The Music Industry Podcast
The Music Industry Podcast
The Route To Success For Electronic Artists | Renowned Label Owner Explains
The landscape of independent labels is a challenging yet thrilling frontier, and we're here to unpack it with you. Our exploration dives into the intricate balance of building music ecosystems, creating owned playlists, and celebrating smaller victories to amplify diverse records. Forget fleeting social media trends; real traction lies in tailoring strategies to specific territories and conducting diligent research. This episode provides insights on how independent labels can harness local expertise and insights to navigate the complex music industry and carve unique pathways to success.
Dance music culture is ever-evolving, and artists face the ongoing challenge of balancing artistic integrity with commercial success. We discuss the shift in listener loyalty to streaming platforms, posing questions about authenticity in a world dominated by commercial hits. With Anton's guidance, we dissect the contrasting paths artists can take, whether aiming for the underground club scene or broader audiences. We also delve into the differences between major and independent labels, highlighting how flexibility and collaboration can empower artists to build enduring careers despite industry challenges.
Welcome back to the Music Industry Podcast. Today we're going to be joined with Anton Partridge. He was the Global Director of Electronic Music at Warner and now he owns Good Company Records, which is one of the leading electronic independent labels. It's a super interesting conversation. We talk about everything from the streaming space to the live space, social media and whether it's actually needed in this genre.
Speaker 2:And he also talks about some of the biggest artists he's worked with which literally have had viral tracks across TikTok or even got in the charts, but also the difference of how the electronic music industry differs from the commercial industry, because there is a lot of different ways to break. As an electronic artist, you can also make mistakes Like I didn't even know that you, as an electronic artist, you can also make mistakes like I didn't even know that you, as an electronic artist, you can play the wrong venue and destroy all your credibility and your career. And he also talks about how to make money from not necessarily hitting the charts. You're not looking to necessarily go viral to have a successful, long career as an electronic artist. He says that social media is not necessarily needed to be successful as an electronic artist. So there's a lot of interesting points he mentions in it.
Speaker 2:Also the fact that he said that Warner had a lot of emphasis on their own playlists and how he looks for that, which kind of validated us a little bit, because that's essentially, if you work with Burstimo, that's what you will get. We have our own network of playlists that we generate a huge audience of music lovers and pump them into our playlists, which get exposure for artists. So if you're looking to anything like that, then I'll leave an inquiry form in the description and also in the comments, if that's something you're looking for. You want to get your career off the ground, and I hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker 1:We're joined with Anton Partridge, the founder of Good Company Records Dance. Would you call it Dance Records? Yeah, it's a house label, it's a house label?
Speaker 4:well, we have, we have two. We have Good Company and the sister label Get Together. Good Company is very focused and centred around the cultural importance of house music and more club-orientated releases, and Get Together is unashamedly commercial.
Speaker 1:Okay, I think it will be a good one for us because we've never had anyone on the podcast in dance house, electronic genre. I plastician on yeah, um, a while back, but we've never really explored this genre a little bit. So I think it'll be interesting. But you, uh, I saw that you were. You were at warner before I was.
Speaker 4:I spent quite a bit of time at warner I had I was there for eight years, initially um with my own imprint. One More Tune I left to set up. Oh, I say I left, my contract wasn't renewed to set up and I chose to set up my own indie as I'd had a yearning to do that for bloody ages. And then they had an idea of buying 50% of it. I didn't like that idea. It was too early and they said okay, you carry on doing what you do. Would you come back and orchestrate our strategy on a global level for everything electronic-wise as far as music is concerned, across all of the frontline labels, be it Atlantic, parlophone, warners, the German office, the frontline labels, be it Atlantic, parlophone, warners you know the German office, the American office and set up the help set up the dance label coming out for Warner Records in LA, which is Major Recordings run by Sam Mobrak as well.
Speaker 2:What does global actually mean then? Obviously, it means worldwide, but as in, what difference does it make in terms of your role and what do you focus on?
Speaker 4:well, it made it made. I'd like to think it made a huge difference, because everybody signs a global deal, right? So, um, they the. There was a propensity to sort of the action starts in a territory that you signed and then everybody else waits to see whether or not there was some, there's some sort of movement, any element of success, before they kick on with it. Obviously not if you're a huge household name with huge success. Everybody sort of moves at the same time. But in a dance arena what would happen is america might sign something and uk might sign something someone, someone in Holland would do, and then everybody would sit back and go okay, what's the story? What's this?
Speaker 4:And my role, my previous role, was to try and get the flow of traffic and information much more concise and sort of like be ahead of the curve so that we'd be looking. I was slightly like an adjudicator of like hello, I think this could work in Germany if someone had something in the UK or this feels like it's going to be really good and start that momentum a lot earlier. So when it came to that record working or looking like it was going to work, it wasn't starting from a cold standing point in another territory so we might go and hire independent radio pluggers or club promotions people or put a little bit of spend into social media advertising specifically in other territories, as opposed to it all happening in the UK. Is it a hit in the UK? Oh, not quite, all right. Well, if it's not a hit in the UK, we're not going to try it anywhere else. And you know, you also then get the artist and the management buy-in on that and you get them sort of being very much more proactive and doing something for those territories, whether or not it's just promotion or a shout out or anything else like that. It's just having and doing dj mixes on radio shows over there and and doing stuff like that, creating more of a presence and an awareness at specialist level so that it.
