How Major Labels Discover Their Artists | Warner Music Head of A&R

welcome back to the burst emote music marketing podcast today we are with joe kentish who is head of a r at warner music best known for signing dua lipa and progressing her career um i don't know if you know about why we invited you onto the podcast specifically i did because i know it was maddie who reached out but there was a comment which was top of one of our youtube videos asking who we should invite on and your name came up and everyone voted for it so we got you on and welcome to the podcast uh do you want to introduce yourself give yourself a little bit of give us a little bit of background about you yep so yeah like you said i'm joe kentish i'm head of a r at warner records in the uk um i started my music career um starting a uk garage label must be like 20 years ago now with a couple of friends of mine didn't previously have i loved music and and music was kind of the soundtrack of all the best parts of my life i was like an active clubber and and sort of all around the the uk and london music and club scene as a consumer um although that's not what i would have called it then um and wasn't really sure what to do with my life and some friends were thinking about doing this label thing because if one of their brothers was it was a producer and we and we did it i think in hindsight maybe because we didn't have anything else going on and just to be closer into the culture that we were all enjoying and going to parties and just being closer to the dj decks i guess you know like first you know first you first you want to get on the guest list and then you kind of want to be in the vip and then you kind of want to be standing behind the dj decks like those like uh so i guess it was just to do that to get closer to the dj deck yeah and um um and so so we did that for a few years and had lots of fun in hindsight we did this it was all passion and not particularly much know-how um but i did start meeting lots of a r people who were just they were just like cool guys used to come to the studio and have like decent cars and kind of like i don't know they just look like i was like that looks good like those people are cool but i wasn't really still thinking in a business sense but eventually one of them offered me a job um and that was a guy called two guys called jamie and miles who worked at parlophone um which was a super successful label at that time they wanted some help on on some acts they were developing to do remixes and just to give them a bit more of an idea of of a younger perspective on some stuff that they did um so i worked there as a consultant for them then i got a job as a junior and our innocent which was a label under virgin music at the time worked there for a few years then went to universal and was an anr at universal and and i guess that's where i really kind of had the responsibility of signing stuff myself and was at universal for eight years and then moved to warner records um and have been at warner records for six years and head of a r for about two or three years now you've should've been everywhere then haven't you not not solely so if sony are listening i mean i don't actually think that a lot of people know what a r is is that like a really basic way of explaining what an anr does and your day-to-day job basically sure so a r stands for artist of repertoire which is a super old name for it but it's where you used to look after the artist and find that the repertoire i.e the songs which at the time would have been like sheep music so it was the repertoire was the right nice fancy name for a nice fancy job um and essentially we do the same thing so but i always break a r down into three sections so you've got first is the scouting element of it which most people associate with it which is going out and locating talent evaluating talent and locating it and deciding on which artists you'd like to sign and trying to secure their recording rights for the record company or the body that you're working for so that's section one section two is then working with those artists and um working with those artists on their music so that what they present to the label to go and sell and promote is the best it possibly can be now you might have signed an artist for a single you might have signed an artist for an ep for an album for multiple albums whatever it is you are responsible for that final product that the label gets being as good as it can be and some artists need very little help they kind of do everything themselves some artists need a little bit of help maybe helping them with mixing some final thoughts um um and some artists need need a lot more help in sort of refining their vision and and and um making sure they they're they're coming up with making sure their songs are right and that you're keeping on on a path and um yeah that's not to say they're any less talented they're just super talented but but um yeah it can it can change that's part two i'm making this sound long usually when i do it it's like really fast um part one finally is part two help them finish their music to the highest level possible and then part three which is really difficult but most people kind of overlook it's kind of being the creative advocate for that artist within the label so you spent the most time probably with the artist you know why you signed them you know why they signed to you you know what they're about the essence of what it is they're about and the artist is not going to be in the label um seven days five days a week um so it's your job to be in there and just to kind of shout loudest about why your artist is great and everyone should be working hard on their project and also just making sure that everything that's done within the label is done um everyone's on the same page about the creative vision of what that artist needs to be um and driving it through the label and that's that's a that's a a part of the the job you can only learn when you have your own artist signed and that is really really hard um it's a doing any sort of creative subjective project within a large company is really tough so that's the bit i think the the you the experienced and as need to get really good at so that's it what are you actually looking for an artist to sign them in a label like in 2020 i'm sure it's changed a lot was it still just all about the music i'm sort of quite old school in that and i don't know whether that means i'm a dinosaur or whether it means like i have