Industry news & advice blog

Andrea Leonelli is founder and host of Digital Music Trends, weekly podcasts shows covering the latest news in the music industry. As well as running DMT, Andrea also splits his time with providing music news content for Rockol.com and regularly speaks at music conferences about current trends in music technology and digital developments. 

6:15am -  Alarm goes off. As much as any “mindfulness” guru would tell me to do otherwise, I check emails a few seconds after waking up. I don’t do it year-round but I’m organising a bunch of interviews for Digital Music Trends at South By Southwest and if I got any confirmations/questions from the US overnight I want to reply before they themselves go to sleep (Americans work crazy hours). Less than two weeks until showtime and the pressure is on. This is followed by a quick check of Feedly for any breaking news in the digital music space as the coffee machine warms up and I get some toast ready.

7:00am - Start on the day’s stories, I work part time at Rockol.com where I cover music industry news. Today’s stories are iHeartRadio (a US internet radio service owned by ClearChannel) integrating BandPage data into its channels and Dave Allen from Gang of Four joining Beats Music as Artist Advocate. Happy to embed a podcast from a few week’s back to the latter piece as I had Dave on as a guest and we talked about streaming at length.

8:30am - Time for a run, as I work from my home office so the gym or a run are a good way, to clear my head and set the mood for the day. Also, that way I get to listen to the Daily Tech News Show which is the best daily tech podcast around and go through a few more tracks from the Spotify SXSW playlist, hundreds of bands that I’ve never heard of which is awesome but also daunting. What if I miss one!?

10:00am - Need to get the main Digital Music Trends show out of the door. We recorded it yesterday and It all went very smoothly in spite of the new set-up so now it’s just about the logistics of encoding the files, creating thumbnails, writing the description, creating the podcast feeds, uploading to SoundCloud and YouTube and getting the word out via social channels - Hootsuite saves the day - and the newsletter on MailChimp. Simple enough but it does take a while! 

1:00pm - A short lunch, usually the only way to take a full half hour is if I decide to cook an omelette or something… 

1:30pm - Emails, catching up on the morning’s load and aiming to reply to most instead of flagging them for later (a bad habit I fall into when the inbox is exploding). 

2:00pm - Time to set the scene for this week’s DMT 1-2-1 show where I interview interesting companies working in the digital music space. This is a little more stressful than usual as I’m using some new equipment so I have to re-configure the backgrounds, set up WireCast, check the levels/eq/compression on my new mixing desk as well as the usual setting up of  lights, camera and making sure I don’t have something stuck in my teeth… 

3:00pm - Recording the DMT 1-2-1 show with Michael Penfield, the CEO at Fandistro, an interesting company focusing on “socially-aware” music distribution to help bands generate new fans. It recently made some headlines for integrating BitCoins as a payment option. A good show.

4:00pm - Call with the organisers of the Miami Music Summit, a conference happening on March 24th, to discuss the panels I’m moderating there and chat about the structure of the day, panelists and guests.

4:30pm - Call with Epidemic Sound, an interesting Swedish company that has developed a large library of non collecting society affiliated music for licensing to broadcasters on traditional TV and online, definitely one I’d like to feature on the DMT 1-2-1 show so we schedule a date in a few weeks’ time. 

5:00pm - Time to check the news again and update Rockol.com.

6:00pm - Coffee break then time to sort out and render the DMT 1-2-1 show featuring FanDistro and get it out of the door as well. Thankfully, with the new process it takes half the time it used to but the upload/distribution piece is still - as described above - a bit of a pain.

8:00pm - Dinner and a movie - switching off, aside from Twitter. I have a very patient girlfriend.

11:00pm - The last email blast before bedtime. More SXSW meetings scheduled and relieved to see the calendar fill up with great guests.