0:00

Being one of the largest music marketing agencies , we

0:02

get artists inquiring with us every single day

0:04

, so we have to be pretty selective with who we

0:06

choose , from independent artists all

0:08

the way up to major label artists . We are

0:10

kind of picky with who we work with , otherwise

0:12

the working relationship just doesn't work , and

0:15

these are the main things that we do look for .

0:17

First one I've got written down is having a long-term

0:19

mindset . Now we talk a lot about

0:21

long-term strategy and that

0:23

, to me , is different . I

0:27

think having a strategy is valuable , but your strategy can change . So

0:30

something isn't working , then

0:32

fair enough , you can change your strategy

0:34

. However , your mindset cannot change

0:36

, in a sense where if something

0:39

doesn't work , or having

0:42

too high expectations from a release

0:44

and expecting to blow up overnight , then

0:47

that is more of a short-term strategy

0:50

. It's understanding that it's not going

0:52

to happen overnight and that you

0:54

are going to build on every release

0:56

, build on every piece of content

0:58

that you're going to put out . That , for

1:00

me , is an artist that I

1:02

know is going to build their fans

1:05

over a long period of time and

1:07

therefore have that core foundation

1:09

to break .

1:10

That patience as well , kind

1:12

of works hand in hand with loving

1:14

the process . So a lot of artists

1:16

may enjoy making music

1:19

, but only because they want to see

1:21

the repercussions of that . They want to see

1:23

fame , they want to see money . However , an artist that is patient and genuinely loves

1:25

that process because they want to see the repercussions of that , they want to see fame

1:27

, they want to see money . However , an artist that is patient and genuinely loves

1:29

that process is so much more likely to succeed because everything

1:32

they're doing is for the right reason . Plus , from

1:34

our perspective , it's so much easier to be

1:36

creative with content , to have a long-term

1:38

strategy , like you said , in mind , because they're

1:40

willing to dedicate the time to it .

1:43

And that takes me on nicely to our next point , which

1:45

is willing to experiment and

1:47

have it fail . So

1:49

if you put out a piece of

1:52

content , if you put out a track that maybe

1:54

isn't quite what your audience is

1:56

used to seeing and it doesn't

1:58

work , then it doesn't affect you . You're not scared

2:01

of that happening . You don't mind if it does

2:03

happen , you just keep moving forward , keep experimenting with different things , because then you're not scared of that happening , you don't mind if it does happen

2:05

, you just keep moving forward , keep experimenting with different things , because

2:08

then you're going to discover what is unique about

2:10

you , what is unique that you can do . And

2:12

without doing that , if you just always

2:14

, always copying what other

2:16

artists or content creators are doing

2:18

, then you're always just going to be

2:21

similar to them or another one of them . So willing

2:23

to experiment , I think , is holding an artist in good going to be similar to them or another

2:25

one of them . So willing to experiment , I think , is holding an artist

2:27

in good stead to be successful , have

2:30

a track or have a piece of content go

2:32

viral ?

2:32

yeah , there's an artist we've been working with for , like , let's

2:35

say , eight months now maybe eight months

2:37

to a year called isaac butler , and

2:39

he's an artist that came to us with an irish fan

2:41

base but wanted to break outside of you , outside

2:44

of break into the UK which is actually more

2:47

difficult than it sounds for people that aren't based in the UK

2:49

and he is someone that has been

2:51

so experimental and if you look at his socials

2:53

you can see this and he's still experimenting

2:55

to this day , even though he has over 100k on TikTok

2:58

, over 25k on Instagram . We're

3:00

throwing ideas at him constantly and he does

3:02

all of them . So , yes , he might have 10

3:05

reels and only six of those

3:07

are kind of 1 000

3:09

to 5 000 views . The other ones

3:11

are the ones that reach a huge fan base , and that's

3:13

because he was able to experiment . I think

3:15

a lot of artists are so scared of that because

3:18

they don't want to be embarrassed , they don't want friends and family

3:20

to see them failing , but the idea of

3:22

experimenting is being able

3:24

to kind of find what content you enjoy

3:26

making , find who is gelling

3:28

with your content and who actually wants to be a fan , and

3:30

so it's kind of needed mentioning

3:32

Isaac's give me a good segue actually , to the next

3:35

point , which is trying

3:37

to look more established than you actually

3:39

are .