real sort of great old-school values but i kind of just want something to that excites me personally um when you when you sign an artist through experience i know how long it is how long you need to be working with that artist how much time you need to spend around them and around their music and around their team and their setup and i find it really hard to get to that level of focus and engagement unless i'm personally moved by the music in some way so i want to find people that are exciting and making exciting music and have the potential to be exciting to me that remains the same they've got to have music that i really like and moves me there needs to be an element of the commercial i've got to think right i kind of know that we can do a job with them and that's that sounds cynical but it's really important that i look at you and i think that all the resources that my company has at its disposal will dovetail with what you're doing and make it bigger because artists can release music themselves so i need to look at you and think that what we do plus what you do can be bigger we'll be adding value to your business otherwise really you should be doing it yourself or you should be doing someone else so that's really important now and that equation comes into it more sometimes a lot of artists these days are saying do i need a deal i'm looking at a lot of artists myself and thinking do you need a deal you know so so there's that um i think maybe the biggest change now though is productivity i don't think i think it's a lot harder to be the secretive genius up in your attic who doesn't promote themselves and is mysterious and is behind some sort of veil or curtain and he's coming up with 12 pieces of music every three years to put out as an album 12 records put out as an album every three years it's a romantic idea and i love the idea of it and you might get to that point in your career and it might work for some people but in this marketplace it's really difficult to be that so i need to see an element of productivity um we tend to put out a lot more music of artists to break them now than we did three years ago certainly 10 years ago so they need to to have that level of productivity and and and a way of engaging their audience and not just productivity in terms of music but productivity in terms of talking to their audience having a language and a dialogue with their audience that they can maintain on their own which takes energy yeah i was going to ask like when you say productivity do you mean just releases but so when you say talking to an audience is that live social media all of those things in one basically yeah it can be every it can be anything and and we speak to some artists who are quite reticent about really engaging in social media heavily and i completely get that i think if you're a young person not thinking really carefully about how much you engage in social media whether you're a musician or not um you're probably making a mistake or you're making unconscious decisions which are having a big effect on what and who you are so we get that with artists and i'm not sure about this and that and and and that's absolutely fine for me talking and engaging with your audience doesn't mean you need to post 10 selfies a day it's just finding a way to to to have this dialogue with them and it might just be through pictures of the environment you're in pictures of things you care about um reposting stuff that you care about doing um short clips of songs that you really like um it can be i'm not giving you very many examples but but it can be anything but i do think that when people find a record that they like and someone's saying something that they like they want and expect to dive in a little bit deeper to that artist and kind of get to know their world a little bit and it's for the artist to work out how they do that and it's not to say we won't engage with people who don't have that all straightaway set up because most people don't but it's something we need to get into sort of see the potential is there basically a hundred percent yeah and no artist comes with the full top trump deck 100 100 100 100 100 no artist comes at you with that they all have things that they're great at and things that they're going to improve on it's interesting it's funny you said something that we hear everyone in the industry saying we say this as well uh artists ask what specifically can i post on social media and you've mentioned that it's what you're about it's kind of your your narrative and then we get comments on our youtube channel saying yeah but what specifically kind of person and it's like i don't know because you've got to figure out who you are what you're about what your your brand is and then go from there 100 and narrative is a word that that i use a lot just in terms of music um you know like what what is what are you about like what what story are you telling um and i i pose it not because i want the answer right now i've sat at so many i've signed artists and sat around tables with lots of like you know with lots of record industry people and we're like what is this what is this artist about what's the brand and like that and it's we're right to be asking the question but we're wrong to be expecting an answer at that point it's good to always be thinking about that i think and what happens is inevitably when these artists start to like gain success and it's you know a year two three four years later i look back and and when everyone's writing about at that point people know what the narrative is and i'm like yeah that none of us thought that was the narrative at the start which is the right way right these are young people kind of finding their names in themselves and and and and it's often i find that when an artist has even finished an album and we'll listen back to the album together i'll be like oh right so you're like really really effed up over this situation in your life and they're like yeah i was listening i must be i thought that was i was chill about that actually i'm not chill about that at all clearly you know and and and and and but it's just a question you've always got to be asking and it's the thing with social media i guess you kind of go out there do it make some mistakes get into it and it's difficult and and this will come up again i guess june during this conversation always comes up to me like you have to do so much of the questions have to be directed towards you um you know like what what's your narrative