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Humdrum:
Was
Teleprompt Records formed as a way of retaining the bands artistic
control over
the music?
Kevin
Kookegy:
Teleprompt was formed when I merged my management company with Tedd
Tjornhom’s
production company and then we went to Paul (Meany) and offered him a
small
percentage of the company in order to give him a better deal. We were a
small
independent label and we weren’t able to give more points or more money
so we
offered him a part of the company in order to secure his investment in
the
vision of Teleprompt and what we were doing.
So he knew that whatever we were doing would
always benefit him because
he shared on that side of the deal.
Humdrum:
Do you
think the arrangement you have where you have your own record company
and have
a distribution deal with a major is the way of the future?
Kevin
Kookegy:
Yeah, it’s interesting, when we formed Teleprompt a lot of people
looked at us
with sort of jaundiced eyes saying, "well, you’re in all sorts of
conflict" but
we were 360 before 360 was even cool. What happened after that is
interesting
because we started to have success, and we were able to do things
efficiently
and effectively. When the major labels started talking about doing 360
deals
they wanted to be like us but they’re not equipped to do 360 in the
true sense
of the word because they are traditional record companies.
So we became attractive
because we were small and because we
were effective doing what we do. Our partnership with Warner Bros. has
worked
really well because they do what we cannot do, they have world wide
distribution, they have people all over the world, they have people in
this
country that can reach places that we can’t with sales and distribution
and
world wide marketing.
But what’s really
fantastic about the relationship is, they
let us drive all of that. We drive the creative from the record
standpoint,
what the band creates, form the packaging, to the marketing plan, they
all come
from us and then they implement them for us. It’s really a wonderful
relationship.
Humdrum:
For
Armistice you have some interesting pre-release promotion like the
listening
party and the vlogs in the studio. I guess that comes from you guys
then?
Kevin
Kookegy:
Well the listening party was an idea I conceived two years ago when
Mute Math
was finishing its fall 2007 tour and I knew that we were going in to
the
studio to work on the next record. Mute Math is a band that has a
intermediate
national profile, what I mean by that is we can sell out concerts all
over the
country but the way we do it is word of mouth.
Typically when we sell
out a show a lot of that is the week
before the show and walk ups. So I was looking for a way to bring
greater
awareness to most of our markets so that fans would buy tickets sooner
in the
process. We have always supported our promoters and worked very closely
with
our promoters and I wanted to take it up a step so I thought, lets take
the
idea of a traditional listening party which is you send the record out
to a
bunch of cities and have people gather around to listen to the it on a
release
date, why don’t we use that as a tool to get our fans in each city that
we’re
going to tour to come out and to have an event before the event. So it
really
borrowed from political campaigning and that was to send an advance
team into
each market. The band really liked the idea.
We left Nashville on the 3rd
of July and we’re
about half done now. We are covering every one of our core markets.
What we do
is we pull into a city much like a political campaign on a bus. The bus
is
wrapped in Mute Math artwork, fans come onto the bus, we break them up
into
sessions. Usually about 20 is all we can fit at a time so depending on
the
market size we’ll have about two to five sessions. They’ll come in,
they’ll be
introduced to the record, we’ll explain who we are why we’re doing
this.
They’ve already bought VIP tickets, with those you get a ticket to the
concert,
the record as soon as it releases, you get b-sides, t-shirt, you get a
first in
line pass, an autographed lithograph and an exclusive invitation to the
listening party.
The bus ended up being
one of the most attractive parts,
since most people haven’t been on a tour bus before. In half the cities
we had
one of the band members with us to answer questions. What’s been most
satisfying the response both to the record and this listening party
experience,
we’re having fans say, oh my gosh, I wish more bands would do this, I
can’t
believe I get to listen to a whole record before it’s released and you
want my
comments on it? We hand out a comment sheet and ask them to tell us
what you
like, tell us what you don’t like, and just be honest with us. We’re
trying to
gather market research but we’re also trying to build a relationship
with our
fans.
Part of this was to start
to build a different kind of fan
club experience. In my experience the fan club has been easy to get
fans in the
door, they pay a little money, but there’s not a lot of service after
that.
Let’s form a real relationship. There’s some data you can collect
through the
internet, collect on paper, but there’s nothing like going up to a
person, face
to face, eye to eye and shake their hand and to really hear what they
like and
what they don’t like. It’s been great market research, and we’re only
half way
done with this. Even when this finishes this is just the beginning of
what we’re
trying to build.
Humdrum:
Would
you use this marketing information to choose for example what singles
to put
out?
Kevin
Kookegy:
Since this is a core group of fans I don’t know if that particular
question you
asked would be as effective. We are getting about three or four songs
that the
fans continue to say are their favorites but most of what we’re using
will be
used in order to super-serve our fans. Prior to this we had one or two
hardcore
fans in any city that we could go to with promotional material or
information
to get the word out.
Now we have anywhere from
50 to 120 in every city that are
hardcore, bought a premium ticket and want to promote Mute Math in
their
market. So whenever there’s a campaign or something new comes around,
we have a
personal relationship with these people. I can’t light the match, I
don’t know
when that spark will be but what we’re trying to do is use discipline
and
organization in order to effectively lay kindling all throughout the
country so
that when the spark does light we’ve got the whole team right there.
Mike Flaherty - Drummer
(and Director of Content for Humdrum
online)
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