Speaker 4:But by the time it got to a commercial level and it was looking like it was going to have commercial success, all the groundwork had already been done and that groundwork could take up to two months, whereas previously that groundwork would start post the success in any other given territory. Helping people close deals you know stuff like that have been around for so bloody long that you know I'll probably know a lot more managers than the very good and younger A&R staff that are in the company. And if someone wanted to sign something but they didn't know the manager, hey, do you know this manager? Yeah, okay, cool, I'll call him in. Let's do this. I'll help you get this over the line. It's your signing, but I'll help you get it over the line.
Speaker 1:And in global strategy for electronic music? How would you say that would differ compared to, say, the more commercial stuff? What were you looking at in certain countries to see that there is potential there, specifically in the electronic space, compared to, say, commercial or rock or other genres?
Speaker 4:Well, it's looking at the nuances in each country. You know, sonically okay, like you might have this record that sounds great and I used to get this a lot from some of the european labels and they were having huge success in europe. It's only be gold, germany, platinum, france, this, that the other, and it's like look this, sonically, this isn't going to work. We can help it and we can get awareness going and we can do these several things to make sure that the artist has a presence. But, quite honestly, I'm prepared to be proven wrong in this circumstance, but from what I can hear in all my experience and looking at the entry points that we would have to hit to build this into being a hit, I can't see the gatekeepers that are going to take this record on or this sound on more than anything, um. So it's looking at that. It's building ecosystems as well. You know, um creating playlists. Our owned playlist, our own playlist that had the majority of the music, was the warner dance catalog from around the world and giving um, trying to give all the records a platform of any sort, whether or not it be from a visual context on youtube to playlists and streams on something that was brand new that isn't going to get an editorial. Look immediately and provide that platform to go look, okay, we're going to put you in these playlists that we own here, this global playlist, this playlist in Germany doing things like that, hiring the independent radio people just having activity because it's it's it's really an independent label mindset. You know it's that thing of you, as are we.
Speaker 4:As an independent, you celebrate much smaller wins, all right, and you chase those smaller wins wherever you can, so long as something is moving. But our bar and our benchmark is a lot lower to what is a is a win by comparison to in a major. So you know, we might work on a record longer or we might work suddenly specifically just in this territory because we can see it moving, whereas the benchmark within the major is, understandably, has it hit this number? What are the trigger points to like to spend more money on it and to do this and to do that? Um, and quite often a lot of time. Even on the data signed records, they don't hit the benchmarks and they just kind of sit there and nothing really happens, whereas we kind of invest as much in the artist as we do for our label, because if we don't promote and test the ground wherever we can and wherever we think that the record is appropriate to give it an opportunity, we might miss that opportunity.
Speaker 4:So we might not do something in Germany, thinking, you know, and the great thing about having independent people on the ground, and you choose the ones that don't take records for the sake of taking records and just give you an invoice. You choose people that go look, do you know what? I'm not sure this is going to work in Holland. Um, if you want me to, I can test it with a few people, but I don't want to take this on right now because I don't want you in a month's time or six weeks time to be going. Where's my results? Why haven't you got this played on the radio? So you use those people as sort of a barometer as well as to whether or not you've got an opportunity or that they think that they can do something with the record. And they'll always ask you okay, how you're going to back me up. What's the plan? What do you? You know what advertising or is the? Is the artist going to have any presence? Have they got any gigs in the in the territory?
Speaker 4:you know doing that sort of thing. So you know, especially now it's got a lot more involved because it's a lot harder. Um that you know. If you rely solely on tiktok or insta, it's like choosing six numbers at the end of the week. You don't know if it's going to happen. No one can dictate that.
Speaker 4:That's one beautiful element of it, where it's like it is dictated or the decision is made by the public as to whether or not they like something and they're going to go for it. But the success of a record shouldn't depend on whether or not it's a success on TikTok or Insta. That's kind of a very fleeting moment. Those are really lean back experiences for music. It's very easy to just like it, pass on, move on. There's very little long term engagement with that artist or even that track and it's very track-based.
Speaker 1:And what would you say the focus would be for you guys Then, obviously, as an independent label, you can be more focused on what you think is the best way to grow an artist. Obviously, you want to focus on all areas, but where have you found that you are putting your most? Most of your staff are focusing on this area, or like most attentions on this, or is it.
Speaker 4:It's very spread out. Yeah, it's very. I'd love to be able to say that there is a blueprint and we can follow that blueprint and if we've got the right record, bang, wallop. You know, um, you know, I have my staff do an exercise once a week with a new record that's come out that isn't ours to do the research on it. What playlist did it get? What radio plays did it get? What Shazam numbers reacted to that? Why the radio plays.
