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An Indie That Believes in CDs

The waters might be choppy for the music business right now, but the Concord Music Group is happy to ride those waves.
Norman Lear, left, the longtime television producer, is the chairman of the Concord Music Group.
In April, Concord announced that it had a reached deal to distribute Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles catalog.
In April, Concord, an independent label, announced two deals, one to distribute Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles catalog and another to buy Rounder Records, the roots label from Boston whose “Raising Sand” won a Grammy for best album in 2009.

Those two additions are the latest in a years-long period of growth for Concord, which is based in Beverly Hills. And they come at a time when many other labels are shrinking or battling for survival.

The success has Glen Barros, Concord’s chief executive, singing a tune not always heard around the industry.

“The future of the music business is very bright,” Mr. Barros said. “People want to listen to great music.”

He thinks people will pay for that music, too, especially the fans he calls the adult audience. Concord has focused its attention on that group, trying to lure people less inclined to chase the latest pop sensation and more interested in music Mr. Barros describes as “timeless and authentic” — more McCartney and less Justin Bieber.

All of its deals in the last decade have tried to scratch that niche, from a partnership with Starbucks in 2004 to the purchase of Fantasy Records the same year to its most recent moves.

In the case of Rounder, Mr. Barros said, it “fit perfectly with who we are.”

Typically — and especially at the major labels — a company’s fortunes rest on a bet that a tiny number of artists will reap huge sales, supporting the rest of its roster.

Concord, however, focuses on getting steady sales from its catalog of 13,000 master recordings and releasing new albums by artists — like James Taylor and Chick Corea — who all pull their own weight.

“The majors and the classic business model have been hit hard because the hit business has been hit hard,” said Mr. Barros. “A low batting average doesn’t work.”

Mr. Barros said he expected Concord to have more than $100 million in revenue this year, 10 times more than in 2003, and said the company had a consistent operating profit. It has about 160 employees, up from about 50 in 2003.

That is a long way from where it started in 1972 as a small jazz label based in Concord, Calif., about 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. It kept a relatively low profile through 1999, when it was bought by Norman Lear, a longtime television producer; Hal Gaba, an entertainment executive; and Tailwind Capital.

Big changes arrived in 2004, when the label joined with Starbucks to release Ray Charles’s “Genius Loves Company,” a record that won eight Grammys and sold more than 3.2 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

That was the same year the company bought Fantasy, a jazz label that owned Stax Records, a soul label, for $83 million.

Those two moves “launched us to a different place,” said Mr. Barros, opening doors that had previously been locked.

One of those doors led to Paul McCartney, who has sold more than 9.4 million albums in the United States since 1991. In 2007, Concord and Starbucks released Mr. McCartney’s “Memory Almost Full,” starting a relationship that led to last month’s announcement.

Although Starbucks has since dialed back the music selection in its stores, its partnership with Concord has endured, providing the label with a smooth access point to artists.

“Their passion for jazz and music that stands the test of time is the same focus we have,” said Chris Bruzzo, a vice president at Starbucks who oversees music for the company. “They’re right in our sweet spot.”

That sweet spot — the adult market — is less inclined to illegally download music and more inclined to buy a CD. This is especially true for baby boomers. According to the NPD Group, a market research firm, people 50 and older buy 16 percent of all albums and singles but buy 28 percent of all the physical music sold.

Concord’s reliance on physical sales can be a double-edged sword, though, Mr. Barros said.

While the company has suffered less than the major labels from illegal file-sharing, fewer stores now sell CDs, and those that do often devote less shelf space and push out smaller genres.

But Mr. Barros finds solace in knowing that his company’s growing digital sales include more albums than singles, unlike much of the industry.

John Virant, the president of Rounder, said that when the label’s founders decided to sell the company — more of a succession plan than a desperation move, Mr. Virant said — Concord was the only place that he approached. The deal was for an undisclosed amount.

“What we saw in their history is that they’ve acquired other labels and been active with them in maintaining and building the brand identities,” Mr. Virant said. “The focus for the both of us has been on career artists, not on the hit-driven singles.”

While the company continues to grow, the artists and managers working with it say they still get a personal, indie-label treatment. Of course, with just 1 percent market share in the United States, it still is very much an independent.

“The first thing you notice is that everyone you deal with is a true, old-fashioned music-obsessed person,” Jon Landau, Bruce Springsteen’s longtime manager, said in an e-mail message. Mr. Landau has worked with a major label alongside Mr. Springsteen and with Concord as the manager of Alejandro Escovedo, a rock musician who has a new album coming out next month.

Sonal Gandhi, a music analyst at Forrester Research, said that the major labels have many advantages over independents, including the capital to invest in new technologies. But an independent’s ability to limit its focus can reap rewards.

“If they stick to particular genres that have music fans, those fans still tend to buy music,” especially in genres like jazz and rock, where the physical product has more value than a digital download, she said.

The company, meanwhile, says more changes lie ahead.

“I see us growing,” said Mr. Lear, who, at 87, remains Concord’s chairman. “The opportunity that was Rounder exists elsewhere, and we’ll grow.”

Springsteen Tape Takes Us Back To ‘Rock & Roll Future’

The evening of May 9, 1974, is legendary in the annals of rock ’n’ roll. It was the night the little-known Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band opened for Bonnie Raitt at Harvard Square Theater, dazzling the critic Jon Landau into writing “I saw rock & roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen’’ in the local alternative weekly The Real Paper. Now a tape from that night — one of the most revered in rock history — has emerged as a museum object 36 years after the storied event.

