There’s been a massive shift in the music industry over the last ten years with major labels, despite having sizable budgets and astronomical clout, no longer being the defacto end goal for up-and-coming and independent musicians. At the same time, there are more artists and producers than ever looking to get their music released, meaning tons of labels popping up left, right, and center.
However, the ones that last are more than just an avenue to get music onto Spotify for Beatport—the labels with staying power focus on growth for themselves and their artists. The best way to do this is by treating the whole ecosystem like a business, with marketing budgets, deadlines, and none of the many laissez-faire approaches that some assume from the outside looking in.
Soave is a label that has seen meteoric growth since its founding just seven short years ago in 2017. Starting small like all labels do, they’ve grown to become one of the top-rated curators on Spotify and a mega force within the wider dance music industry. So we sat down with Soave’s marketing manager, Elizabeth Dijkhuizen, and the label’s founder, Jan-Hendrik, to pick their brains about how labels should grow, develop, and play the long game all while having something tangible and valuable to offer their artists.
So, let’s dive into the conversation.
How do you keep up with the rapidly changing digital marketing landscape, especially in the music industry when growing a record label?
Liz: Never stop learning! Marketing is constantly evolving, so even if you’ve years of experience, you still should familiarize yourself with new trends and technologies. Talking to people who have a certain specialty, attending conferences, reading up on news, doing a course, and most importantly, experimenting!
The music industry, in particular, is creative. So, even if you’re not a musician, you must experiment with marketing techniques, content strategies, and communication outlets to keep up with that creative approach. Having the feeling like “Hey, why don’t I know this?”, doesn’t mean you’re bad at marketing, it might just mean you came up with something new and creative. It’s never boring and learning to embrace that makes it more fun!
Jan: As a label founder, the challenge is to find and employ people along the way who know more about new media than you do so that the label as a whole stays ahead.
Do you have any tips on balancing traditional marketing techniques with innovative digital strategies to promote dance music?
Liz: Honestly, I feel that ‘traditional’ and ‘digital’ marketing have become relative terms. Our generation, Millennials/Gen-Z, considers social media as the basis of one’s marketing strategy. At least in this creative music business.
Having a well-thought-through vision helps you pick and choose channels relevant enough to share your message, whether digital, offline, or a combination. If you are asked to play at a local event and do an interview with the local paper, you want to make sure you capture the moment with your phone camera and turn it into a social media post.
It’s a simple example, but it’s where a collection of marketing channels comes together.
What’s your approach to label branding, and how do you ensure consistency across all marketing materials and channels?
Liz: At Soave, it’s artist-first!
A music fan is a fan of an artist and might become a fan of the brand behind it, such as the label. At some point, one might notice that they generally like Soave’s style, making them more eager to explore new artists simply because they are released on the label.
However, it usually starts with liking a particular artist, right? If we play an active role in helping artist develop their brand, Soave automatically grows along with them. Of course, we don’t push our branding onto the artists’ channels. The content shared on the artist’s channels should be connected to their brand style.
We rebranded our own Soave Records style at the beginning of this year. A brand guide was designed to maintain overall brand consistency. Our team is growing, so having a brand guide ensures every member of our Soave squad understands the feel-good vibe the label wants to share with the rest of the world. Not only in music but also in social content, tone of voice, and other visuals.
Jan: As a founder who started out designing everything himself, I still like to share my vision about our branding assets, even every individual release artwork. But I’m happy to have a professional team of designers who are much better at turning that vision into actual output. At the same time, I’m also still involved in part of our social media posting though, it’s just something I really enjoy.
Can you share any tools or resources that have been invaluable in your role as a marketing manager that helped grow Soave Records?
Liz: There is a ton of resources and tools you can use to optimize your marketing efforts. To grow your streaming stats, use tools like Spotify for Artists to see where your streams are coming from and how many are triggered organically. If you focus on building your brand, use the data dashboards of the leading social media networks to see how many people don’t just see but also engage with your content, making them more likely to turn into fans.
The main piece of advice is to set clear goals for yourself. It’s straightforward for all this data to cloud your mind. You can’t simply ‘do it all’ in one go. Let’s say you have a €500 budget and want to promote your song. It’s a lot of money, but not enough to pitch your song to curators, have influencers promote it on TikTok, and run ads on Instagram to grow your followers.
The impact is going to be too minimal if anything at all. In this case, having a clear vision will help you drive relevant results and stay motivated. Is growing your overall streams your goal? Focus on partnering with relevant playlist curators who drive streams on your songs. Even though it’s a decision between 10.000 streams vs. 100.000 TikTok views, it still significantly impacts your personal goal.
Jan: As expensive as it is, Chartmetric has been very valuable to me over the years, especially in playlisting, which is at the heart of our company as a Global Top 5 Spotify curator.
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
