OALS Pod is great: Ms Banks (left)
and DJ Semtex photographed for Music Week in London, May 2019
musicweek.com
“This podcast is the director’s cut, you just can’t do that on radio”
DJ SEMTEX SPOTIFY
After they shared the bill that night, Semtex knew Ms Banks would be perfect for his podcast, Who We Be, which was then six months into its existence. It launched in January last year with an intimate, revelatory conversation with Dave. It was the first time the rapper had been so personal. The podcast spawned from the urban-focused Who We Be playlist (current follower count 510,515) and live events. Ms Banks starred at the 2018 Birmingham show, and Semtex was looking forward to telling her story. The 47-minute episode aired in February, the latest in the second series of a show that was renamed Who We Be Talks at the conclusion of its first run. Ms Banks (real name Tyra Banks) won the Music Week Women In Music New Artist award in 2018, and her appearance on the podcast would reveal more about her than ever before.
“I was more open in that interview than I have been in others, I felt very comfortable,” Ms Banks explains. “It’s Semtex, the way he speaks to you. It’s his genuine love for the culture, the people and the artists. You can tell Semtex loves music, so of course it’s going to be easy to bond with artists, because he loves what they’re about. He has a real interest in the process and how we do things and how certain things come about, so it makes it easier to want to [open up].” James Cator, head of podcasts, EMEA at Spotify is similarly glowing about DJ Semtex, who swapped BBC Radio 1Xtra for Capital Xtra last year and is Sony’s director of artist development.
“We were in a room talking about what we thought should happen with Who We Be, it was an incredibly popular playlist on Spotify and the question was, ‘What shall we do next?’ he says. “Semtex was so clearly the obvious choice, he’s an industry legend.”
Eighteen months down the line, Cator is very satisfied with the results, despite the fact that he declines to reveal listener numbers for its podcasts. But reporting on the episodes from outlets includng GRM Daily goes to show that the interviews are making an impact.
“It’s been really great to expand the brand and make it into a place where artists can tell stories,” Cator says. “That’s why it’s taken off, you don’t get this opportunity to have an in-depth interview with an artist [elsewhere], they share things on social media and it’s often just a sentence here or a photograph there. Being able to tell a story with nuance over an hour is quite a rare opportunity nowadays. The fans and artists have responded.” Spotify’s focus on podcasts continues to intensify, and the company has just signed a new deal with The Receipts Podcast (see page 22).
Safiya Lambie-Knight is lead, urban in Spotify’s artist and label marketing team and plays a key role in all things Who We Be, particularly in light of Austin Daboh’s departure, which the outgoing head of shows & editorial confirmed to Music Week last month. The pair don’t reveal any plans for Daboh’s possible replacement today.
“From the labels’ perspective, offering artists who
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