AIM CEO's Paul Pacifico addresses the AIM agm

29 September 2017 - Press release

I would summarise 2017 for me as a ‘year of inspiration’

I have spent a lot of this year getting to know our members and the wider AIM family, understanding their businesses, the challenges they face and the support they need from us.

I have taken that feedback on board and then looked at the music market as a whole, thinking hard about who we are as a community, what we do and how we add value in the digital age and as the market rediscovers a sense of optimism.  

Merlin, the independent licensing body announced this year that they had paid over 1$bn to independent music companies from digital revenues.  The Wintel report on the state of the independent sector worldwide is due to be published soon and I look forward to it, confident that it will reflect the strong sense that the independent sector is resilient and robust.

This process has informed the way AIM is now evolving in terms of the partnerships we are forging, the services we are delivering and the way our own organisation is taking shape to both lead and support you in key areas.

Strength through partnerships is paramount and allows us to grow quickly, deliver more and cover increasing bases without adding unwieldy costs.  It reflects closely the way our members work and rightly so.

By necessity this presentation will be a fairly quick run through some of the headlines, so please do watch for follow up announcements and drop me a line if you would like to know more.

The vertical silos of the old world music industry have become irrelevant to many in the independent community.

We no longer work in isolation on just our piece of the puzzle, we work across all the pieces, with our partners and have much more regard for the bigger picture.

AIM members are Music Entrepreneurs, assembling the jigsaw pieces of the market in new and innovative ways, figuring out what works for their specific businesses and driving innovation on both the commercial and creative frontiers.

Our members are humans in an increasingly digitised music value chain.  

Many artists used to sign to labels to get access to back-office processes like distribution, royalty accounting and so on.  These are increasingly automated and delivered at very low margins by businesses who make significant upfront investments in IT systems.

Systems however do not replace bright, well connected, creative thinkers and that is where the role of the independent music company stands strong, generating value for artists and helping build careers.

As the old world verticals have flattened and companies have become more horizontal ‘Artist services’ businesses, so AIM has also flattened its internal structures to better meet the needs of our members.  

There should be a virtuous circle between the services we provide members, the feedback we get, the education, training and networking events we deliver and the advocacy and campaigning that gives a crucial voice to our community in the corridors of power in Westminster, Brussels and Washington where we punch well above our weight.  

Helen Smith from Impala, our European Umbrella organisation is here today and will give us an update on the view from Brussels shortly.  We are also these days further empowered by the fantastic work being done at global level by Alison Wenham and her team at the Worldwide Independent Network.

There have been quite a few changes to the AIM structure and team this year and I just wanted to make sure you had a chance to see who everyone is and what their roles are.  

Here is the AIM team.

The Board has decided on some structural changes and elected a Chair for the first time in Tim Dellow from Transgressive.

I am grateful to all of the advice, help and support Tim has given me over the last several months and his insight will I believe be of great value to the community.  Tim and I are supported by a new Management Group which give us a highly experienced go-to group to discuss difficult issues which further strengthens AIM’s ability to act quickly and with confidence.

We are there for you, so please do get in touch if there is anything you might want help with, advice on or just to talk some things through.

One of the things that makes independents special is that they are, at their core, artist-centric businesses.  

This passionate focus on making a better music industry for all participants was one of the key reasons I joined AIM.

You may be interested to know that the fasted growing segment of AIM’s membership is self-releasing artists, something that resonates with me as, as most of you probably know, I spent some time looking at the industry from the artists’ perspective in my previous role at the Featured Artists Coalition.  

Once upon a time, I even was one.

It is absolutely essential that we respond to artists’ needs as they evolve and working in partnership with their representative organisation lends weight and credence to our mission.  

To this end, AIM has agreed a Strategic Partnership with the FAC which will enable us to transfer some of our knowledge about the business side of the industry to this new generation of artist-entrepreneurs to help empower them in their commercial activities.