3:40

And I find that we get a lot of

3:43

artists hit us up trying

3:45

to , firstly

3:47

, I'd say , try and backtrack

3:49

on their history and try and make up

3:51

like they've been doing this

3:53

for years . And there are more established

3:56

artists . I think they want to be able to

3:58

go down to the pub and have a drink with friends

4:00

and be like , yeah , I've been doing this for years and

4:02

I've got this , this and this , and they're trying to like

4:04

rewrite their own history . That's never

4:06

going to happen and it is a

4:08

, it's a strategy that is just never going

4:10

to work and help you break as an artist . It's

4:12

just going to make the drinks that night a little

4:14

bit more validating for you and

4:17

that's it . But if your content

4:19

is something where you are accepting

4:22

of where you are , just like Isaac

4:25

did , and he had that reel

4:27

go viral where he was simply showing

4:29

a song to his dad and playing it

4:31

live the first time and

4:33

it's a small venue and therefore

4:36

that small venue and the dad

4:38

being there watching his son play was

4:40

endearing enough to make that

4:42

particular piece of content go viral

4:44

and I think overall

4:46

, there are just so many assets

4:49

to an artist when , or advantages

4:51

to an artist when they know where they are

4:53

and they're creating content based

4:56

around it and they have that mindset of exactly

4:58

where they are .

4:58

Yeah , you would not believe the amount of artists that just straight

5:00

up lie to themselves and lie to us . They'll

5:03

come to us being like yeah , I've got like

5:05

200 000 monthly listeners , I've got 20k

5:07

on instagram and we have softwares

5:10

in place where we can look at where kind of the streams

5:12

are coming from . We can look at the engagement

5:14

on things and I'd say most

5:16

of the time they are fake and I don't know

5:18

if they've kind of lied so much that they

5:20

believe it themselves , which is kind of sad . But

5:22

that kind of mindset

5:24

is so toxic because when

5:26

you try to do things legitimately , it's

5:29

going to kill you because you're never

5:31

going to get the same results . You're not going to have 200 000

5:33

monthly listeners if all of those are fake . You probably

5:35

have like a thousand , if that

5:37

. So kind of being honest

5:39

with yourself first and then whoever you want to

5:41

work with , you have to be honest with them , because they

5:44

cannot start making a strategy

5:46

if they don't know what the real

5:48

numbers are and who the audience are . Because especially

5:51

if you've got fake streams , if they're coming from random countries

5:53

, you're going to think , okay , they have

5:55

fans in this country , we're going to market there even harder

5:57

, but really they would just fake all along that's

6:00

a good point .

6:00

Actually , we haven't even got that written down . But

6:03

I think that is the thing that pisses me off

6:05

. The most the artists would ever do

6:07

was try and fake

6:09

their streams and say they've got , like

6:11

say they've got a million streams on every

6:13

track , and they say they want to

6:15

aim for five million . We put down

6:18

a strategy together wouldn't think

6:20

okay , you've got millions of

6:22

streams on each track , I think that

6:24

that is a reasonable target . And

6:26

then you find out they've been faking the whole thing and

6:28

then putting pressure on you to

6:30

get five million streams , but

6:33

they've actually got about a thousand

6:35

real ones . So going from

6:37

a thousand streams to five million streams , it's

6:39

a completely different strategy to a million

6:41

streams , to five million streams . So yeah

6:44

, we do have faced that a lot and it's

6:46

quite difficult . So we do vet everything

6:49

now and make sure that everything

6:51

has been real up until that point , otherwise

6:54

it's just . It's just a car crash . Sorry

6:56

, is that too soon ? No , I

6:58

only just got what you said

7:01

but , you thought the point was too soon yeah , maddie was

7:03

in a car crash a few weeks ago

7:05

rough , bad choice of words

7:07

. Uh .

7:08

Next point is uh , no long intros

7:12

, uh see , I feel like we can agree

7:14

and disagree on this one because I know where you're going with

7:17

it . Yeah , like for the algorithms perspective

7:19

yeah , I completely agree . If you have like

7:21

a minute long intro , people are going to skip it . They

7:23

don't know who you are like . There's that the kind

7:25

of idea you'll get . Yeah , completely agree

7:27

. However , I'm also

7:30

all for the artists being

7:32

creative with their music , as long

7:34

as they genuinely believe in it . Like

7:36

we have had some artists that have slightly

7:38

longer intros but the tune is such a banger

7:40

and they do not want to edit

7:43

that intro any further . Fair

7:45

, like I'm not going to get an artist to completely change

7:47

their song for the sake of a marketing campaign like I'm not

7:49

going to get an artist to completely change their song for the safer marketing campaign . However

7:51

, from a marketing perspective it's just

7:53

harder and it's when we're looking

7:55

at music that comes to us . We

7:57

, we do make note of it and we tell them as well . If we

8:00

really want to work the project , we will say , like any

8:02

chance , you can maybe make that intro a little bit shorter

8:04

cool .

