First workshop in Nantes : the daily report

Wed­nes­day, Nov 27th — First day — Brand & Mar­ket Strategy

Picked-up at 9am at the hotel, the artists were giv­en a tour of Trem­polino build­ing (WW2 bunker), before dis­cov­er­ing their stu­dio for the week and the room in which they’ll be hav­ing most of their courses. For this first day, Chloé Nataf, head of the pro­ject, intro­duced them to the mood­board concept, before they had 2 hours to cut and paste their favour­ite images found in magazines. A mood­board is a type of col­lage con­sist­ing of images, text, and samples of objects in a com­pos­i­tion. The aim was to present the mood and val­ues of their pro­ject to a few Auden­cia stu­dents that would work on their brand­ing strategy.

In the after­noon, oth­er Auden­cia stu­dents presen­ted their work on each one’s glob­al mar­ket­ing strategy, giv­ing gen­er­al fig­ures about the music busi­ness and first tips for the artists to think about their tar­geted audi­ence and career goals. But they would come back on that sev­er­al times with­in these two weeks in France.

Thursday, Nov 28th — Second day — Digit­al revolu­tion & Music Value Chain

On Thursday, we all met around 10am at La Cent­rale, an audi­ovisu­al com­pany co-work­ing place that kindly wel­comed us. Lec­turer of the day was Yvan Bou­d­illet, founder of the Lynk, an innov­a­tion agency for cre­at­ive start-ups. He talked about the gen­er­al changes in the past 30 years in the Cre­at­ive Industry and sep­cially in the music industry, start­ing with a present­a­tion of all the Music & Cre­at­ive soft­wares and applic­a­tions that were cre­ated in the last decades.

Through the story of their suc­cesses and fail­ures, he aimed at help­ing our five artists to chose the ones they would need. He also inter­rog­ated wheth­er labels aren’t really neces­sary any­more. Is the “Do It Your­self” (DIY) philo­sophy a real solu­tion for artists? Anoth­er ques­tion each artist would need some time to think about, before chos­ing his/her per­son­al strategy.

Fri­day, Nov 29th — Third day — Stream­ing plate­form strategy

After a quieter morn­ing — free time and an inter­view for Marta and Mar­tin at Eura­dio, it was time to get deep­er on tech­nic­al sub­jects and Quentin Gau­vin was the right per­son for that. Co-founder of FUTUR records and label man­ager at Believe Digit­al, he taught Alice, Marta, Mar­tin, Joanna and Simone about spe­cif­ic tricks to be used on Deez­er, Spo­ti­fy and oth­er plate­form to be seen, and to touch new audiences.

Need­less to say, it was wel­comed and ques­tions burst out until the day was done, and no one had energy left to go out at night ! Especially…

https://soundcloud.com/euradio-fr/to-make-your-career-work-its-not-only-about-making-great-music-slash-programme

Sat­urday, Nov 30th — Fourth day — Social Medi­as strategy

…Know­ing that this Sat­urday would be at least as intense. Course of the day : present­a­tion of sev­er­al social net­works, and how they should be used by artists, by Lucie Guil­loux and Hans-Paul Landrièvre, founder of Stu­dio Volume, a pro­mo­tion agency for artists. Pas­sion­ate about their sub­ject, both caught the audi­ence quite eas­ily and explained how Face­book, Ins­tagram, Twit­ter, You­Tube or Tik Tok could change their life … if they knew how to use them prop­erly without los­ing all their time for no result.

This time, we had to enjoy some of the Bar-bars Fest­iv­al, that was by chance hap­pen­ing at that time of the year. After some con­certs in small bars in town, some went dan­cing at Le Lieu Unique, a fam­ous bar in Nantes and former bis­cuit factory.

Sunday, Dec 1st — Fifth day — Free day

Dur­ing this day, as on their free time the pre­vi­ous days, the artists could use at their ease sev­er­al stu­di­os at Trem­polino to rehearse for the show. Some oth­er went to vis­it parts of Nantes, have a nice cof­fee and crois­sant, or relax at the hotel.

Monday, Dec 2nd — Sixth day — Fun­drais­ing & Day-to-Day Organisation

Courses start to speed up and things to get clear­er, but there still was a lot to cov­er. In the morn­ing, Chloé Nataf gave some insights about crowd­fund­ing cam­paigns and how it could help pro­mote a release — and not only fin­ance it.

