At this year's Women In Music Awards, we celebrated the achievements of 13 game-changing executives and artists as the industry came together to honour their work. Music Week has spoken to all 13 winners to tell their stories.
Words: Anna Fielding
Karen Emanuel, winner of Businesswoman Of The Year at the Music Week Women In Music Awards 2024, founded Key Production Group in 1990.
The business offers design and manufacturing services to produce CDs, DVDs, vinyl records and cassettes, plus bespoke packaging for music and other industries. It partners with a range of some of the largest and smallest labels and artists in music and boasts a team of over 60 spread across design, packaging and manufacturing with offices in four locations.
Key Production Group reported turnover of £15 million between August 2023 and June 2024, while last year the firm made its first move into Europe, opening an office in Germany. Since then, its international business has grown, with regular orders from France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Netherlands.
Key Production Group is now a B Corp certified business, meaning that it is among the ranks of companies that are focused on social and environmental responsibility. As a B Corp company in the music industry, Key is counted among businesses that are “leading a global movement for an inclusive, equitable and regenerative economy”. The company is an official supporter of the Music Climate Pact.
Elsewhere, Emanuel has turned her business into an employee ownership trust, empowering staff to drive the company forward and safeguard its future.
The company celebrated its 33 1/3 birthday in November 2023. Its portfolio now consists of Breed Media, a Sheffield-based broker and Think Tank Creative, a high-end packaging company.
Alongside her work with Key Production Group, Karen Emanuel is co-founder of the Move The Needle charity.
Here, Music Week meets the executive to discuss her story so far, her business philosophy and the future of physical music…
How do you feel about winning the award? And why do you think you won?
“Completely knocked out. I burst into tears, happy tears. I was stunned, but also over the moon. I don’t really put myself forward, I just get on with stuff. I’ve been in this game for a long, long time and I’ve built up a company by myself. We did the employee ownership trust this year. We’ve grown a lot from during Covid and beyond. We celebrated our 33 1/3 birthday last year and had a huge party. I’m still the CEO at Key Production, but I decided I wanted to move in a different direction and give back more. I’m doing more mentoring. I set up the not-for-profit Moving The Needle [organisation] and I’ve been sitting on some boards. Thinking about the award, I felt it took a long time to be recognised as an expert in my field and as having run a multi-million pound company that employs a lot of people. I think I spent a lot of my career waiting to be asked. The Women In Music Awards is so good, it recognises all those women that possibly should have been recognised a long time ago, but weren't very good at putting themselves forward.”
Why did you decide to set up an employee ownership trust?
“I think you get to a certain age and you realise that life is short. And secondly, I thought that I've got an awful lot to give back. So I decided to kind of move out of Key Production, but I didn’t want to sell it, that didn't feel right to me, with it being my baby and something that I've done for so long. I feel very strongly about my team and the culture of the company, and I wouldn't ever want to sell out and leave that and I was aware I needed to leave a legacy. So I did what's called an EOT, which is an employee ownership trust. It sells the shares to a trust, and the trust then has to hold them for the staff, so the staff become co-owners. I wanted to enable the team that has helped me build the company to carry it on when I go.”
I’ve been in this game for a long, long time and I’ve built up a company by myself
Karen Emanuel, Key Production Group
Where would you say the world of physical music is right now? And what is Key Production’s place within that?
“Physical music is still really strong, it's not going away. There was an enormous peak over Covid, which was kind of a false peak, but now it’s settled down into a pattern. If you look at the BPI figures, physical is still strong, CDs are still there. We’ve always been great believers in the CD as well as; people keep trying to kill the format by saying it’s dying but they’re not looking at the real numbers still being made. That’s all coming out now and we feel quite smug because we’ve been backing them for quite a long time. A lot of younger people are starting to buy CDs again, possibly because they’re easier things to buy at gigs or because of the price differential. There are also younger bands asking to have their music on CD. I think physical is in a very good place, it's here to stay. There's also a lot of work being done in the physical space to make sure we are giving customers the options to make things much more sustainably and Key Production just wants to keep growing and growing into that space. We really enjoy what we do. We particularly love the bespoke products we make and the love the artist puts into it. We're all a very passionate, knowledgeable bunch of people that just want to continue helping people make fabulous products. We want to be at the forefront of new kinds of products that are coming through. We want to be at the forefront of sustainability and technical know-how and knowledge.”
Of the bespoke products you’ve worked on, which is your favourite?
