Play MPE_ A Game-Changing Platform for the Music Industry

PlayMPE is a SaaS product for the music industry that delivers watermarked audio to radio stations. They have been around for almost 20 years and have expanded to distribute music globally. They aim to help label clients reach their goals and provide opportunities for independent artists. PlayMPE has a user-friendly platform for recipients to access and work with the content they receive. They have to market to both radio stations and labels, tailoring their approach to each market's specific needs. Word of mouth and reputation play a significant role in their success. Hello, and thanks for joining us for another episode. I am here today, I'm super excited, I'm here with Alan Benedict, Director of Marketing for PlayMPE. And to be honest, I've been looking forward to this episode for a while because the place that you're operating in is super interesting to me. So if you can start us off by giving us a little bit of context for, you know, how you got to where you are and the role, that'll be super helpful as we kind of move through the conversation. Absolutely. And then first and foremost, thanks for having me. So my background comes from radio almost exclusively. I was on the radio in Chicago at 88.7 WLUW. From there, I wanted to move over on to the, I guess, marketing promotion, marketing, same kind of deal side of things. So I started working at an independent marketing agency out in New York called Syndicate. From there, I started working at a record label for about five, six years. And I've now been over at PlayMPE, looking after all of our marketing and business development for just about the last three years. So what PlayMPE is, we are a SaaS product for the music industry, essentially. We were one of the first companies that we've been around for just shy of 20 years. We were one of the first companies to start delivering watermarked audio to radio stations. So if you've ever wondered how radio gets the new songs to play, it's through a system kind of similar to ours, where labels or artists or promoters or managers will utilize our platform to deliver that stuff securely and be able to track some metrics on it, too. So we have, we're actually founded in Canada. Our headquarters is still in Vancouver, but since we've expanded so that we distribute music into, I believe, last county was 31 different countries, six continents. And yeah, we're constantly looking to expand and grow our offerings to make sure not only that our label clients are able to reach their goals and then fulfill their marketing plans, but that the independent artists, too, can kind of find some level footing with some of the giants out there. That's awesome. All right, I want to take a half a second break. We're leaning on your desk. Oh, yeah. Sorry. No worries. It shakes the whole screen gesture. So it looks like you're having an earthquake, which is OK if that's the vibe you're looking for. Yeah. We had we had a big thunderstorm yesterday. We have clear skies today in New York. OK, so back to the questions, and I have a ton of questions about the business. Not the least of which is, it sounds like and we've had a couple of folks on the show that have a double headed market, essentially two angles that they're approaching the market space. So you're selling both to to radio stations and the performers, is that right? Not selling. So we almost do radio stations or recipients because we do do more than radio, we do some music supervision and media outlets and that. They're almost the product in a way where we don't charge the radio setting anything. They don't have to buy a subscription or anything like that. They just we make sure that they're on the right list to get the content that they need to their jobs. And then our curation of that list is on top of the platform, kind of what we're selling to the label and our decided. Gotcha. So how I guess who it's interesting, right, and there's so much so much to unpack here with the radio stations themselves, then needing your product or service as part of kind of a vital part of doing their work, you being part of that distribution platform, you still have to get them to use you. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's definitely part of it as well. It's almost I guess it is marketing and almost like customer attention in a way where we not only have to maintain the sender side of the platform to make sure that it's easy to input that information, easy to track everything, easy to watermark everything, but also that recipient side. There are some services that some like very simple services, even like on the lines of like Dropbox and Google Drive and that where everything's kind of on a a link basis where like you get the link, you have to remember to keep that link, you go back and find that link. And over the years, we've built out a, in my opinion, at least a pretty nice user experience on the recipient side as well, where if they don't check their email notifications that often or they come back from vacation or or they're just not great with the Internet, we have a fully web based platform for them where anything that's been serviced to them already lives and they're able to work with it as they need to. They have all the information they need and they can play around with it a little bit like make playlists, organize it, stuff like that. And you're doing the that side of the sort of conversations and we'll get to the the supply side as it were in a second, but the getting the essentially the stations on board and compliant and participating in all of that kind of stuff. What is that sort of marketing conversation look like? Because I know you may not be charging for that, but there is distinctly a compliance kind of need there on your end, right, because that's part of what you're then able to take to that, that the folks that are giving you, you know, investing in that kind of stuff. How how do you get them to participate and do that? Well. It is it's a little bit different for every recipient we have, you know, like that's one of the one of the tougher conversations that we have internally. I mean, most of our sales and marketing staff are either artists or we have some experience in the music industry. Most of us have worked at labels or been on the radio side or promoters or something in between. So we already have a lot of the radio relationships that that we would need to make sure