Billboard Spotlight: Germany's Global Reach

To measure the strength of the German record industry, you could take a tour of the country's multiple music-business capitals, from Munich in the south, the headquarters of BMG and Virgin, to the financial towers of Frankfurt, where Sony is based, up the Rhine River to EMI's home in Cologne and onward to the media hub of Hamburg to find edel, PolyGram, Universal, Warner and others.
Executives within Germany are perennially upbeat about their priority artists as they head into the holiday season (see related story). But this has been a tough year, with unit sales down 5.4% for the first six months of '98 and unemployment at 10.6% as of late summer. Industry observers hope the election of a new government in September, with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder ousting long-serving Helmut Kohl, will help jump-start the economy.
Yet a different perspective of the state of the German music business is found beyond Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne or Hamburg. It is available instead from New York, London, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Stockholm or even Orlando, Fla. It is the view of Germany's global reach‹a growing awareness of the international impact of German artist development.
BREAKING ABROAD
Even while sales are down at home, German record companies have become increasingly savvy in the '90s about exploiting and marketing their repertoire worldwide. And it's not necessarily only German-born artists. From Orlando's Trans Continental label, the American teen pop of the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync broke out of Germany before going platinum-plus in the U.S. for Jive and RCA Records, respectively. From London, musical-theater star Sarah Brightman signed directly to EastWest Records in Germany and cut a record-setting hit with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli on "Time To Say Goodbye." Brightman subsequently signed with Angel Records for the world outside Europe, and her album of the same name, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, has sold a million units in the U.S. and Asia. From Canada, the Moffatts have seen worldwide sales of nearly 700,000 since being relaunched via EMI in Cologne, the same company that broke the British rock band Chumbawamba.
"The Germans are getting better at their ability to pick good quality music wherever it comes from," says Dave Novik, senior VP of international A&R at RCA Records in New York, who has helped guide acts such as 'N Sync and La Bouche (both comprised of American musicians) from BMG in Germany to success in the U.S.
"The second half of the equation," says Novik, "is that there are bands‹and Rammstein is a good example‹who are being broken out of Germany. There are rock acts, in particular, that we are looking at now. There is a quality upgrade in English [-language recording], which allows the music created in Germany to be more globally suited."
HARD-ROCK STORY
The story of Rammstein is one of the most remarkable cases of German artist development with international impact. Who would have predicted that a hard-edged band from East Germany would break onto The Billboard 200‹performing in German? Signed directly to PolyGram's Motor Music label in Hamburg, Rammstein gained an early fan in director David Lynch, who featured the group's music in his movie "Lost Highway."
Slash Records president Bob Biggs recalls seeing the band perform at Popkomm in Cologne in 1997. "To a lot of people, they seemed really weird or out there, but, to me, their music spoke to the bottom line of alienation‹which you can never go wrong with in America. When you see them, you see there are no marketing issues." Biggs signed Rammstein for America to Slash, whose repertoire goes through London Records, with radio promotion via Island. "The A&R aspect, that pristine vision, is divorced from the part where you have to popularize it," notes Biggs. "The Island promotion department was so instrumental in getting this to radio and getting them to see it wasn't scary." Rammstein's album "Sehnsucht (Longing)" has sold more than 500,000 copies, according to SoundScan, and peaked at No. 45 on the Billboard 200.
Worldwide sales for the band are estimated at 1.7 million, according to PolyGram, and the U.S. success has since translated to the U.K., where London Records is releasing the single "Du Hast" this month. "We're watching very closely the success the band has had in Europe and America," says London Records U.K. marketing manager Richard Connell. "There is a market for their kind of hard rock here; it's just a question of timing."
TEUTONIC TEENS
For the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync and such Orlando labelmates as Aaron Carter and Take Five, the timing turned out to be excellent. It had been years since teen pop was taken seriously by American record executives, most of whom appear to have long forgotten when New Kids On The Block sold 8 million copies of "Hangin' Tough" in 1989. But Lou Pearlman, president of Trans Continental, had been inspired by New Kids to recruit and record the Backstreet Boys at his studio complex in Florida.
"We went everywhere in the United States," recalls Pearlman. "It was not going to happen." The Backstreet Boys eventually signed a worldwide deal with Jive Records, but, recalls Pearlman, "Germany gave the Backstreet Boys their very first gold record. Germany was so receptive, and what happened with 'N Sync was very much the same."