After a short break, Thomas Coch­ini, a French artist part of duet Labot­a­nique, intro­duced our five guests to Streak, a Cus­tom­er Rela­tion­ship Man­ager tool for Gmail. More than a tech­nic­al tool, it’s a way to open the dis­cus­sion on how one’s should divide and organ­ize its day, between cre­ation and … all the rest, mean­ing email­ing for book­ing, organ­iz­ing tours or record­ings, and get­ting oth­er sources of rev­en­ue. Which is, as every­one knows, the sinew of war.

At night, Marta, Mar­tin and Simone first met their ment­ors, respect­ively Max­ence Cyrin, Grégoire Vail­lant and Romain Lalle­ment (Len­par­rot) at B2m res­taur­ant in Nantes — fine food and organ­ic wine!

Tues­day, Dec 3rd — Sev­enth day — Being a slash­er artist & Rehears­al show @ Trempolino

If the artists were giv­en some time to relax, this day clearly was­n’t the lazi­est! After a course in the morn­ing with anoth­er slash­er artist, Cécile Unia, about mul­ti­task­ing. Net­work­ing, pro­mo­tion, book­ing, when do you need to ask for help and when can you do it by your­self? While remem­ber­ing all the time that you need to keep time for creation.

The last two ment­ors, Dorothée Han­nequin for Alice and Mari­ama for Joanna, arrived for lunch, before they all star­ted the line-check for the rehears­al pub­lic show. Each artist could get some time to pre­pare for the show at Les Trans Musicales, where they would get 20 minutes to present what they are and what they play…very little to what most of them were usu­ally used to play.

In front of a small but warm 50-people audi­ence, we had to chance to finally listen to them for real. And there it went : all beautiful !

Wed­nes­day, Dec 4th — Eight day — Ment­ors day

After see­ing them live in con­cert, the ment­ors could spend some time with their mentees in stu­dio to dis­cuss their pro­ject, their career, and give some feed­back about their con­cert. Per­son­al­ized advice went from chan­ging the order of songs on the show to go shop­ping for some new clothes, or giv­ing a few con­tacts to email before and after Les Trans Musicales.

Maybe that was the most intense part of the week, and every­one was happy to get some sleep before “tour­ing” to Rennes !

Thursday, Dec 5th — Ninth day — Trip to Rennes & Con­fer­ence @ Les Trans Musicales

After every­one met at Trem­polino for cof­fee, we drove to Rennes, avoid­ing one the biggest strike ever in recent years in France. Our European artists had to dis­cov­er the atmo­sphere of demon­stra­tions, and they could enjoy it from the win­dow of their hotel in front of Rennes train station.

In the after­noon a con­fer­ence was held at 4bis con­gress cen­ter. Dir­ec­ted by Chloé Nataf, the lec­ture saw our five artists and four ment­ors dis­cuss about their status of slash­er artists- please find the pod­cast link here.

At night, every­one could dis­cov­er the city of Rennes dur­ing Les Trans Musicales : a maze of bars, con­certs, and a lot of people to meet. Some still had the energy to go to Le Parc Expo and catch a few shows before it got too cold, and we got too tired.

https://hearthis.at/transmusicales/8etre-un-artiste-slasher-en-europe/

Fri­day, Dec 6th — Tenth day — Show­case @ Les Trans Musicales

There it was, the final day, the S‑Day — Show­case Day. We had talked about it so much that Alice, Marta, Mar­tin, Joanna and Simone star­ted to get a bit nervous, but all of them went really pro­fes­sion­al on line-checks — and eat­ing all the sushis. Des­pite the cold and rainy weath­er, des­pite demon­stra­tions, we had anoth­er chance to enjoy five great con­certs, and if you wer­en’t there, check the pho­tos of this art­icle, and the trail­er below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md_F7vKLmzk

Sat­urday, Dec 7th — Elev­enth day — Back to home

On a grey morn­ing, the city seemed quiet when we left the Hotel de Bretagne but a few cafés were open­ing. The coun­tryside was quiet and foggy, giv­ing fields a fant­ast­ic atmo­sphere. Some mis­chev­i­ous kor­rigans were indeed out at the air­port and gave Mar­tin and Simone a few shivers, when the host­ess refused to board their gui­tars, but it finally went well after a nice lady took care of the situ­ation (watch the video). Alice and Marta did have some time to take anoth­er quick look at Nantes, its castle, its cathed­ral and its Sat­urday demon­stra­tions. So long, time for good­byes and see you soon!