that the right people, or I guess you would say the top tier radio programmers and things are on the list. And then aside from that, we almost have to come up with a mini unique recipient marketing plan for every market we want to go into, like trying to find radio stations in the U.S. versus Australia and making sure that we're addressing their very specific needs is is really tricky. Everyone does it a little bit differently in the U.S. It's gotten more and more consolidated over the years where there are fewer people making more decisions for more radio stations, whereas if you go to, say, the U.K., the BBC is very, very locked down where they have a very specific way they want to receive music and they and they really stick to that because they're like kind of the only show in town over there. Like they're kind of the top tier. And then you go into a territory like Mexico and it's it's a little bit more of the wild west where these radio stations haven't really encountered a system like Plan B before. We're one of the first to kind of bring that down there. And that education process itself is something that we really haven't had to worry about in many other territories. Like it surprisingly took a lot more effort than we thought to convince them that we weren't going to send them a bill at some point just because the kind of the culture of the music industry there is so much different from it is in many other territories. So it's it's very kind of bespoke plans when it comes to recipients. And it kind of differs everywhere we go. Luckily, we have a very dedicated list management team that on top of our just reach out efforts and standing relationships and marketing like they they really stay on top of who should be on what list and what changes are being made and and they make sure everything is running smooth and as accurate as they can make it. The radio station side of the conversation is outrageously interesting to me because it has you have no you have no stick as it were. Right. It's all you have to really be selling the carrot the whole time. It's got to be like, yeah, we make this easy. We make it great. But on the other side of the conversation, that buyer side, the folks that are kind of looking for your aid and are paying you to do so. How does that work? What does that typical engagement look like? And what are the challenges in that side of the market? It is it is actually somewhat similar, like every every market kind of has their own thing, like different offices from labels and different territories work slightly differently and they never talk as much as you think they should. So sometimes you'll find yourself selling the same label in three different countries and then no one really knows you're talking to the other. But for the most part, we're very lucky that we've been around for long enough where we have a pretty great reputation and a lot of radio formats. And that does help through things like testimonials and word of mouth. And luckily, a lot of promoters who found success on Plan B, they'll refer their artist friends to use Plan B, especially if they can't take the project on themselves. They'll be like, hey, like this is the tool that I use. You can use it, too. And that's something we really pride ourselves on that we we don't cater to labels versus artists or vice versa. We try to make the platform the exact same no matter who's using it. And luckily, it's a really useful platform for labels because we have a lot of admin functionality and some global infrastructure and they can they can really do what they need to do. And it's also easy enough for an independent artist who might be sending their very first song out to radio without much guidance on there. It's not like they're being thrown into something as complicated as like Pro Tools. That's the first program that comes to mind. We try to make it level and even. And that's a that's a nice selling point. But a lot of it does come from word of mouth and reputation and a lot of relationship building, almost even more so. I mean, with, I guess, traditional marketing avenues, it's it's difficult for us to reach who would be using our service just because they don't. There's a small group of people who would be interested in sending secure music to radio stations and especially their own secure music radio stations. So finding where they are, whether it's a trade magazine or we make sure that we really focus in on brands and organizations that we want to partner with to reach not only artists, but also make sure we're relevant in the right music circles. And it's kind of a balancing act of trying to find the audience and then stay there while the audience is there and adapt to when they move somewhere new. And it's as simple as, I guess, a billboard or a snipe bank or something a little more a little more traditional. Well, and that's where this like one of the things that I find so compelling about kind of your role is you've got so you've got the stations on one side and the station networks for that matter, because, you know, very rarely is it like independent. You have then the labels. So and some of those labels vary in size and scope. And then you also are going after the independent artists. So like just on at a high level, you're marketing to almost four different types of organizations and you're doing it and every one of those markets and every one of those organizations needs varying levels of education. You're speaking at a different level on the artist side and the label side. You also have the genre kind of challenge. Right. So you've got well, you know, we have both kinds of country and Western kind of thing. You've got those like distinct challenges and it just like from the outside in, you know, and I've talked to a lot of folks with shows that are products or whatever that are hard to market. This just sounds daunting. How do you make sense of it all? It's a very unique piece. One thing that we really have to focus on is prioritizing and knowing what we want to invest in at what point. Like it would be kind of like it would be impossible for us to constantly market to every territory that we're in and every side of that territory that we need to be in touch with. So it's a lot of kind of looking at data and seeing where we're being successful currently, where we have room, where we have an opportunity, where we can be successful probably quicker than some other areas. And it's almost a constant