How Record Labels Grow Fanbases | AWAL

welcome back to the music industry podcast today we have lisa young in with us from awol she is audience development manager and has worked with the likes of lao yumi6 jungle and nick cave welcome to the podcast thank you do you want to tell us a little bit about what an audience development manager does on their day-to-day role yeah sure so it depends um at awol sometimes we have like a deal with an artist that's literally for one album campaign like for more established artists like jungle we are working for this album and it's all

everything is about the release like the singles and yeah leading to the album basically but the more up-and-coming artists and there are a lot of projects that are focused on artist development so um we actually at the beginning it's not so much about the release strategy but also about branding and actually like raising awareness for the artists in general and making sure that they are reaching a bigger audience and that we're building the audience basically from the ground up and based on the interest based on their um talent and skills and yeah based on their

creative vision as well do you find this different for an established artist compared to an emerging artist for the strategies um yes it is very much different um it really depends what a stage of the korean artist is in for an up-and-coming artist yeah as i said we're doing a lot of like branding we're building everything from the ground up and we have a lot of like young artists so i work with artists like millie turner and phoebe axa who are like 20 21 and they have been making music for years but um they've not

had a record deal before so basically we're showing them like the ropes we're um we're actually working on that creative direction with them a branding positioning vision um just but all natural to the artist obviously um just we're working very closely with the artists on that and then we get some established artists um let's say jungle or tomish who probably already have a vision in their head and just need like a reliable partner to execute that vision so then we have a lot more um existing things that we can work with and the team is

also much bigger sometimes i only work with one artist manager and sometimes it's like a whole management team behind them so when you say with a development artist you're working on branding and obviously it has to be natural to the artist how does that work do you sit down with them and say like would you want to get across or um as you're the expert do you say you know what we're seeing this in your content we're seeing this in your music we think your brand should go in this direction how does it work i

always try and get them to make the advice to us in a way like um so whenever i start working with an artist um i let them film like an artist questionnaire that answers everything like all the interests everything that they're about basically and also what kind of goals and visions they they have already but sometimes they might not be that well thought out so then we have a brainstorm meeting together um first internally and then with the artist together and then we present some ideas based on the artist's questionnaire what we could do with

the artists and either they like it and sometimes they don't like it that's that's totally fine as well because we are very artist first companies so um yeah i think that's actually the most interesting thing to work with really like up and coming artists and building everything from the ground up so yeah i think that's one of the exact most exciting things in my job actually um just to see like to find out what the artist is all about to get to know them better to actually work very closely with them and get access to

them and yeah and actually work on a strategy at the moment is there a certain trend where certain artists are prioritizing platforms like it's like tik tok really hot right now is instagram really hot water what are they all coming to you asking for it's a lot about tick-tock right now yeah everyone is talking about tick-tock um obviously yeah it's become such an important tool especially to reach um gen c like the 14 to 24 year olds that you that are so important to you they might not be the ones that buy the most like

um stuff from you but they are actually their influence on their peers online is immense and yeah i mean tick tock actually is is great because um it has like an algorithm where even like if even if you're a complete like unknown you can suddenly get like trending on the platform and um it can be super overwhelming for artists and a lot of artists are struggling at the beginning but when they see that it actually reaches a lot more people than on instagram when they start out they are actually getting very motivated to post on

a platform more are you trying to get the song to go viral are you trying to get most of the artists to post themselves and create content i mean ideally um the song would would go viral on tick tock but it's not something obviously that you can enforce in any kind of way um we have been lucky and uh that that some songs by artists went viral but it could be like complete like catalog releases like releases from years ago that suddenly come up and go trending on tick tock again for example i'm working with

the wombats and a remix of the old track greek tragedy which was from an album that wasn't even released by evil suddenly went viral but it led to a spike and like followers on all the other channels as well so um it's very unpredictable and how did it all start for the wombats then did it just like just happen and that's it or was it like one particular video that kicked things off um so that the remix um was i think it started on tik tok actually someone put that remix on tick tock and it

wasn't even released as a single yeah and uh people kept dancing to it and um doing videos to it not a big dj or anything just and no emerging dj um it was just like um picked up by a lot of people not really influencers and then suddenly it reached um the group of influencers and then at some point like the most popular tick tock creator charlie emilio she used the video and then obviously it caused a complete stir and then the band actually released the track um on streaming platforms as well so the band

