Braving the storm

BKP Music founder and CEO Barry Kirsch.

One of the Middle East music industry’s best-known personalities, BKP Music founder and CEO Barry Kirsch is forging a path as an industry pioneer, steering an ambitious expansion strategy for the music production firm in the GCC region. Here, he tells Aaron Greenwood about the company’s new HQ in Dubai and his plans for the Saudi market.

You recently relocated the BKP HQ to new premises in Dubai Internet City. What prompted the move?
Barry Kirsch: We’d outgrown our previous HQ and considered the move an opportunity to establish a permanent base that would meet our needs moving forward. It’s the fourth time I’ve built studio production facilities in Dubai – each time in the past I’ve been moved on by landlords and the like.

We’re really happy with the new offices. We aimed to create an international standard audio post-production facility and I believe we’ve achieved that.

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How’s business in light of the recession?
BK: It’s really good at the moment. Like other companies in this business, we’ve experienced the downturn, but it hasn’t been that significant for us.

Audio production opens so many doors, whether it be commercials or post work for film, television or soundtracks for events. Some sectors of the market have proven more lucrative than others.

For example, demand for radio spots has gone through the roof during the recession, because it’s a cost-effective advertising medium. By comparison, TVC work has fallen away significantly.

So, overall would you say 2009 wasn’t as challenging as it could have been?
BK: Well, we were fortunate to be involved in a couple of huge productions last year. We were responsible for scoring and posting the feature film City of Life, which was a three-month project, and we also did the full score for the King Abdullah University launch in Saudi Arabia. This carried us through the summer and we’ve been doing well ever since.

We haven’t had to lay-off any staff. On the contrary, we actually recruited an additional sound engineer in mid-2009 and we’re now looking to hire two new staff this year.

We accounted for the downturn when we were doing budgets for 2009 towards the end of 2008. We had just committed to an enormous expense setting up the new Dubai office, which made the situation a little stressful, but through careful planning and reining in our expenses we’ve managed to handle the situation very well.

We’ve got clients fairly far-flung across the region, which helps to absorb any impact locally.

To be honest, I thought 2009 was going to be mayhem, but in the end it all went fairly smoothly, which was a big relief given the circumstances.