shuffle of resources and seeing if we're where we need to be and when we need to leave and what we want to do. And we're a pretty small company, too. Like we have fewer than 40 employees and includes like our entire data and product side. So it's a true team effort and a lot of discussions about, OK, where what are we missing in Canada? Where can we expand there? But should we shift our focus to Mexico or should we look deeper into Australia because they have new grant funding available to artists and things like that? So it's a lot of a lot of collaboration and a lot of monitoring. So a lot of kind of analytics, seeing what's working, what we find something that works, trying to replicate it in other territories. Over the years, we've had some success partnering with things like songwriting competitions, and that seems to be a good gateway to independent artists because they're obviously all entering the competitions. And if we're identified as a benefit of entering and a benefit of winning it, it helps spread the word a little bit more. And that's something that's worked for the last few years. As tides turn, I'm sure something different will work a year from now. And that's just a conversation that we're kind of constantly having internally. So are you guys also like doing things like mining band camp and, you know, social media and all that kind of stuff for up and coming artists? Is that something that's also part of your protocol? Not currently, to be honest. That's something ideally down the road we would. Right now, with the size of our team and kind of the amount of releases that are coming in and just the amount of new leads that come into the website every day, we have a pretty steady stream of independent artists who found us. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, like we're one thing we do is we definitely monitor airplay charts in other countries. So if we see an independent artist in Australia, for instance, is suddenly becoming really successful on their country charts and they're kind of new to the market, just for the word flash and pan kind of thing. We definitely like try to find a manager team and reach out and let them know that there's a way to move from Australia to other territories. So that's that's one of the really nice things that sets us apart from a lot of kind of localized competitors like we do have. We do distribute in 31 different countries. So if something's doing great in Australia, sure, you might have a solution in Australia. But with one release, we can hit every country radio station that we have globally and stuff like that. So we're we're definitely a good export asset as well, which is something that we try to make very clear. So apart from your competition being folks that do exactly what you do, do you also view social media broadly in some ways as competition as well, since folks are distributing a lot of content there? Not so much like we sometimes get lumped in with like traditional DFTs or digital service providers like Spotify and Apple Music. Because I guess in theory, it's kind of the same. You submit your music to us, it's posted online, people can stream it from anywhere. But really, like our market is very different from just a traditional music consumer. Yeah. Where even to have access to our platform, like we put any recipient through a pretty substantial vetting process because we not only want to make sure that our lists are active and accurate and we don't want to just balloon it. So yeah, now we have 10,000 people, but who knows who they are. So we have to make sure that the right people. But also, like we have to really focus and take pride in the security and sender side as well, where like we do get pre-release music service through Plan B, we get very fresh releases that are probably on the radio before they hit, I guess iTunes doesn't exist anymore, before they hit Amazon Music or wherever people buy music now. So we have to be really mindful of that too, where if someone or a label trusts us to send only to country radio programmers in the US or rock programmers in Canada, that their release is only going to legitimate country programmers in the US, rock programmers in Canada. So it's a, we make less of a push on the traditional consumer side. Right. Again, the dynamics of all this just seems quasi-mind-blowing for me. So when you go through this process and you're identifying the upcoming artists you're going after or the labels that you're working with and then getting them in front of the right folks securely, how much of the work you're doing is education versus, you know, in terms of like the marketing conversations up until the transaction point and then afterwards, what is that? Kind of like help me understand like what the split is, like how much are you doing education-wise in the market versus really at that point of transaction and do a lot of folks come at, you know, come at your business at a transaction point or is there a lot more nurture? There is, I mean, it does vary a little bit territory to territory, of course, but education would definitely win out. Probably as you gather from the conversations that we've had, it's sometimes a difficult value proposition to kind of explain to people exactly what we do and why it's useful and how it's different than them just kind of Googling a bunch of radio stations and sending cold emails. So we really have to lean on not only the ease of use with our system, the success others have had, but we lean a lot on testimonials and we lean a lot on showing that, yeah, you might be an artist new to this, but the head of promotion at Island Records and Duck Jam also love using the system. So we really try to put their reputation through and use testimonials in that way. And then once, I guess once we kind of draw them in as a lead and they're kind of talking to either a sales rep or an account person, we're always looking at new ways to kind of remarket to people. Like we update the product really consistently. Like we're always, our product team is kind of never sleeping on new additions and new features and how we can improve what we have. So it's some remarketing or education to that, too. We have an interesting, kind of an interesting meatball where even if we're very successful for an artist, there can still sometimes be a year, two-year quiet period between their using the system just from the nature of them running out of record and then they won't