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During a long interview of almost two hours, I had the pleasure to meet Davide Pulito the creator of a Promotion agency for rock&metal bands called The Metallist PR. I have established a very fruitful working relationship with Davide because of the interesting bands he introduces me to and which I review for you Heavymetalwebzine.it readers. The interview is divided into two parts: in the first one we will get to know Davide and his activity, while in the second part we will go to dissect the current Italian and European scene regarding this sector, perhaps too unknown to most people even today.
1) Let’s start with the usual question: Who is Davide Pulito and what is The Metallist PR?
Davide pulito is me, I am 39 years old, I live in the province of Bologna, classic family with a wife and two little girls. I have been a metal musician since I was 16, specifically I am a drummer and I have released two records with my old band, Revolutio. The metallist PR is my company. I have been freelancing since July 1, 2021 so I am running a company with regularly with VAT, taxes and a lot of contributions to pay (laughs). So The Metallist Pr is an agency that does promotion and marketing for bands that play metal and rock. I operate mostly internationally, for 95 percent of my contacts from all over the world. The Metallist is therefore largely me.
2) How did you approach the world of hard music in general?
It was In school in the third grade thanks to a metal guitarist friend of mine who made me listen to a couple of records, “Burning Bridges” by Arch Enemy so when there wasn’t yet Angela Glossow, the good old days to be clear (Ride) and then he made me listen to “Images and Words” by Dream Theater, in fact for many years I still retain a great love for prog metal and melodic death. Actually the approach to hard music was through what I think is a genre of metal in its own right that is with NU metal which to this day one of my favorite genres with bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit among my favorites.
3) A question I’m very interested in asking you is, how do you get in touch with a label? Do you approach them or is it the other way around?
So, currently I don’t remember the exact number but I work with between 6 and 8 labels and I must say that all of them are quite professional. Most of them I contacted proactively in the sense that I sought them out and we engaged in the discussion of collaboration. With some it was a little easier while with others it was necessary to woo them a few months but it’s something that came pretty easy for me to do because I came from 11 years as an Export Manager anyway. I’ve been a salesman all my life and I was always abroad many times a month, three or four days each time, so it’s normal for me to bargain something. Of course with some you have to apear when it is time to insist, always in a polite way. For example Marcus from MDD Records who is a great person, wants to see that the other one insists, that he “fights” for something. I’ll never forget one time on Messenger where I contacted him since I also speak German, saying “come on Marcus let me try” and then finally groping him a little bit he said “look I should promote the new suidakra record, would you like to try?” and in the end we started just with this band our collaboration, I think so in March or May 2020.
4) So now let’s take a step back for a moment. It has already been almost three years that y ou have been collaborating with MDD Records and therefore it has been more than three years that Metallist PR has existed. Do you feel like telling us what was the process primarily but also why did you decide to start this company of yours?
It all started during the first lockdown of 2020 since I had nothing to do at home because I was in smart working and out of the blue I found myself in the situation where my foreign contacts, in Germany and Austria mainly, were no longer responding by disappearing altogether. The will arose in view of the fact that I am a person who is just not able to sit on my hands and hates wasting time. I decided to throw myself into this adventure a combining my old passion for journalism and press sphere in general that I already cultivated as a kid when I wrote about politics in a Ferrara newspaper with the time with Revolutio which provided me with great experience, having lived through many good situations but also bad ones with the so-called “industry operators,” such as labels that did not treat us very well after the release of one of our records, or of filmmakers not up to the mark, etc… So I promised myself a while back that if I had a chance someday I would want to prove that there are also serious, easygoing, capable people who can really help bands make their way by developing your music product and who can promote it to you. However, this is not just because you pay them but because you can really trust them.
So you know, in a context like the lockdown and with this premise, I started working 6-7 hours a day to create the first database with 500-700 contacts collected all over the world, even through my business travels. After the first month I had the first band and after a few months I was up to 5 bands, then came the first label and went straight from there. To complete the answer to your question from before, for a while I was reaching out to labels to get a more secure user base but if I have to tell the truth, for the past year I haven’t been looking for clients but the opposite is happening. That’s because in December of 2020 during the vacations I took the opportunity to create the site, the one you find by typing “The Metallist PR” and attend some master’s on on SEO and search engine optimization of sites. So I went from one band a month contacting me through the site in July 2021 when I went freelance to January 2022 since when I get contacted by one or two bands a week. This is because anyone searching for “metal agency PR” on Google immediately encounters The Metallist PR and it is the first true, organic result with no payment required.
Obviously when I have time and to “get it out of my system,” if I find a band that I particularly like that makes me lose my mind, I contact them and hope they will accept, maybe a contact is at least made that always comes back good for the future. In general, however, I no longer search for bands myself but the opposite happens.
5) What is your typical day? What activities do you do most consistently?