like well specifically i'm i'm not trying to be a recorded artist do you find that things have changed nowaday when you're signing artists are the artists can be further down the line in terms of their size of their fan base compared to what it was 10 years ago like in terms of followers in terms of streams and listeners yeah i think you know for me you can engage an audience more because you've got the means to talk to lots of people it's also really tough because everyone else has got the means to talk to lots of people so the possibility is the possibilities are there but the possibilities are just as hard um but i i kind of think we were always looking for artists with audience you know like we were always you know i would prefer to walk into a gig with 200 kids inside 100 kids waiting to to get in outside and then know all the words you know that's maybe what would have happened 10 15 years ago that's what you would have seen if you were going to try and sign the arctic monkeys when things were getting really crazy you'd have walked into a gig 100 kids outside all in there all knew all of the words they'd have the the badges or the t-shirts whatever and and that's the equivalent of whatever 50 000 instagram followers or that's the same thing we were always looking for audience we just it was harder for people to build an audience and it was harder for us to see the audience um but yeah artists can get i guess further down the line for sure and um but audience doesn't equal for me audience doesn't equal that you should be signed to a record deal so what does fit for you it's no one thing like i said like we have to look at what you're doing and think we can amplify what you're doing you might be doing something and have like a really great small engaged fan base and i personally because it is all my personal opinion might think i don't know how much bigger we can make that i think that that audience i don't necessarily see the areas we're going to put your music which is going to grow your fan base exponentially so i have to make a kind of decision on on that yeah or i might go to your gig and think you know what with a little bit of focus on the anr we've given you a bit of access to um to some more people or to some more equipment or whatever it is i think we can elevate your music which is going to mean it can sit in it can be a bit broader i think we can help you make bigger videos i think we can there's things that i see we can take your music to radio in a much more sort of forceful way and i think radio will will pick up on it and so let's go with that you know so that's i guess what we're looking for how are artists discovered now by yourself on other a rs because now social media is a thing is that a way you discover artists or is it purely like word of mouth you just go to random gigs like how does it work for you specifically we find artists the same way everyone else finds artists our friends tell us about i guess we have a professional network on top of our friends network as well so you might have a friend of yours who kind of knows that you're in the music biz and be like have you checked that this out i was listening to it also holiday what is this song blah blah blah you get into it that way so so we've got a bigger network of professional sort of contacts that would do that with us for professional reasons but yeah we're on instagram you know like some an artist that we really like might be like hey check this out i'm really into this you know you might be listening looking at phoebe bridges and phoebe ridges is like hey i love this song by blah blah you go and have a have a look sort of dig into that um instagram you know twitter everywhere everywhere everyone else does we've been told in the past that and ours will find you so everyone's saying i wonder if you agree with this because people say um that and a r will find you if they want to sign you and people often come to us and say can i submit how do i submit to enl's how do i get a meeting with a r and our response usually is you know if you when you're ready to be signed the right a r will find you and offer you the deal do you find that to be the case and do you agree with that or is this still a case where submitting your music and getting into the right anr helps i've been doing this for nearly 20 years and i know of one example where someone put an um and and i know one example where it happened and that was more than 10 years ago yeah so yeah i mean yeah do the math so let's talk about juliepa then how did that all start how did she end up getting signed uh where did it start for her um she like a lot of great vocalists kind of found out she had a voice i guess when she was super young there's lots of videos of her kind of singing to her family and stuff so so so the the work began super early he went to i think she did went to music school weekend then then mentos performing arts thing at certain points during her childhood uh so she'd always sung and kind of had a passion to do that and was desperately trying to sort of meet producers and and and people to work with to get some material together um and eventually met you know one person introduces you to another person and and eventually met her manager a guy called ben morrison he's a super successful and established manager who immediately kind of got what she was about and um ben began to develop her so sort of raised the level of who she was working with um and i had just taken on my job at warner's and went to meet ben i heard he had this this he was developing this this new artist but i kind of in truth went to see him generally to find out everything he was he was he was doing and uh i mentioned this artist and he said oh yeah she's great but you won't meet her because we're developing her and we're not going to play her to any labels so okay fine um and then he took a call and said oh you're in luck she needs to sign a piece of paper she'll be in the office any minute now and you'll get to say hi and and a few minutes later she kind of came in massive she was wearing a massive orange feather coat or something she was wearing something nuts anyway and sort of just sat down and and and any thought i might have that this would be like a normal hi so here you want to be an artist she was like rapping there was a mixtape out i can't remember whose it was just like started rapping have you heard this and it started like wrapping the whole thing to me and then just was kind of this bundle of energy and