Week 2: Artists and Repertoire

Welcome back, everyone. I am happy to report that I have begun my internship with Synchro Events. This week, Mr. Cilignr assigned me to locate and document potential talent for Synchro’s upcoming Manifest music festival. This process of identifying musicians is called Artists and Repertoire (A&R). This term is usually used in the context of music labels looking to sign talent; however, instead of signing artists to a label, we are booking them for an event. 

On July 4th, Synchro Events will host their fifth iteration of Manifest, and for that, they are looking for House, Tech House, UK Garage, and Bass House (sub-genres of electronic dance music) DJs and producers to perform. For this assignment, I was given a set of criteria to ensure that the talent I found was not more popular than Manifest’s headlining act. This meant I had to be limited to individuals with less than 60K followers on Instagram and 105K monthly listeners on Spotify. Moreover, I was required to find 5 smaller, less popular acts and 5 larger acts that were based in the Tri-state area. To locate these acts, I searched on Reddit forums regarding the rave scene in NYC. In the end, I found 6 smaller acts and 5 large acts, one of which was our very own Mr. Heilbronn, who is active as House DJ and producer. I had a lot of fun with this week’s assignment. Being exposed to new artists that I may not have come across otherwise was a unique pleasure.

Thinking back to the reading I did last week, my answers to the first three of Aulet’s questions are as follows. Who is your customer?: those who enjoy attending raves that specifically pander towards listeners of House and related sub-genres. What can you do for your customer?: host events that feature popular DJs and producers who play the type of music they enjoy. How does your customer acquire your product?: through online sites that allow for the purchase of tickets to one’s events. Although the answers to these questions seem simple, it is vital to reflect on the structure of one’s startup before executing a vision, and these questions provide a framework to engage with the foundation of a new business.