Speaker 4:You know where it started, how it grows, and we kind of look at them for a four to six week period and then move on. So at any given time we've got six records in play that we're monitoring that aren't ours, to see what the path of records are, and there's hardly a path that is identical to another. You know, outside of it's a hit on TikTok and everybody just goes bananas and chases after it. But even then you know it's so fleeting the majority of the time, it's so fleeting that hit on TikTok. Then you know it. It's so fleeting the majority of the time, it's so fleeting that hit on tiktok or like that. You know, by the time you've kind of like got your ass into gear or even tried to sign the record, invariably it's got a sample. You have to clear that sample. You have to do all that sort of thing. By the time you've got the deal done, the sample clearance done, you know, if you're lucky, it's four weeks in, it's probably about eight weeks in and that moment's gone.
Speaker 4:And if you're lucky, it's four weeks in, it's probably about eight weeks in and that moment's gone, and then you're left with a record on your hands going all right. Well, what do we do with this? Because the place it only lived was on social media.
Speaker 2:Are there any specific attributes you look for in an artist to know that they've got a better chance of being successful over another artist, for example, like whether they can play live, whether they can create content on tiktok? Is there anything you're specifically looking for or is it just like more so on a track by track basis?
Speaker 4:um firstly, it's always about the music. Is it great? You know, we pride ourselves. It's getting more difficult because of the landscape and how the algorithms are working and the personalisation of playlists and things like that. We have big artists and we're very proud to do artists that have done their first record and they might not have any monthly listeners on any streaming platform and they might not have any TikTok followers, but we think it's a great record and we're like, ok, we're going to try and navigate through this and that's got a lot harder. That's got an incredibly. That's got like furiously harder, like even the ones that do work.
Speaker 4:What used to be what we used, the timeline that we used to be able to do, was about to get a record to a point where we could get a clear idea as to whether or not it would just turn over nicely or kick on was about to get a record to a point where we could get a clear idea as to whether or not it would just turn over nicely or kick on, was about two months. It's about four or five now. It's a much slower process. The playlists don't return as much. The personalization of it sort of slices everyone into different groups and tribal listenings and it becomes slightly echo chamber like more than discovery.
Speaker 4:Um, um. You know, the human creation of curation of a lot of playlists was at times a really good thing if the editors were really really good, and I still think the editors are good. But there's so much music and they have to serve to so many people that the, the personalization, I mean the personalization stuff doesn't work for me. Because if I get, if I listen to one of those playlists and I hit one or two records in the first five or six that I'm not into, it's like you don't know me I'm going to go and look for my own music.
Speaker 2:I don't know about you. It recommends me the same thing, same artist, every time. I get a bit bored of it, especially if you don't follow artists on Spotify.
Speaker 1:Your release radar is just the same stuff over and over and over. So you used to find that the playlisting side was more beneficial than it is now it is, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 4:And again back to your question about you know, looking for an artist. Sometimes you know, firstly music, if they've put out stuff previously. Sometimes it's about how many you know how long they've spent really properly chipping away at their career. You know, there are people. At the moment we have a guy called Rossi. He's an unbelievable dj, great producer and having his moment right now. You know that sound is in um. He's honed his sound and his dj technique to a t. That's been a minimum of seven years, you know. And now this year he's been out there with everyone from jane back with Jamie Jones, carolla, anybody that's an aspiring DJ. He's hit the halcyon, he's got the pinnacle of it. But for a lot of people they probably would have thought he'd done that in the last six months and not seen the hard yards for years before.
Speaker 2:Has this kind of echo chamber, as you put it, changed your strategy at all over the years, in a sense, where I notice people complaining about the Glastonbury line-up and the likes of Elton John and Pearl Jam etc. Are the headliners. But when you think about it, there hasn't been any huge stars in the last 10 years that have really come out to be headliners or even be in contention, like, say, the likes of David Guetta, for example, or Avicii. So now, because of that, the way the algorithms work or the way the editors work and everyone's in their own little tribal zone does that change?
Speaker 4:It does it changes because the loyalty now zone. Does that change it? Does it changes because the loyalty now, most of the time, the loyalty now is to the track, not to the artist. And I remember sort of saying this. I remember doing a I can't remember what the speech or the talk was for bloody years ago. I remember saying um, like you know, in the physical days when someone might hear something, they like it or they buy, buy one single, you know, might buy another single.
Speaker 4:Talking from my experience when I bought things, uh, physical product, I was very aware that I was spending money on that person and so I like right, I've spent whatever. It was a 12-inch record that came in as an import I got absolutely rinsed for at like £8 a go or something. I spent 16 quid on these last few records. You read about him or something. You go and see him or her and you know playing out and you're like I'm in, you know I've accumulated, I've spent this accumulation on that one person and I love what they do.
Speaker 4:I'm in the minute that the sort of all you can eat buffet, which is great. It saved the music industry to a large extent from the limewires, the pirate bays and all of that sort of thing, but the loyalty is, the loyalty is to whoever you're paying your money to. So the loyalty is to Spotify, it's to Apple, it's to Netflix, it's to things like that. And so if you're given a choice every Friday morning to pick your favourite song out of a playlist that has 200 brand new songs in it, the value of it to you not commercially, the value of it to you becomes more and more inconsequential does that mean you're signing, you're choosing to sign, or you're seeing that labels are signing individual tracks rather than an artist on a long-term basis, because that makes more financial sense?
