If you got in touch with Ditto Music a decade ago, you might have ended up with a bouncy castle. If you get in touch with Ditto Music today, you might end up with a global hit.
The fast-growing music distribution and services company was founded in January 2007 by brothers Lee and Matt Parsons from a flat in Smethwick, Birmingham – accommodation, recalls Lee, which sat under a densely-populated apartment packed with people “smoking crack all day”.
Back then, Ditto wasn’t just a music company: Lee and Matt ran a range of businesses from their humble abode, including a window cleaning operation, a computer repair service – and a bouncy castle hiring company.
Anything, basically, to pay the rent.
“We had one mobile phone and when people called we didn’t know if they’d want window cleaning, a bouncy castle or their computer fixed,” says Lee (pictured). “So when we eventually launched the music company, we just started saying, ‘Hello Ditto’ to anyone who called the phone. That covered all bases.”
Today, following a year of accelerated worldwide expansion, the Birmingham-born, Liverpool-HQ’d Ditto is a truly independent British success story – and it’s still fully owned by the Parsons brothers.
The firm was recently named the No.48 fastest-growing company in the UK by The Sunday Times – while the same newspaper placed Ditto at No.26 in its league table of British SMEs with the fastest-growing international sales. (None of these sales, you might have guessed, were of bouncy castles.)
With 19 offices around the world – in addition to an A&R presence in hip-hop hotbed Atlanta – Ditto is now truly one of the premier independent distribution/services companies worldwide.
The firm runs three offices in the US alone – in New York, Nashville and Los Angeles – where it recently pinched TuneCore’s respected Senior Director of Entertainment Relations, Chris Mooney, to head up countrywide operations from NYC.
There have also been recent office openings in the Philippines, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, The Nordics, Mexico and India.
In its first five years, Ditto welcomed the early recordings from some huge names through its platform, including the likes of Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith and Royal Blood.
All of these acts, however, then jumped to major label deals in order to take their careers to the next level.
Since then, Ditto has become more tenacious about encouraging artists to remain independent, and stay the course within its system. That’s why the firm takes its expanding global presence quite so seriously – with an A&R force in every market in which it operates – and has recently bulked up the level of service it can offer artists.
It’s should be no great surprise, then, that Ditto has become a go-to distribution partner for the UK’s hottest urban music artists.
Stormzy (pictured inset) released breakthrough Top 10 single Shut Up through the company in 2015, before signing with ADA, while other leading lights such as MoStack, Hardy Caprio and MIST have also turned to the firm to boost their careers.
And today (July 19), the company took things to the next level: Ditto is now the official digital distribution partner for Chance The Rapper’s new material.
Ditto currently has around 150,000 artists on its standard distribution tier, which sees acts pay an annual subscription of £19 and keep 100% of their royalties. (Quick maths: That’s nearly £3m a year in baseline revenue.)
In 2015, Ditto started layering on additional services for its banner artists, who typically still receive 80%-90% of their royalty pool despite Ditto’s further investment in their career.
“The reason we expanded so much last year is so we can have teams in each territory going separately into the Spotifys, Apple Musics, Amazons etc. to build artists worldwide,” says Lee Parsons. “With Dave’s last release he got on the front of the Brazil Rap playlist, the US ones, on the front of the Philippines… for the small percentage the artists pay, they get a truly global campaign.”
Ditto’s recent expansion has been made possible by some smart business moves: in 2014, Ditto launched ‘Record Label In A Box’, providing independent artists with a one-stop package for grassroots labels that takes care of PPL and ISRC registration, in addition to other services. The product now turns over £2m a year.
MBUK sat down with Ditto CEO Lee Parsons to learn about his company’s ascent, its global battle with the major labels, the growing power of independence, and why the blockchain is about to change everything, for everyone…
IS IT TRUE YOU AND MATT STARTED OFF IN A BAND AND GOT DROPPED?
Yeah. My brother and I actually auditioned for [Island Records boss] Darcus Beese, when I was a rapper. That was about 13 years ago. We went through the whole industry thing – we had a management deal with Albert Samuel who had Blazin’ Squad and So Solid Crew and we signed a publishing deal with EMI. But it’s the classic story: we didn’t get to put any music out.
Me and Matt went back home to where we lived, Smethwick, and we were frustrated by it all. The whole Ditto thing started from us trying to release our own songs. I went down to HMV that Christmas; I waited an hour to speak to a woman and asked if we could get our CD in the shop and she literally laughed at us and said there was no chance.
YOU LITERALLY WENT TO YOUR LOCAL HMV?
Yes, the one in Birmingham. We even made business cards in the library to make it seem like we had a proper record label, but she [the HMV manager] still said no. People don’t understand now how hard it was back then [circa 2005].
There was one record label down the road from us, and I told them: ‘We’ll give you £200 if you just put our CD into HMV.’ We had a decent fanbase, but they said no and laughed at us. One of the people from that record label applied for a job at Ditto a few years ago, actually…
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER YOU WERE REJECTED?
Six months later, we found out about this company called Wippet, who were like the first digital store – they were ahead of their time. We put our track on there and were really excited, only for it to get to, like, No.72 in the UK charts.
We’d had enough, me and my brother. We’d been in bands for so long and we were physically exhausted. We were living in Smethwick in this horrible flat with people smoking crack upstairs all day.
I was doing window cleaning, and my brother was fixing people’s computers. I had a bouncy castle as well so I was renting that out for kids’ parties on the weekend. Anything to make a bit of money.
Originally posted on MUSICBUSINESSWORLDWIDE.COM
