ON the fifth floor of United House next to Notting Hill Gate Tube station is a music industry office that does not look like any you might have seen before. Sure, there’s the grand piano in the lobby “which used to belong to Annie Lennox” anyone who walks in is told. There is the odd Fender guitar lying around, plus amps and vast speakers. But there isn’t much music playing. Odder yet, half the floor looks like a call centre with staff bashing the phones. “Welcome to the future of the music business,” says Merck Mercuriadis, as he greets me.
Mercuriadis, 59, is a music man down to his trademark black Prada. He used to manage Elton John, Beyoncé, and Guns & Roses. But that was in the good old days when record companies pumped out first vinyl, then CDs, which had such a high profit margin that executives rocked up for work at the crack of lunch, headed off to the Groucho Club at 6pm, and still pulled six- or seven-figure salaries. Streaming services — at first illegal — overturned that lifestyle and threatened to take down the entire industry. Revenues fell so sharply that some big names almost collapsed, notably EMI.
