MI Pro

With all the excitement generated by reports of impressive pre-Christmas sales for Novation’s new Launchpad controller, it seemed a timely idea to turn the spotlight on the Focusrite group as a whole. Though it might not be at the top of some traditional music shops’ lists of suppliers, this UK company has become one of just a handful of formerly largely pro audio/
hi-tech sources that have helped create a new sector for MI retail – and one that is rapidly spreading into traditional retail outlets, too.

Simon Halstead, Focusrite’s UK marketing manager, helped guide us around the different elements of this increasingly important company.

“What may cause some confusion is that we are a distributor that looks after four brands including Ableton, but we’re also manufacturers,” he explains. “The bit that’s the most relevant to MI is Novation, which has its own products but also distributes Ableton and KRK studio monitors. Focusrite is an umbrella to that, with its own products. It is crucial for us to remind people that Focusrite started out making mixing desks that cost £500,000, but now we make interfaces that are designed for people who want to get really good sound into their computers in their bedrooms, or when they’re out on the move.”

It’s Novation that is particularly the source of interest in the MI market at the moment, boosted by the nationwide Ableton/Novation tour that took place in November and which had just got under way when we spoke. The first few dates had gone extremely well, Simon Halstead reported, no doubt helped by the tremendous reception received by Launchpad. So what could he tell us about Launchpad and its sudden success?

“It’s a controller that is specifically integrated into Ableton Live and Ableton is tremendously popular at the moment – very much in the consciousness of music makers. In essence, it enables people to play Ableton with their hands – bringing it out of the realm of computer software and into the realm of musical instruments, which is very much how I see Novation as a brand.

“The market is looking increasingly receptive to hi-tech and I think it’s down to us as manufacturers to make the technology appealing. Retailers are our eyes and ears so we respond to what they’re saying the public wants and I think we’re doing it better now than ever before.”

Another example of responding to demand like this was the launch of Novation’s new controller keyboard – the Nocturn. As with Focusrite’s ability to let its top-end technology trickle down into its mass market products, Novation has done much the same with Nocturn, according to Halstead.

He says: “We used to be a boutique synthesiser manufacturer, making our name with quite expensive digital modelling synthesisers and we decided to go for this controller keyboard using lessons we've learned along the way.

“I think our particular success has been with the Automap technology we've developed. Without going too deeply into it, it enables our hardware to talk to all the popular music making software – which is something the Japanese and American manufacturers hadn’t managed to do and which provided our toehold in the market and is why we’ve managed to grow so well.

“Essentially, this all goes back to the idea that Novation looks on computers as musical instruments, which have been, until now, quite difficult to access. Looked at this way, computers are not just machines for recording events – people want to play them and what we’re trying to do is provide sensible, clever and easy ways to get your hands into your computer software.”

There are many challenges attendant in that but one of the biggest is keeping up to speed with all the rapidly mutating and evolving software systems on the market, because although Novation has the obvious tie to Ableton, it by no means restricts its users to that product.  

All the same, it is Ableton that has challenged the accepted ways in which musicians work with software, and has become an increasingly mainstream MI product as a consequence – and, again,  not necessarily an expensive one.

“The standard Ableton package costs just under £300, so it’s an investment, and there’s a higher end package that costs around £500, but there’s now a lower cost version called Live Intro and it’s going to cost around £80 – which is incredibly good value, as you get pretty much all the functions and features of the main version, but slightly stripped-down.”

For a retailer who didn’t feel particularly comfortable with £300 packages on the shelf, this new version of Ableton, particularly sold alongside Launchpad (which sells for around £150), could be a very tempting proposition. So does Novation make it easy for non-specialist retailers to get a piece of this action?

“I think this is something that ordinary music shops are definitely going to find themselves stocking, because everybody has a laptop now,” Halstead says. “It will probably be the case that the broader range of  music shops will stock Ableton Intro, though they probably won’t stock the £500 version and we’d be happy with that.”

Meanwhile, very aware of the need for sales staff to know what they are selling in this complicated market, Novation has recently taken on a member of staff whose sole responsibility is going to be visiting shops, demonstrating the product.

Another Focusrite/Novation specialist, meanwhile, looks after education – a rapidly growing market for these products.

While Novation’s own products and Ableton have become increasingly mainstream, Focusrite itself has historically been an upmarket pro audio brand with plenty of legacy and prestige, but possibly not too much relevance to the mainstream MI market.

But even that is no longer set in stone, Halstead says. “Now we do an entire range of soundcards and effects processors that are not only aimed at people who have project studios, but also at schools and colleges that want a good quality audio interface on every machine. We’ve just brought out the Focusrite Saffire 6 USB, which has simple things like two headphone outputs, so that two students can sit at a workstation, but which also has the same high quality mic preamps that we put in our £600 interfaces – and that retails for £140, making it the most affordable interface that we’ve ever released under the Focusrite brand.

“In the past we’ve been making interfaces that sell for £800, £600 and £400, for people who want to spend serious money and it’s only now that we’ve had the means and the development time to bring that technology to a box that costs only £140. Obviously you don't get the bells and whistles that high-end studio users want, but they’re ideal for people who want to get a really high quality sound from their guitar or vocals into their computer.”   

And finally, yet another red-hot brand from the Novation distribution stable is the US monitor company KRK Systems. KRK has pulled-off an unlikely coup in entering the crowded studio monitor market and making a success of it,
despite the presence of so many long-established competitors.

“KRK is an enormously successful brand for us,” Halstead says. “Products range from a single powered speaker that costs £140 to main studio monitors that cost £2,000 and it’s been particularly successful with the DJ market – especially at the more affordable end and in a way that we could never have anticipated. They’re great quality speakers, at the right price point and they’re very attractive. DJs are a clever bunch that have branched out into new ways of creating and performing music. Increasingly, they’re wanting a pair of speakers that will perform when they’re playing records, but that will also give a nice flat response when they are making their own music. If you’d asked me a couple of years ago, I’d have said it was a crowded market, but I’d guess the Rokit 5 is probably the biggest selling monitor in the UK at the moment.”

Asked to summarise why retailers should look to Focustrite/Novation today, Simon Halstead has an interesting answer. “I’d say, firstly, look at the number of products that come back. You don’t get many returns from our brands and that makes life easy. None of our brands are about getting the cheapest items available, because we’re quite aware that frequently costs manufacturers and retailers more than it’s worth. Although we’re meeting new price points all the time, our stuff is designed and built to a standard and the price tag reflects that. We’ve brought the prices down as low as we can but were not turning out cheap, disposable units. I’d say urge your customers to follow the philosophy that you get what you pay for.”