News June 19, 2018

The digital marketers who are helping artists grow their own music

The music industry is an ever-changing beast. As consumer behaviour changes and revenue streams shift, the industry adapts.

Social media platforms and record companies have become media publishers, artists have become marketers, and media have become agencies. The goal however, hasn’t changed. the aforementioned all want to reach large audiences and cut through the overwhelming noise that exists online.

Excelling at your core business is demanding, excelling at your core business and a new sector at once is even more so. It’s apposite then that a troupe of wholly independent digital marketers have achieved great success in the music industry; taking on label, festival, tech company and artist clients to define strategies, increase and engage audiences, and drive measurable returns.

To find out more about how digital marketers are carving out a relevant and crucial space in the music industry, TIO chatted to:

Martin Brown, CEO and Co-Founder of Grow My Music, a digital music company providing education, digital marketing, and artists services to artists, bands and music companies.

Vanessa Picken, Founder and Director of Comes With Fries, a modular digital agency providing professional services and expertise to those in the music, technology, fashion, and digital industries.

And Anthony Zaccaria and Alex Zaccaria, who are behind the team of marketers, analysts, strategists, artist managers, designers and developers at 10-year-old Bolster.

What does your company do?

Grow My Music: Grow My Music assists artists and music companies in career growth in a variety of ways; Digital marketing and sales pipeline strategies, online courses, seminars and more.

Comes With Fries: Comes With Fries’ interest is in empowering clients to utilise creative digital campaigns to take charge of their future and break down barriers to achieve success. We identify critical DNA that aids the cut through in an increasingly saturated landscape, provide strategic development and create campaigns that enable true to artists/ brand audience lead results. We offer tailored and modular services to independent artists, major label artists, managers, promoters, and fashion brands wanting to better engage with in the world of marketing and digital.

Bolster: Bolster is a digital strategy, creative & product agency specialising in music, events & entertainment. We work out of Melbourne with people on the ground in Sydney and New York as well. We have a deep-seeded love for music and events, and get excited about marrying up our knowledge of entertainment industries with new ad tech and data analysis.

Team Bolster

Who do you list among your clients?

Grow My Music: We’ve most recently assisted in Artist Management companies like Space44 sell out the Skegss and Ruby Fields tours nationally, RTO’s such as Abbey Road, The Grove Studios Academy, Mastering facilities such as Crystal Mastering and, of course, Grow My Music advertises month to month as well.

Comes With Fries: Our client base includes tech startup Jaxsta, conferences including EMC and FastForward (co-curators for Sydney), APRA AMCOS’s Vanda & Young Songwriting Competition, Support Act driven campaigns such as the EveryOneBand, Management and label clients like ie:music, Eleven: A Music Company and Network, as well as tailored individual strategies and services for International and local artists including Lah Lah’s Big Live Band, Theodore, Tashka, Harrison Storm, Brewer to name a few.

These clients engage in our modular services from strategy, project consultation, content creation, implementation (social media management, advertising and promotional services), to our newly created DSP global servicing platform and analytics.

Vanessa Picken, Comes With Fries

Bolster: Our clients include festivals such as Splendour in the Grass, Laneway Festival, Falls Festival and Groovin the Moo, record labels such as Future Classic, Caroline, Remote Control and Dew Process, as well as lifestyle brands that work heavily in music such as YouTube Music, Red Bull, Blundstone and Sapporo, and touring companies such as Chugg and Secret Sounds.

On top of our festival, tour and label clients, we’re also the team behind LNWY, Linktree and Buzz. LNWY is an always-on music media outlet in collaboration with Laneway Festival, with a focus on longform evergreen content, bespoke video and photography. Linktree is an Instagram tech tool allowing users to easily link off to multiple sites, with the app gaining over 600K users including Alicia Keys, Eminem and The Grammys. Buzz is Bolster’s unique social listening tool designed for BIGSOUND and SXSW, using our proprietary algorithm to determine in real-time which artists are the most talked about for each music conference.

How have you measured your success in the last 12 months?

Grow My Music: Your number one job as a digital marketing agency is to pay for yourself multiple times over. If you cannot do that, then it’s not financially feasible for your clients to continue another month with you. We measure our success by our achievement of client goals and we’re so confident in achieving them that we offer the first month free to all new clients.

Martin Brown, Grow My Music

Comes With Fries: Comes With Fries prides itself on our ability to stay up to date and adapt with constant changes within the digital space, working hands on with our clients to gives them what they need often beyond our contractual obligations.

We are the added value; that’s our proposition (and why I called the company Comes With Fries ) do what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it. It’s with this follow through on commitment, small or large, that we’ve been able to build trust and maintain long-term clients. A critical success marker in my business.

We’ve built our team, we’ve built our international client list and from a personal perspective, we’ve also built internal benchmarks that acknowledge mindfulness, unbias thinking and personal growth. My business is only as strong and successful as those that create it.

Bolster: The past 12 months have been huge for Bolster as a company. Our biggest achievements have been launching LWNY, and creating specialised brand, social media and content teams to help further our support for clients. In terms of how we measure success, we truly do see ourselves as part of our clients’ teams, so we look to how our clients’ projects have gone. We’ve scored two #1 ARIA albums this year, and sold out hundreds of festivals and tours with clients.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.