actually like jumped onto tiktok as soon as it starts that went viral what did they start creating did they just start just posting themselves or did they do like covers or renditions of that song so i believe they might have had a tick tock profile before but um it was more like not themselves like actually putting out content for it but then they started like um putting out content for it um actually the the singer started like interacting with uh with the fans on there and videos that they did to that remix and um also

um there was a compilation of remix videos was actually released on on tick tock and another band member reacted to two videos like yeah so there was a lot of stuff going on like a perfect example of found activation isn't it um that's a topic we really wanted to talk to you about because i think a lot of people when they think about marketing they're like new audience constantly so um fan activation for anyone that actually doesn't know because it's a bit of a password in the industry at the moment isn't it um it's basically

talking about getting your existing fan base and getting them to actually engage with you and sort of i think it's an effective way of marketing because they talk as well do you think fan activation is just as important as like reaching that new audience more important maybe yeah i mean my role is audience development so that means existing audiences and also obviously new audiences and both is very very important um obviously one focus should always be to increase the fan base and to get the music into places where people hadn't listened to it yet but

obviously you also always have to do things to to to warm up existing fans and to actually to um because they are your super fans you don't want to lose them by being inactive on social media and um yeah so it's definitely both are equally important is that the best way you think to engage with the existing audience on social media yes so there are different ways to do it and it depends from artists to artists but nick cave for example he has an email newsletter that he releases every week where he speaks to fans

and that's his like main channel communication and he loves that and it works well yeah it works well for him like it's literally like he he picks like a question or two and he answers them in written word um in the newsletter and he's doing it himself and it has like thousands of people are subscribers and opening it every week and that's just his preferred way to do it and he even took it live at some point and did this um did these shows around it where he would take questions from the audience and answer

them live and also perform a few songs so it became a whole like thing so what kind of topics can you think of any of the top of your head like or is it like questions from fans saying like what do you have for breakfast is it more like political kind of stuff like where does he go with it i would say most of the questions are about his music and what he's been doing i mean his catalogue is so like full of um music and also lyrics lyrical content and the meaning behind songs and

obviously he has had some life experiences that really shaped him and yeah that kind of stuff or what gear he uses or um what he thinks about a certain poem um or something that he has mentioned in an interview but also like yeah what what's your favorite breakfast i mean it could be as simple as that and um he chooses the questions and they can be completely random and they can be like um very very deep so sometimes it's like i would say two pages long like the answer and sometimes it's just two sentences that

will be so nice for our audience to hear i think i think a lot of artists put pressure on themselves to be on tick tock so creating like they think oh i have to do a dance routine or i have to go live on instagram and do covers so something like that is so different and shows that you can always engage with your existing fan base especially amazing for us to where we're like tick-tock instagram yeah youtube and that sort of thing but there is so much more out there that artists can do what i

love about that is it like keeps the story and what it's all about for him as well because yeah what was that album it was either selena gomez where you said like you you once you found out what that album was about you absolutely loved it and you went into that frame of mind was it i think it was one of selena gomez um you know they do oh that was it yeah yeah and it was actually rare and she explained like behind the lyrics what it meant and this is like a perfect example of

like an artist doing that but with like their life as well so the the songs probably come alive a lot more um do you yourself do any fan activation campaigns at awol or is it more you let the artists engage with their audience personally no it's mostly a team effort okay like i sit down with the artist or the management and we think up some strategies especially around singles and albums um most recent example is i've worked with daddy freya the eurovision contestant from iceland yeah and uh that was actually great because um he and

his manager we worked with them super closely like we have weekly calls and we were um he was up for doing so much stuff it was actually perfect situation literally where um he had his own vision and and we got to know him um quite well just from talking to him about stuff but and and he's so like tech savvy as well like he built his own like discord community he had a whole like video game around like a single release and this is a daddy makes music yes exactly yeah and got like big dance

routines and things like that yes his track went viral on tick tock when he was first released yeah as well that as well um it was helped by some like celebrities like james corden and pink posting about it on twitter so that's what made the song from 2020 actually go viral so yeah that was um a good example of how we can work together on fan activations because he already had like a fan base and we could split them up into two different groups um the first fan base was already there before eurovision so that

