Coffee or Beer‪?‬ Hold Tight

This week we are joined by Nathan Barley Phillips senior A&R at Nuclear Blast Records.   Barly gives us his thoughts on what labels look for when signing artists, the role of an A&R in today's music industry and the long term strategy thinking that bands must adopt in order to last and succeed at being in a band over a long period of time.

Jerry Ewing, editor and founder of PROG magazine and the host of the annual Progressive Music awards, joins us for this week's Coffee or Beer. Come with us on a debaucherous trip into Jerry's past and how he came to start Classic Rock and PROG magazines. We find out about how much the industry has changed over the years and what's in store for the future of printed press.

He's back! After almost a year since the first episode with Lewis his career has rocketed into bigger and better places. We catch up with him to find out more about how shooting the recent videos for Pendulum and The Hunna was and what it was like being nominated for a VMA Award for his video he did with All Time Low.

When it comes to music education and mentoring musicians to strategise their career, Damian has proven he is the best in the world.  At 23, Damian founded and built The British Institute of Modern Music (BIMM - now known as BIMM Institute), currently valued at over $100m, and they are the largest set of music colleges in the world. Artists that studied at BIMM under Damian include George Ezra, The Kooks and James Bay.   In addition to this, Damian has worked as a professional bass player internationally, alongside artists such as Eric Clapton, Alanis Morissette, The Who and Bob Dylan.    After building BIMM, Damian went on to successfully build and invest in several other businesses, including a management company for musicians (DK Music Management), a live agency (Warble Entertainment) and a social media company (Black Rock Media).  The constant for Damian has always been educating & advising musicians throughout all stages of their career, whilst being at the forefront of navigating changes in the music industry.  Damian has built an online community of over 100k musicians online, through YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.  Damian has also released two Amazon best-selling books for musicians, The Rule Breakers Guide to Social Media & Stop Selling Music: Career Changing Lessons for Musicians.    Damian is inundated with messages every day from musicians wanting his expertise & guidance for their career.  He realised that he wasn’t able to keep up with the demand through YouTube & Instagram alone, so wanted to establish a community where musicians can have more access to him & his training.

Alex is a senior label manager at The Orchard one of the worlds largest distribution companies operating in 25 global markets.  We discuss how The Orchard releases music in today's market, strategies and services that are popular right now and other ways bands can distribute and market themselves effectively to promote their latest releases.  

For more information about The Orchard check out: https://www.theorchard.com

Is print dead? Or dying? Do people even read magazines anymore?   What role does a magazine like Metal Hammer play in today's music scene?  What are publications doing now to adapt and change with the times, how does their online presence complement their physical outlet and what do bands have to do to get featured in these publications?  All of this plus a whole lot more.   Support the Metal Hammer team by subscribing to the mag, following them on socials and checking out the podcast!