FFWD: FastFive with Chris Carey
How did you get started in the music industry?
I was lucky. I was working in banking (and not the make-loads-of-money banking, branch banking!) and I was not happy! PRS were looking for an Economist to join Will Page. In taking the job, I think I became the 2nd “music economist” (Will being first) and the 3 and a half years I spent in a team of 2 with Will was an incredible education in all corners of the music industry, live, recorded, publishing and collecting societies.
Was there a pivotal moment in your career?
Am I allowed 3?! Will hiring me (and training me) was instrumental to everything that followed. I was then lucky to be at EMI running a global big data team at the time when big data and person level data analytics was still very new (thanks David Boyle for that pivot!). The last one came a few years later when I left UMG (after they bought EMI), quitting my job with no job to go to. In that gap came a consulting business that’s still going almost 13 years later. None of them were comfortable moments, but each of them jumped me forward years in my career and experiences.
What are you doing work wise now? And how’s it going!?!
I run FFWD full time. The conference is the high profile piece and something I really enjoy doing but that’s probably 2 months work split over 4 months. Most of the year I’m doing a mix of economic insight work, data analytics and strategy consulting. As for how it’s going… I think its going well. I keep busy. But if I’m honest, 2024 was a bit routine, I spent a bit too long turning the handle. Those slow times are healthy too, but having had a bit of time to look ahead I plan to be a lot more ambitious in 2025.
What advice would you give your younger self for thriving in the music industry?
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Ask the stupid question. I am much better now at asking “help me understand that more” or “I didn’t quite catch that” but in my early days failing to pick something up first time (however complex) would have me very nervous and trying to blag as if I knew. If I had my time again, I’d hope to be much more ok with asking the ‘dumb’ question, and transforming that uncomfortable not-knowing moment into an empowering, educational one.
What is one important change you’d like to see in the modern music industry?
I would love to see artists appreciated more, and I would love to see us set them free to create in innovative ways that suit them. So much of ‘content’ creation follows global (predominantly US) rules on what you have to do, how often you have to do it, how it has to be done (to generate likes and clicks) that I think we risk clipping the wings of artists to fit a rigid structure. I’d like to see platforms be more flexible, giving artists more space to be themselves. I could make an argument for fewer metrics, better metrics, using data more effectively to lift artists up, but in honesty SET THEM FREE and the rest takes care of itself.
Want to know more about Chris? Here are some links…
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cjcarey
https://instagram.com/musicecon101