In turn we will continue to work closely alongside the FAC to develop dynamic pathways for artists through the industry, as their careers develop and their need for partnerships grows.

AIM members should feel absolutely like the natural next step partners to artists as they emerge and grow.

Last year, we asked you to put forward a number of Big Ideas for AIM to work on.

One of the key Big Ideas from last year’s session was that AIM was too london-centric so this year we have responded by redoubling our efforts to get out and about beyond the M25.

On this slide, the purple pins show where are members are.  The red rings show where the AIM team has delivered presentations and workshops over the course of the last 12 months.

So far this year we have attended 18 regional events and had 76 new members join from outside London up from 54 in 2016. That is an increase of some 29% which by any measure is impressive.

So you can see, we have worked hard to take AIM to UK-wide events.  We have also worked on getting UK-wide members to events happening in London.

As many of you may know, Fast Forward is a relatively new conference focussing on young music professionals, held originally in Amsterdam. AIM has been a partner from the outset.

This year, they held their first Fast Forward conference in London at which AIM facilitated free conference passes and then paid travel expenses for 5 of our members based outside of the Capital as we want to make sure that as many members as possible have access to these types of important events.

And we are not complacent. This is just the start.  

We take AIM’s commitment to independent music entrepreneurs across the UK extremely seriously, and the need for equal access to knowledge and opportunities is clear.

Let me give you an example of just one of the projects underway which builds on this commitment.

I am excited to announce that AIM has signed a memorandum of understanding with Pirate Studios who already have opened 12 locations in the UK and are growing fast.  They are growing so fast in fact that this slide is already out of date!

As part of the deal, AIM Members will get discounted access to their facilities, they will promote the benefits of AIM Membership to their client base and we will have a network of facilities from which to deliver education, training and networking UK-wide.

This will be brilliant for AIM of course, but also for all of you and the artists and bands you are working with day to day and in a very practical sense.

One of the most exciting initiatives this year has been to make the case for our community as the driver of entrepreneurship in music.  AIM Members, whether self-releasing artists, independent music businesses or independent distributors push the envelope in driving innovation and growth within the creative industries.

Access to capital however remains a key concern.  

Our members often have too few sources of capital and options like debt financing are priced out of all proportion to the actual risk in the underlying businesses.  There is definitely more work for us to do in that area.

AIM is currently working hard on expanding the options and opportunities available to the sector as a whole as well as our particular constituency.

AIM has recently agreed to become a supporter to a private investment fund specialising in tax-efficient funding for new artist projects.  This will open up the opportunity for AIM Members to recommend projects to the scheme and participate in its benefits.

Watch out for an AIM Newsflash in the near future which will give you all the details on how to get involved.

Our belief in and pursuit of a tax break for music remains unwavering and was in fact the winning Big Idea last year.

I have recently been appointed as Chair of the UK Music Fiscal Incentives Committee, the industry-wide initiative through which we will take our case to the Treasury.

We all feel strongly that Music ought to stand alongside film, games, TV and other creative industries who already benefit from such schemes.

For our members to succeed, the market must function properly.  Whilst music is the most important aspect of what we do, the pipes that connect us to the market and the data systems that tell us what is happening need attention too.

An import part of our work is in challenging the status quo and stress-testing the infrastructure in which we operate to ensure our members are operating on a level playing field - ours is a competitive industry and we want to ensure a fair fight.

As entrepreneurs, nothing is as exciting as the new stuff, the new projects and new ways to do things better - and these are often all driven in this digital age, by new tech.

AIM Members embrace change.  New technology companies in music often experiment with AIM Members before taking products to market, knowing they can get quick answers, responsive partners, and people who are forward facing and not focused on protecting the status quo.

I am particularly excited to be able to highlight two new partnerships that demonstrate our place at the heart of innovation.

In October, we will be kicking off AIM’s partnership with the Digital Catapult.