Speaker 4:I mean it's a weird one because dance music is very the majority of it is very track-based right, and you can have people that set out to make commercial music and want to follow that path. A lot of the dance tracks that become hits weren't made to be hits. They were just great club records and lived in the club for six months a year, however long it was, and then just by its own popularity you know it became a hit. But those people that sometimes make those records that are club records just want to make another club record. They don't want to follow it up and, like I, want to hit the charts again Because also, if it happens under its own, there's more integrity in having a hit if it wasn't ever meant to be a hit and it became one by its own kind of velocity, of the amount of people that liked it or the forward motion of it.
Speaker 4:If you're then seeing and it's probably got a certain sound that doesn't sound like a normal hit record, it isn't like verse, chorus, pre-chorus doing this doing that record. It isn't like verse, chorus, pre-chorus doing this doing that. It might have just an eight bar vocal hook in it and be quite dark and deep, but it's been a huge hit, that person invariably feels maybe under the pressure to like, okay, now I've got to put a full song in and I've got to get my record on the radio and stuff like that, but those are changed. It's kind of like now it's those people, their careers are forged by long-term live careers and djing and doing that and the dj world is a precarious world to be in. If you put the wrong, if you put a foot wrong, you play in the wrong club as far as the branding or whatever's concerned. Or you put a foot wrong, you play in the wrong club as far as the branding or whatever is concerned, or you put the wrong record out it could hurt you.
Speaker 1:Explain that to me, because it's not a genre I know very well. In terms of the club space, I'm sitting at home with a cup of tea. You won't see me in a club.
Speaker 4:So, give us a bit of information on how that works. If someone's made a underground record and it ends up being a hit, yeah, just because it just becomes more and more popular and more and more DJs are playing it and suddenly everyone's loving it and that DJ is playing really cool clubs the Circa, locos of the world. You know, motion, which unfortunately Bristol is about to close. You know playing a very um playing clubs that are really about the culture of the music and not about booking people that have had lots of hit records. In fact, there's probably less chance of playing at the club if you've had hit records unless they have been under their own. Guise of this just happened because everyone loved it and it doesn't sound like it's trying to be a radio record or it's not put together like a normal commercial record would be.
Speaker 4:Then you've got the other arm, which is the brilliant worlds of Joel Corey and Calvin Harris and Getter, where it's like no, I'm just going for the jugular, I've done my 10,000 hours of whatever it is, of being cool, and now I'm just and I have the ability to write another hit record and a record that works for both the floor in a different type of club, you know, in a more commercial club and the radio and do that sort of thing.
Speaker 4:So there are the two sort of lines of the commercial world of dance and the underground or more club-centric world of dance. And if you're on that more underground club world, it's not about having hits, it's about playing a certain style of music and being a really bloody good DJ. More often than not now you also have to make your own tunes and that you are also in line with being a great DJ. You are a great producer, and being a great producer and putting out your own records shows that you understand the scene really well and this is what your sound is within that scene it's funny because that sounds more like what we were talking about before, how we're kind of lacking that loyalty to an artist and there aren't these like cult, like fan bases.
Speaker 1:That sounds more like it's huge.
Speaker 4:There's huge loyalty to those artists yeah, those djs obviously smaller groups.
Speaker 4:Smaller groups, um, and it depends what your the metric is for success. Yeah, yeah, you know, because invariably those records aren't doing 100 million streams, yeah, right, but they don't need to. They don't want it like if, if one does off its own back because it blows up and it's just played everywhere, great, but there isn't the need to desperately do that again, because if you purposefully try to do that again in that area, it probably is never, ever going to work. You need just to do what you do. And then it comes to the fore People like Sammy Vergy and Pauzer and stuff like that that are in a very cool lane but have got to the point now where they have really rabid big fan bases and they're constantly being talked about online and their music is being swapped.
Speaker 4:Or did you hear this tune in his set? Do you think this is his record? It is like there's a real fan base, whereas and it was always the case with pop or commercial dance music wasn't too dissimilar to having a pop act. It's just that you had somewhere and a base for it to work from, and that was the club and a different set of clubs. Which from, and that was the club and a different set of clubs, which sort of brings you on to another world of like. Well, those big oceana clubs and those mega commercial clubs have all really suffered in the last few years and through covid, cost delivery crisis, all that sort of thing, um, and there's a lot that are closing down at a rate of knots yeah, but that's difficult.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's your, that's live, that's live venues.
Speaker 4:It's not even to do dance music as well. It's like you know smaller places where which used to incubate bands. Yeah, you know that might only have three, four hundred, maybe at the most a thousand cap. You know they're closing down.
Speaker 1:Because TikTok kind of comes in in a way of you can still communicate or bring in those new fans by doing live sets and creating content and stuff. But I guess you're not seeing that return financially because people aren't paying for anything through TikTok.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and you know, I think that, and you know, I think that it's a really dangerous world at times when your fan base is built via social media because it's so passive. It's, you know, no one. Yeah, you can do so to a certain extent, but I just don't know. If that's it, if that's all you do, right, that's fine for a moment, and then your moment will go quite quickly if there's no other foundation of which your career is built on so you spoke about the underground scene and then more the commercial space.
