…poised to launch streaming music service

Simeon Sandiford shows his chart for One Caribbean Voice.
“…Wait, do I know you?” asked Simeon Sandiford, cracking a smile, his salt-and-pepper hair and jovial laugh-lines the only visible signs of a man who is ageing very gracefully. Simeon Sandiford, known by many simply as Sanch, is a veteran in the TT music business from a technical, recording and local business point of view.

Sandiford is managing director of Sanch Electronix Ltd, and a voting member of The Recording Academy (for 25 years), a US organisation of musicians, producers, recording engineers and other recording professionals dedicated to improving the quality of life for music and its makers.

Sandiford spoke to the Guardian in an interview last month at the International Conference and Panorama (which took place August 4-9) on how we can improve T&T’s music sector.

A former student of St Mary’s College, Port-of-Spain, Sandiford studied the sciences, maths, Latin, Greek and French at school, and went on to earn an MSc in Applied Physics at the University of the West Indies in 1975. Sandiford is also a lifetime member and distinguished alumni awardee of UWIAATT (2011).

But Sandiford has eclectic interests: arts and culture, economic empowerment, education and science are just a few of his long-held causes. For decades now, he’s been a passionate advocate for TT music. Indeed, his business, Sanch Electronix, has as its mission statement: “To produce, promote and market the music of T&T and related multimedia products and services within the global community.”

Started in 1979, Sanch Electronix originally made loudspeaker systems to supplement high-end imported audio equipment. But with the economic downturn of the mid-eighties, the company started selling indigenous cultural products, including music. In 1995, Sandiford started the Sanch CD label.

More recently, the business has shifted emphasis to services, offering on-location and studio recording, mastering and mixing, editing, archive transference, audio restoration and CD replication. It also offers two ICT-derived products: the Pan in Education Business Model, and Pete the Panstick interactive software to teach music literacy through pan.

‘Archive and commercialise our repertoire’

Sandiford was emphatic about one point:

“We need a structured music industry, with a purpose—to archive and commercialise our repertoire.” Looking at TT’s music sector, he commented: “In TT we have pockets of insularity, and we won’t penetrate the global marketplace like this.” He proposed a simple approach:

“All the music producers should get together—because we have the repertoire—with the Government (though MusicTT), which has the capital, the outreach and the contacts. We can then concentrate on what we can do best (which is making music), and they can find the leverage to get it out there. It’s collaboration, and we split the returns equitably.

“So then, we can actually invite the big players. And there are only four of them: Sony Music Entertainment (Japanese-owned), Universal Music Group (French), EMI (now part of Universal) and Warner Music Group (US-owned). We can invite them to come and bid for our repertoire.”

‘Cott must crack down on pirates’
Sandiford said Cott and the relevant authorities must find a way to crack down on copyright infringements:

“The biggest problem in the arts is that no one has any respect for intellectual property. So pirating, or buying one piece of music and giving it away to 50 people, is the norm. But every time you do that, you affect the artist, to the point where he might ask: why even bother to make a good product, when it will hit the streets even before it’s released? That’s the reality of it.

“If we don’t make good quality products, we are going nowhere. So you have to encourage the artiste to spend a little more time in the studio to make quality products. This is not a ‘now-for-now’ thing.

“So we have to tighten up on the copyright protection laws,” said Sandiford.

“With the advent of digital rights management, there’s a whole other ball game going on out there: look at the chaos that exists in the digital domain now, with Internet radio, digital downloads, YouTube, Facebook, and other posts just going up in Cyberspace, and no-one seeing any returns on their investment. So Cott has to get its act together in terms of: How do they manage the digital domain?”

Digital streaming: One Caribbean Voice
Meanwhile, means of experiencing music have radically changed from the days of buying vinyl records and CDs, and even from downloading mp3s; today, the streaming of digitised music via the Internet has become the new norm, ever since Spotify became available in the US in 2011. Spotify offers access to more than 30 million songs. In the US, streaming revenues have now overtaken CD revenues, according to www.whathifi.com.

With audio streaming, people can access music from their PC, mobile device or home audio system. A monthly flat fee gives access to millions of tunes. This flat rate often includes additional features such as creating a personal radio, sharing playlists, or reading reviews about newest releases. Streaming services today include Spotify, Beats Music, Rhapsody, Google Play Music, Tidal, Apple Music, Deezer, Quobuz, Rdio, MySpace Music, Pandora, Rara and Slacker.

