A&R, Development and I broke my card dammit

nobody@vox.com(Indieboy) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:52:47 +0100

Just sent off my new A&R list to the labels, will get onto them this afternoon and hassle them to see what they think. I treat the lists as almost my own personal best-of's. I will start publishing them once this platform has been running a year I think. I'm in with RCA tomorrow so will be able to show off my wares there aswell.

I was meant to go to the Fox Cub's gig last night but as it took me about an hour and a half to get home to drop my stuff off, and I couldn't get any cash out because of this...

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..I couldn't make it. Damn. I had to scrounge change from around my room to make it to work this morning.

It's such a hassle but it will probably stop me spending for a while which isn't a bad thing.

Anyhow. I've forwarded on the results from the discussions happening around the development of the A&R platform to my boss. I also mentioned to Ged the recent activity and he was pleased to hear of the input and has been having a look around I believe.

Rather than put a poll up, which is what I thought about doing in the first place. I'm simply going to investigate every option to see how feasable it is first then see if I'm in a position to implement them. If it's something fairly easy (like the new media player) then we might aswell just do it. The more complicated ideas, like co-branded nationwide gigs, may be a little harder to acheive. But I will have a look nonetheless.

Big apologies to the Fox Cubs, it all got a bit much once I got home. Will have to catch the next one. Did anyone go to the Claire Toomey gig? I'm curious to see what she is like live too.

Tonight Shortwave Fade are playing at the Charlotte in Leicester. They've been in the community a while and are worth checking out. I really like their track Stay As You Are, take a listen if you get time.

Hope all is well with you, keep on adding the gigs and as soon as I've glued my card back together I'll start getting out and about again.

Hope all is well with you.

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Interested in A&R?

nobody@vox.com(Indieboy) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 12:11:14 +0100

Slightly hungover today. Ugh. :-/

I spent yesterday at an out of office session with my dept in a workshop. Got to get to know a couple more people which is always nice. Doing this job I spend most of my time with headphones on in my corner, or heading out to gigs so I don't really speak to my colleagues that much. I must make more of an effort to wander around and say hi. Went to Jujitsu after and had a really good session, went through some bag work with some new starters.

The bits arrived for the DV cam I'm going to start using for bigger gigs. So I can properly have a play with it today.

Just read a comment on a post suggesting that as I look only about 23 and how could I possibly know anything about finding good music. I don't know if that's the case, but apparently I look 23! Get in! That made my morning (I'm 27). :-)

It did make me wonder if anyone really knew that much about me or why I do this job. I have written something in 'About Me' but I haven't updated that in ages. Perhaps I should do that now.

Potted histrory - I started by studying Music Industry Management at uni. Whilst there I joined a band (The Approach). On leaving we toured for a couple of years, couple of singles a video but nothing big happened. I spent a brief stint as a plugger (getting new music on the radio). I also worked for little while booking bands at The Water rats, The Pheonix, The Marquee before I went indipendent. So got to hear a whole load of new music, find the better stuff and get them gigging. Plus got to know a lot of the bands on the circuit at the time. It was around the time The Rakes, Dogs Die In Hot Cars, The Libertines etc were kicking off.

On the band folding up, did a few sessions here and there on piano/hammond and then got into royalties. Which is basically working out an artists wages. Calculating how much they've made from sales, the costs, their advance etc. Really excellent experience as you couldn't have a better guide to what happens in the industry, how money is made, understanding record contracts etc. I worked for the PPL, Trojan (Sanctuary), Warner Music, then here at Sony BMG. After a while I started getting involved in other areas of the company and had discussions with the management about my ideas/views on the industry. Usually after a couple of glasses of wine.

Ged suggested that I get involved in this. I jumped at the chance but didn't realise what would be involved. I knew I would be going to gigs, listening to new stuff, and spending time online. But didn't realise how involving this community would be and the dramatically contrasting views that I read. A couple of months back I read a post specifically about me! I thought that was insane, why would they write about me? As it turns out it was quite damning of what I was doing, or not doing in that case. I've read quite a few since good and bad. The bad tend to be around "Why didn't he comment on my track" or "It's obvious that I should have a record deal, he must be an idiot". Everyone's entitled to their view, I guess some people need a pat on the back from time to time to get on with it.

If you're interested, an average day starts with me trying to clear all the blog messages. I usually start at the oldest and work forwards although I do keep my eye open for replies from certain people I've contacted previously. I listen to their tracks aswell as I get many "Check this out" emails. Then I start listening to the new submissions. This can take any time between an hour or several depending on the activity from all you creative types. I comment sporadically as I really want to get through as many as I can and put the better ones to one side. Though I've been commenting more as recently loads of good stuff has come in.

There's also a couple of people in Vox who forward on the better stuff that they find too, I guess they've become scouts really. Often they'll send me stuff I've already put to one side so it's nice to see that other people think those tracks are good. I'm going to start asking them to come to gigs with me if they're local. Infact, if you're interested in doing that kind of thing let me know.

Once I have my pile of Vox demos that I want to present, I start to whittle them down to the very best ones and have an A&R meeting with the heads of Columbia and RCA once a week. We listen to the stuff, discuss the artist, look at their blog and info and decide which gigs need checking out. There is so much on outside Vox aswell, it's difficult to judge who to see when. I was speaking to one of the chaps the other day and he had been to Northern Ireland, Wales and then Newcastle over a period of 3 days. Crazy. I'm more restricted to London and head North from time to time. But there are other scouts who cover the various areas of the country.

Anyway, I hope that gives you a better idea of what I do. There'a a bunch of other areas I get involved in but it's not the more interesting

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If you ever wondered what we actually look like....

nobody@vox.com(Indieboy) — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:37:00 +0100

Have a look at our Youtube channel. (Again if you were here for one of my first posts that mentioned this)

It will give you the opportunity to have a good laugh as I'm not my of a TV personailty. Ged (the Chairman) is up there, along with Mike (Head of Columbia) and Craig (Head of RCA).

I don't think any of us are thinking of quitting our day job but it gave us an opportunity to show you at least what we look like. I think I will try and stick a few more videos up there of what actually goes on in here so it makes a bit more sense.

I'd like you to comment on what you think of all this on the channel if you can, be honest, good or bad. The reason I ask is the only people who seem to have commented on there so far aren't involved in our community and don't seem to see it for what this is.

The reason this is starting to take off now is because all of you are supporting this very much from the inside. Which I'm really grateful of. As a result of the growth of the site I've managed to get a few things in the pipeline that are going to be really exciting. I can't give any details away as yet but I will soon.

Hope all is well with you out there.

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