Speaker 1:Do you deal with both of those through the label, yes, we'd like.
Speaker 4:So we have good company sort of more club focusedfocused, culturally relevant, and then Get Together which is commercial, much more a wider appeal. I mean, I love both. I genuinely love both. I'm not in this. Oh, all that commercial music is shit and doing this it's like you know, I have fun with it.
Speaker 1:Easier to market.
Speaker 4:I guess more competition as well, though, so not necessarily, actually, because if you're cool and you have that fan base, you know, you know you've got a fan base too. With the commercial stuff. You're kind of going on the back of the sound of a record, um, and whether or not that works or not, um, but it's fun. It's a different area. You do different things, you learn different things. You're not just in this little rabbit hole of doing one thing and one thing only.
Speaker 2:So what's the difference in the marketing strategies then? Firstly, at what stage do you pick up an artist and look to sign them in their career?
Speaker 4:It's various stages. Like you know, we've only just recently done rossi's last two records and he's been plowing away for years. As I said, fisher had had a few records out before and you know we picked up losing it when it was well before it was the record that it became um that is my gym.
Speaker 1:go-to that track. I feel like it's in my brain as soon as you said it you are powering through the gym now. Yeah.
Speaker 4:You know, it's so variable Someone might send me something that they've never put a record out before. We just picked up an Australian DJ. When did we put his record out? February or March, and this is for the commercial label called a dj called levi. He had one record out which was about four years before. Um, there were a couple of videos of him. It's like an afro house version. It sampled rihanna's jump which was her cover of genuine's pony.
Speaker 4:Um, I, I know you could see a few people using it on Insta. We were like you know what the record sounds? Good, I didn't, quite honestly, didn't know it was going to do what it ended up doing, you know, and it got. By no means was it a viral record on either Insta or TikTok, but it had this grounding and it had somewhere to build from with that. So we're like jesus, you know, really moves in germany and uh, where else was it? France or holland, something like that before it came to the uk, you know, and we had, because it did have that little bit of a platform of the social media element. You know, we we were for someone like him that hadn't had a record out for ages. We were fortunate that we were starting on 20 or 30 000 streams a day, which is a lot for someone that's brand new. But within three months we were on 350 000 streams a day and we were at his platform that worked best.
Speaker 4:Um was insta. You know, it did okay on tiktok, but the engagement there was really strong engagement for him on instagram. So we really honed in on that and we very then then sort of went right which territories germany, okay. Which cities in germany, let's? Let's go in for this here. Let's get the radio plugger on board in germany, let's build this out, let's create a story out there, which then sort of spilled over into France and then Turkey and Greece. And then the numbers start becoming bigger and then, just by proxy, the UK numbers start going up. So we then started mithering the editorial team at Spotify and Apple and stuff like that Going look, have you seen these numbers? These are all organic. Slowly it starts going into playlists and then he's getting bookings and he's done four sold-out shows in Germany, and that was since the end of Feb.
Speaker 1:Snowball effect.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So do you have an A&R team that are constantly looking out for things?
Speaker 4:It's myself and a girl called Corinne.
Speaker 1:So we had Joe Kentish.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I know Joe, I used to work with him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's the president of Warner UK. Now he said to us, in the whole time he worked in A&R, there was only one situation you could think of where an artist reached out to him and that got them signed Because you're an independent artist. Do you find that that's different? Do people reach out to you and that means that you sign them from there, or is it usually word of mouth? Socials, live events, that sort of stuff, that a lot of A&Rs no, no, no.
Speaker 4:People reaching out to us. I mean, it might not be the artist direct, it might be the management of the artist, but you might not have dealt with them before or anything. We've got on the commercial side again. We've got an amazing duo in scotland called that kind. You know they were boyfriend, girlfriend. They're now husband and wife.
Speaker 4:Um and taylor the female side of it, uh, the singing writing side of it. She's got this gorgeous, uh, scottish celtic soulful voice, a bit like tracy thorne or something like that, and but her favorite music are things like fleetwood, mac and paramore and jack. Her husband was signed to a dance label when he was 13 and making edm music and slightly fell out of love with it all and they started making tracks again and they just sent us a batch of six demos and just one stood out massively and so we just, you know, ran with it and I'd like to think we've given them a career over the last three years of working with them. Yeah, I think it's three years when you know they're earning whilst not being in the charts because, also as an independent label, our be-all and end-all is not being in the charts because, also as a label, as a independent label, our be all and end all is not being in the charts. Right, if that happens, that's great and we'll support it, but we don't. Our metric for success isn't being having a top 10 record in the OCC. We're like how many streams has it got? How much money have we made from this? How much money have we spent? Okay, do you know what we're up? It's a success.
Speaker 4:Would you like to do another record with us? And that was at the early days and now someone's having success and we sort of like right, should we do a four single deal? Should we do a five single deal? Do something like that? And then we know that we can spend more money in building them. And because, if it's just a one-off record, yeah, you're going to spend money on promoting that record, but there are so many other things that you could spend money on to develop the artist profile and do things that don't have. Sorry for the shitty marketing, speak an roi immediately. You know it's kind of like well, we know, if we do this now, hopefully that's going to pay off on single three or single four. Um, so, yeah, there's, it's people giving us stuff, people tipping us off on things, people reaching out to us directly. Yeah, I mean a lot of, even in my Warners days, were contacts hitting? Me up.