Streaming offers great convenience and affordability with mp3-type, lossy formats—but it can also offer CD-quality, lossless audio services (eg Quobuz, Tidal and Deezer Elite) at higher monthly subscription prices.

Sandiford thinks streaming is the way to go. Sandiford is the founder of One Caribbean Voice, a forward-thinking, enterprising business paradigm which, among other things, aims to stream Caribbean and regional music at a high quality resolution—not mp3 or other lower end formats—at a monthly subscription rate.

One Caribbean Voice is hoping that Spanish content providers join them, such as Cuba’s national record label EGREM (for Empresa de Grabaciones y Ediciones Musicales, or Enterprise of Recordings and Musical Editions).

“EGREM in Cuba contains the biggest studio music archive in the Caribbean,” said Sandiford: “They have maybe 50,000 albums archived, going back to Nat King Cole…..All kinds of excellent music archived. But what good is it sitting in a vault? We have to digitise it, and allow people to have access to it.”

One Caribbean Voice also has a plan for other kinds of activity, spanning education software, wellness, a music academy, social entrepreneurship, engineering, and even certification. It hopes to include heritage material from Cuba, Jamaica, TT and other regional and Latin American neighbours. And it plans to organise high-profile music and other cultural events. One event is already planned for May 2016, involving Cuban and TT musicians—including educator, composer, and fluent Spanish speaker Ray Holman.

Sandiford believes the subscription service model is a good one, because with enough music choice, no-one need buy CDs or digital music anymore. Instead, people can make their own selections and playlists with a broadband Internet connection.

Additionally, subscription streaming offers remarkable flexibility and convenience for those researching, teaching or studying music—they can do it from home, instead of going to a physical music library, for instance. Sanch said music from UWI’s West Indiana collection, from our National Library system, and from local concerts like those at Queen’s Hall, could all be archived, digitised and made available via streaming.

Dr Don Carrington, a dentist with a love for music and a large personal collection (Sandiford has an even larger collection) had approached Sandiford a year ago to discuss the idea of a subscription model for Caribbean music streaming, said Sandiford. They’re now business partners. Meanwhile, Sandiford is busy collecting and archiving music, using a high-end archiving system from Korea (www.aurender.com) from which music can be made ready for access.

Sanch’s archive
Sandiford himself owns some 30 years’ worth of musical repertoire. “What I’m doing with my own archive now, is using it as part of the Learning Management System, Pan Online/Steel Ambassadors that we are developing with the Distance Learning Secretariat of the Ministry of Tertiary Education.

He said this relates to the idea of a structured music industry, with a whole curriculum designed around an animated instructor called Pete the Panstick—part of engaging youth to become music industry professionals (which includes music journalists, production engineers, business people, and many other music-related jobs). He said this model can radically reduce the cost of education, as it is a form of distance learning.

“The repertoire that TT has, that is most important, is not necessarily the current music, you know,” noted Sandiford. “It is the back catalogue—meaning all those combos and big bands such as Joey Lewis, The Dutchy Brothers, Clarence Curvan, Mano Marcelin, Cassanovas, The Group Solo, Rockerfellas, etc—the music of yesteryear. And the stories that we can tell with them. Because it is media you are talking about, now: it’s mas, it’s Carnival, it’s everything entertainment.”

He thinks we in TT should be managing our own music repertoire—especially the music that is hiqh quality, marketable (for research, entertainment, wellness or other uses), and unique to us (parang, soca, old time calypso, gospelypso, rapso). He also thinks we need to be practical, and have a good balance of local pop music with more enduring quality music.

“…But for me, music with longevity is the answer,” he said. “This is the music that will sustain us over time. So, for instance, good traditional acoustic and pan music recorded on location in panyards would last much longer than the Panorama music on the stage.”

“The forecast for the global media market next year is in the US$trillions. We (the Caribbean) need to play in that market, because we have things to offer the world that nobody else has.”

MORE INFO

One Caribbean Voice YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wta02YPUGAM

Sanch Electronix: 23 King Street, St Joseph
Website: www.sanch.com; telephone: 663-1384; email: [email protected]