Visualizzazioni post:611
Here is the second part of the interview with Davide Pulito, creator of “The Metallist PR” agency!
1) What do you think has changed in the metal PR industry since you started your business and how do you think it will evolve in the near future?
The metal and rock industry is elephantine, a Mammoth let’s say, and it is difficult to bring news. For my part, I think it is not true that reviews and press activity are not needed, as some people claimed years ago, in fact the function of the press industry is back in vogue. I have had feedback from some labels that as a result of some reviews there have been booms in sales of particular records.
I think it’s going to go in the direction where social media is going to fade a bit in terms of importance (“Fortunately”) in the sense that with the changes that have taken place in social media algorithms, feedback on the various Facebook, Instagram, etc. has become less and less valuable, likes generate very little return. Tik Tok is an interesting tool but I’m not much dentr in it but I don’t think bands use it much, as they are more present on classic FB, Istagram and in some cases Twitter, but after all that knows taking place following Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform, my guess is that will wane as well.
I confess that I have an idea: I’d like to shift the focus to a new social network that is exploding, created by Twitter offshoots, namely BeReal, which could be interesting for a band. For those who are not familiar with it, BeReal is poses the intent of photographing you “as you are” during the day so the nice thing is that there is no more talk of filters or retouching to get the perfect photo. You show yourself as you are and it might be interesting for a band because then they can show moments from a typical day of the band. I’ve been told to also try to push on twitch however I honestly don’t know, I see it more as a tool for big and established bands or more by industry players like it can be webzines that do video reviews or video interviews whereas for a band I don’t see it as very apt. This is my vision for the future, also because big shakes the metal and rock promotional sector is unlikely to have any.
As far as The Metallist PR is concerned, one need I feel and am already putting my hand to is to achieve business differentiation. I start out as a PR agency in the print sector and spent the first few years of my business creating a hard core in that direction, then I moved on to promoting on third party playlists on Spotify, creating Google ads campaigns to push views and real interactions for youtube as well. However, I see that there is a need for a lot more that I get asked from bands while from labels I have fewer specific requests due to the very nature of the two parties, as bands are usually less structured and need to be accompanied more. I started getting requests “Davide but when do you start organizing concerts or offering management services” meant not only for booking but as a manager figure as it used to be understood, so helping bands in their own growth, to develop, to create relationships with the outside world. This is where the talk from earlier about the need to be professional in your relationships with the people around you comes back.
In this sense The Metallist PR is becoming something more and I see it already. The destiny of the company is not just to do press PR or manage the playlists or the usual things but it will be to become a well-rounded company that will necessarily have to have the support of 4-5 people on staff to deal with the various kinds of client needs and engagements. There will be people handling press relations, online marketing, pushing youtube videos, Spotify promotion, management, booking. There will be a need for a Label side.
Once again it comes back to the original point. Believe me, I’m not a guy who likes to drag my feet, in fact I prefer the “long ball and pedal” to use a football metaphor however many times the bands I’ve worked with return to me beyond the mere result. Then of course the bands happen that get hung up on the number of reviews they get. To finally supplement your question about labels, I have a lot of contacts with labels and directly from the site, but the value of The Metalist PR is that bands come back to work with me because they are comfortable. Then of course no one is perfect and keep in mind that there are agencies that have been active for 20-25 years so it’s okay for a band to decide not to continue, there are always those who are better.
In short, for the future I am positive and I’ll give you two figures as well: in my first year as a freelancer I set a target of earning 100% of my target which meant creating a gross salary for myself that after taxes and contributions could equal my compensation as an employee. I made 110% of that target! So the job is not going well, it is going great! I have no reason to be down in the dumps and in fact, the more I look around, the more I realize that for The Metallist PR there are still many possibilities!
2) What is the Italian situation like as far as your business sector is concerned?