was like people who were like generally interested in his music and had been following him for years and then there was the new group like eurovision fans who really enjoyed his music but because of those eurovision songs they also got into the other songs so that was very interesting because you had to find activations to to satisfy both groups of people and yeah we sent out newsletters um he is regularly um talking on social media to his fans and he did like twitter live q as reddit chats all that kind of stuff to talk to

his fans and um like live streams um on youtube um which which was amazing and we also did like this uh virtual reality activation with him we sent him on a virtual world tour which would basically end um in rotterdam um for eurovision and we worked on that with landmark which is a vr company yeah we had him on the podcast oh really yeah that's amazing yeah um no and we've worked with them before on a love project but this was different we actually we built a whole like hologram like um daddy recorded a hologram

of himself in front of a green screen and um yeah and that um so performance was ingested into um the landmark app and uh yeah we sent him on to around the world so fans from countries all around the world could unlock uh the performance at a certain date and then on eurovision date it would be open for the whole world and obviously that was um something where we had the existing fans in mind that were around the world but also some fans who would just discover him um as the bus around eurovision continued so

yeah we actually we also made sure that the data collection worked like that people signed up with their email address or their spotify and we had like um ctas um for the single and the video on there as well so people who were checking out the world tour could also watch the video and listen to more music and stuff so it's interesting so kind of what you're saying is if you focus on your own fans then you end up kind of getting new fans from it because people start to talk about you and share it

and say have you tried this yeah virtual reality thing is that is that basically what you found that the fan base actually grew despite targeting the existing there's definitely a lot of word of mouth and also if you have an existing community like daddy has a discord community when when he told us about it there were like 300 members and now there are over 10 000 in it like just after eurovision obviously he got a lot of attention but he's always been keen to to build like a space to talk to his fans um it

was um in a facebook group that's also very active and on discord and he would pop in bo pop into both sometimes you mentioned reddit as well so yeah does he go live on reddit um so he has a reddit profile he um he is active on there and yeah we secured some like ask me anything um that's part of my job like talking to digital partners about like what can we do to enhance our campaigns a little more i've always been interested in the what goes behind the amas on reddit do you have to

go through a moderator and then say kind of this is the time we want to go live and this is kind of a bit of a pitch to them or is it the usual reddit where you just post the ama what what happens there um no if you want an ama in the channel like music which is one of the biggest channels or indie for example um you you do reach out to moderator um sometimes um you can try and facilitate it via your pr company or um in that case i reached out to a

moderator of the music group and because daddy had done one the year before which was secured by the pr agency um and they knew of him already and because he's quite active on reddit himself um someone got back to me and offered me a few slots and then yeah we secured one i mean i think a lot of fun activation we've spoken about is with larger artists that already have quite a big community do you think it's uh doable or do you think they should even be focusing on this if your audience isn't as big

so say you've only got a thousand followers on instagram do you still think you should be doing a lot of fan activation or should your main focus be on reaching that new audience oh absolutely i mean if you have thousand fans and let's say 300 of them are very engaged you need to keep those fans otherwise there's there's so much competition out there right now that why would they like stick with you if if they could like if another artist offers them more entertainment or some something so yeah there's definitely stuff um you should do

but also like i realized that puts a lot of pressure on the artist because um i mean especially when you start out as an up-and-coming artist you might have another job you might not be doing like music full-time so it can be extremely time consuming to to do social media and um obviously it's great maybe every week at like 8 p.m or so it's like oh i'm doing a live stream i'm doing a q a and stuff and i'm collecting questions the day before that's the way to keep engaged with your fans or yeah like

do like um doing the pandemic a lot of artists did like a zoom um q a basically with fans and stuff and they did it maybe every month or so or in your newsletter if you're not so much of a social media person you can give them like a snippet of a new track to listen to if if they sign up to that it's just also you you will quickly find out as an artist what the medium is that you like the most but also where most of your fans are so and also the vibe