8:06

Yeah , you've said my point and argued with it .

8:08

Yeah , it sounds like my life

8:11

having conversations with myself literally

8:13

my life working with you .

8:14

Yeah , um , cool

8:16

, uh . The next point is , uh , having full

8:18

trust in us . Uh , in a sense

8:21

, where if

8:23

we put forward some ideas

8:26

, that's because those ideas have

8:28

been researched . We do have a social

8:30

media trends pdf that go out to all of

8:32

our members . They are well researched

8:34

put together . We know what is

8:36

going to be viral in a couple of weeks

8:38

time and therefore , we know information

8:40

from what works yeah , so therefore

8:43

, having the trust in us and

8:46

they've decided to sign

8:48

and work with us . Therefore

8:51

, that should be a

8:53

collaborative thing where we can help them

8:55

and they can work alongside us rather than

8:57

pushing against us .

8:59

Yeah yeah , it's difficult because , at

9:01

the end of the day , an artist is paying for

9:04

a marketing campaign , so it's

9:06

kind of seen as , like you work for me , which I get

9:08

, you've handed over a lot of money . But

9:11

that's also another reason to really

9:13

listen , because you've hired these people as

9:15

experts , like we do this day

9:17

in , day out . So being

9:20

able to take on the criticism and work

9:22

alongside us is so

9:24

important , because the minute you

9:27

see it as you're being like personally criticized

9:29

, the minute you're not really taking on these ideas , it's

9:31

kind of a waste of your money you're paying us to criticize

9:33

you as well like .

9:35

We're not going to lick your ass just because you've

9:37

given us money . We're there to find

9:39

out what you are doing wrong and

9:41

why you haven't progressed , so you

9:44

should be happy to take

9:46

the criticism yeah , I think we had a consultancy

9:48

call with one of our members probably

9:51

a couple months ago and we did exactly

9:53

that .

9:53

We kind of just spent like half an hour just criticizing

9:56

him and at the end we were like this isn't a personal

9:58

attack and he's like no , I literally paid you guys for this like

10:00

this is what I want . And you should see it like that

10:02

, because if we're not criticizing

10:05

you and we're just saying that's great , that's great , that's great , you're

10:07

never going to grow , because otherwise you wouldn't be hiring us

10:09

in the first place .

10:11

Next point is being

10:13

romantic about how

10:16

you're going to break and sticking with that . So

10:18

say the next TikTok comes along

10:20

. And if you remember when TikTok first

10:23

came along and musically it

10:25

was all dance routines it was just

10:27

like girls in skimpy

10:30

clothing dancing around and everyone

10:32

was saying you've got to get on this app because artists

10:34

are going to break from this , et cetera , and it was cringe

10:36

. And now artists

10:38

are trying to break on

10:40

TikTok . So therefore

10:43

you have

10:45

to not be romantic on how you're going to break

10:47

, because the chances are

10:49

in your head how other artists have broken

10:52

. That's actually moved on now

10:54

and it's not fashionable . So you're

10:56

not going to break by suddenly having

10:58

a radio dj pick up your track

11:00

and having you on track of the day for the entire

11:03

week and then suddenly everybody knows

11:05

about you . That's not going to happen anymore

11:07

. Therefore , don't try to

11:09

push for that and then push back against whatever

11:12

is trending , what the next thing is , just

11:14

because in your head you don't really want

11:16

to tell your friends or you don't want to live a career

11:18

where you broke from tiktok

11:20

or whatever you think is cringe at the

11:22

time .

11:23

Yeah , I literally put this on the burst of my instagram story

11:25

the other day , um , and it was . It

11:27

was something along the lines of like if you're not embarrassed

11:29

, you're not doing it right and that's because

11:32

all of the things that have broken

11:34

an artist like look , all these legacy artists

11:36

. Like elvis presley was hip

11:38

thrusting so much that tv wanted to ban

11:40

him they would film him from , like , the waist up . Um

11:43

queen had bohemian rhapsody , which everyone

11:45

declined and said it's way too long . It's way too long . They

11:47

released it anyway , which is kind of the link to like the intro

11:49

thing . Like , if you want to do something different

11:51

, just do it , because if

11:54

you find it a bit embarrassing , it's probably because you're

11:56

breaking the norm which is how

11:58

you are going to make a name for yourself and that's

12:00

what we fully support . Like we want to get

12:03

behind artists that just want to experiment

12:05

and do some crazy stuff , because

12:07

you're so much more likely to get an audience that way

12:09

. That's how you stand out .

