In 2009, when Believe opened its first London office in Parsons Green, the UK music industry was a very different place.
Then-MD Stephen King and his team of three joined a world where physical music still provided the lion’s share of recorded music revenues, where there was no TikTok, no Instagram, no Apple Music and where Spotify had only just launched.
Yet Believe, um, believed in digital so much that back then it even had the word ‘Digital’ in its company name.
And, over the subsequent decade-and-a-half, the French-owned company has both benefitted from, and hugely influenced the changing landscape.
Over the years, everyone from Bastille to Lizzo, Mura Masa to Razorlight, and Cat Burns to Orbital have been involved with one aspect or another of Believe UK’s many business strands, along with such storied labels as Nuclear Blast, Black Butter, Bella Union, Southern Fried, Hospital, Communion and CR2.
Fifteen years and two offices later – Believe UK’s staff of 60 will soon move to its fourth home in King’s Cross, next to Google, Facebook and Universal – the company has quietly established itself as an absolute mainstay of the music business.
Believe UK has often preferred to fly quietly under the radar, at least in comparison to its high-profile French parent company.
But that’s changing, with the UK operation recently driving huge success for the likes of Sevdaliza (whose Alibi track was one of TikTok’s songs of the summer); Novo Amor (the Welsh singer- songwriter has cruised past two billion global streams); Sea Girls (who scored a Top 5 album in June with Midnight Butterflies) and many more.
Its business now encompasses everything from DIY artist platform TuneCore to Sentric Music Publishing, via distribution and label and artist services. And, after 15 years and with its future secured with founder Denis Ladegaillerie taking the company private three years after it was listed on Paris’ Euronext stock market – Believe UK is ready to make some noise.
To that end, MBW gathered three key Believe UK executives – Ben Rimmer (a 12-year veteran), Malena Wolfer (eight-and- a-half years) and UK boss Alex Kennedy (a mere two-and-a- half years) – to celebrate the company’s anniversary and look to its future.
Malena Wolfer, Director Of Artist Services
You joined Believe in 2016 from Sony Music. What made you want to switch?
On a personal level, it was progression. Majors are very set in their leadership structures. I was excited to be given an opportunity to step into a leadership role, and to be with a company that’s super digital-focused. Believe has been a game-changer for my career. It’s been eight-and-a-half years of uninterrupted fun.
Why has Believe UK been so successful?
We’ve always worked very hard under the radar and made sure that it was sustainable in the way we signed artists and labels; we always provide the right level of service to the right artists. We don’t oversell and under-deliver.
What have been your personal highlights?
Knucks. Craig Evans, our head of hip-hop, was instrumental in signing him really early on, working him on the distribution side and giving him the time to develop and find his own fanbase, then seeing that growth being developed over a number of years by teams across distribution and artist services. Getting the No.3 album [2022’s Alpha Place] and co-winning album of the year at the MOBOs was a real highlight.
Knucks
Also, Novo Amor, the Welsh singer-songwriter, who we signed all the way back in 2017, has been an absolute dream of a campaign to work. When you sign a Welsh singer-songwriter, you don’t necessarily envisage him selling out shows in Brazil, China and all over the world. But that’s what we’ve achieved and that’s testament to focusing on local artists and building them into global powerhouses.
How important is artist services to Believe?
It’s the highest level of service. We’re always monitoring any artist that is within the Believe system, whether that’s on distribution or TuneCore, championing them from where we are.
It’s just a joy to work with artists at this level because, by the time they join the artist services department, they have developed a really good understanding of what needs to be done to get to this level. It allows us to work with artists as a partner rather than as someone bossing them around.
What are artists looking for when they come to you?
A home and a team – and that’s what we give them. We want to be a partner, we want to be the team they can rely on. We’re not the kind of partner who will dictate the release date or which single is being released, these are artist-friendly deals and that’s how we work with artists and their managers.
Has the success of Raye raised expectation levels around services deals?
Everyone always wants the highest level of success they can achieve. But artists and managers are very well aware that you can’t copy someone else’s success. It always needs to feel authentic to the artist you’re working with.
So I wouldn’t necessarily say that expectations have been raised. What the success of Raye has done is show what is possible within an independent deal and with an independent team. It doesn’t always need to be within a traditional label set-up.