Speaker 4:I've got a record. James Hype, you know, knew his managers. He was just a guy that was a wicked DJ doing loads of bootlegs and Serge and Kev hit me up. His managers who, serge, I'd known for years and he had done a record with Kelly Lee. Um needed a few tweaks and stuff like that, but it just sounded great. It was a cover of um on Vogue's um Hold On and uh, it just, you know, ended up being a top 10 record, um, but there were no. There were no metrics to say this is a hit. There's no big social media campaign or social media moment prior to that. It's just like, well, this just sounds like a hit. Should we roll with this?
Speaker 1:So you mentioned that because you're an independent artist, you're not just thinking about charts all the time, unlike the majors. Would you say that's one of the the biggest differences, um, from an artist signing with a major and independent? That it's more hands-on, it's more focused on those small wins. What would you say like those really big differences from an artist being yeah, I mean, their metric is different.
Speaker 4:They've got a lot more mouths to feed, you know. They've got a lot more lights to keep on, um, and you know the, they, they. They have to have this fine balance between market share and being an ambassador for the culture of music, you know and that's a very fine balance you know that they have to sort of walk down the line of yes, their metric is how much starts success, which is different to mine From an artist's point of view. If an artist wants that, it doesn't mean that we can't do it. You know, there are times when we will spend more money on a record at the beginning of its life than they might do because they're not seeing the trigger points for them to activate those marketing spends. And we're not necessarily waiting for the trigger points. We're like we have to create those and so, therefore, we need to spend some money and put it here, put it there, put it there. You know, if you're an artist, we do.
Speaker 4:You know our label is what I wanted to set out was something that was very fair and collaborative, and so our deals are 50-50 net receipt deals, where whatever the costs are come off the top and then whatever the profit is, we split 50-50 with the artist. And the reason why a major labels deal is 25% to the artist, 75% to the major label, is that only the recording costs and advances come off the top and the marketing costs and the promo costs get swallowed by the label. But, more importantly, they probably put down a really large check for that record, especially if it's been a hot TikTok record and they've had to pay 100 grand for it. Okay, well, you know what. We've got our marketing and promo costs and things like that to recoup and we've just laid out 100 grand for you on. This. Speed is the big thing. It's like being able to see something and move on it immediately and not have the levels of bureaucracy that you have to go through for approvals or clearances.
Speaker 4:And you know the, the sort of chain of command that I always used to get told off when I was at warners because I used to circumnavigate that chain of command and it was I get it, it was disrespectful. You know the. The outcome was the same. But I'd probably be pissed off if someone cut me out and I wasn't involved in something. That became a hit and I could have been or I could have added my 10 pence worth in to help that process. But I I was very aware that if we don't do this, and we don't do this now, there's no fucking point in doing it in four weeks. We're just going to waste money. So let's just do this and whilst it was being undenied about, I'd just do it and luckily, more often than not, it worked. Thank God.
Speaker 4:I know Someone said to me something along. I always like love those sage, like words of advice that are small sound bites that you get along the way from great people that have put their arm around you at times, and I always remember someone saying like it's better to seek forgiveness than it is approval.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and I'm like look, let's just roll I guess that's why you ended up starting your own thing, because for us as well, having our own thing, being able to just have an idea and do it, is and not have to persuade someone it's a good idea. We're very much like do it and just see, see what happens, maybe consequences aren't yeah and it's like you know I I I specifically do not micromanage my team.
Speaker 4:You know, yes, there's a fair bit that they want my opinion on and stuff like that. But I'm always like, look, you're not gonna learn if you don't fuck this up yourself. Yeah, but we're really lucky that if anybody does, you can probably turn it around quite quickly and no one's going to die. So if you do it, just don't do the same fuck up twice, right, because then it just shows me you're not really learning. And you know you empower people. You know we've been a nurturing ground, not only for artists. You know we furthered the careers of established artists like Fisher and people like that, and you know we give new artists a platform to find their way in the industry. And that could be said the same with the sort of recruitment policy that I have. You know my A&Rs always end up being poached because they've been trained quite well and and a major is going to come in and double what I can pay them and that is it. That's like you know what great you and look how well they're doing.
Speaker 1:Do you find that with artists as well, where, like you, might develop and then a label will come with a massive check and just kind of yeah, yeah and I get it.
Speaker 4:You know, if you've not got a thriving live career and you're not earning tons of money from it and someone's waving a huge check in front of you for your next record you know you're going to take it.
Speaker 1:Is that where you'd say that most money in that genre is then in the live stuff?
Speaker 4:yes, but the caveat to that is it's kind of like for a very top set like top one percent earning what I don't know, the percentage.