i'm getting is that it's very much the artist has to do it now whereas 20 years ago it was like just handle my pr company and they would give me magazines and they'll put my my music video onto mtv etc and now you're basically saying the artist has to do it we can advise you but you're not going to have a team that does it all for you and schedules your posts and things like that is that the case i mean there are definitely artists who have social media teams um but i mean fans are

clever they they find out at some point if it's the artist who's posting and or if it's not and there is um i think it's good to have um some posts being done by a social media agency for example that like some of the promotional posts or regular posts um that that's completely fine but there should also be videos of the band talking directly to the fans or like those live q a's it has to be with the band and also tick-tock content it won't perform that well if if the band or the artist is

not in it yeah so yes it there's a lot more that's being required from artists but also um that's just because there's such an abundance in music and artists right now so you kind of have to stand out and i think it's really hard times actually to to be an artist nowadays so so much competition there's so much competition and i still find it so impressive that there are still so many artists um who are doing it um yeah and obviously during the pandemic we had a lot of artists who were very frustrated um about

not being able to tour because a lot of them they really feed off their energy from like from gigs and and if they're not really like social media people they really had to be on like social media and do virtual gigs with no real applause and stuff it's it's very hard um but then some artists were also particularly creative during that time and just released a lot of songs so do you think it's possible to not be on social media and still succeed so you're saying nick cave had a newsletter but he also had to

be on social media do you think do you have to be on all platforms now just at least sharing content occasionally or do you think you can get away with just never posting on it i wouldn't know really how i mean maybe in certain music scenes it it could work like hip-hop community is a lot like where people are being discovered on soundcloud or via music blogs like pigeons and planes and stuff and if you get a review in one of those magazines and i mean some people like it if an artist is a bit

more mysterious because that's also like that draws attention to them in a way but at some point um once maybe they can keep it really secret at the beginning but at some point i think it is important to to join social media because you can make new fans at the beginning but you have to keep it up and at some point i mean yeah you can be elusive and stuff but even the most elusive artists at some point they have at least one social media channel or so obviously not all of them speak to fans

all the time on them and you can see that oh it's probably run by the label or it's run by a social media agency you're also the second guest to mention discord yeah in the space of a week two weeks and so obviously it's taking off and to be honest i don't know anything about discord now but i know what it is but how is it really being used what happens in those discord servers or channels what gets discussed is it fans talking to each other or is it the artist talking to fans or what

really happens in the discords so yeah that's very interesting because at the beginning i also had no idea what it is so i had to do my own research and it's apparently very popular among gamers um so they use it to actually play games together live on the platform similar to twitch and to basically just just chat while you're playing games but they really wanted to open up their platform to like music fans or other like sectors and it's actually it's great because at the beginning i think in order to build the community the artist

definitely has to pop in and like maybe share some news there that they haven't shared on other platforms or and just set a time every week oh i'm gonna chat to my fans on discord you can do it via text chat but there's also a video feed feature for example and but the more a group grows and i can only speak um of the daddy freya group for example um the artist can assign moderators um who also set up specific topic channels um for other stuff it could not just be the artist's music it could

also be off topic or i don't know um other things that people like to talk about like gaming for example a lot of daddy's fans are gamers and they are not just talking about the video game that daddy created but also other video games created a video game so yes you mentioned it created a video game as well i missed that yeah they said he was so tech savvy and i didn't expect him to make it out this video yeah yeah so that's literally what um yeah so a lot of like different topic channels that

are being created by moderators that the artist assigned and stuff like facebook groups yeah as well so you have moderators on it yeah so now it has taken on a life of its own yeah and the fans have are actually like going in without without knowing that the artist will be there and it's not the main focus anymore they want to speak to other fans they've become online friends with them and they're like oh i feel like i'm in such a safe space i've made new friends and also like oh if if gigs are happening

again we i can meet with those people in person and stuff so it's actually it's amazing for creating communities and it's basically the modern version of a facebook group i would say yeah i think that's a great place to end it yeah there's some really cool gems in there that i don't think anyone's spoken about anyway podcast for uh where people can people find you online instagram twitter uh yeah it's just lisa young in on instagram and twitter and um yeah linkedin facebook i don't know we'll put it in the description of the video but

um yeah if you enjoyed the video make sure to give it a like and if you haven't subscribed yet make sure to subscribe and we'll see you in the next one