Post AWAL’s acquisition by Sony, and Universal’s investment in [PIAS], does anyone still care about independence?
To many artists and managers, it really is important to be independent. That’s why they come and speak to us.
The acquisition of AWAL and the investment from Universal into [PIAS] has made a massive difference to us, because we are essentially one of the last few, if not the only, big global player that’s fully independent.
[Artists] have seen what happened between TikTok and Universal this year. It might feel more like a conversation topic between managers and labels, but when it impacts the artist day-to-day on their social media profiles, it becomes clear what might be at stake and what the advantages of independence might be.
Where do you want Believe to be in another 15 years?
We are very ambitious and hungry for more success. We really want to develop more artists to local and global superstars and make sure that we continue to champion artists and labels across all areas of our business.
You worked with One Direction at Sony. Could Believe do an act like that?
Of course! With the right artist and with the right team, anything is possible.
Ben Rimmer, Regional Director, UK, Northern Europe & Australia
Were you expecting to stay so long when you joined Believe UK?
It was around the time when HMV went bust for the first time. HMV has come back and done really well, but it was a pretty clear decision between what felt like the old world and Believe, who were all-in on digital. I was choosing the future at that point, so it felt like I could and would be there for a long time.
Did you think it would become as big as it is now?
I had no idea, but Denis [Ladegaillerie] has always had that mindset. Even when I joined, we were already big in France, Germany and Italy. That ambition that Denis had, the belief we could be as big as the majors, was always there.
Why has Believe UK been so successful?
We’ve got a very solid tech base – everything works very well and we have the global footprint.
The competition may have burned very brightly for a period and then sold, whereas we’ve been very consistent as we’ve grown. We haven’t tried to sign everything and be everything to everyone.
“We haven’t tried to sign everything and to be everything to everyone. We’ve really focused on what we’re good at.”
We’ve really focused on what we’re good at. We could have gone much bigger, much faster, but it would not have been a profitable or a sensible way to do business.
There was a famous quote from Denis saying, ‘We don’t do stupid deals’ – and that’s been our mantra.
What have been your personal highlights?
There are two right now that I’m extremely proud of. One is Sevdaliza (pictured), who I signed out of the Netherlands in 2022. She’s currently having a huge global Spotify hit [Alibi]. That project would have taken a lot longer to grow and break in the major system.
The other is Royel Otis, who I signed three years ago on their first single. They’ve been able to build as an Australian artist from zero to where they are now, pretty much the biggest new streaming band in the world with a huge, growing fanbase.
Sevdaliza
That’s a really great modern story because, historically, a guitar band would not have streamed and would have taken way longer to develop. We’ve been able to grow extremely strong numbers, editorial and algorithmic success, and big virality out of TikTok, but they’ve also been built in a very traditional way at live, press, radio and media.
What we want to do now to completely prove our model is to retain it long-term and take them to true global stardom. That’s our big final challenge to show that we can do what the majors havedone.
How about British artists?
We’ve taken Novo Amor (pictured) to an extremely high level and one that’s really interesting is Wunderhorse, with Communion.
I took Communion out of the Universal system four years ago and the idea with that was not to do what happened with Catfish And The Bottlemen, where Communion found it, developed it and upsold it into the Universal system.
With Wunderhorse and their other artists, the idea is to develop it long-term independently and retain it in Communion and Believe.
How did you manage to persuade Communion to leave Universal and join Believe?
I was their label manager at Proper 13 years ago. It took me eight to 10 years to get them but, ultimately, it was that confidence of them knowing me and other people in Believe through long-term discussions.
In the Universal system they were essentially a tastemaker feeder label. Now, with us, they’re a growing independent brand, which is what they should have always been.
We showed them a path for their artists that would mean, at the top level, you can have 100+ people in 50 markets working a project in a sustainable way. They were convinced we could be their global partner to break and develop artists.
Dance music is having an extremely hot moment right now – does that mean there’s more competition for you out there?
Yeah, but it’s a different kind of competition. Originally, people would build artists and labels in the independent space and then, if it broke, they would license the track into one of the really big independents or a major record label would sign them up.
The competition is not as big a problem for us because our system is so unique. We’re the only global partner that has launched a distribution-focused dance brand.
