Kevin Paul:  Welcome to the Sound On Sound People & Music Industry podcast channel with me, Kevin Paul. In this episode I talk to Cameron Craig about his career as an engineer producer and his role at the MPG, the Music Producers Guild. I'd like to say thank you to the Pierce Rooms and Neil Pickles and the management there for letting us use the space while we recorded this interview. I hope you enjoy the episode. Hello, Cameron, how are you doing? Cameron Craig: I'm good, thank-you. Kevin Paul: Thanks for joining us. I think, if you don't mind, I'd like to really start at the beginning of yourself and your career, why and how did you want to become an engineer / producer? Cameron Craig: I guess I fell into it like a lot of people I think. The, you know, I was in bands in my teenage years but I was always the guy that had organised the PA and set it up and I started a studio straight out of high school. So I went from high school, I thought I have to get a job, did the usual thing, signed up when there were a lot of studios around, wrote to all of the studios and didn't get anywhere. I got, I think I got one, I guess it was an interview, but I went and saw and talked to somebody and then nothing happened. So I went and worked in a music shop for a little while and I suspect the owner of the music shop knew my heart wasn't in it and knew I wanted to be making music, didn't quite know how yet but, and he was friends of somebody who was quite a well-known producer engineer who'd taken over a studio that he used to work in and he was now managing it, producing it from that place and so I went and did some work experience there and on, I'm guessing on the recommendation of my old boss. So yeah, then I then found out that the person that I went and spoke to was actually the accounts lady, so they were just palming me off. But in the meantime the management had changed and he'd come in and taken over management of it and I got a job. Kevin Paul: That path you talk about of just falling into it, that's kind of, I think that's a very similar path really for a lot of people, isn't it. That's how I fell into it. I was the guy amongst my group of friends who always plugged stuff up and it just seemed a natural progression to go into the studio you know. I looked at the back of records, you know, obviously before the internet and it said sound engineer and I was like, well what's that, I don't know what that is and I found that he's the guy who plugs stuff up and makes things work. I thought oh yeah, that sounds exciting. Cameron Craig: So I was even one step worse than that, I didn't even look at that, I had no idea. I literally started this studio. I thought, this looks really cool and a lot of my life I end up finding out these things later on but I was actually employed to do the tape dubbing, you know, we did a lot of jingles there, so in those days you had to run off quarter inch things and deliver them to the radio stations and that's what I was actually employed for. Nobody, well, they all sort of neglected to actually tell me that that was my job, so I just went straight into the studio and made myself kind of busy in the studio and kind of got on with all that stuff. Kevin Paul: Yeah, that's a very important thing, isn't it, making yourself busy. You know, I was always told, make yourself indispensable, even if you think that your position is quite trivial actually, you know, if you are part of making the record process and you become part of the team because it is a team effort, making yourself indispensable, certainly in those early years, is one of the really good ways of cementing yourself within a building or with a client. How did you progress once getting into the studio, how did you progress along the lines of engineering, because obviously you said you're doing tape dubbing but I'm kind of assuming that you didn't really know much about what you were doing, you were just watching people, I assume. Cameron Craig: Yep. So when, you know, when I was sort of making myself available in the studio, there was the house engineer who I'm still friends with, so no bad blood, but it was kind of like they were being a bit difficult and I was like, oh sod this and we were building, the studio was building a studio two down the hall, so I thought I'll go and help the builder. So I went down and helped him out and kind of made myself indispensable down there and then it sort of turned out that he was the manager and he just happened to be building the studio because that's what he was like and so that made a good impression on him. He was quite a big engineer in Australia and unbeknown to me because he was just Ernie the guy building the studio down the end. There were two people that I thought, this was before the internet so it was hard to find these things out but there two people I wanted to work with, one was Richard Lush, who was living in Sydney at the time, so I thought that was the other one, was a guy called Ern Rose who I thought was American because you don't know, they're just names on records and I just liked the, I liked some of the stories of the way he worked with, he's well known for working with a band called Little River Band, so okay they were very, very pedantic, but I kind of like that attitude of going to get something right rather than, you know, so they would, you know, later found out, you know, tell stories of dropping in, doing a vocal all day every day, dropping in every syllable, getting it absolutely perfect and then