Speaker 4:But you know, if you're renowned and you can sell hard tickets, you know you're going to get paid a really good fee. If you're renowned and you can sell hard tickets, you know you're going to get paid a really good fee. If you're kind of finding your way, like anything, you're probably going to be taken advantage of by a lot of people. Oh, you want to be a DJ? Yeah, come here, I'll give you 25 quid and a few drinks to play for the evening, you know? And of course, if you're young and you want to be a DJ, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna do that. Um, there's a lot of money. Fisher's live income far outstrips anything he does from a records point of view. It doesn't mean to say that the record stuff isn't doing phenomenally well, it's just he's headlining massive, massive 20,000, 30,000 cap venues and stadiums around the world and there's a great sign of loyalty. When Record blew up, when Losing it blew up, we hadn't quite signed the deal and everyone came piling in. It was like no, you were there first.
Speaker 2:So it does exist. Yeah, and imagine the competition is fierce, especially with the, the major labels in a sense, where it must be very tempting to go just as a safe bet as a major label, uh, compared to an independent, is there any kind of like selling point for, for you as an independent?
Speaker 4:of what we have? I don't think. I don't, I don't think there are any safe bets. It's more of an illusion.
Speaker 4:Everything is so subjective, right as far as people's tastes in music and nothing has been ever. The playing field is so wide and ever-shifting at the moment as to what tastes are doing your route to market, all that sort of thing. It used to be every year, maybe every 18 months, that you saw sort of genre shifts and consumption shifts and things like that. You know, it's probably six months at a time. Now a genre will come to the fore, be really big and spent two years, three years getting there, and suddenly everybody copies that sound and kills it and it's the sort of reinvent itself. You know, just because a major signs you and spends a lot of money on you doesn't mean that that's any form of guaranteed success. Um, it's you when, when I first started good company and get together, I licensed out a couple of records to majors that were. So when I first started Good Company and Get Together, I licensed out a couple of records to majors that were doing well and everyone saw the metrics and came in for them and stuff like that. And after the second or third one I was like I'm not doing this again. One, I'm giving away my catalogue, but two, I'm tired of sitting in meetings going. How is it that I've spent more money as an indie on you, that on this record, than what you've spent on? Why did you give me 50 grand for the advance? Why didn't you give me 25 grand and say we're going to put the other 25 grand into marketing? Um, that's not tiring that whole industry with that same brush. But you know they're the the the major element of it from from the records label side. You know they need hits, they want hits, they're hit, they're hit driven, they're hit based. So you know data is coming to it. So much more. All right, this record's got 100 million views on TikTok. This is doing. That Still doesn't mean that it's going to be a success, you know still doesn't mean that it's going to be an OCC record. It might have a very long tail on it. And if you spent 200 grand on it and everyone looks at it in its first six months and goes, oh, dodged a bullet there, ultimately it may end up making its money back. But if it does that, it's not going to help improve the market share, which is the most important thing, because that determines what the price point is that they will get paid for a stream as far as a major is concerned and gives them more weight in any negotiations that they're having.
Speaker 4:So you know, more and more people are trying to go the independent route, and whether or not that's signing to someone like us or doing it themselves through a distributor, stuff like that, you know, the thing that and it's what I'm a huge stickler for with our team is the service that we provide.
Speaker 4:Whether or not a record does bugger all or does really well, there should be no room for anyone to go. Yeah, we signed it to them, they didn't really fucking do anything. It's like well, we signed it to them and they've given us this plan, they've got us filming this content, they've given us the strategy of what they're doing. They're doing that, they're doing this. And if we've done all of that on our records and it still doesn't work, the most you can do is do everything right, leave no stone unturned, and so there can't be any accusation leveled at us that well, we signed it, just chucked it out, did bugger all with it, and that will either make people come to us or actually come back to us. And also when people do their own little distro deals and set their own labels up, I don't realize how much bloody work there is in it, you know it's.
Speaker 4:It's intense, and even more so if you've got a successful record. You have to really coordinate where you're going to be, what you're going to do. I'm going to promo here. I'm going to need you over there, do this, going to do that? Well, actually, more importantly, we're saying no to this or we're saying not. Yet if you do this now, it's going to stop you being able to get the big thing there. So hold off. You know, trying to coordinate, and the best moments are when the artist is totally aware of who they are and what they stand for or don't Like. Right, give it, here's a plan. No, I'm not going to do that. I'm to do that. That's not me. I like that. I like that, like great. We know exactly how we have to focus on you, uh. And the management is there going hustling out there as well, when everybody's working together, it's whether or not it works commercially, financially or whatever. It's a dream seeing bits move, seeing things sort of come to fruition.
Speaker 2:What's the journey look like for an artist who has, at the beginning, and they end up having, you know, a successful I don't want to say hit, but a successful track, because we get a lot of uh questions like when, when do I get an editorial? And they're, you know, they've got like 2 000 streams or something like that. We need to push through the editors, they need to hear this, and it's like it's not going to happen. So so what? What does this journey look like of certain kind of milestones for an artist to know they're progressing?
Speaker 4:through. You know it's uh, it's difficult, it's funny. You know the journey where, dance or not, I saw good, really good piece yesterday that was done by uh roster that there's a website that accumulates all information on artists and management and stuff like that and sort of puts it in pecking orders, and it was talking about the grammys. And so I did this brilliant piece, um, where how many years that artist had been doing their thing since their first release to the point where they got grammy nominated. It was like 10 years, 12 years, seven years, things like that.