So our industry in Italy is basically composed of more or less 6 – 7 entities but they are all agencies that work only in the press office area and therefore, apart from one other, there is no one who offers the same kind of services that I offer, able to integrate press PR with spotify, Google ADS, management, social media marketing, website optimization for bands. There is virtually no one doing that, and I have to tell you there are not many internationally doing that either. Few then have as strong an international vocation as I do since most Italian promoters prefer local press or at least national webzines. I have the advantage of knowing and speaking 5 languages fluently, having studied them for many years and having employed them for work, and this has allowed me to create for myself a database that to date has more than 3,000 contacts worldwide.
One of my greatest satisfactions is to promote an Italian band abroad also because the webzines in Italy are about thirty level being wide and therefore you can contact them in a couple of hours of work. Instead when it comes to going to promote in Germany for example or in other countries where they don’t know who you are at all, you have to introduce yourself, tell your story, get maybe first a generic contact email, create the relationships with the local press. It is not trivial but it is the result of a lot of work and patience as well as skimming. Going back to Italy, I feel like I’m a bit of a drop in the bucket in terms of business diversification.
I say this also in view of the low level of professionalism around. The “bad” thing is that for many people music remains just a passion, a hobby. In my opinion a lot of people, operators in the industry first and foremost, should have some “balls” to put themselves out there for good. Let’s not go around, there are even labels, both in Italy and abroad, that print and release records, take the money but have no VAT number! All this is well spread… The argument is that as long as you are, for example, a Webzine where the purpose is to talk about music out of passion, from enthusiasts to other enthusiasts, it is perfectly fine as it goes.
For that reason, though, I decided to skip the ford. At some point you have to make a choice that is not relegated to just making money but to becoming serious and professional. For example, you, an industry operator who publishes and promotes bands, cannot think of writing a press release yourself just to save money or not even take an online course that teaches you something about it just so you don’t spend, say, 100€ and a few hours of free time. Because then you write it badly anyway and so the feedback is negative and you go and generate an echo, a welter of unprofessionalism which is the main reason why the industry has become swamped and doesn’t move much anymore.
To tell you another point that you find me making very often, in our industry there is no news agency union as well as other countries lack but neither is there a friendly association. The industry should start doing a little more the industry and not just be a “Rock on!” community of metalheads. Many webzines should also be more professional and it would take very little indeed! How many webzines don’t, for example, tag the PR agency when they post the review or interview on social? It doesn’t make sense! Doing so would allow the work of multiple parties such as the PR in the first place but also the labels to be valued. How many sccopro reviews published two or three months in advance because I did not have a chance to be updated on their publication. One tries to keep everything under control but having 20-25 releases in charge becomes difficult. There are several ways to be more efficient and professional and it would really benefit everyone.
3) So it might be ideal to create a “system” that ensures that things are done well and that is able to combine a sense of community with a business approach in your opinion? It seems to me that in fact it is very often all left to chance in many respects….
You have touched on the crux of the matter, a nonsense. The mentality let’s do a metal band, beer, beard and sweat overrides the willingness to put money into it. Bands very often want results without knowing how to achieve them, and therein lies the nonsense. It is then not only a question of money but that once you have released a record the work is absolutely not finished. Bands have to be proactive, you can’t think of going to market with a band Bio that reads “Guy met Caius at school and they formed a band” and have the courage to riteneral a biography.
What is the message you want to communicate? I get it, “How good were the old days?”… But if you want to go out into the world and play music, you can’t come across as nostalgic or as the schoolboy who plays “Metal” after school with his little friends. You can’t! Otherwise you do your demo, you do the gig in the little club in your town and that’s fine. But if you want more and I repeat not only in Italy this thing happens, you can’t fit in the huge percentage of bands that want the results and think they have already arrived just because they produce art and therefore ask for tot reviews, interviews, publications, etc. It is wrong and it is completely unrealistic! But not because you do not want to provide what is being asked for but because PR is by its nature variable and you cannot accurately estimate the numerical result you will get. I would not be serious about promising certain results.
