Groover expands mission ‘to help artists get heard’ to US, UK & beyond
Paris-based Groover promises to help artists take the difficult first step of getting their music heard by music curators and industry professionals, and their stats suggest that they are having an impact.
We asked Groover co-founder Dorian Perron to explain how the platform works.
Tell us about Groover and how you help artists
GROOVER: To say it short, Groover is the web platform that helps artists get their music heard. We connect artists who want to promote their music with the best curators, radios, and labels seeking emerging talents.
How Groover works is easy. As an artist or an artist representative, you select who you want to send your music to in a list of 1,500+ media outlets, radios, playlist curators, record labels, and other industry pros. Through micro-payments – €2 by contact selected – we’re able to guarantee you that they’re going to listen to your music and at least write you feedback within 7 days. If some don’t, you get credits back so you can get in touch with other curators. And of course, if they like your track, they will share it – review, radio broadcast, playlist add – and/or get in touch with you for more information.
Since we launched the platform in 2019, over 1.3 million pieces of feedback have been given to artists by the music curators & pros, more than 300,000 shares obtained, and over 600 signatures with record labels, bookers, managers… That we know of!
How do you choose your reviewers and industry professionals?
GROOVER: On Groover, we’re selectively looking for music curators and professionals who gather those characteristics:
- They have influence/impact, at least on a niche, or they have experience in music (sound engineers, managers etc.)
- Their editorial line is high quality, and artists will be happy to associate their name to the outlet’s brand
- They’ve been active for some time and they’re currently active
Our curators and professionals are split in several categories:
- Visibility outlets (blogs, radios, playlist curators, journalists, Youtube channels) who can provide coverage for the tracks they have a crush on
- Potential collaborators (record labels, publishers, managers, bookers) who can become the artist’s team members
- Mentors & sound specialists, who can give more detailed advice on a track
We also assess more metrics to approve or not curators on Groover, which ends up in us refusing over 80% of applications. This helps us keep the feedback quality as high as possible.
We also coach and guide the music curators & pros on how to give proper feedback to artists, feedback that will be useful to them. We recently introduced a feedback evaluation system so we can be even more careful about the feedback quality on the platform.
Your data shows that the most successful Groover campaigns are when the artist reaches out to 50 contacts. Can you share a few of those success stories?
GROOVER: Indeed, we advise artists to get in touch with at least 30 contacts and ideally more than 50. It’s quite logical, as you’re going to get many more replies, thus more sharing opportunities, and really get the most of the value Groover can give.
More than 600 signatures on record labels happened, such as Myoon with Electro Posé’s record label Inside Records, Dekay with Chinese Man Records and Lampion on Rosemarie Records – a Quebec-based band on a Quebec-based record label – which shows how Groover can be used for local encounters as much as for international ones 🙂
Recently, one of our users whose project has been growing quite well in the past years – the French rapper Alvin Chris – told me that the first comments he received on Groover in 2019 were pretty harsh but illuminating. Curators were finding him interesting and charismatic, but the beats were found to be a bit too basic and the melodies not original enough.
He told me that he realized at that point that he needed to collaborate with other beatmakers instead of producing his beats on his own, and he spent a lot of time finding a way to be more authentic and stand out. Once he did, he started to get amazing feedback on the website, one of his tracks buzzed on TikTok (‘Coucou c’est encore moi’), his music became even more solid after he signed with a great distributor. He played at MaMA Festival & Convention in 2021, other cool festivals and even opened for OBOY. It’s just the beginning for him.
Can artists share quotes from the reviews and comments that they get using Groover in their press kits?
GROOVER: Yes, they can! Some curators are very detailed in their feedback and some of their comments could become catchy lines in your press kit. By the way, we give you more advice about how to build a press kit on our blog. You can have a look at the “High Quality Feedback” filter on Groover if you’re looking for particularly detailed pieces of feedback.
What are some other ways that artists can benefit from feedback they get on Groover and benefit from the platform?
GROOVER: On Groover you can get in touch with many different kinds of curators & pros. What’s important is to define what you want to achieve. You can choose your targets based on that, e.g. media outlets and playlist curators for a new release, sound specialists for a demo, record labels if you’re planning an album etc.
A few pieces of advice I can give:
1. Choose max 2-3 music genres on your artist profile, so that the recommendation algorithm can help you choose the right curators for you
2. Fill out your profile entirely so the curators can dig on your project if they liked your focus track
3. Adapt the timing for your campaign: if you’re aiming at Spotify playlist curators, you should definitely wait until release day to send your campaign so the Spotify URL is already available. We give more details about when to send your campaign on Groover here.
You can also have a look at the curators’ badges and even filter by them once you initiate a promotion campaign. Badges such as ‘Spotify certified’, ‘Youtube certified’, ‘Very impactful’, ‘High quality feedback’ can help you focus on the curators that are the most important for you, depending on what you’re looking for.
If you want to learn more about how to get in touch with media outlets and journalists on Groover, we get in the details here.
What’s next for Groover?
GROOVER: Good question! As a young company, Groover is evolving rapidly and our goals can subsequently change a bit over time. But we have three strong priorities right now:
- On the platform, improving the experience for artists after they’ve sent a campaign, through a completely new dashboard which will help them evaluate their experience, act upon it, get in touch in a more direct way with curators, get detailed stats etc.
- Developing the activity internationally and especially in the US and the UK. Our homebase is in France but we already do 70% of our activity abroad, including 25% in the US and 10% in the UK. We’ve just opened an office in Brooklyn and we’ve recently organized shows during Liverpool Sound City & The Alternative Escape.
- Developing new services, and especially the artist accelerator Groover Obsessions which we launched in 2021 to support the most talented artists we’ve detected on Groover. We currently support more than 40 artists all around the world and the results are beyond our expectations!
© MARGOFORIT
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