going away and learning it like that and then coming back and redoing it exactly like that, but with feel. So, you know, they had the budget and the time to do all that, but I liked that sort of, that mentality and it sort of turned out that Ernie, the guy building studio two down was actually Ern Rose. So yeah, I sort of landed on my feet there. Kevin Paul: What, what city was this? Cameron Craig: Melbourne. Kevin Paul: Melbourne, oh I like Melbourne, I've been there a few times. What was the studio called? Cameron Craig: It was called Flagstaff Studio. Yeah, it'd been around a long, long time, it was a pretty old seventies studio with a nice, well, what would be now, a nice Harrison Console and MCI tape machines and stuff like that. Kevin Paul: So you've been out starting and learning various stuff. What sort of things did you learn about the business of making records, what did you take away from those informative years? Cameron Craig: Well, I said with Ern it was very, I was very lucky. He was a very good engineer. He was looking to get out of engineering and more into managing studios and producing and stuff like that, so he obviously decided I was it and taught me rather than I didn't have to sit there and look over the shoulder and kind of go, oh what's he doing there? He actually would sit there and go here, see, this is out of phase. See, hear the difference. Just little things like that every day and we sort of, I just, I progressed very, very quickly because of that and we've, yeah, there was a couple of years there we were sort of quite an inseparable team. I literally sat, you know, two feet away from him and got to the point where, because he was managing the studio as well, somebody had come to the door and be like, you got a phone call and he'd just get up and walk out and I'd be straight in the chair to the point where the artist would look up and there'd be somebody different there, you know, kind of like. Kevin Paul: So did you find that scary? Cameron Craig: No see, that was I guess the arrogance of youth I just, it just felt very natural and we just carried on like that for a few years and then the studio was bought out by bigger studio to get him back and that wasn't quite as nice, so I ended up going freelance very young, 22 23, which is... Kevin Paul: Still in Australia? Cameron Craig: Still in Australia, which back then was very unusual to be freelance at that age. Kevin Paul: Even when I first started studios had engineers assigned to the studio, you know, you had one or two engineers, a chief engineer, you know and that's where people like me as an assistant would learn the ropes, you know that out of phase thing, you'd be learning that all day, every day just by sitting next to your compadres and being shown. Now the people who want to get into industry have to go to colleges and are taught all of that and I think that's one of the very downsides. I mean, colleges are great, we'll speak about that maybe a bit later, but colleges are great but that in the field, real world experience I think for me is, it's getting harder and harder to learn that stuff. Cameron Craig: Like I think, yeah, for me, my first very early solo sessions, if you like, were you know, six months early I didn't even know what an engineer was. Here I am, doing a session with some very good players and I literally just mimicked the button, I had no idea what the buttons did, but I knew that they had to go there to do this and they had to go there to do that and that was it and that's how you sort of, you're thrown into the deep end like that and it's, you learn pretty quick. Kevin Paul: Yeah, you sink or swim. How do you define the roles of engineer and producer, in your opinion? Cameron Craig: They used to be quite defined. I think they're getting blurrier and blurrier as things go on and into the engineer, producer, writer roles all sort of blurring into one sort of mess. Kevin Paul: For the people listening who want to maybe go into the industry, the studio, when I say the industry I don't mean necessarily the music industry, I mean the studio industry, the making music industry which I feel has been neglected quite a lot in the last five years, maybe even 10 years. Cameron Craig: Yeah, 10 I'd say. Kevin Paul: You know, where people outside of that industry have, through things like technology and monetary reasons, have wondered if and why that studio engineer, producer, writer, what are they there for? For me, there was always quite a distinct role between the engineer and the producer. Engineer took care of how things work, producer took care of how things were creative and the direction of a project. Let's maybe just go straight into that blurriness of that. What do you think has caused that? Cameron Craig: I guess yeah, the advent of home recording really like, because when I started there was very, very little, it was four tracks or whatever, so you did go into a proper studio, even if you're a young band and yeah, I said the arrogance, but like there was, if you are a band that walked into a studio, you just go oh my God, I dunno what that is, it's kind of, whereas now everyone knows what it is and they kind of know how it works and things like that so yeah, if they're not getting what they want, they can, you know, it's not that big a step to jump in and do it yourself, so... Kevin Paul: Yeah, you can just go on the internet. Cameron Craig: Coming to England was very different. Back in Australia I was very formalised, very traditionally