um it would be wrong to say i immediately went man i'm going to make you a star like like i just thought this is exciting my skill set is helping exactly this type of artist meet the right producers and and and and writers and developing exactly who this person is that's that's the area i've been in so i thought you plus what i do and what my label does we could do something here this is a this is a really ideal fit with what we do what we do is major labels and there's warners and what we're looking for what i personally do and what you want to be and what you need and what you have so it really was it really was perfect in that sense um and we basically as a label offered on the spot and and and which doesn't happen which doesn't happen very often but it was such a the right fit because wallace had no no sort of mainstream pop artist and i'd been given the job because they wanted to build that side of their brand and it had amazing history of it but didn't have any of it now and the owner of walnuts would say we need another madonna we need we need a huge female artist and so i was like whoa this this the star's really aligned so so so yeah that was it and we offered straight away it got a little bit hairy a couple of other labels heard about her and tried to offer but but but she loved the idea of coming to a label where she could be the next big female artist and we didn't have anything in her lane and she'd have my undivided attention and the labels undivided attention um and she was the first female solo artist to have a number one record in america after madonna so so actually nice bow on the end of the story at the end of the story but but it worked out and i wish it worked out like that all the time but it kind of worked out it worked out in that way so what was the development from there then from like your end and from the label was there a lot of work to be done or was it sort of just there was a lot of work to be done a lot of value for her it was 100 her ambition and her manager's ambition was sky high so they turned down a lot of stuff you know people wanted to feature on records people wanted her to i think everyone had a real in terms of the creative team we had a real ambition for what she did so it was it was trying to find records that we felt were different and special enough and trying to make different huge interesting pop records is i think the most difficult thing to do at nr um so it was about fine you know developing her writing she had all the character but she and and all the ideas but you know she didn't have um she hadn't done it like ten thousand hours studio sessions you know to get to so the writing developed over that time and there was at least a year maybe not that long but there was a long period for which we we weren't getting it but i think what everyone stuck to her most of all was that we're not gonna go until this is good and different and right and we find her sound and we kind of find her narrative and all of these things and it once it started to come together it came together really quickly she went to canada we were working with some of the people from um the ovo which is drake's camp and um we sort of at the end of a conversation i think that the manager had someone said oh you should work with this new guy that we've signed this young guy producer and she went and did a session with him like typical like after the main session she went and did a session with him in the evening i don't even think she really enjoyed the session that much at the time but then this song came out of it she was like this song's something that guy whose name's koz is now like her main collaborator he's he produced this single that she's got out at the moment like mega talented producer she kind of stumble by doing the work you have the accident right and then that song that they did that night ended up sort of providing a bit of a blueprint for what she wanted to do and it was like this isn't the big single but this is this is the vibe and then i think it was downhill from there making the rest of the rest of the record we're like we got it and interestingly on this current album he the current single is the song that did exactly the same it was the song that was like all right okay this is what we did and then it was we made the rest of the record really quickly so how does a pop artist break then because for me i know like a grime artist or a rock artist they start with like these small little gigs and shows and then kind of build it up for pop artists i'm very is it the same or is it a different route because for me i only ever hear about a pop artist when it's like they're already big and they're they're getting a lot of coverage is it just the same route no no i think i think that um with like a grime artist or a rap artist i think the audience there for me that audience is like just so incredibly dynamic in wanting new music they just want the newest stuff now and they demand that of their artist and their artists are really good at giving it to them and um yes i i think you can kind of you can kind of make waves quite quickly um i think with pop a big part of papa's epic scale and escapism and and fantasy and that that so people kind of want big you know and so pop has a bit more of smoke and mirrors you're convincing everyone everyone that this is the next big thing this is huge it's not really that big but then it becomes big because everyone kind of jumps in on it that's that that's a really crude way of of describing the difference the difference of it so they basically i mean pop specifically have to be everywhere yeah i mean listen the market's fragmenting and and there are different genres of pop where i think people actually want it to be a bit more low-fi and and stuff um but i definitely think there is something in the immediacy of sort of grime and rap genres that lends itself to breaking new stars quite quickly yeah and i think that's borne out in in in how how many new exciting arts there are in those genres and and i think the pop world that tends to be a little bit slower how much control do you have over the artist i say it's for dual leaper in terms of branding in terms of sound so you put the producers together and tried to make them something and you said that like what they came up with was it but would you ever say no that's not it and then the artist wants it to be it how much conflict is that you it's what i think when i speak to young potentially young artists we talk about signing and