So if we are talking about bands, they should take that leap and study the environment, get some knowledge related to the dynamics of the market on which they are going to operate. It all adds up and that is exactly why I am activating the management service. A band goes to the market and the only thing they care about is reviews but without understanding that webzines get between 50 and 150 review requests a day in some cases! You know better than I do being in it. Sometimes some webzines get their mailboxes literally clogged and simply delete everything without looking and in addition artists should remember that webzines are run by enthusiasts who work in their spare time and nothing comes into our pockets. Not everything is taken into consideration or not considered interesting. I would add: bands should know that they are free to send the promo digitally but that obviously if they send the physical record, automatically their request takes more importance and precedence!
These are all dynamics that if bands wanted to delve into, they would not need to ask a PR agency “but how many reviews are you giving me?” You avoid making yourself look bad in the first place, and you’re already showing yourself to be professional by avoiding poorly worded questions.
4) Are there two episodes that you would describe as your greatest success and conversely your worst failure that even made you think “I’m quitting now”?
Great! (laughing) I have to say that I really have a lot of satisfactions, I won’t say daily but almost, in various ways such as the reviews that bands give me and that can be seen on the website or accessed on FB on my page. Then there are the satisfactions at the level of promotion with respect to some bands that have worked with me which, however, for the sake of fairness to all, I prefer not to mention. I can, however, speak of one band that gave me pride in promoting, Unterwelt, an Austrian band that calls itself Dark Ambient Metal with whom I fell in love and of whom I successfully promoted the latest 2020 album entitled “2084” of which they then gave me the autographed vinyl copy. Truly a great band in my opinion.
Then also the fact of ending up in important international magazines and webzines and being published consistently on some Australian heads with whom I also share friendships. Another satisfaction is related to the promotion of Tad Morose’s latest album or even having sometimes combined my personal tastes with the work aspect.
As for the negative ones on the other hand believe me I have never said quit and I have never quit even 1 cm however there have definitely been bands that have been just the minimum of professionalism possible. Of course it’s not correct to name them but it happened that some of them hired more PR agencies at the same time, which is perfectly fine after all it’s your money and you use it as you wish but because of your lack of professionalism you don’t even question whether to inform the parties that there are more PR because if you were a professional band you would know that, for example, the premiere of an album must be one and not more otherwise what premier is it?
What’s more, being a willing and committed person, when I request the material so that I can work on it and send it to whomever I need to, I have seen replies delivered after several weeks without explanation while in the meantime they have organized events and other occasions with the other PR. I repeat: it is not a matter of money, but of professionalism. I would like to say it openly and talk about this huge taboo that is money since THERE IS MONEY! There are as there are in every business and in every market and they should be used properly by bands to promote their music.
5) So we come to the last part of this interview. I ask you, is there a message you would like to send to bands, webzines and listeners?
I would advise bands to come out with a record that really rocks because today the market is really saturated with at least 200-300 releases a week and it becomes important for bands to curate their work as a perfect product that is able to communicate a message to the audience. It doesn’t matter what exactly but that it communicates something because if your only concern is to play what you like there is but it remains a work for its own sake. One therefore has to try to get out of the rehearsal room mentality by curating, of course depending on one’s finances, the product 360 degreesand it is also possible to do it with ridiculous budgets these days!
To a webzine I would say to be more analytical in evaluations, more technical and to give advice to bands on how to improve because it is fine to read that an album is cool but in itself just makes the band happy without offering a cue for improvement when instead many really want to understand analytically how their work is felt and what aspects need improvement.
Instead, to listeners who move through a market so saturated and crowded with new releases every week of even their favorite individual subgenres I say try to stop and listen, almost a paradox in a fast-paced world. I am reminded of the image of the Festina Lente employed by Italo Calvino from my undergraduate years, no? This oxymoron of “hurrying slowly” however, here it is today, it is humanly impossible to listen to everything. Moreover, streaming platforms have further accelerated this process and it is really hard to find the time to dwell on a single release for more than a couple of times. Lately I have rediscovered the pleasure of buying vinyl mainly of Ambient music but always inherent to metal or maybe even Post Rock records, which I really enjoy having on vinyl.