trained, all that, so I think you probably came up with a similar background. So I did everything properly and everything correctly and I could do that, I could do that with my eyes closed. But I started working in a little studio just down the road here called Chiswick Reach, which was an old, it was valve, it was the quirkiest place you could ever go into and none of those techniques that I learned were relevant or even, you know, you just didn't, they just didn't do work. So you'd set it up normally and just go oh my god that sounds horrible. You had to really think out of the box, just push yourself to be kind of creative and try and come up with different things and I was very lucky in those early days at Chiswick Reach is where I met James Lavelle, who was actually up for things being quite different sounding. Kevin Paul: James Lavelle is a big influence on me. Cameron Craig: So I met James doing remixes and what became the beginning of a band called South's record so, but that was, you'd sit there and the, you know, kind of the proper traditional engineer in me was kind of like, you'd do something and there was, I can't remember, I think it was a South session, we came in and because it's Chiswick Reach, it's just distorting and it was kinda like, yeah and they're all round me going yeah, yeah, more, more, more. I was like oh, okay. So it just shifted my mindset of like, oh no, that's what they gotta want, they want that excitement and things like that so it was a valve studio and it was all old gear. There was a dawning on him that he didn't have to sample things, he said I didn't think people could get those sounds anymore, so I used the knowledge that I had with the gear that we had to then, you know, recreate that sound without it being we, we weren't copying anything, we were making new versions, but with the sonic texture of what was he was used to hearing coming off records. Kevin Paul: Yeah because Chiswick Reach used to also make equipment, didn't they? Cameron Craig: Yep and they became Themionic Culture. Kevin Paul: That's right, yeah. What made you decide to come to the uk? Cameron Craig: I'd had a bit of success in Australia so, you know, being, I had a lot of time to reflect on this when I got here because I didn't work for 12 months when I first got here and just looking back, I'd worked on probably, I dunno, half a dozen multi-platinum records, not as the sole engineer, but involved in those records. Kevin Paul: So fairly successful. Cameron Craig: So yeah, you would think, y would think, yeah. So I guess that's what I had the arrogance knocked outta me coming here and not working for a year, but I was a bit like, I deserve better than this and yeah, there was a hierarchy in Australia and they, I didn't see that changing so without something drastic happening and I just couldn't see anything drastic happening out there so I decided I wanted to move to America. I had friends in LA and I could probably get work there, but the whole visa situation was sort of unobtainable and my brother lived here so he said, why don't you just come over here, you don't have to, you know, I could come... Kevin Paul: Of course, yeah. Cameron Craig: Essentially British anyway so... Kevin Paul: From the Commonwealth, yeah. Cameron Craig: Yeah. Well, yeah. Name like Cameron Craig, you kind of figure out where I'm from. So I could, yeah, get a Visa here quite easily but I didn't know anyone here, so I just literally came over, I thought, I'd also worked my way into an area in Australia where it wasn't very satisfying creatively, it was, you know, it was good and they were fantastic players and everything like that, but it was that very sessiony kind of place, which was great at the time but I felt like I needed more creativity in my life so I just thought oh, I'll move and in hindsight going to LA probably would've been the wrong place because I would've just ended up doing more of the same out there but coming here was a bit of a shakeup and having just not knowing anyone and just having to figure out how it all works. Kevin Paul: Well a lot of people do that way. I mean, you know, certainly I have a lot of students at the university that I teach in, they all come from abroard or a large majority of them and they don't realise the competitive nature of a city like London or New York or LA, which I mean, even though the world is a much smaller place, those three places and probably a couple of others, you know, essentially that's where 80, 90% of the world's most popular music is made still and it is a big shock when you arrive from a foreign country I'm sure, not that I've had that experience because I'm lucky enough to be born here, but even me getting a job here was an eyeopener, you know, that competitive nature of having to continually put yourself about, show willing, work for free maybe in some cases. You know, I think that still exists today, I think actually, I think it's even worse. Cameron Craig: Probably worse today, yeah. Kevin Paul: Because you know, universities and colleges are producing 30, 40, 50 engineers every year, you know and there's hundreds of universities around London and New York and stuff. It must have been quite disheartening coming here or was there that steely determination and like you said, you said it a couple of times, arrogance, to push yourself to the front of the queue as it were. Cameron Craig: I guess a lot of that was actually, slowly seeped out of me and pondering my life for 12 months but a friend of