asking what their fears are about signing to a record label it's always this idea they have that that they you know you know the old dude's gonna get in the room with them and be like yeah that's your music now we're doing this and it's it's it's certainly not the way i work it's not the way most it's not the way any good a r works and most a rs work full stop if it ever was a thing it's i'm sure until that had a bit more truth in the past if there are still many remnants of it they're not lasting that long and they're on their way out i i wouldn't say i've got control over any of my artists i want to have i don't want to sign artists who would be up for giving away control to be honest i will always say with energy what i think but i find my relationship with them is always more just encouraging them to giving them the the security to like be braver let's try this let's try harder let's make it better it's more kind of adding fuel to their flame rather than trying to direct them in any way i just don't really remember that many times when i've like had an artist where like they're like this is my single and i'm like this is your single i can't remember a time when that's happened there might be some of my old artists thinking you definitely did that to me but um i don't really remember it like that it's not like that yeah because you're passionate about the stuff that you're working on with them and that they're doing and when a great record comes up if you're half decent and are and they've they're half decent heist they're half digit man manager it's not that difficult you know because you you play it to a couple of people i might have you know i open my office door and blast the new tune and i have a couple of people like oh what's that or i'll open the door blast a new tune and everyone carries up with their day you know like and the artist is doing the same you know so they'll be like i played this to my hairdresser and it went off and and then the manager might be i played this to my wife or do i play this to my husband and like it you know you know bang as a bang it's like yeah you kind of get into it and certainly the environment and the way i've my sort of mentors and stuff in a r they've always been just about having taste and great records it's unusually on the same page yeah there are um this has probably happened over the last couple of months there's been a lot of talk about um labels signing talent that have an audience say from like tick tock and things yeah how do you feel about that because it's pretty clear that you like love the music you go for the music first yeah and these people sometimes haven't even released music yet it's a worry man worry because like a lot of people my age and i'm sure a lot younger i go tick-tock and i'm like it's definitely the end of the world um whatever like there are good people on tick tock and there are bad people on tip shop do you know what i mean like there's it's just another discovery tool and and what what isn't but it is a format that people are like enjoying having music to so it goes with there they they've got these short videos and they have music with them so it's a format um that people like um are always still doesn't matter what the format is i'll always still come to it from you're an exciting person making exciting music who puts yourself out there in an exciting way let's talk um but it's another way for people to gain audience so it's becoming a thing um but it's just another discovery tool for people out there and for us yeah um but i'm not i'm not spending all my time on on on tick tock what are the key indicators of when you know that an artist is going to be successful or to rephrase it what do you think drives not to success are you sat in the office saying if only this track was on more spotify playlist if only there's more instagram followers what what tells you that something is gonna pop or a key driver there are really boring things like sort of rapid growth in organic consumption on spotify so like it's not just in people's playlists they are seeking it out and saving it and listening to it again and again um i mean we live in a world where there are so many um so many platforms where people can be listening to music that it will be a combination of lots of things it's still the old school thing like oh my mum heard it you're like your mom heard it we're out there right unless your mom's an absolute legend like listening to community pirate radio stations but um but yeah there's still the thing i was in my uber or it was on you know radio well there's still like just lots of different things but yeah it'll be playlisting and stuff like that um shazam is a really good sort of indicator although shazam leans towards certain platform it being played on certain platforms i guess that in a world where there are so many different yeah places to listen to music it takes a few of them but ultimately you know chart and radio chart and radio charts are there and consumption over time is kind of what you want because you can have a record that does that which is a really sharp sort of uh consumption profile or you could have a record that builds and is steady over over time realize that making that with my finger isn't great for a podcast but you know what i mean most people watch on youtube yeah right okay okay i just made a mountain with my finger so um some things are like that and then something's more gradual so i guess you look over time but i kind of want you know i want to to appear very high on streaming charts i want to appear very high on occ charts i want to be very high on radio um on on radio charts i want i want that to be replicated all around the world um i want to hear it when i go out i want people who i know are not really early adopters of music um your dad your uncle you know i want i want those people hearing about it because it means i've got into a broader space um all of those things and do you think that's possible without a label it's 100 possible it's harder those two things are factual um and you know people see this label non-label thing as very binary my view on it is is really pragmatic like if you don't want to be on a label i don't want to work with you because it takes a lot out of me to work with an artist i can only work with this i can only work well with a certain number of artists at any time i want to have really big success in whatever shape that is with as many artists as i possibly can in the rest of my career it's really