The music industry? Nick Burgess has completed it, mate.
Across a remarkable 30-plus-year career, the renowned A&R executive started out as an artist in an indie rock band that signed to EMI and were managed by Merck Mercuriadis in the 1990s (and whose identity he is determined to keep secret).
He then joined indie Gut Records as a scout before working his way around all four majors – in the days when EMI was still a thing – via high-profile roles at EMI’s Virgin, Sony’s Jive, Universal’s Virgin EMI and Warner Music’s Parlophone.
He’s enjoyed huge highs and endured plenty of frustrations, including EMI’s decline and Terra Firma’s takeover (“That was a whole world of pain for everyone”), plus an exasperating 18-month wait when Universal made him sit out his Virgin EMI contract before joining Parlophone (although he admits today he spent some of his gardening leave in the Wrights Lane Holiday Inn taking meetings).
Along the way, he has been instrumental in discovering/breaking everyone from The Kooks to Chipmunk, and Lewis Capaldi to PinkPantheress.
“I’ve done everything,” he grins as he greets MBW. “I started as an artist, I’ve been at all four majors. I’ve seen it all really; the highs and the lows.”
Burgess’ 23-year stint in the major label system ended abruptly in 2023 when Parlophone – which he and co-president Mark ‘Mitch’ Mitchell had worked tirelessly to turn around, having taken over in 2019 – was downsized in the early stages of Warner Music Group’s ongoing restructure/cutbacks.
The timing, at least, gave Burgess a chance to steal a march on many other big name ex-major label UK execs currently looking to set up their own independent companies…
“If you don’t get fired as a music executive, you’re doing the wrong thing – it’s part of the game,” he quips. “When I look back, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Bad news is good news in disguise most of the time and maybe it was my destiny to [launch] a label.”
“Bad news is good news in disguise most of the time; maybe it was my destiny to do a label.”
Nick Burgess
Having spurned further major label job offers in the immediate aftermath of the Parlophone split, Burgess set about building his own company, Artist Theory.
Teaming up with former Parlophone colleague Jack Melhuish, and joining forces with indie label/publisher B-Unique – run by Burgess’ friends Mark Lewis and Martin Toher – with financial backing from Firebird, Burgess sees his new label as a ‘best of both worlds’ proposition.
“Jack’s got 15 years of major label marketing experience and I’ve got 20 years of major label A&R experience,” he says. “Why don’t we take the major label mindset, put it into the independent arena and see if we can find some success?
“We’ve set up Artist Theory with the premise of being a real, true alternative to the major label system.”
They’re already building quite a roster: with another Parlophone refugee, Eurovision hero Sam Ryder (whose Heartland album gave Artist Theory an early Top 20 UK chart foothold) adding some established stardust alongside fast-rising, highly rated new acts such as Nieve Ella, Benjamin Steer, The Guest List and Ruth B.
Burgess acknowledges that artist development in 2025 is a different game to his major label days, when he would argue in the studio with his acts about which songs they should prioritise: The Kooks only recorded their biggest ever song, Naïve, because he begged them to do it as a personal favour; he similarly had to twist Dan Smith’s arm to even put Bastille’s name to monster hit Happier (eventually released by Marshmello feat. Bastille).
But he does not share the widespread industry pessimism over the state of British A&R today.
“It’s harder, but I like the challenge of it, it doesn’t stress me out,” he says. “We used to always be at the mercy of other people’s opinions: if Radio 1 or the NME didn’t like you, it was like, ‘Oh God’. Now, you don’t need anyone to like you or your music apart from the audience – you’re not at the mercy of other people’s whims and egos. I like the freedom.”
All of which means the only thing left to tick off on Nick Burgess’ career bucket list is to meet MBW in a quiet cinema bar on a late autumn afternoon, and share some pithy soundbites on everything from A&R to some of his former label homes…
When did you decide to stop being a musician and become an A&R exec?
I didn’t ever intend to do A&R; I’d never even heard of it! My whole thing was ‘rock star all the way’.
I was an artist from the age of 14 to 26, I was always in rehearsal rooms with musicians: playing, thinking about making records, writing, recording, playing live shows. What I didn’t realise at the time was, that was my degree for being an A&R person. That was what taught me how to understand how to help an artist to make records.
