The Ray Davies album that his record label “killed off”
Over the last 20 years, the music industry has changed significantly. The business is almost unrecognisable from what it was at the turn of the century. Still, the shift didn’t take place overnight, and there was a strange period while it was positioned in a bizarre hinterland before streaming gained dominance, as Ray Davies knows first-hand.
While the music industry remains in an unhealthy place, with artists not earning their fair share from companies such as Spotify and Apple Music, there is at least a system in place. Musicians know how to play the game if they want their album to have a chance at succeeding, even if the payment practice is unfair and they have to bend to an ever-changing algorithm.
Unfortunately, it is common for artists to accept that they will lose money on their albums before they have been released into the world, pinning hopes on recouping the costs by touring. It’s a broken system which leaves many musicians unable to rely on their art to support their lifestyle, leading them to take up other work to supplement their income.
In 2007, Spotify was still a tiny Swedish start-up that had yet to change the landscape of the industry, but piracy had taken over, and labels had already started to haemorrhage money. While many artists still sold copious amounts of records, there was no guarantee, even for The Kinks singer Ray Davies.
Davies was gearing up to release his fourth solo album, Working Man’s Café, the follow-up to 2006’s Other People’s Lives, which charted at 36 in the United Kingdom. However, rather than share the record through the traditional method, his label, V2, struck a deal with The Sunday Times to give it away with their paper before it went on sale in the shops.
A few months prior to the release of Working Man’s Café, V2 had been sold to Universal Music Group and was still going through financial problems. Therefore, teaming up with The Sunday Times presented a chance to recoup revenue and allowed over 1.3 million people to hear the album for free.
However, once an album is given away for free with a newspaper, it naturally stops fans from paying to own a copy, as they could have picked it up with The Sunday Times or walked into their local charity shop to pick it up for next to nothing.
Despite the LP being a strong solo outing, Davies lost all of his momentum, and the album eventually charted at 179. The Kinks singer later said to MOJO: “The reason is simple: the record company got into trouble, then it was given away with The Sunday Times. That killed off any ability to promote it properly.”
He added: “Timewise, emotionally, it was a very big gift, because you’re giving away your work for free. It’s over, it’s transient; that’s why I admire real art, paintings. You can’t hang a record on the wall. It was a bittersweet time.”
Although Davies worked tirelessly on the record for a significant stretch of time, his record label viewed it as a disposable commodity, which led to the broader general public also feeling this way.