mine came over just before me as well and he ended up doing, we ended up doing some demos at a studio in Wandsworth and then I sort of, actually I went and did the rounds of all the studios, here was one of them and obviously there was some big party I think and the owner of that studio had been to that party and been talking about me. I dunno whether, obviously in a reasonably positive light because he sort of said oh, do you wanna do some freelance work here and I said yeah, okay and ended up doing a bit there, which led to working and a lot of the Fallout Shelter and Island Records overflow went there, so they ended up me filling in at the Fallout Shelter as well as getting some other work for Island and stuff like that. That was kind of the start of it. Kevin Paul: Okay, so then you are off and running. Cameron Craig: Off and crawling I would say and then I met James at Chiswick Reach, so that was good because then I was working on proper records, we're getting, you know, we're getting a good time, we were doing like three, you know, a remix was three days you know, we'd spend two days recording and then a day mixing and I got to try out all the good studios, so we'd spend two days recording at Chiswick Reach and then I'd go and try a mix at Metropolis or try a mix at Strongroom or you know, like I got to try out all these studios I'd been around to have a look at. Kevin Paul: Yeah, such a different time isn't it compared to now. We talked about the roles of engineer, producer, writer. How do you think that sort of changed and why? Cameron Craig: Technology has put, all the accessibility to technology has put all the tools for everybody in everyone's hands so now a writer can record themselves and do all those things. Somebody who's engineering, you know, can hopefully do a bit of writing as well, you know and everyone's gonna input on what it should sound like and they're able to do that themselves, to sort of dictate the sound of where that song or that record should go. Kevin Paul: Do you think that's a positive? Cameron Craig: Sometimes. Sometimes it is good. I do like a lot of the specialisation of things sometimes as well though. I think that if you've, a lot of the early days in England it was very specialised. We had an engineer, we had a Pro Tools operator, we had a programmer and we had James, who was the overseer and we're all specialists within our area. So we had, Damien Taylor was the Pro Tools operator, he's gone on to great things, so we learned a lot off each other as well. So there was, I was into digital very early so I think I had SoundTools before, way before I came to England, so I used SoundTools from about 1990 I think so very early in the day but I sort of played a little bit dumb when Pro Tools came along because there was a Pro Tools operator, so I was like great, they can do that but I ended up learning a lot off Damien, how it worked and he learned, I hope he learned a lot of engineering skills off me. Kevin Paul: I'm sure he did, yeah. Cameron Craig: And same with James. Like, I had no idea who James was when I first worked with him and the first day was a little bit awkward. He didn't know there was a, the whole story was a double booking. He came to Chiswick Reach, he bought, is it Kudo? He was using a Japanese engineer at the time. He took one look in there and went, I dunno what's going on here but he hung around for the day and I was just a bit like, oh James was driving me insane and obviously at the end of the day James has sort of said to him, is this guy any good and Kudo has just gone yeah, he's great and he didn't come back the next day and then we got on after that. Kevin Paul: Wonderful. Cameron Craig: But yeah, I had no idea that James ran Mo'Wax or did any of that and so everyone's like, oh yeah, it sounds like an UNKLE record and I was a bit like oh, I don't even know what an UNKLE record sounds like. Kevin Paul: Yeah, what is UNKLE? Cameron Craig: So whenever anyone goes, oh James doesn't do anything, he does because how he, obviously how he directs people makes it sound like that. Kevin Paul: Yeah I have worked with James only once, I made a record with an artist called Andrea Parker who was on Mo'Wax. We mixed that record together and he is, as you say, he's just an overseer and he, from my experience encourages you to, that's really good, let's push that, let's see how far we can take that and then we'll bring it back and then we'll go off in a different direction, you know, that was my experience with my, like I say, it was only once. I mean I'm a big fan of these records anyway, you know, Mo'Wax is a great record label, you know and it's a very similar kind of, different music but a very similar kind of ethos to where I worked at Mute with Daniel Miller, you know, let's push things, let's take them in directions that people are just not even thinking of, you know and you sit there half the time going, is this right and you know it isn't, but it's sounding really good and you've got a guy at the back going yes, yes, let's push that more. Cameron Craig: Yeah, well that's the distortion thing, that was exactly that so... he was very good at that, like he, you know and to this day I love people explaining things in more abstract terms rather than going can you put some more 10k on it. Kevin Paul: 10k at 4db. Cameron Craig: So he would go I want it to sound dusty, or I want it to sound, you know, he'd give really good sort of descriptions of what he, the feeling he wanted to get from it rather