A&R is really a service industry; it’s about providing education for an artist who could have all the talent in the world, but doesn’t know how to curate it into something the audience can understand.
How do you look back on your stint at Parlophone?
We inherited a label that hadn’t had a hit for 10 years; Tinie Tempah was the last in 2010. It was quite outdated in its mindset, it just fell behind for various reasons.
“We had carte blanche to design a brand-new record company. We had a great time and I think we were doing a pretty decent job of it.”
It was a challenge in terms of its roster and staff, so we built a brand-new label from scratch. We thought, ‘We’ve got a clean slate here with one of the greatest brands in the UK music business’. We’ve all been huge fans of Parlophone over the years so it was, ‘How can we turn it into the most modern, forward-thinking label on the High Street, as opposed to one of the least?’
We had carte blanche to design a brand-new record company. We had a great time and I think we were doing a pretty decent job of it.
So what went wrong?
Somebody right at the top of the tree decided that Warner [UK] didn’t really need three frontline labels, which we did talk a lot about internally. The way they did it was a surprise, but the actual reality of it wasn’t a surprise.
Did you really have no idea it Was coming?
There was not one raised eyebrow in a meeting before. It was literally as though nothing in the world was wrong. Then, ‘Can you come and see [then Warner Music UK CEO] Tony Harlow in his office?’ and it was gone.
The irony of it is, when it all happened, it was maybe the first time Mitch and I had ever looked at each other and gone, ‘I think we might be doing alright here’ – about 24 hours before we got booted out. Classic!
I think it was partly because [Warner Music Group CEO] Robert Kyncl had just started. He wanted to restructure the company, looked at it and said, ‘What can we do?’ The ‘cut to grow’ thing of Lucian [Grainge]’s was probably ringing in his ears – and it’s carried on with the cutting!
I’m getting Terra Firma vibes off it if I’m honest, where [there are] decisions that smart people are making, that don’t seem that smart. But maybe in 10 years, we’ll look back and go, ‘Robert Kyncl’s the smartest man in the music business, he saw it all coming’. Who knows?
How would you have felt about reporting directly into America, as Warner Music UK execs now do?
I wouldn’t have liked that. I don’t think it’s a good idea, it sends the wrong message out to everyone.
It basically says that we don’t have an understanding of our own market or control of our own market, and we aren’t capable of delivering the goods. The music business is a vicious circle: the less it gets invested in, the less it’s going to succeed.
My worry is, are the US executives going to take as many risks on a band from Manchester that could end up being Oasis or the Stone Roses?
It just feels wrong to not have a UK head replace Tony Harlow. Tony was brilliant, he’s a good man, really passionate and very intelligent, he cared about the artists. Taking him out and saying it’s going to be OK without him… If Sony and Universal decide to do that, where does that leave us? We’re just a 51st State.
I get the psychology that we’re a global industry and all artists should be global, but it’s very hard to know which artists are going to be massive globally. No one would have said Mumford & Sons.
It’ll play out and maybe it’s genius. I’m nowhere near as smart as those people, so I’ll let them figure it out.
Are you worried about the state of UK A&R?
No. It had a tricky period with Covid, because everything became so globally focused. But with Yungblud, Olivia Dean, Lola Young, PinkPantheress, Fred Again and Raye, there’s a renaissance of world-class artists.
Everyone’s just got to raise their game – there’s less room for complacency, it’s a more competitive market. The music business let the audience down for a while. You’d see who would win the Sound Of… poll or the BRITs Critics’ Choice [award], and they just weren’t up to it really.
If I was a normal person I’d go, ‘You’ve told me for the last five years that this is the best thing on planet Earth and I’ve listened to it and it ain’t as good as Aretha Franklin or Stevie Wonder or Led Zeppelin or Frank Sinatra’.
Then you lose the trust – the public stopped listening to us because we cried wolf too many times about the next big thing.
Does the upheaval at the majors give a company like Artist Theory an opportunity?
Absolutely. With all the managers and lawyers I talk to, I don’t think there’s any real massive desire to sign to a major label right now, because there is a lot of uncertainty and upheaval.
What you don’t want in life as an artist is the person that you signed to, or the person you really connect with, to suddenly go, ‘I’m being fired’ or ‘I’m off somewhere else’.
