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The world’s best-selling artists and global touring acts trust Centtrip with their payments, foreign exchange and touring expenses. This week we catch up with Simon Liddell who heads up Music, Film and Entertainment.

Firstly, please tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do at Centtrip and how you work with music managers. 

I’m Director of Music, Film and Entertainment at Centtrip. We help managers maximise their artists’ foreign income with the best currency rates in the market.  Our Global Touring Card is used around the world to significantly reduce and better control touring costs.  We also support record labels, publishers and neighbouring rights companies in reducing their payment fees, improving the processes behind royalty runs and ensuring artists maximise their incomes and avoid losing out in the form of fees charged by traditional banks.

What new music releases are you enjoying currently?  

Lockdown and working from home have given me the opportunity to listen to more music than before which is a definite plus!

It’s been great listening to old albums I enjoyed as a teenager with a new appreciation.  My taste covers a variety of genres. My top new albums of 2020 have been Biffy Clyro, Blossoms, Gerry Cinnamon, Nines, Run The Jewels. A real mix!  I’m also a massive fan of Royal Blood, if “Trouble’s Coming” is a taste of things to come, I can’t wait for their album to be released.

How has business been for you since the COVID-19 pandemic hit?  Any significant challenges?  How are you are adapting your services?  

We are a fintech business and – hats off to our tech team – the move to working from home was seamless.  We love working in Music and we’re really missing meeting our clients, planning tours, speaking to managers, tour managers and music accountants.  Zoom is great but you cannot beat face-to-face meetings.

In terms of our business activity in the music sector, it has been massively affected by the tour cancellations this year. We’ve been hit like all services supporting the industry. At the start of the year, we were working on a number of world tours, ready to go out. Sadly, they all had to be postponed. We also do a lot of work with record labels and neighbouring rights companies and that side of the business has held a little better.  Besides that, we’ve been involved in a few catalogue deals and we’ve also been fortunate to be working more in film and TV as the sector has managed to restart their activity.

We hope that, with a vaccine likely to become available soon, we will be back preparing for touring in the first quarter of next year!

The role of the manager has evolved massively in recent years, as highlighted in the MMF’s 2019 report Managing Expectations, with managers taking on an increasing amount of responsibilities.  Has this influenced the way you work with managers at Centtrip? 

Definitely! Centtrip’s platform and services are all about empowering managers and their artists and equipping them with as much information as possible when making key business decisions.  In the past, financial decisions may have been left solely to the accountants. Thanks to our solutions, those decisions can be made as a team.  We provide the tools and detailed analysis that the team can use to make better informed decision.

Are there any managers you particularly enjoy working with – or consider to be doing brilliant work in their field? 

We have over 700 music clients with managers looking after the biggest acts in the world to artists at the beginning of their career.  I don’t want to upset anyone! The beauty is they all have different styles, personalities and approaches, all rooted in working very hard.

If I had to name one it would be Bill Curbishley. A legend and hugely knowledgeable. Every meeting with him we learn something new.

Do you think there are any positive opportunities or changes in the music industry you believe we will see happen “once we’re though the other side of all this” (Covid)? 

If there isn’t positive change then this last year will have been for nothing. Going to live gigs, festivals, watching a huge artist in a stadium to catching a new band in the local pub – I hope after COVID-19 there is a new-found appreciation for how lucky we are to have these collective experiences.

Is there anything you would like to say to managers who are considering working with you at Centtrip or finding out more about what you do?

We’re passionate about what you do and we love being able to help no matter where you are on your journey.  Seeing the career of a new artist or manager we work with taking off is a real buzz for us. Too much time, resources and money are lost through antiquated methods. Centtrip is about making sure artists and managers maximise their revenues.  A short phone call to us can often mean a significant difference in income to them.

Thank you, Simon and Centtrip for supporting the MMF and our membership through our Associate’s programme. You can email Simon at – simon.liddell@centtrip.com