Modern music marketing is about the artist-fan relationship

In the mid 90’s i had been lucky to be involved with some major rap band releases. 

As radios were very slow to react, we use to manufacture few hundred thousands of promo CDs, stickers etc for street marketing campaigns. Means that we used to pay almost half a million dollar to be able to give away music, just to get our new band heard by the kids …. 

Things done changed, new digital ecosystem is offering services for free that used to be so expensive …

Make sure you are getting the best out of it:

- Get out the traditional album marketing path. Release yourself, Release more music than a traditional label can handle. Remember the mixtape era ?

- Give away music for free, donations, feedbacks, email addresses …Download is the new radio !

- Host your music in one single place and publish it across the internet. Tracking streams and download is the new soundscan.

- Release Objects, Clothes, art, picture discs, books, connected devices, handcraft records… whatever will match your brand and please your fans. CD era might be over but music will never be … digital only …

Did you know 4.0 ?

I already watched the GO FAST CONNEXION doc by Kourtrajme more than 10 times. It is hilarious.

I met Romain Gavras back in the late 90’s in Paris. He was very young and hustlin on a daily basis to launch Kourtrajme. He had a lot of energy and a “i dont give a f….” attitude that i really liked. He showed me his reel and we started collabos on video clips almost right away. He introduced me to the whole gang. it was a movement. I understood when i quicly had interns from the kourtrajme crew running around the company i was owning back then, selling and shipping records, producing videos … Here are some early stuffs and memories.

Madison Square Garden Backstage, NYC, 2008. Touring and Shooting for “Across the universe” with Justice.

This video below was on the reel that i first saw. i remember Roce and Tekila tex first teased me about this flick right after they cameo-ed in it.

Roce “Changer le monde”, 2000. An amazing DIY video. I even ended up doing the stunts in this one.

Mafia K’1fry “Pour ceux”, 2001. This is THE blueprint for the Justice’s video “Stress”. I remember that few days before linking it on Kanye’s blog, i was chating with Romain and never thought people will react the way they did. “Pour ceux” is real while “Stress” is a fiction.

In 2004, while i was working on bands like Chromeo or Bloc Party, we met with Romain this crazy french guy called Didier Super. All our friends were freaking out that i decided to produced this album and Romain directed the video, but man, that was so much fun. For the record, that year, i pitched kourtrajme for the Chromeo “Me and my man” video. Dave 1 wasnt so much into the hijacking scenario that Gavras wrote ha ha.

There would be so many more stories to tell but look out for the next long form that Romain Gavras is shooting now.

C’est frais ou pas ?

I just watched this cool video interview of Spike Jones. This episode predates the Directors Label DVD collection by about 4 years and contains interviews not available elsewhere. Spotted on Defgrip.

Here is a little selection of 15 horror movie soundtrack…wow