than telling me what to do and that's why I said, that's why I don't end up working with people who just want somebody to walk the console, that's kind of not what I do. Kevin Paul: I had a Japanese artist but they essentially because of the language, they drew a picture and they said, okay so here is like, you know, it's a nice meadow and it's sun shining and then it's a huge mountain with lots of rain and that was the description of the mix. Cameron Craig: I'd love that, yeah. Kevin Paul: Yeah, exactly. It was wonderful and it invokes creativity in your mind which then I saw the producer and the engineer try to manifest that and you know, like you say, that mixing by numbers thing, you know, a bit of 4k, 10db, you know it always, there's a place for that for sure but for me it's slightly kind of boring quite frankly. Apart from James, which obviously you've mentioned, is there any other artists that have given you inspiration on a project? Cameron Craig: Very similar. Like I have a guest who I shared a studio with for like 15 years, we did Hurricane, the Grace Jones record was where we met, so it was a very similar dynamic, very different characters but a very similar dynamic and we went on to do a bunch of stuff I can't even remember now. So a couple of Brigitte Fontaine records so yeah and that was a very similar dynamic although he's a lot more technical and a lot more pedantic than James but yeah, we shared the same studio so we'd do the whole creative thing and just spew out a whole lot of stuff and then he'd sit there and kind of yeah, piece it together a little bit and then we'd come back together to mix it, we'd sit there and we'd put the vocal up .1 of a db and he'd be like okay, let's just leave for that for a day. Kevin Paul: For a day, oh okay. Cameron Craig: And we'd go off and do other things but then we'd come back and listen to it and then this prompted great arguments and then the mastery, we sort of went, mastered it with Bob Ludwig, which was amazing and we said all right Bob, what's the smallest increment you can hear because we are arguing over this constantly for like six months and he sort of said well funny enough I have done tests on this and he said the smallest thing you can hear is actually .1db, he says, but if you had to come back the next day it's .3 so you can hear it when you're doing it but if you come back the next day, you won't be able to tell unless it's .3. So that just changed our language now, it was kinda like well, can you turn it up a Bob, so it went up .3, you know. Kevin Paul: That's the currency of decibels. I love that. We can't do an interview with you without talking about the MPG. For those that maybe are not aware of the MPG, would you like to explain what it is and what it's trying to do? Cameron Craig: The MPG has been around a long time. In recent years it's sort of morphing more into like a trade body to represent producers, engineers and anyone and studios, anyone involved in the making of records and it's a much more collaborative approach now where we do a lot with, you know, writers and the MU and the FAC and all those other organisations because as we described earlier, you know, all these things are morphing more into one area but it is, some of these issues are kind of weighted more towards writers or they weighted more towards producers and weight, you know, so that voice needs to be heard within those discussions, you know, I think. Kevin Paul: Within the industry at large you mean? Cameron Craig: Yes. At first I just, I joined the MPG like a lot of people just about the community side of it and it wasn't you know, it was like yeah okay this, whatever and then I got co-opted onto the board I would say and it was a lot more about technical things and all those sorts of things which yeah, as you probably gather I don't really care that much about the technical side of things, so that was not that great and then we sort of divvied up the jobs a bit so there was one job called for you to be a part of UK Music, so the MPG had a seat on UK Music's board. The board, that board then had no idea what that was, it was handled by somebody else and they just sort of said oh, I think they only meet once a year and I said okay, I'll do that one then, that sounds easy. Yeah, how wrong was I. Kevin Paul: And what did you do there? Cameron Craig: So yeah, I was sitting on that board and this is like, you know, I've barely been in an office let alone a boardroom and this is all the big organisations of the music business. These are the CEOs of, you know PPL, PRS, the BPI, all those big organisations and literally I think for the first 12 months it was literally sitting there going oh and the producers, you know, little me down the end here, kind of don't forget about us. It's like, oh yeah and then after a while people started then including producers in these discussions and then and that's sort of grown and grown and grown so, and with this current version of the board it's very, very active in a lot of the lobbying side of things so you know, we're sitting there in meetings with the government, talking, trying to get a fair deal on streaming and transparency and metadata and all those sorts of things. Kevin PAul: Well, the big discussion at the moment is the AI copyright changes. Cameron Craig: Oh I thought I might get through today without talking about AI. Kevin Paul: Very vaguely, we don't have to go into it too much because I'm pretty sure unless you're actually living in a studio and