President of Ineffable Records Adam Gross, Island Music Conference 2023 panelist, recently spoke on the ‘language’ of social media platforms, saying it is something artistes must master to maintain and build on their fanbases. The IMC event features global executives (like Adam Gross) enlightening entertainers, independent and otherwise, on how best to develop their careers going forward. We sat down with him ahead of the conference.
You’ve spoken to the necessity of independent artistes learning the ‘language’ of social media platforms. Can you expand on that?
“So, there are 8 billion people in the world; 60% or so have access to the internet. Essentially there are people placing their attention on different platforms around the world at all times; so that’s anything from streaming platforms like Spotify, Youtubeor Pandora, or Audiomack or Apple Music. Then you have social media platforms like Tik Tok, Instagram, and others such as TV shows, films, video games; a number of places where people are placing their attention.
So it’s essential to figure out how you optimise the performance of a song in any one of those places. Each platform speaks its own language, right? So Spotify speaks its own language, and learning how to do things within that platform is important: how to maximise the streams on that platform, to maximise the algorithms. Basically, you’re not reliant on others.
It’s super important to learn how to speak the language of TikTok and put things out the right way so that you can grow and can take as high a percentage of people’s time on that platform by constantly pushing your music. We’re living in the best time in history for independent artists; we have all these tools at our fingertips and the cost of getting things out there is much less. It’s about optimising and maximising performance instead of having big budgets.”
How important is it that artistes target multiple platforms?
“You need to grow your audience on every single platform so it’s sustainable. You never know if the government of a country might ban one platform tomorrow or another platform comes in and [dominates] that other one. You want to be in a position where you have access to your fans, so you don’t lose your fans and are not relying on one platform to reach them.”
How many artistes from the Caribbean are you currently working with or have worked with in the past?
“We’ve released a number of projects from artistes from the Caribbean; we’ve done projects with Konshens, Anthony B, Demarco. We’re working on an album with Kes right now, a live record and have rolled out a number of singles from it. We’re working with Hector ‘Roots’ Lewis. Also doing some projects with Conqueror, Kaliyah, and a number of other artistes from the Caribbean–some of which I can’t announce right now.”
Is there a difference in the way you market (and manage) artistes from the Caribbean as opposed to those from other regions?
I don't think there’s any difference in how you manage artistes from the Caribbean or different parts of the world. I think it all falls into the same bracket of understanding that projects go best if you have the right people as part of artistes’ teams; people that can execute the plan and strategy. The way we think about any project, it’s just that it’s important to have the right partners in place.”
Those interested in learning more (and or registering for the conference) are encouraged to check out the website at https://islandmusicconference.com/.
Members of all Caribbean music industry societies are
entitled to a 50% discount on registration fees.
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