Speaker 4:It's like you have to be in this for the long run. Or. Or there's the other element where you're like I just want to make a few records. If they work, they work Great, fine. I'm not really out there to DJ, I'm just a producer. I want to knock out records and try and get a streaming game going on.
Speaker 4:It really depends, because there are parallels. There's the okay, you're in the commercial world, you're having success, you're having radio records, you're having chart success. Then that leads to you know, calvin, if you go and see Calvin at Ashwaya, like Calvin's the only person, like Ashwaya's 12,000 people. He's outdoors, finishes at 11, starts in the afternoon. I think he's the only DJ playing on the island that sells out all of his shows before the season even starts. And then you go there and it's just like a pop concert. It's brilliant, he's just, it's really cool. He's sort of just playing a lot of his own tunes. He's remixed some of them. It's still like powerful people on each other's shoulders singing his songs and you know, like, like okay, you know that's been a long road, because he started off almost like as a indie shoegazer and decided to go into the world of dance. He was out there with the band and stuff like that, but his talent was phenomenal, both as a producer and as a songwriter, and he backs it up.
Speaker 1:So I guess every journey is just different.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it really is. And it's like who do you want to appeal to? If you're a DJ, who do you want to appeal to? Who do you want who? If you're a dj, who do you want to play your record? Right, what scene do you want to attach yourself? What scene, not even attachment? What scene do you love? Right, okay, so what record are you going to make for that someone in that scene to play? Are you going to do this? You're like all right, this is a really good record. You got a few. Oh, do you dj as well? All right, why don't? Why don't you come on dj with me?
Speaker 4:You know there's so many different points to looking at. What are the milestones or what are the tipping points? I mean, the tipping points are a bit different. Oh, you had this record played by these djs and your next record and it's like that. And then you suddenly got on a set with them and then people start to become more aware of you and it's like ah, there's the tipping point. You know milestones People can be happy with. Like, I got to 200,000 streams. It's bloody brilliant. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:You know? Just as a final question, are there any like hidden gems that you think that artists are missing sometimes when they come to you like, for example, uh, not concentrating on soundcloud or not concentrating on youtube, like we spoke to a distributor a couple weeks ago who said we think that, like, a lot of artists overlook youtube, or is there anything where you think artists at the moment are just kind of?
Speaker 4:sleeping on it. Um, soundcloud's a good point, actually, you know, because I really I love SoundCloud. I love it as a promotional tool and a tool of engagement, because it's the only music platform that you can see who's listened to your record, how many times they've listened to your record, and then message them directly. You know, and build some proper engagement with people that like your music. If your music gets played on YouTube unless someone leaves a comment, obviously but if your music gets played on YouTube, if it gets played on Spotify or Apple and you don't know if any one person or Spotify you can see on the back end, you can see how many streams you've done in a week from certain playlists, but not from people's own music libraries. If they've sort of created a public playlist of tunes that they like and so you're like, all right, you've, there's 100 plays this week from this person, but you still can't reach out to them. You can't say, bloody hell, thank you. You know what's your email. I'll send you some music. I'll build up a rapport. Soundcloud is brilliant for that. Love it. You know it's. It's not about like, having the million stream count, stuff like that. It's about building up a community and about building up engagement and having the ability to directly converse with people that like your music and might share your music, uh, and do things like that.
Speaker 4:I think you know that. I think there is a big shift. There's artists that connect with their listeners that will turn into fans, because listeners aren't fans. Listeners are people that appreciate your music once or twice or might have it on in the background because it's on a playlist that they've got 50 other tracks on and it just fits in nicely and oh, I like this one, but they're not there. You know someone, someone that suddenly does that with quite a few of your records and and it becomes, starts becoming a fan. But they become more of a fan if you've reached out to them or you've had some sort of engagement. Or people are using WhatsApp groups and stuff like that. And Insta's got broadcast channels, but it is a broadcast. It doesn't seem two-way, it's sort of one-way traffic. You know the WhatsApp groups and our SMS groups and stuff like that and not being afraid to sort of put your music out to these groups early as an MP3.
Speaker 4:Do you know what? Thank you for all the support. This is out in four weeks on Spotify and Apple and stuff like that. You lot can have it. First, if I really liked someone and they sent me that, I'd be buzzing, you know. And that's at 54, I was 18. I'd probably die of a heart attack. Um, you know it's. It's about getting a connection back. Um, for a lot of artists, um, for any artist actually, it's. But it's about trying to connect with the people that do really like what you do, because everything, even when you've had success, it feels so passive. There is no engagement unless someone's bought a ticket, bought some merch, done this, done that. You know, but they don't necessarily. Everything is at arm's length. It needs to be brought closer.
Speaker 2:Cool, nice. We have done a full podcast on SoundCloud as well so I'll link that down below if you're looking for another episode to listen to after this. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1:Good place to end it, great well. Thank you so much for watching, if you're watching on YouTube and if you're listening. Thank you very much and we will see you in the next one.