In this era of multinational labels, with their quarterly global-marketing meetings and affiliate-presentation sessions, RCA's Novik acknowledges that acts such as La Bouche have broken from BMG Germany into the U.S., in part, because of old-fashioned import airplay. More than three years ago, as RCA's new U.S. team came together under label president Bob Jamieson, "La Bouche was one of the first acts we picked up [from BMG Germany]," says Novik. "Knowing that this act had some [import] airplay put a magnifying glass on the project."
La Bouche's debut album, "Sweet Dreams," produced a run of hit singles, including the title track, "Falling In Love" and "Be My Lover," the latter hitting No. 6 on the Hot 100. The duo's follow-up album, "S.O.S.," released by RCA earlier this year and again guided by veteran German producer Frank Farian, includes the single "You Won't Forget Me," which peaked at No. 48 earlier this year on the Hot 100.
DEUTSCH DANCE
Germany's international partners have had no shortage of successful pop and dance acts developed out of the market, going back to the days of another Frank Farian creation, Boney M, in the '70s. In fact, in markets from Scandinavia to South Africa, Boney M's catalog continues to sell strongly.
"Over the last 20 years, Boney M has been one of the most consistent sellers in the South Africa music market," says Dave Thompson, marketing director for BMG Africa, who notes the German dance-pop tradition has continued with the likes of Modern Talking, Bad Boys Blue and, most recently, No Mercy‹all acts that have achieved multiples of the 50,000-unit platinum mark in South Africa.
Guy Brulez, VP of Sony's multinational Dance Pool division, based in London, points to the continuing popularity in Europe of such German pop-dance acts as Culture Beat (now released via Columbia Records) and Jam & Spoon, who "usually do particularly well in Holland and in Italy," along with newer names such as Spacefrog and Orinoco. "Some of the barriers do still exist," says Brulez, "and what the Germans see as the latest trend in dance, the French may not, or the other way around, but a good track is a good track."
A&R executives at Warner Music Japan would agree. When label staff in Tokyo heard the track "Coco Jamboo" from WEA Germany act Mr. President, they opted to release it in their own country, recalls Junichi Miyaji, chief producer, international A&R, at Warner Music Japan. After a slow start, Mr. President took off with the release of the album "We See The Same Sun" in February 1997, fueled by radio airplay for "Coco Jamboo." By the end of last year, Mr. President had sold nearly a half-million albums in Japan, and "Hits Of Mr. President," released this past August, added another 40,000 units to that tally.
Smaller German record companies often lead the pack in breaking dance-pop acts, but, without the multinational distribution setup of major labels, they turn to international exploitation partners. The Dutch music broker Toco International, with affiliates from Chile to Hong Kong, handles the repertoire of German clients such as E.A.M.S. and the Dancestreet label.
Through Toco, E.A.M.S. has sold some 2 million copies of albums by Swiss musician DJ Bobo and has made impressive strides with labelmate Imperio. "Some of these artists are hardly known in their country of origin but massive in another region," says Toco co-owner Marc De Raaff. "For instance, Imperio is more or less an unknown quantity at home, but can boast gold status, for 25,000 albums sold, in both the Czech Republic and Hungary."
Germany's Dancestreet most recently has licensed the act 666 to Toco International. "As the new album, "Paradox,' has just been released, this act has been available in most territories only through compilations," says De Raaff. "All in all, about a half-million copies of these samplers featuring 666 have been sold up to now."
THE CREDIBILITY QUESTION
But a paradox of another sort troubles the German market. Despite all its success with artist development, Germany is viewed more as a source of hit singles than credible career artists.
Nina Sjömark, international label manager for pop/rock repertoire at BMG Sweden, discussing the success of new German acts such as Sweetbox and 4 The Cause, praises the accessibility of German dance music. "But when I start to work on a German project, people in the industry and media often wrinkle their noses because they don't think the music is high quality," she says. "The retailers are more receptive, because they look at the sales history and know that the music will sell. But the journalists will never approve of it."
Making that transition from German-produced singles act to international career artist is the challenge facing such performers as vocalist Melanie Thornton and rapper Lane McCray, the lead voices of La Bouche, as they seek to match their previous success. Germany's music business is up to the task.
Which is why the breadth and depth of artist development in Germany today‹from the teen pop of 'N Sync to the classical vocals of Sarah Brightman to the unrelenting rock of Rammstein‹holds such promise.
"I think that people should understand," says Lou Pearlman at Trans Continental of his partners in Germany, "that it's a really great market."n

Assistance in preparing this story was provided by Diane Coetzer in Johannesburg, Kai Lofthus in Oslo, Steve McClure in Tokyo, Robbert Tilli in Amsterdam and Paul Sexton in London.