the concept behind it is?

D: The company was set up four and a half years ago by myself and two other business partners, Emily Cooper and Laura Martin. We are all friends and had all worked in the music industry straight after college, doing retail, distribution and promotion for various record labels. Eventually, we got to a point where we thought that we had enough experience, collectively-speaking, to set up our own company. We did our research on what was going on currently, on the business side of music. There seemed to be separate companies for Press, Radio, TV and Management and we thought we could combine them all into one company. We also saw that within the Press companies that there would be one that specialised only in Rock and another in purely Pop music and so on and so forth.

As we all had such a diverse range of music that we listened to, we didn’t want to confine ourselves to specialise in just one type of music and instead, try to promote music that we actually love and listen to.

- You have a management side and a PR side to your firm; are they run as two separate entities?

D: Everything we do comes under the umbrella of Scruffy Bird, even though they may have different facets and are autonomous, it all is branded as Scruffy Bird. Each one of us looks after a certain aspect of the whole company but on a Monday morning, we will come together to have a meeting and discuss all the different business points.

- What artists have you signed so far and why did Scruffy Bird choose them?

D: All the acts that are signed to our Management label have been acts that we have worked with for years. So far, the artists we have, certainly define us in terms of what we do and I think we have been lucky to find some unsigned acts and been given the opportunity to work with and help them to develop. At the moment, we are managing The Rumble Strips, The Foals and Young Knives. We chose The Foals, for example, because we felt that they are trying to bridge the gap between intelligent rock music and intelligent dance music. Other bands have tried and failed and for me personally, I don’t think it has been done well until now, by anybody since The Prodigy’s “Jilted Generation” album.

Youtube : The Young Knives - Here Comes The Rumour Mill

- How closely do you work with the bands? Are you on the phone with them everyday?

D: Very much so. We find that when you are in a market where you have to challenge big management labels like D.E.F. management and Rough Trade, it pays to have that personal touch as opposed to being a powerful, faceless corporation. Obviously, you don’t want to get too close to the bands, personally, as they should always be able to speak to you about professional issues and their careers without feeling uncomfortable. There needs to be a line but our relationships are definitely close; my phone is never turned off and if they need to contact me at 10pm on a Saturday night then they can as I want to be able to help them to develop as much as possible. Through this we can create a trust and respect for each other.

Youtube : The Rumble Strips - Motorcycle

- On the PR side of Scruffy Bird, what do you do to promote your bands?

D: The PR side of the business is mainly based on domestic campaigns. As well as our managed artists we also handle PR for many other artists and record labels. We deal with the national press, whether it is the style magazines, the broadsheet papers or the tabloids. We also deal with the TV and radio stations too, trying to get play-time for the bands, radio-sessions & interviews; basically doing whatever it takes to get them on the air in some way. It’s hugely competitive, but if you do manage to get a result, it is usually heavily rewarding. Luckily, having both management and PR sides in Scruffy Bird means we can fully control the PR for Young Knives, The Rumble Strips and Foals and we don’t have to rely on anyone else.

Youtube : Foals - Hummer

- On a more personal note, what are your feelings about the current UK music scene?

D: A lot of the time, I don’t feel inspired but that could be because I’m not looking hard enough. I am not trying to be biased but I feel that the bands that Scruffy Bird work with, both as management and as PR, tend to be some of the more exciting musicians in the UK at the moment. As a manager of three bands, I also tend to just focus on them a lot and I don’t have a great desire to look elsewhere for other unsigned bands.

Business-wise, the music industry is changing. I have a feeling that it is shifting back towards managers with bands. It’s definitely getting harder and harder to run a record label and be able to make money through sales as the margins are getting smaller. There is now a shift towards digital sales and I think in the next 5-10 years, picking up a CD at a store will be a hard thing to do.

- What are the future plans for Scruffy Bird?

D: I think that we will be definitely looking more at getting stuck into online PR as it is a huge area and has been growing in the last few years. We may join up with another online PR firm and work together on strategic marketing or we may employ someone in-house to try and head up a new online PR department within Scruffy Bird. Also, as we already have the infrastructure in place, we would like to open offices around the world and possibly start up a new, purely digital music label. We want our current bands and any new ones to be able to get a decent amount of exposure, not only on a domestic level but internationally instead.

Scruffy Bird : www.scruffybird.com

Written by Selph