LOS ANGELES — Millionaire Steve Bing is getting into the music business.
Looking to expand the holdings of his Shangri-La Entertainment — the feature film production company behind Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones documentary, “Shine a Light,” among other projects — Bing has recruited one of the music industry’s heavy hitters, Jeff Ayeroff, to guide his new Santa Monica-based boutique record label, Shangri-La Music.
To be sure, the music industry is anything but a happy- go-lucky place to work these days — with plummeting sales, major label consolidations and corporate layoffs compounding the pressures of an already cutthroat creative culture.
But to hear it from Shangri- La’s co-founders, Ayeroff and John Rubin, their first priority isn’t focusing on the bottom line. It’s schmoozing with performers, giving face time to artists and devoting personal attention to creative marketing plans for acts on its roster — basically an inversion of the prevailing major label M.O.
“It sounds perverse in this town,” Rubin said recently. “We want to do work we are proud of with artists we care about and actually want to spend time with.”
Ayeroff, dressed in black and looking less like a label boss than a Hells Angel with his long white goatee, added: “Part of the deal is an economic relationship, but we’re interested in a true partnership. We sit on the same side of the table with the artist.”
For example, in 2006, just weeks into the Duke Spirit’s first U.S. tour, the British indie-rock buzz band’s van was burglarized and all of its equipment was stolen.
Worse, at a moment when acclaim for the Duke Spirit was reaching critical mass, the group’s record label, Polydor, dropped the ball. It failed to distribute the London-based quintet’s debut album, “Cuts Across the Land,” in cities where the band was playing.
“We felt like we were marooned,” recalled vocalist Liela Moss.
In 2008, newly signed to Shangri-La Music, the Duke Spirit is enjoying the best reviews of its career with its second album, “Neptune.”
“All five of us feel galvanized,” Moss said. “We wanted to surround ourselves with people that have absolute faith in us. And everyone at this label has energy, parity and faith.”
The “boutique” imprint, which boasts about a dozen employees, is signing all of its acts to so-called 360 deals in which the label shares a portion of an artist’s revenue streams — typically, its touring and merchandise profits as well as digital branding rights — instead of simply cashing in on music sales.
In recent months, such deals have become popular with top-tier, multiplatinum-selling acts such as Madonna, U2 (both of which signed groundbreaking contracts with the concert promoter Live Nation) and the Pussycat Dolls. Although not new — Robbie Williams signed a similar contract with EMI in 2002 — until now 360 deals have been the province mainly of established performers with a dedicated fan base, not developing artists like the Duke Spirit.
As part of the deal, Shangri- La must take responsibility for performers’ artistic development in ways not commonly associated with record labels. “While we don’t supplant a manager, we have to think like one while also thinking like a record label,” Ayeroff said. “We have a vested interest in developing a brand.”