12:12

I knows what a good aesthetic looks like

12:14

, and I put this one

12:16

in because it's very difficult

12:18

to work with an artist . Yes , we've got graphic designers

12:20

. Yes , we've got video editors who can

12:22

put together an aesthetic , but we can't consistently

12:26

do it for an entire artist's

12:28

career . You need to know you

12:31

can do it , but you are

12:33

a huge advantage by

12:36

knowing what looks good , what's going to look good

12:38

on your feed if you need to do a video

12:40

, what's going to look good , what you're going to wear

12:42

for your aesthetic , and therefore it

12:44

cuts out a lot of the work

12:47

because you already know what looks

12:49

good .

12:49

So having a ready-made aesthetic

12:52

or you already know

12:54

what is looking good , therefore you create better

12:56

things going forward is

12:59

just an immense asset for an artist final

13:02

point is isn't too similar to a

13:04

big artist , and this one is very

13:07

difficult because there's so many tracks out

13:09

there , however , like whether that's sound

13:11

, whether that's aesthetic , whether that's message , whether

13:13

that's brand something just a little

13:15

bit different for us to be able to like

13:17

, cling on to and use as part

13:19

of the marketing campaign . I mean , it's

13:21

so difficult , but we've got an artist at the moment really

13:25

incredible music , kind of an indie artist . However

13:27

, how many indie artists are out there ? He

13:29

, as a hobby , is an acapella in

13:31

an acapella group . That is

13:34

like such a unique little thing that we've been

13:36

able to use as part of

13:38

the marketing campaign and all of our artists

13:40

. We look for something which is

13:42

unique and that can be the music , but

13:44

so often now it's not because there's so much music

13:46

out there . So , having something which means you're not just

13:48

a copy paste of all the other artists

13:51

, whether that's in content , whether that's with brand

13:53

, aesthetic , the music , we've

13:55

just got to find something a little bit different yeah , and

13:57

I don't mind if you sound

13:59

like an artist from the 70s , 80s

14:01

, 90s , that's OK .

14:03

I mean , sam Fender essentially sounds like

14:05

Brian , is it Brian Adams he gets compared to

14:07

? So that's OK

14:09

. It's if , say , harry Styles

14:12

has got a new album out and everyone's listened to

14:14

it and you're an artist who kind of sounds like

14:16

Harry Styles , it's going to make it very difficult

14:18

, but artists often think that's

14:20

going to be an asset for them because everyone's listening to this

14:23

style of music . Therefore they want more of it . That's

14:25

not true . In the long term you're just going

14:27

to end up as kind of a Harry

14:30

Styles from Wish .

14:32

What's really funny is I put money

14:34

on it . The comments will be flooded with people like oh

14:36

, have you listened to the charts ? They are all copy and

14:38

paste , but

14:42

the thing is they weren't , and that's how they broke . So , for example , justin

14:44

bieber like the swish , the swishy haircut he had

14:46

and the way he dressed with his hoodie

14:48

and the purple cap , and the way he sung

14:51

on youtube . Like he sung on

14:53

youtube , people didn't do that

14:55

then . So that's how he broke . Like ed

14:57

sheeran he was the normal guy , like

14:59

the normal ginger guy , and he like rapped

15:01

. With example , he like did some youtube videos there . Like that was the normal guy , like the normal ginger guy , and he like rapped . With example , he like did some YouTube videos

15:04

there . Like that was unique . He had like

15:06

rap in his singer songwriter music

15:08

. Like these artists yes

15:10

, you might think they sound all the same now , but when

15:12

they broke they found something

15:14

that made them unique . So in

15:17

this stage of most artists career , like

15:19

the really early stages , they just have to find

15:21

what that one thing is absolutely

15:23

, totally agree .

15:25

Um , happy to end it there . Yeah

15:27

, happy to end it .

15:27

See us out yeah well , thank you so much for watching

15:30

or listening . If you're listening on podcast platforms

15:32

, make sure to subscribe , if you haven't already , and we

15:34

will see you in the next one .