All most artists want is stability, to be cared for. It’s the most vulnerable job in the world, being an artist – how many people in the world make their career out of opening their hearts and minds for the whole world to criticise and have an opinion on?
We treat these people like they’re commodities and products – with my artist background, sometimes I’d be in meetings thinking, ‘If I was an artist, this is the last thing on earth I’d want to be overhearing’.
But in our label, what we’re great at is really strong artist development. We understand how to build the music, the social content, the brand. We use data to help build and understand the audience and drive the streaming algorithm, and we understand how to take an artist from zero to establishment. Every artist is different, but we do have a really good blueprint for how to build an artist career now.
Do you want artists to stay on Artist Theory for life, or are you OK with them moving onto bigger labels?
Our ambitions are huge, but I’ve got no ambition to get into bed with a major label, unless I really feel we have to.
There may be a moment with one of our artists where we’re like, ‘Do we need to partner up with Republic or someone in America?’
“Our ambitions are huge, but I’ve got no ambition to get into bed with a major label, unless I really feel we have to.”
But I’ve worked at all the majors, I’ve seen how they operate and I genuinely don’t know what they could do that we can’t do, as long as we’ve got enough money to resource an American radio campaign or a really strong PR campaign.
Obviously, an act could decide at the end of our deal that they want to go and work with a major label, but that’s up to them. I would hope they wouldn’t, but people always have their own perspective.
You work with FUGA at the moment. Are you concerned about them being owned by Universal via the proposed Downtown acquisition?
I can’t control those worries, but I’d rather they didn’t do that, because I love being independent. We were on The Orchard for a while and we had offers from other companies, but one of the reasons we signed with Firebird is, I really loved the idea of being a fully independent company.
I didn’t want to be a part of Sony or Universal because I know how those things work; you get more drawn into them, the more success you get, the tentacles come out and you’re somehow part of them.
“We took a real risk with Firebird, and we’ve been incredibly impressed by them.”
We took a real risk with Firebird, because we didn’t know them particularly, but we really liked them and we’ve been incredibly impressed by them. They’ve over-delivered on every metric.
What you need more than anything in the music business is resources: without money, you can’t sign the acts you want to sign, or when you do sign the acts you want to sign, you can’t get them out to the world in the way you and the artists want to.
What we need is people to support our vision – Firebird came and said, ‘We’re buying into you as executives, we’re not super-concerned about your roster at the moment, we trust you and want to
back you.’
What did you learn from being managed by Merck Mercuriadis?
It taught me a lot. I’ve had 17 bosses in the major label system and you take bits from all of them, from Tony Wadsworth to Ferdy [Unger-Hamilton], Max Lousada, David Joseph and Ted Cockle – all these people who are incredibly gifted, but very different.
All of that has made me ready to take on the music business with my own label. My intention is to be the best record company that an artist could possibly want: good A&R, good marketing, a strong understanding of the market, audience engagement and the live business; helping them through the myriad of difficulties that the music business throws at everyone.
You’re only right or wrong in hindsight in the music business; in the moment, you’re just arguing about something. It’s only six months later that you realise one was right, and one was wrong.
So, what it does take is conviction – that’s one thing I’ve been lucky to have. I believe in myself and my opinion and, whether I’m right or wrong, my opinion tries not to be ego-driven.
The worst thing is losing an argument you know you should win. I can’t agree to the wrong thing, so sometimes it gets a bit tense!
How big do you want Artist Theory to become?
I would like it to be a huge label in the future. In 10 years’ time, it could be one of those ones with 100 staff. But I’m taking it day-by-day, because it could also fall apart!
So, I’m not dreaming too much, but I don’t think I’ll ever go, ‘This is enough for me’. I’m not the guy to ever say, ‘We’ve hit our ceiling guys, let’s put our pens down’. We’re going to keep going until someone else tells me to stop.
We’ll see how far it can go – I’d love a roster with multiple artists having success and having their own businesses, and a few good Grammys or BRITs moments.
It’s all about identification. Identify the right acts and you’ve got a shot, because I don’t believe anyone can fuck up a great act.
This article originally appeared in the latest (Q4 2025) issue of MBW’s premium quarterly publication, Music Business UK, which is out now.
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