Promoting Artists? Talk To We Do Music
You are an artist promotion agency. What do you do for artists that they normally can’t do for themselves?
We are a promotion agency specializing in the web, a big nuance! We bring our assistance to artists, and most importantly, that which deals with their web presence: how to use different tools (from the website to a newsletter and also flashing partnership banners), web promotion (you can think of us as cyber press attachés), but also viral communication and social media.
To sum up, the web is our game field, our medium of diffusion and the finality of our actions.
Each artist has a different relationship with the web: sometimes, they are completely autonomous with their networks, mastering the abilities of diffusion tools and communicating effectively with the public.
That’s in a perfect world, where there is a professional entourage like a manager or project manager from a label who is very invested in these questions. But almost always, and even with confirmed artists, signed to a label and very prolific on the web, we discuss strategy together: when, how and where to communicate? What about viral ideas? Which material? What are the strong points here? etc.
The web has changed everything for musicians, do you see the web in a positive or negative light for the promotion of artists?
More than positive!! It is mostly for that that we have specialized in the web. From the point of view of diffusion, all our actions have secondary effects, and information circulates very quickly. When a journalist finds something they love, there is no delay to talk about it with us or waiting to publish something in print. We can also mount very inventive operations, without limiting the type of content.
What’s more, the web can also be a real jungle for novices, with its own codes, webzine trendsetters: one must know how to navigate and know musical preferences of journalists, and know which social tools correspond best with regards to the artists.
Tell us about a success story with one of your artists:
We don’t really have a magic story like that, web promotion is really more of a long battle, full of little victories, a group that you take farther and a juicy press release about the project that’s running.
But a nice recent story was our meeting with the Chinese group Nova Heart: we discovered them at a show completely by accident at the Mama Event. We immediately loved their project, and we discussed at length with the group and their manager to convince them that they absolutely had to develop their project in French territory.
Then we saw them again, completely by accident, six months later at the other end of the world at the Sakifo festival on Reunion Island which we worked on: the alchemy worked again, the sea and flavored rums even more. We finally were able to launch something together, and we released a completely underground EP in France and the project finished among the last of the Transmusicales de Rennes: their new album is coming in 2014, and it is going to be even bigger!
Are there clients that you don’t accept to work with? (Because the style is not yours, the artist seems like an idiot, etc…)
We Do Music has existed almost five years and when we look back, we see that we’ve worked on a good number of projects. And it’s important to note that with each new album we put our image on the line, and our credibility with journalists, therefore we must be — above all — convinced by the music that we are charged with defending. It’s the bare minimum!
Then, before we say yes, we ask groups to come take a coffee with us, and we must see that we match up on a human level too. Sometimes, we like a project that is very young, unknown to the world, but we take the bet and help them develop. Those are the most exciting projects, everything is to be done!
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