The Digital Catapult is the UK’s government funded technology accelerator whose mission is to identify and support emergent technologies that have the potential to transform our landscapes.

We will be bringing together the digital and commercial expertise of AIM Members with the most exciting cutting edge startups.

Together, we will become the go-to centre for music and tech.

This is a win-win - we get to guide and influence new tech to help our businesses, and tech gets insight in how to be market-ready faster.

In another exciting new partnership, we have also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with PRS for Music to work together towards launching the world’s first ever true music Innovation Licence.

This looks to join together publishing and master rights to enable small new technology startups to pay in one place to use music legally from day one for the first time.

This really is a world-first to have a joint licence in one place to help startups access music legally and pay to do so.

There is a lot to do and whilst the project is ambitious, we have a great team working on it and willing partners on all side to help make it happen.

Isn’t it crazy that this hasn’t been possible until now?

We can all agree that music piracy is a contentious and historically difficult area.

We are delighted to announce a brand new Member benefit in the form of an AIM-wide anti piracy solution that is tailored to and fit for our particular needs.

Muso is at the forefront of digital anti piracy and the business intelligence insights that can be gleaned from it.

I would love to go into more details about this exciting new development, but is still early days and there are some practicalities to work through.

Once launched, all AIM Members will benefit from this new initiative which will be free at the point of access.

Further details will follow soon so keep an eye on our newsletters and other announcements.

This year, we rebooted the AIM Academy as a brand to unite our various initiatives in education, training and mentoring.

Events so far have covered law, marketing, social media and distribution…

Our approach to education is innovative and all about delivering practical advice from real experts across a range of disciplines - for example, our negotiating workshop was hosted by a senior hostage negotiator who is the only guy ever to work for both the Metropolitan Police in London and the NYPD.

If we think that OUR deals feel like a matter of life and death, the advice and insight from this particular session put things somewhat into perspective whilst actually delivering a lot of very transferable tips and tricks.

It was quite an experience and something we hope to repeat.

Ultimately, we are really serious about this.

If we want a well functioning and meritocratic market for entrepreneurs in music, one of the most glaring inequalities is in knowledge.

We are in the incredible position of being able to leverage the knowledge and expertise of ALL of our members to foster a true sharing economy for knowledge in our sector.

Please do suggest topics or ideas for things we should be doing in this area - we are always on the lookout for interesting and useful topics to explore.

In the meantime you can see the upcoming sessions on our website.

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AIM remains wholly committed to ensuring equal opportunities for all those who have the passion, drive and talent to succeed in music.

Whether on the creative or commercial side of things, there are a multitude of roles requiring a broad spectrum of skills and there is no excuse not to have a truly representative community.

I want to pay tribute to my team who continue to drive the agenda forward with energy and focus to ensure we continue to move forward and inspire others to do the same.

We continue to host the Women in Music conference, and partner with Music Week on the Women in Music Awards

New this year is the launch of free public speaking training for Women in Music in partnership with WIN.  We have trained 150 women in the first 6 months, which is amazing.

Let’s not kid ourselves though, we have made progress for sure, but we still have a long way to go.

And on this subject, I have one final new partnership to announce which is very close to my own heart.

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Love Music Hate Racism has recently relaunched.

It does what it says on the tin and is I think a cause we can all get wholeheartedly behind.

It is a great shame we live in a world where it is still needed, so AIM is getting involved and we will be rolling out a number of ways for you to add your support in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, please make sure you take a flier today and meet some of the team at our after party later.


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I started this presentation by saying that 2017 has been a year of inspiration.

We have done a lot of talking, a lot of thinking and a lot of preparatory work.

Now we move into action.

Where 2017 was a year for me to listen and learn, 2018 is a year to deliver on some of what I have heard and taken on board.

But the listening doesn’t stop - I am here for you and am available whenever and wherever you need me.

On behalf of the whole team, I would like to thank you for your ongoing support for AIM and the work we do on your behalf.