not coming out and seeing daylight that you must be aware of it. Cameron Craig: Yes okay, so not a day's gone by in the last 12 months where I haven't talked about AI, so... Kevin Paul: We don't necessarily have to go through everything but just again for people who aren't aware, what's happening there? Cameron Craig: One thing that we've been lobbying for, as have the other organisations, is consent. You know, we are not Luddites, we don't want, we you know, because keep saying we use AI every day in our jobs, you know, I'm helping develop some tools in AI, you know it's not, it's not like we don't know what it is but we need for, especially for generative AI, we need consent and we need individual consent, not label consent. So one of the disconnects for us is the labels feel because you signed a contract with them that they have consent. So if they sell their catalogue to an AI company, they have your consent to do that, which they don't because that's not what the AI companies are buying. They're buying the knowledge that created that product, not the product. So even though they're actually using the product, but it, like I said, it's complicated. So yeah, we're just pushing for consent. It got, like individual opt-in rather than opt-out as well because opt-out is a bit like Whack-a-Mole, it'd be like every startup that got to do an AI thing would, you'd have to opt out-of and that's just kind of impossible. Kevin Paul: From what I can gather, the government seems very reluctant to allow the opt-in option rather than just have, well you've got to opt-out of it because like you say, if you're opting out of hundreds, if not thousands of companies, it's an administrative nightmare and also there's still not agreement about how much you get paid, you know, how's my or your work going to be exploited. It's quite worrying I think actually for creatives and it's not just the music industry is it? Cameron Craig: No, no it's not just, it's actually a little bit complicated for the music industry but for say the, you know, the authors it's actually pretty straightforward and they've already started, a lot of the big publishers already started doing, started asking their authors whether they want in or not so, but just getting some track in this where transparency comes in as well, it's kind of, how do we know whether they've used that or not, we kind of... Kevin Paul: Yeah it's pretty scary really isn't it because once you let go of it, once you open that genie, it's not coming back and it's a bit like the streaming when it first came out, you know, the record companies made all these huge decisions on behalf of artists and then the artist suddenly went well hold on, we're getting 0.003 pence and you are not, you are getting 5, 10, 20, 50 times more than that. Cameron Craig: So yeah, streaming, that's the other big front we're fighting on so, sort of getting somewhere on that, just. Kevin Paul: Good. Cameron Craig: But yeah, like all these things they would discuss behind closed doors and at least we're in the room discussing things now and yeah, without giving too much away... Kevin Paul: And that's one part of the MPG? Cameron Craig: Yes. Kevin Paul: What's the part of the MPG when it comes to, I don't know let's say me as an individual, how do you support people like me? Cameron Craig: There's a lot of education and a lot of events. We've just opened up a partner scheme now, so as those partners come on they're going to want events to, you know, to make what they do sort of visible to our members, so that's good, great. At this early juncture it's a lot of work for us. Kevin Paul: Yeah, of course. Cameron Craig: But I think it will enable us then to put on people to put on these events so then we can just say yes, make this event happen, so that'll be good. But that'll be, so it'll end up being more and more events around all sorts of things. So I think the first one out will be Iron Mountain, who do archiving for people and restoration, all those sorts of things. Sound Royalties, which are a company that will lend you money against your royalty streams, so the catalogue remains yours but they'll basically use your royalty stream as a guarantee against the loan. Kevin Paul: Oh okay, I see. Cameron Craig: So yeah, for the, especially for the more successful ones that's got decent royalty streams then that'd be a useful, you know say you want to build a studio, you just need some money up front, they'll do that, they'll do it against the royalty stream. Kevin Paul: Okay, that's quite interesting. Cameron Craig: And a few other, like Big Star which is a business partner, your business management company and there's one more, Neumann who we work with Neumann a lot anyway so... Kevin Paul: Yeah and how would you like to see the MPG grow, where's it gonna go in five years time? Cameron Craig: I'd just like to see it grow. It'll grow and we'll be able to deal with more areas. At the moment you know, the six of us are spread quite thin. We're doing a lot of work with studios, that's the other big one if we can get that through, so that's looking to get studios classified into the entertainment world if you like, so they will be, you know, like a grassroots venue equivalent, so they'll then automatically get a 40% discount on their business rates which for a lot of studios will be life changing, so that's one thing. Also working on a tax incentive along the lines of the film tax incentive, but for music. Kevin Paul: So you're lobbying for these