The KLF were an influential British electronic band who saw success in the 80s and 90s, followed by retirement and then reinvention as an art foundation called K Foundation. In this guise, they infamously burned £1 million as a work of performance art.

As the “The Timelords”, in 1988 they published a book called The Manual, which provides a blueprint for replicating their success in getting to number 1 in the music charts, as well as a funny commentary on the music industry as it was back then.

While working at SoundCloud, I got a brief look inside the music industry and gathered quite quickly that it was mostly a cynical affair. Ever since, I have tried to learn more about it and I decided to pick up the Manual after friends had recommended it, along with work by Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds

The KLF themselves based the book on their experiences working in the music industry in the 1980s, as artists and on the production side. Primarily, the book argues that chart success comes from applying a derivative, specific method. You begin by compiling current hits into a reference set, not just for ideas but to act as a template library. Imitate their structure, pacing, hooks and arrangements, incorporate some “golden rules of pop”¹, and use an expert engineer you have hired to craft everything into something convincing sounding. The rest of the formula comes down to how you work with the industry apparatus, such as sales people and distributors. If you do manage to do all of this well then you might have a hit on your hands. Nonetheless, do not confuse making a hit with financial success. You will not get rich from reaching number one, although you will make a lot of money for the industry around you.

Rather than any form of artistry, one might think of this as a type of cultural engineering, with the application of a methodological framework that breaks already-successful songs down into their structural components and puts them together using heuristics to create further derivative versions. This framework measures success by the ranked position reached in the sales charts, giving it a metrics-based market-optimised objective.

This overall seems not too far from how many companies choose to operate. Copycat start-ups, formula film-making, fast fashion or SEO-driven article production could all mirror how the KLF approached hit-making. They mitigate risk by mimicry, often for portfolios of investments. Their mimicry also often encompasses the brand or identity of the originals. On this topic, The Manual makes the case that chart success does not depend on a strong artist identity or brand. However, many in the music industry would probably disagree today. A strong brand strategy, such as Charli XCX’s “Brat”, can convert directly into substantial engagement on social media if done right.

At this point, I would like to give some praise to mimicry as a creative strategy . While mimicry makes us think of cheap knock-offs, in 1990, Rene Girard argued that imitation drives innovation: “Public opinion is always surprised when it sees the modest imitators of one generation turn into the daring innovators of the next. The constant recurrence of this phenomenon must have something to teach us. He talks sense, but I would have liked him to talk more about risk-taking in his concept of innovation, to understand more of how he saw its relevance, if at all.

Would The Manual formula work today? The authors themselves said that the book would be outdated within 12 months. 37 years later, no one really cares about the music charts any more, and streaming and social media have changed how music artists are discovered by and engage with their audiences. Social media enables a kind of direct measurement of engagement and audience behaviour too, for better or for worse, which fundamentally changes marketing processes. These days “content creators” need to provide content that engages their audiences the most, even if that means giving up their own tastes and preferences, much like what the Manual advises.

Read this book as an entertaining historical record of the music industry at the time. At just 73 pages, you can easily skim it in a single sitting, and you might still find one or two things still ring true.

If this topic interests you and you want another perspective into how the music industry has operated, check out F.D. Signifier’s video “Hip Hop’s Original Industry Plants.”