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21.11.14 Music Week 17
and trends. We’re influenced by them occasionally, as anyone would be, but it’s about doing what we want to do rather than where we think the market is heading. It’s the same as our radio show, if we like a record we’ll play it, if we don’t we won’t. We’re strict about that, if we don’t like the new Tiesto record, it’s not going on.
You’ve got a healthy social media presence with over 400,000 Twitter followers, but it’s nowhere near in the realms of Tiesto’s 3.2m... JG: A lot of artists will pump up their social media numbers but there’s no point in doing that because you haven’t got engagement. There are people with 10m followers on Twitter but look at the numbers of retweets or favourites they are getting, it just doesn’t add up.
PS: A couple of years ago I downloaded Twitter information on all the top DJs and it was eye opening. I thought there was no realness to the numbers that I was seeing, so I had a look and, for example, 75% of the followers of ‘DJ X’ had made less than two tweets ever. When you look at what they are doing, those [are fake bot accounts]. You can play tricks with the internet and social media, but ultimately social media is word of mouth and nothing works better for word of mouth than exciting content, if that’s the core of what you do the internet works itself out.
How did you sell out the Madison Square Garden date in 24 hours? TM: By doing stuff on our radio show and telling people about it. By the time we sold out, we’d not advertised once, not one poster. It’s the people who already know who we are who are waiting for the chance to buy a ticket.
own rules. We are now in the lucky position where we can make a video that supports our story not somebody else’s story.
How do you keep your fanbase engaged? PS: We try to give people really cool experiences and I think the live shows are a really big part of that as is the radio show. We firmly believe that if we can do shows that people leave having had an incredible time, then that’s how marketing really works, because they are going to go home and tell their friends, “You really missed out”.
TM: At the core of it is music that people really connect to, that’s been the thing that we’ve managed to do in a genre that is littered with party music and music that’s about the moment when it’s consumed, Friday night and all that other stuff. We write songs about life, like most bands do outside of the electronic music area, and it’s that connection with the music that is at the heart of the shows that Paavo is talking about and at the heart of the relationship that people have with us. We’re lucky that nobody else in our world seems to have caught onto that really.
JG: The reason not everyone has caught onto our [way of doing things] is because short term, it can be risky. The quick wins may well be the tits and arse videos but in the long run, it’s the fair-weather fan-led stuff. We’re really happy with how the tickets for the LA Forum show are selling, we’ve got information from some of our peers about how many tickets they sold and we were pleasantly surprised by the comparisons. I think it’s down to sticking to what we do rather following fashions
What do you do to reach new fans, is that important? TM: Our job of marketing Above & Beyond is to give our existing fans something to feel great about and to tell their friends about. That really is quite the opposite of trying to talk to people who aren’t our fans. Our focus is on the people who already like us because we understand that they are our most valuable foot soldiers.
JG: Festivals are our opportunity to reach out to new fans. We’ve played at Party In The Park, V Festival and Glastonbury.
What are your future ambitions? PS: Hopefully one day we will be able to sell live tickets from an Anjunabeat ticket shop rather than Ticketmaster. And I really want us to keep developing our show to the point where it will hopefully one day be one of the ones that people will study at university 25 years from now, when they are looking back at the electronic music show and how it evolved to the beast it became. I want to be part of that. I think we will keep pushing and experimenting, technology is changing, we don’t know where we’re going to go with it but I’m really excited.
TM: I just want to keep doing it and for it to be meaningful, fulfilling, genuine and something we can feel proud of. I’m not a big fan of future plans and that’s been one of the hallmarks of what we’ve done. Rather than dreaming about the future, we see what tomorrow brings. That’s a really important thing these days because change is coming thick and fast. We’re just trying to be connected, alert, nimble and able to adapt to what’s going on.
‘WE DON’T ACTIVELY CHASE THE HITS’
As well as being Jono Grant’s brother, James Grant is Above & Beyond’s manager and CEO of their publishing company Involved Publishing. After working for a few years in tech and internet PR, he persuaded the group to give him a try and came on board, first working for free. He must have impressed, as he’s now heading up the whole operation 12 years later.
Alongside Above & Beyond, Involved Publishing controls songs from
writers including Mat Zo, Dusky, Andrew Bayer, Arty, and Audien. Here Grant discusses the trio’s new album, We Are All We Need, the potential of joint ventures and future plans.
Explain Above & Beyond’s business set up… Madison Square Garden is an example of how it all comes together. Anjunadeep hosts the after-party, the support line-up is made up of artists that we manage, and in the backroom somewhere, there’s a social media room with an entire label of staff all working together on the event. Above & Beyond sit at the top of the pyramid then everything else feeds into that.
What are the promotional plans for We Are All We Need? The group don’t seem bothered about radio play. We’re in an interesting position at the moment where we’re utterly unreliant on Radio 1. We’ll knock on the door around each album campaign but we won’t lose any sleep over it if the answer is no. We are really trying to run a great pre-order campaign to get everyone on board and make an impact in the sales chart, whatever that means these days. The album is out January 19 and European tour dates kick off around the same time. We’re doing a full North American tour for a couple of months and then we’re touring in the UK in April with two Brixton dates, then Manchester Apollo and O2 ABC Glasgow.
What are your ambitions for the album? I feel like we’ve got a shot at a Top 20 possibly a Top 10 album but let’s see, I don’t want to tempt fate. It feels like [the value of chart positioning] is diminishing every week though so it’s really about engagement with their fanbase.
What is it about the group that connects with their fanbase? The fact the songs are so personal to the band creates that personal connection with the fans. If you think about the way most dance music is made, DJs make some beats, they’ll make a track and then farm it out to a topline writer. It’s not a very personalised process, whereas A&B is very much a band, if the songs aren’t being written by the band themselves, they are being written in collaboration with the band. The result of that is, when you go to the shows, there are people singing along to the songs with tattooed lyrics on their arms. We get emails saying, “I walked down the aisle to this song” or “This was played at my friend’s funeral”. There’s a really strong connection there and that’s probably helped us have this longevity and ever-growing fanbase.
What are your future plans for Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep, would you ever do a joint venture with a major? We’ve had approaches from America; America is massively excited about dance music at the moment. It’s a bit of a weird one though because if they are going to do a deal, they are going to be interested in hits and that isn’t our raison d’etre. If they happen, fantastic, but we don’t actively go out trying to sign hits, which is the beauty of it. We sell music that we love and if it connects on a bigger level, great. We’d be more open to a strategic investment from someone who could open doors rather than signing our lives away to a major label.
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