hard if you're not in it 100 with me no harm no foul all good i need to work with someone else who is you know so so so it's possible it's just harder and i think looking at it in a binary way is is a bit unhelpful for people like label equals x yeah not label equals y labels are a bunch of services that you will probably need as an artist some more than others radio promotion tv promotion a creative department who make videos and do all your artworks a um a r coordination department who just book studios and kind of get stuff done and a r department giving opinions and help and advice and encouragement for your music to be as good as it can be um a sales department we go around and get your records on all the platforms and talk to them about trying to get as high as possible in playlists or you know shop windows or wherever it might be we have a royalties department who make sure you're getting paid when stuff gets out there we have a legal department we have a branding department we have a sync department so we we're all of these things in one place yeah selling it to me now now most probably as an artist you will need most of those services if you want to go big time you're going to need both of those most of the services you can get them under one roof which has its advantages and has its disadvantages or you can go out and get them all yourself or you can do them all yourself with your manager but you're still doing them that's time you're not making music that's time your manager isn't trying to book shows or do deal like when your manager is doing this when your manager is sorting out your live stuff he's not getting you a brand deal when he's getting you a brand deal he's not listening to your music and helping you with the a r or book in the studio like so there's an opportunity cost of everything right so you just need to start thinking about that equation for you now of course then there's a financial thing about masters and where they go to and stuff like that and and it's a big thing and you should 100 go talk to your lawyer and account about that like that's my view on it i don't kind of like that bit of it knock yourself out and obviously the more demand there is the bigger audience you've already built the more you've proven yourself in the marketplace and and and and all of that um the more leverage you have and and and labels will label a lot more transparent than they were just because streaming and stuff has made consumption um more transparent um and um yeah that that bit of it is your thing because but if you want investment in this there's no investor in a business that is not going to want to share with you in the potential profits of your business it's not happening in anything so yeah you should you should go it's like dragon's den go go and cut the best deal you can but cut you know all good um so yeah you can do it without a label but but but it's harder for all of those reasons that i told you it's harder because you've got to go out and do all of that stuff and all these independent artists have all of those services being done for them and how they slice and dice it is is is something that they've had to work out but you have all their services and uh just to wrap things up is there any mistakes you see artists making just all of the time where you kind of just see it so common you wish that they'd kind of stop doing it or um i could only sign you if artists just stopped doing this i don't know that there's one thing i kind of you know i have a lot of i work with artists most of the time and and and and have it's my favorite bit of the job and have all my fun with the artists and and stuff and so i know how difficult it is it's a difficult it's not the easiest road to to to go down even if you're successful it has the most amazing high so i but but it's not easy you know you know being even being a big star is is is really hard so i i've i empathize with them a lot so i kind of i you know i said that don't want to give anyone a hard time i think it's really tough um and being and trying to break is is really tough and believing in your and your vision is really tough i would say sometimes with some potential artists i would say that a r people are we are we are not like the destination at all nor do we want to be the destination like good and also don't want to be destination we um so therefore like the focus of your attention should be getting in front of an anr um because most day in our meetings that you do with an artist you hear what they have and you're like all right cool come back and see us later it's cool it's developing it's early it's fine it's not going to be the kind of this this this nirvana moment you know we're we're watching what you're doing in the music you're making and they're making decisions from there so i would say like focus as much as you can on having amazing music having amazing content and getting out there and talking to people who will get it out there because your your aim is not to get a record deal your aim is to be a successful artist with an audience the record deal is not the answer the successful eyes with an audience is the answer maybe we'll be a part of that for you and maybe we won't but that's where you want to get to so just keep in mind the goal rather than the the label because we're not mutu yeah we're not magicians like we don't get it right all the time but we offer a sort of improved chance but so does a good manager so there's a great md such as a brilliant video director they all improve your chances of getting out there you know um and and and major we sign a really really small number of acts every year and it's not it's not saying that your music the music that you make isn't great it's just saying that um we personally subjectively don't feel like it's the right thing for us to do right now you know and that shouldn't get people down or stuff will sort of stop them it should you know you should just more focus them on the getting their music out and building an audience it's a strong place to leave it yeah yeah thank you very much for coming on though absolutely appreciate that i think that's just so much insight you know the first day we've ever had on so i think all right okay yeah i think emerging arts are going to take a lot from that so thank you very much for coming on no worries at all yes so i hope you enjoyed this one drop it a like and if you're not subscribed subscribe already and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Burstimo

