Terry Church is an award winning dance music journalist and editor with over a decade of experience in the industry. He has worked for DJ Mag as their News and Web Editor and at Beatportal.com as the Editor. He now runs Terry Church PR and has clients such as Dubfire, Eric Prydz, Adam Beyer and Sebastian Leger.
Last week the students of London School of Sound were treated to a lecture by Terry where he went through how he helps his clients sell more records and become even bigger successes.
Terry began the lecture by discussing brand attributes and the characteristics we associate with artists who indeed have their own brand. When you think of an artist you may or may not realise that they do indeed embody a brand and culture. Lady Gaga is a brand, Deadmau5 is a brand, the moody local DJ who refuses to do interviews is a brand. It is what we become addicted to, what we feel when we hear their music. Terry asked each one of us in the room to write down a list of brand attributes that we want to associate with ourselves and our music (for those interested mine were eccentric, wild and uplifting...yeah baby). This was a powerful thing actually because nearly all of us had never even thought about this, or even that we can control it.
Most of us just make music and let the world decide how to perceive us. But what Terry made us see is that because of the changes in the world today we have a lot more control on how the world perceives us. Super celebs can directly communicate with hundreds of thousands of their fans in seconds via updating their status on Facebook or sending a tweet out on Twitter, it's astonishing.
He went on to discuss exactly how we can showcase our brand attributes via Social Media. In today’s world we can access our fans and target market directly through Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud and blogs. Terry went through each one and discussed how they play a part in the branding process and how we can utilize each to become a household name. Facebook on one hand is great for talking directly to fans and getting feedback on tracks you may be working on. Twitter on the other hand is good for networking with companies, labels and major artists directly to gain good business connections.
Terry closed the show by discussing how to start a label in today’s digitally enhanced world. Overall Terry was a delight and was great afterwards handling the students questions too.
I really took away a lot from the lecture, knowing what it takes to market your own music and yourself makes you incredibly more likely to be successful and signed to a major label. Labels today want to know an artist can create their own following and have done so, meaning knowing how to do this with the wonderful world of the Internet is a major plus.
This was one of a series of free lectures we organise from time to time. Some are exclusive to LSS students, others are open to everyone; each lecture is unique and will not be repeated. Subscribe to our newsletter to hear about future events as soon as they’re announced.
For more information on Terry Church visit his website www.terrychurchpr.com/
"Students learn how social media helps Eric Prydz sell more records" > read the full post