positions, yeah? Cameron Craig: So yeah, we're in there... Kevin Paul: Actively with the government and the departments? Cameron Craig: So the business rate one we've actually been in talks with the Treasury about that, so that's getting closer. The tax incentive one is a bigger, I've been working on that one for years and it's sort of, it's come along and bubbles burst and then it's sort of, we're picking it back up again now and that's sort of getting somewhere because we've got the independent labels a bit more on side now, so they've seen value in it now so rather than just, you know I think it's hard for little labels, they just think oh, the overhead of it's not gonna save us any money, we're not making money anyway so why is, that's not gonna help us. Kevin Paul: Yeah and the tax man doesn't like to give away that money so easily. Cameron Craig: He doesn't give away anything. If you think the tax incentive for every pound that they give us an incentive, they get 17 back. Kevin Paul: Okay, wow. Cameron Craig: So yeah, they don't give away anything, i's whether they're gonna get value for money with what they're buying, basically. Kevin Paul: So one final question, or maybe a few more after that, what advice have you got for newcomers coming into the industry and again I say, for me when I say the industry, I mean engineers, producers, and writers. What advice would you give to them? Cameron Craig: It's hard. It is a hard life and it's a hard business, but it's also, you know, I'm just constantly finding myself in situations where I yeah, at the time you don't even think anything of it and then you look back and you think oh my god, you know, that was actually quite a situation I was in, in a good way. So yeah, it does have its moments and it just, I don't know, I really like, this is a lot, we talk about this a lot at the MPG because you know, Matt's the youngest and he's 30 and he's a bit like I wouldn't know how to get into the industry nowadays, you know? Kevin Paul: Yeah I mean, I guess it's probably the question I get asked the most from students, how do you get into the industry and inevitably I say you've just gotta be determined. Cameron Craig: Be great, be determined and talk to as many people as possible. You've gotta talk to a lot of people because you know, like it's sort of merchandising isn't it, if you've put out a thousand, you might get 10 people buy something, if you've got a thousand people, you might get 10 people. So you've got to talk to those a thousand people to have 10 people that might be interested in working with you and also you've got, it's one of those industries where you don't get a job, you've gotta make a job so you've gotta go out and make yourself available and indispensable and all those sorts of things. Kevin Paul: Yeah, like we said at the start, yeah. Make yourself indispensable I think. Cameron Craig: You don't have, we don't have the structure of the traditional studio anymore for that but if you are out there and making yourself indispensable to a band that needs you then, you know, one of those bands eventually will lead somewhere. Kevin Paul: Obviously with institutions like the MPG, which offer events and occasions to meet people, this is where you have to be I guess, active in your determination to seek out those opportunities. Cameron Craig: Yeah and like they don't, it's not like, matchmaking doesn't really work, it's gotta, you just gotta put yourself, you know, like we have big gatherings probably three or four times a year and it's a lot of people and if you are there and you're talking to a lot of people, the chances are you are gonna end up doing something that's when, you know, even the award show, I said most of the business is done in the drinks prior and then the awards happen and everyone's drunk by the end of it but you know, that hour and a half, hour, two hours beforehand is very rich pickings for networking and just finding people that you might, you know, work with or collaborate with, or the same with, you know, the Summer parties and even the events. Like there were, we did some Dolby events at Metropolis and they were great and then one of the guys just was there and he sort of, he met us and he said this is amazing, he's just like I wish I had known about this 10 years ago and he's gone on, he's now, you know, quite a big Atmos mixer because he was like, he just saw that and went oh, I know how to do this now, I can do this and then he met enough people at that thing to have a, you know, a client base baked in and somebody he could talk to when he was having problems as well, so... Kevin Paul: Yeah, that's good advice there I think, that's good advice. Cameron, thank-you very much for taking the time to speak to me again. Once again, thank-you to the Pierce Rooms and to Neil and to the management here. It's a great institution, the MPG and I've watched it grow over the years and it's fantastic to see a body representing us because for a long time we've needed that, I think. So once again thanks for the interview and good luck with the MPG. Cameron Craig: Thank-you. Kevin Paul: Thank-you for listening and be sure to check out the Show Notes page for this episode, where you'll find further information along with web links and details of all our other episodes. And just before you go, let me point you to the soundonsound.com/podcasts website page where you can explore what's playing on our other channels. This has been a MixBus production by me, Kevin Paul, for Sound On Sound.