Views: 191,856

Keywords: music promotion, music marketing, how to get signed to a major label, major labels, record label, get your music discovered, get more fans

Id: AN_Owj90-P0

Length: 44min 45sec (2685 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/jordannimz]

Hi Joe I have not watched the video yet but if you are reading this comment I would like to be discovered xoxo

[u/Bordersz]

Joe Kentish is Warner Head of A&R, and is best known for signing Dua Lipa and breaking her into the mainstream. He talks a bit about how long it takes to work with an artist until their ready for their debut. He mentions how "resources my company is using will make what the artist is doing bigger" AKA if the artist is profitable.

Also timestamps:

• 00:00 Intro to Joe
• 06:51 What does an A&R actually do?
• 08:53 Artists NEED to be more productive than ever
• 12:13 What story are you telling?
• 19:42 Dua Lipa's road to 7.5 BILLION streams
• 26:56 Is it harder to break as a pop artist?
• 29:02 Who has the control? label or artist?
• 36:26 Finding success without a label
• 37:34 Labels have how many departments??
• 41:00 Are you aiming for the right career goal?

[u/missvanjie95]

Step 1: Be attractive, especially if you’re female

[u/HausOfMajora]

Lemme bookmark this. I wanna make music one day and i wanna be discovered lol

[u/Bordersz]

For people who are interested in the Dua Lipa section:

• Ben Mawson, manager of Dua, met w/Joe and raved about Dua Lipa to him saying "you won't meet another artist like her", and Joe wanted to meet her but Ben did not want Dua to meet him or be pitched to any major label yet because she was "still being developed [as an artist]"
• Then Ben hit him up saying Dua was swinging by in the area so Joe and Dua met. She started rapping (lol) about a lot of things related to her music and was a "bundle of energy".
• Joe really liked her energy and personality, and felt like she was what Warner was looking for. She was offered a record contract at the spot because they needed a mainstream artist like "another Madonna and another huge female artist".
• Warner had to beat other competing offers but Dua took on Warner bc she was able to have Joe's + Warner's undivided attention and recourses since there were no other big female artists to compete with.
• Joe praises Dua + Ben's ambition. They turned down a lot of features and records to find the right sound for Dua and wanted a different and unique sound.
• Joe says Dua had the character and personality but her writing needed a lot of development since she didn't have studio time (he said in range of 1000s of hours lol) like other artists. Even after a year nothing came out of investing in her but Joe + label still poured money in her and still believed in her.
• To get her sound label made her get a studio session w/a newer producer Koz to record Last Dance but she wasn't feeling it or the session at ALL but ironically liked working w/him and later ended up working w/him on Physical and Levitating.

[u/DilemmaOfAHedgehog]

I don’t know even I will be be able to watch this but I am so interested. Ty for posting this!!

[u/ziggytvs]

This looks fascinating, good find OP

[u/longlivemrwolf]

This sounds interesting and hopefully demystifies a lot of how the industry works.

[u/[deleted]]

someone contexualize this with the Olivia/Sabrina come up