I work from 8:30 a.m. until 7 p.m. always from Monday to Friday but sometimes also on weekends. I really do a lot of things because being a freelancer I have to take care of my business 360° so it starts with cleaning the email correspondence so that I always have a tidy mailbox, but I won’t hide the fact that every morning I have to start again also because during the night emails arrive from different places with different time zones. Then of course I check the various social pages, Facebook, instagram etc… and afterwards I check the press releases on the various sites and forward the main news on the Facebook groups of the various bands. I then also have a small private chat on Telegram for major communications or maybe particular reviews because that is the content on which I will then go on to schedule posts on the various social profiles.
The activities that I go to from day to day anyway are all already scheduled even two weeks in advance also because on average I manage between 15 and 20 releases at the same time usually so I have to have a schedule that covers everything. In this way, I already know my moves with respect to the bands/labels and as soon as I receive payments (strictly in advance) and materials I get right to work. I always send the schedule to the clients, both for personal convenience and to let them know what the plans are, on Google Calendar so that everything so is transparent and controlled by the various parties. Sometimes of course it is possible for unforeseen events or surprises to happen during the week, but otherwise I know my work 90 percent in advance.
6) You have a really huge amount of work. Do you handle it completely on your own?
I have a collaborator, Emin Aghajani, an Iranian guy who already has a good experience in PR in the metal field as he has worked in the past with some labels including Pelagic Records, a rather highly rated label. He helps me with press releases because of his excellent English. Up to a certain point I was able to handle all the work by myself but then I had to look for someone in support because if you take into account that I do press releases in three languages at the same time, English, German and Italian, it leaves me at least two hours between ideation and writing and with the amount of work it would become really tiring to be able to keep up with everything. When I have demanding clients I still do them myself otherwise I delegate to my collaborator.
7) Did it happen to you to experience “critical” situations maybe during the relationship with bands/labels, or with webzines?
It happened to me with some labels to have some contrasts but nothing so serious that it could not be solved without problems, then consider that communicating by E-mail it is easy to run into misunderstandings given by haste or misunderstanding. Instead I had a situation, repeated a few times, with one of my label partners that made me very angry. I respect everyone’s opinions and really it is very difficult for me to lose my patience also because the fact of receiving negative reviews is also up to the PR agency that has to be able to select webzines according to the genres it deals with so as not to send material that will surely not be liked, so one cannot criticize the other party if I have not worked well in the first place.
Fortunately, being very organized I have almost eliminated this casuistry and it happens very few times that I have an average that spouts nonsense nonsense about a record however I bring you for example the case of a foreign webzine to which I sent 10 physical promos at one time and in return I received ridiculous reviews with bad ratings with reasons such as “the cover is bad, this record sucks”! Hallucinating stuff! And so that’s it, I stopped any relationship with them but otherwise I didn’t get any more.
8) Have you ever had second thoughts or even regrets about agreeing to work for and with a particular band or is it always found helpful professional people?
I’ll tell you something: when I had the band we mainly related to other bands so that we would inquire about the best contacts, who to contact and who to avoid a priori. There is a tendency to think that bands are always the victims of the day, the ones who suffer the consequences of the unprofessionalism of one or the other operator in the industry that can be a video maker like a label or a PR person. Now that I am on this side of the ford, I can assess both sides and tell you that often, far be it from me to name names, bands are the first to lack professionalism. This is a general problem with what I call the “metal industry,” which is that our industry suffers terribly from a lack of professionalism: a lot of people improvise a “something,” or bands who just want to think about playing but that’s not enough if you want to make it a profession.
There is a lack of in-depth, diligent study to make the leap in one’s career. So in Italy as well as abroad indiscriminately. We all know it, it’s in the light of day, how is it possible that there are labels that are born one day and close the next? Or bookings that cash in and organize concerts in some remote location in Romania in front of 5 people. To go back to what we were talking about before, there are so many webzines that want to be webzines but then judge you a record by its cover, then of course there are so many realities and people who want to work well and know how to do it. We need to start talking in a more corporate way in our industry, which suffers from a great ferment full of novelty and stimulation but which then clashes with the lack of professionalism of the actors involved…
9) What advice would you give to someone who wants to enter the PR world in metal and make it a profession?
It’s important to have a desire to study and develop as an individual. These things then come in handy as personal growth beyond what you go to do as a job but you need to develop a set of soft skills, then as far as the adventure of freelancing is concerned, it’s important to have a lot of organization and a desire to study and learn new things, keep up to date, never feel like you have arrived and be very humble. You have to try to develop a business approach, ask a lot of questions, ask when you don’t know in addition of course to knowing what product or service you want to offer in order to be able to explain it well to the new client who is paying and rightly wants to know what he paid for. It takes self-discipline as well as a lot of passion if we are talking about music promotion, you have to like music and especially the music you want to promote.
As far as I am concerned, metal is one of the pillars of my life along with my family and my work. Which by the way coincides with Metal for that matter, an important thing for me. It’s all about attitude: you have to be resourceful and be able to give up a few hours of sleep and maybe beer with friends on a Saturday night if you believe in a band that you absolutely want to promote. In the early days you also have to make your bones by promoting the first band for free or at low prices. In short. Never give up!
Sito web: https://www.themetallistpr.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themetallistpr
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themetallistpr/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYefkVhO_asa8n5McWduzFQ
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/70915286