Dino Stewartmanaging director of BMG Italywas a guest of SPOT – The Podcastthe program that Michele Monina And Massimiliano Longo they record live at the Spot Music Fest in Bareggio. A conversation about the least talked about profession in music, that of those who don't sing records but make them, from rejected auditions that become successes to the choice to protect the catalog of an artist like Ornella Vanoni.
Stewart has spent thirty years of recording, starting from a provincial boy, growing up on Lake Como, who ordered unobtainable sector magazines on newsstands. Radio promoter at twenty-one, then the move to Sony, EMI, the role of artist and repertoire, up to the current double role in BMGwhich is both a record company and a music publisher. Two different jobs, he says, with different satisfactions: recording success and publishing success are enjoyed in ways that are not similar.
The crisis of the record industry told by those who saw it coming
When Stewart entered the industry in 1996, there was already talk of a crisis in the sector, even if no one imagined the extent of what would happen in a few years. The clearest memory concerns the arrival of Napster and the reaction of the recording world: anyone who tried to explain that file sharing would change everything was laughed at. In those years, he says, at some labels not even everyone had a computer or an internet connection, and this made it difficult to grasp what was about to happen. Streaming arrived later as a response to that crack, but the question remains as to what type of crack it opened in turn.
The physical before streaming: an expensive luxury
One of the traits that characterize BMG's work under his leadership is the choice, applied to various projects, to release the physical album first and only after some time bring the music onto the platforms. A road traveled with artists like Niccolò Fabi And Fabrizio Morowhere it makes sense to enhance that format before getting to streaming.
Stewart gives the example of a record by Alice Cantabattiwhich remained in stores for three months before its digital release: around ten thousand physical copies sold, an important result for an artist outside the mainstream. The point, he explains, is to look for an audience that has little or no familiarity with Spotify, because not all of Italy is Milan, where it is taken for granted that you have everything and are updated on the latest news. Speaking as a provincial, he remembers how difficult it was, at the time, to find magazines like Rolling Stone on newsstands outside the city, which in Milan instead seemed normal.
Calling it a luxury, he admits, is correct: being able to look at music as music and not just as numbers is a privilege. But it is an expensive luxury, not in economic terms, but in terms of energy. Working with a roster that requires constant attention means always being there, and the commitment does not change based on the size of the artist: small or large, the energy required is the same. The possibility of having a recognizable editorial line, within a multinational that still demands results, is the true luxury he is talking about.
Francesco Gabbani and the story of “Amen”
The album that Stewart indicates as the first sign of the new BMG, now ten years ago, is linked to an editorial proposal: Francesco Gabbani. He remembers him arriving at the office for the first time on a motorbike from Carrara, helmet in hand, to the point of wondering why a guy like that wasn't a singer. In reality Gabbani already had a long career behind him made up of groups and projects, and was about to release his first album. Among the new songs there was Amen.
Gabbani, Stewart says, had just made many attempts and considered it his last chance for Sanremo Giovani, so much so that he said that if it hadn't worked he would have gone back to being a farmer. The song, before taking that path, was proposed in the editorial field to other artists, who let it go. Luck, Stewart admits, was precisely that: Amen he stayed with Gabbani and brought him to the Sanremo stage, paving the way for everything that would come later, starting from Westerners' Karma the following year.
The song for Ornella Vanoni, born out of distraction
Having become an artist in his own right, Gabbani continued to write for others as well, from Mina to Ornella Vanoni. The song for Ornella itself has a particular story. In the period following Westerners' Karmawith the pressure of having to repeat that success and a single that hadn't worked as hoped, Stewart says he proposed to Gabbani to write something for Ornella, also to distract him from that complicated moment.
Gabbani returned with an audition with an anomalous structure, verse and chorus without special, and just like that, remaining substantially unchanged, that piece became the song. Stewart says he is happy that an artist of that caliber was able to have, at her age, a piece that he considers worthy of her great classics.
Ornella's catalog and the choice not to publish everything
After the passing of Ornella Vanoni, Stewart declared that an unreleased song of hers would never be released that wasn't worthy of her production. A rare position in a market where, when an artist passes away, there is a tendency to publish whatever material is available. A line, he confirms, that has been maintained so far: BMG has not yet released anything, although some news could arrive during the year.
The rule, he explains, also arises from the way of working of Ornella herself, described affectionately as a big head who couldn't be persuaded to try anything she wasn't fully convinced of. When he recorded an audition it was because he really wanted to do that piece. In the six years of collaboration with BMG this has been the underlying criterion.
Paola Turci and the return built calmly
In closing, Stewart mentions the new project of Paola Turciwho returns with an album after seven years. The choice to announce it well in advance, with the album expected in the autumn, is admittedly outside the box: it serves to make the public understand, with the necessary time, that the artist is back. The fact that the radio networks do not yet pass the single, he observes, confirms the theory of a work that must be built step by step, without haste. What counts, more than anything, is the energy and desire to be there of those who return to the game. This too, he concludes, is part of that luxury he spoke about: being able to work at the right times.