B:electronic supports artists and labels to remain independent and gives them the global footprint and power that negates the need for licensing. The competition’s still there, but that model now feels quite outdated.
Alex Kennedy, Managing Director
Does being a relative newcomer to Believe UK give you a different perspective on the company?
Yes. Because I’d been in the music industry for 20 years before I started the role, I’d watched Believe’s growth with real interest. They just seemed to be exploding globally for the last five or six years and I started to notice them really kick off in the UK as well.
I’ve worked previously at Music Glue and been a partner with Believe. When I was at Sky TV, I did a lot of sync with Believe as well. So I’d seen them from all angles.
When I came in, I saw a team that was really over-delivering versus their size in the market. And one of my jobs was to make them aware of how well they were doing. Because they were just heads down, fighting a pretty tough fight against a very competitive landscape in the UK and carving out a pretty considerable niche as a business.
Is that why the company is finally getting more attention?
The other thing I’ve focused on was the need to talk about ourselves a bit more, because I don’t think the industry fully gets what’s under the hood with Believe.
“I don’t think the industry fully gets what’s under the hood with Believe.”
I took it as my job to be an advocate for us and explain where we’re at, what we’d achieved and what our ambitions were. Because of the level of competition and the different service options out there, you have to be able to convey to the managers, lawyers, artists and labels, exactly what we do, where we’re strong, where we can deliver, but also, at the pace and rate that we’re growing, continually update them.
The view people had of us last year should be very different now, because last year we were at X size, now we’re Y. There are new levels that we’re attaining each year and it’s really gratifying to build from nothing to a very considerable business in that 15- year period.
But Believe UK is not at the same level that the company is in some other territories…
No, not yet, but we’re definitely on the way.
The UK is a very specific market. Outside of America, it’s where the majors have their biggest presence by a long way. So, carving our way into this market has been a lot more difficult than it has been in other markets.
But we’ve done a lot of the hard work now, a lot of the groundwork. We’re starting to see with signings like Bella Union, Fabric, Hospital and Rinse on the label side – we’re beating all the label services competitors to make those signings.
It really feels like there’s an inflexion point happening, where we’re breaking through a glass ceiling. People are trusting that we’re the type and size of business that can handle it.
The real challenge now is to take it up a notch. Over the next three to five years there will be artists that you wouldn’t expect to sign artist services deals, coming and doing just that. And that’s what we’re well positioned for now.
Can you really catch up to the majors?
That has to be the ambition. I don’t know what the time frame would be, but if you looked at where we were 15 years ago and where we are now, and the trajectory of growth – if we can do anything like that trajectory in the next 15 years, then it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that we could be nipping at their heels.
It’s going to be really interesting to see how the market shakes out in the next few years. You’re going to get less share of market for the top global superstars, because there’s a challenge for them in terms of the health of domestic markets all across the world.
That’s not happening in the UK though – why is American music so dominant here?
Because the majors have core offices in the US and UK, it is very easy for them to market big American artists here. And that becomes a challenge because, as a local office, you’re competing against huge artists with big marketing budgets.
But I still believe the market is more than big enough and there’s more than enough opportunity for us. We haven’t had a great year in terms of UK artists at the top of the charts, but there is still a big export market for UK music. We have a cultural cachet that was earned over 50 to 80 years of developing and breaking some of the best artists in the world, ever. There will always be scope for UK artists outside of the UK.
Has Believe got what it takes to produce a global superstar?
We’re absolutely at the stage now where we can deliver a very meaningful global campaign for a top artist. We’re starting to see those artists come through now.
If I had some money to spend on a bet, I would put it on an artist called Hayla. She’s on the precipice of becoming something very, very special. We’re planning a very good campaign for her when the album comes out in November.
What does Believe have to do to thrive for another 15 years?
We have to keep centred on the core principles that we have as a business: fairness, transparency, making sure that we are super-open with the artists.
Being a champion of independence is something we don’t take lightly. It’s something very important in the industry. So we must stay close to our central tenets, but also stay very innovative. What’s got us to this level is not being afraid to look at things slightly differently.
This article originally appeared in the latest (Q3 2024) issue of MBW’s premium quarterly publication, Music Business UK, which is out now.
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