The tape, never available for public hearing, is included in the Springsteen exhibit “From Asbury Park to the Promised Land’’ at Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, on display through summer. It has been digitalized and streams to a single listening station, where two people at a time can listen to it on headphones. It is not available on the museum’s website, nor can a copy be purchased in the museum store.

The sound has some rough patches, and there are no seats for relaxing. But the radical effect of the music on the audience then (this writer was there and can attest to that) can still be felt. The band aims for the mystically transcendent one minute and party-hearty, sax-fueled retro-rock raucousness the next, keeping everyone off guard. Springsteen was in Cambridge to promote his second album, “The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle.’’

The idea for an exhibit centering on Springsteen’s career came about because the Hall of Fame’s induction ceremonies were going to be in Cleveland last year and chief curator Jim Henke wanted a big show to accompany it. He approached Springsteen, who had been inducted in 1999. Springsteen agreed and provided items ranging from his “Born to Run’’ Fender Esquire guitar to his favorite songwriting table.

The exhibit drew so well in 2009 — 423,000 visitors — that it has been extended into this summer, with newer artifacts added, including the jacket he wore to President Obama’s inauguration, his 2009 Kennedy Center award, and the Golden Globe he won for “The Wrestler.’’ But it is the Harvard Square tape that remains one of the most fascinating parts of the exhibit, just as that night itself remains an enduring, pivotal moment in the Boss’s career.

“It was my idea to include it, because that show is so famous because of Landau’s review,’’ Henke says. “So we contacted [Springsteen’s organization], and they had a tape of the songs played there. He and the E Street Band were a great live band, and that does come through in those tracks.’’

Springsteen’s band at the time of the Harvard Square booking featured a pianist with strong jazz and classical leanings, David Sancious. (He left in August 1974.) It is Sancious who makes the band’s first impression so strong, opening with a long, melancholy, and ruminative solo on “New York City Serenade.’’ It slowly leads into Springsteen’s yearningly searching vocal, with the impressionistic, romanticized lyrics that seem part Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row’’ and part Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side.’’ The song was aiming for theatrical grandeur and also reverent intimacy, and the effect it has on hushing an audience can still be felt today.

But then he moves away from that territory on “Spirit in the Night,’’ a song that still has its cryptically spooky Dylanesque lyrics but also builds into a more traditional soul shout-out, thanks to Clarence Clemons’s saxophone solo. The band then goes into soul-oldies heaven with a cover of “I Sold My Heart to the Junkman,’’ which had been a 1962 girl-group hit. On these three songs and five others, it’s evident that Springsteen and his tightly rehearsed ensemble were trying simultaneously to draw from the music’s past and to create a future. This is the night they came to be forever recognized for it.

It took luck for Springsteen’s audio engineer, Toby Scott, to find the tape. He lives in northwest Montana and met a Boston emigre, musician/retired music teacher Michael Atherton, at an open-mike night at a bar in the town of Whitefish. Atherton, a resident of Trego, said he had a tape for him — Springsteen at Harvard Square Theatre, 1974. He had made it himself, lugging in a professional-model cassette recorder with external microphone and taping the show from a seat in the back. At the time, Atherton was a natural-foods baker (with his wife) as well as a musician. “I saw every concert we could afford to — of course, we were broke most of the time,’’ Atherton recalls. “I don’t even know how I knew who Bruce Springsteen was. When we baked, we listened to WBCN all the time and even took doughnuts over to them because we thought they were so cool. So maybe that was it.’’

Smuggling the bulky recorder into the show turned out to be easy, because he was prepared. “My father was a news photographer for 40 years and instilled in me a rule to always look like you know what you’re doing when confronted with any possible security situation,’’ he says. “So I put it under my peacoat, where it probably looked like I was pregnant. Then I put it in my lap and held the microphone up in the air.’’ He also recorded a bit of Raitt’s headlining act, before the batteries gave out.

Over the years — as Atherton and his wife moved to first New Hampshire and then Montana, he has made a few copies for friends — which may have something to do with the bootleg copies that some Internet sites say exist. But he has only played it once for himself. “It was every bit as good as I remembered it,’’ he says. “It was the greatest band concert I’ve ever seen — completely together, completely refined, the dramatic intent clear from beginning to end.’’

Actually, Landau — who went on to become Springsteen’s manager — didn’t see the performance that can now be heard at the hall of fame. He went to the second show that night, when the set list not only was somewhat changed — Springsteen opened with “The E Street Shuffle’’ — but showcased a new song, “Born to Run.’’ Landau had seen Springsteen at a Cambridge club called Charlie’s Place just a month earlier.

Landau declined comment for this story, but the music writer Dave Marsh — Landau’s editor at the time — recalls The Real Paper review well. “It was playing off ‘A Christmas Carol’ — it was Dickensian in the way he talks about rock ’n’ roll’s past, present, and future. It always gets quoted as being in a prophetic voice, but it wasn’t.’’

Marsh went on to write two Springsteen biographies and “Bruce Springsteen on Tour: 1968-2005.’’ While he and Landau had seen Springsteen earlier in a small Cambridge club, Marsh didn’t make the Harvard Square show. “This is a horrible thing to say,’’ he says. “I had a ticket but was sick.’’