“It’s so hard to answer that. When people ask me, I always go back to an old favourite, which is an old favourite for personal reasons, and it’s Nick Cave’s Push The Sky Away. It was a beautiful, beautiful package and I’ve loved Nick Cave for a number of years. One of my team worked really closely with him to recreate his notebooks where he would write down the beginnings of his songs and his musings. But I could pick a dozen other things we’ve worked on, very easily.”
Key Production turned over £15 million last year, which is very impressive in what everyone considers an age of streaming. How have you done that?
“Well, I use these words quite a lot so I know there will be some wry smiles in my team… But it’s knowledge and passion. It’s said that when people build a company based on what they believe in, then the people who are attracted to work there will also have the same values. We really, really love what we do. We really want to help people. We really want to share our knowledge with people. We’re very loyal in many ways. I’ve got several staff who have been here for more than 20 years. My first customer, Jungle Records, is still a customer – as are many others from back in the beginning. I’ve had many of the same suppliers for many years. It's very much about building relationships, building knowledge, always questioning, always trying to find new ways of doing things, making sure the customers get really good quality product on time. I’m also very pragmatic and very resilient.”
That’s impressive staff retention, how do you do it?
“I’m always astounded that sometimes people in business don’t see what is very obvious, in this case, ‘Treat people as you want to be treated’. I’ve always tried to pay a fair wage, even without loads of money behind me. I want people to have breaks, I don't want them to be always on. I do not expect people to work late into the night at Key. Everybody really enjoys their work and being in the industry. A lot of people are friends and go out together outside work. Loads of people in the office play music, so you’ve got to be a little bit flexible when people go on tour. Give perks that mean something to people. We close at 1pm every Friday. It doesn’t harm productivity at all. We’re flexible around parenting and illness. We treat people like human beings.”
You’ve mentioned sustainability a few times. How does that square when physical products are based on plastic?
“Well, a hospital couldn’t run without plastics, not all plastics are bad. And people forget that vinyl and CDs are not one-use products. They are listened to again and again and then passed on rather than being thrown away. There’s a huge secondary market. And there are new ways of doing things and we’ve been at the forefront of that. You can pay to have things put on BioVinyl, which is bio-attributed vinyl. Essentially, if you put non-fossil fuel PVC into the whole vinyl system – it’s a bit like buying green electricity, the more people opt for it the less reliant on fossil fuels the whole system becomes. What we are seeing now is all the PVC manufacturers realising they can make PVC without the fossil fuel element, using biofuels instead, and, as a result, really reduce their carbon footprint. There’s a lot of good happening, but no silver bullet. There's also research being done into alternative materials. There’s the Coldplay release [this year’s Moon Music], which is made from PET. It’s not technically vinyl, but it looks like vinyl and it plays like vinyl.”
If you could give a message to the whole industry about sustainability, what would it be?
“You’ve got to look at the way you run your business and make as many small changes as you can. Because if everyone makes a lot of small changes to work in a more sustainable way, then that mounts up to big changes, which can then change the world. On the vinyl side of things, I'd say go towards BioVinyl or other products in the marketplace that also replace fossil fuels. Pay a bit extra to make something more sustainable, because the fans will also pay a bit extra if they know it's been made more sustainably. There are so many things that companies can do, like changing everybody's pensions to a more sustainable option. We always recommend the carbon literacy programme. Well, we did carbon literacy training, which educates people on all the changes that they can make, both in the office and in their home lives. I’d recommend that to everyone.”
You’re a co-founder of Moving The Needle. What have you learned from your involvement with the organisation?
“That I need more time to run it! I want to show young women coming into the music industry what they can be. There are lots of women who have forged very successful careers in the music industry. I want to show that you don’t have to be behind the microphone to be a success. The women involved in Moving The Needle are all very authentic, all want to give back. It’s become a mission to tell people what’s out there, to be good role models. Unfortunately, I've spoken to young women that still have the same barriers and issues that I did years ago. And it's really quite upsetting. Haven’t we moved forward?”
Do you have hope for an equal industry?
“Well, of course I have hope but don’t ask me to put a timeframe on it. There are a lot of big companies with not a lot of diversity at the top, but those people won’t be around forever and change is filtering through. An awful lot has changed since I started, an awful lot.”
What do you think your legacy will be?
“I want to see Key Production carry on in the vein that it always has done, but better. I’m really proud of what I’ve done. I’m really proud of my team and I want to enable them to expand and grow while continuing to enjoy the industry that we’re all in. We all got into it because we loved it.”
Click here for more from Women In Music 2024.