need a record for another two years and they have to write one. So it gives us a lot of opportunities whenever we have something new to tell people about or we put together a new distribution list. For instance, just a couple months ago, we started putting together, we're calling them international bundles. So kind of like I mentioned before, like every country program where we have global people is in one list for sale now. It's artists and labels. So anytime we have an advancement like that, it's a lot of how can we make sure that we're covering the artists who maybe just finished writing a record for the first time in three years and they used us, but man, they don't really remember who they talked to and they can't quite remember how to find us and that kind of thing. So with us, there's a kind of weird built-in dead period between transactions sometimes, just from the nature of music, really. Nothing can really change it. And at the same time, you mentioned you have a lot of folks come into you on a regular basis in terms of like new artists and emergent and stuff like that. So how many of those folks do you have to turn away for quality issues? I mean, do you do any of that? Do you determine whether or not you're going to take on a client as well? We do some, yeah. We have a very hands-on onboarding process, partially because of that. We want to make sure that we're not, since the recipients are kind of our product itself, we don't want to bombard them with a bunch of stuff they have no interest in and then they move on to the platform and we have to keep them active. One thing we definitely try not to do, though, is if something is radio quality and it fits in with where they want to send it, like on a very basic, no-judgment level, we won't turn someone away for anything like that. We just want to make sure that it's broadcast quality and it's something that could stand a chance. I mean, we get some submissions that are someone singing into an iPhone or recording a video of them singing in their car and we don't want to just take their money and send it somewhere and knowing full well that it's not going to be on the radio. We want to respect our reputation, too. We do very basic quality control, usually for broadcast quality over content. That said, if something is totally off the wall and inappropriate, we'll steer them away. But we try to be as non-judgmental as possible. If it could fit in and we see it sitting at home, even if it's a small college station in Germany or something like that, we do our best to try to find a home for it. So, I guess as we start to get close to a wrap-up here, and I have a feeling I could talk about this stuff for days, but one of the – I guess the natural next question then is it's got to be interesting now with the AI stuff coming out, how much those submissions are going to be directly connected to your system or vice versa. How are you negotiating some of that? Do you have editorial protocols that you're incorporating into your onboarding process as part of that marketing conversation or any of that kind of stuff? Have you figured that out yet? Not quite yet, to be honest. We haven't had to deal with that yet. We haven't had any issues to run into, but it's definitely a conversation that's happening on most of our product and dev side. I imagine eventually there'll be some detection system or something like that, something far more technical than I'd be able to describe somewhat, but I'm sure there'll be something to safeguard against that. In the meantime, luckily, we – I don't think we've said that yet, AI stuff, but we've got a lot of emails coming in. Yeah, exactly. All right. I mean, especially with – definitely, especially with just the shift in culture, really, where everyone's looking at TikTok and these kind of short snippets of releases versus album plays like they used to. I mean, they always say that the music industry evolves really quickly, and this is just over the last five, six years, the most I've seen it evolve in the 20 or so years I've been working in music one way or another. It's definitely an exciting time. It's given our product team and our marketing and sales team a lot of fun conversations to have, which I'm sure will continue. Yeah, no doubt. When we reconvene here in a couple, 12 months or so, I think we'll have wildly different conversations about what that looks like and how it works. So, before we wrap here, I have two key questions for you. First things first, who should be reaching out to you? Who would be a good connection for you? A channel partner, potential client, what have you? Yeah, anyone, especially anyone who works with – not even only in this kind of music, anyone who works on the – you'd call it the sender side of the music industry, whether it be a distributor, a record label, a manager, someone managing their friend's band, an artist who's trying to get out there for the first time. What we do is we really help grow and get people out there to grow. Yeah, anyone on the music side looking to figure out how to get their stuff to more than a few people. Gotcha. And in your journey to the wildly successful and complicated marketing position you're in, what are your three biggest things you've learned along the way to help the next guy out? My three biggest along the way, these might seem a little more music industry than traditional marketing, but one thing I'm a big believer in is keeping in touch with people you've You can program ads and set up ad groups and do some SEO work all you want, but it's always easier if you have someone you can turn to and either ask questions or you never know where someone's going to end up five years from now, whether they could be a partner for whatever you're working with or help you get a leg up on a conversation you need to have. So people is always a big one. I would say try to put yourself in the shoes of the person you're trying to reach, which is probably basic marketing knowledge, but especially when you're looking at different segments and having to come up with a more bespoke strategy for each, really thinking about what are they being hit with every day? What are they actually caring about? If I'm an artist in Australia, I probably care about things differently than an artist in the U.S. because I have some government funding available to me. Or if I'm in the U.K., it's a pretty small music industry, so I'm probably caring about a few key recipients versus trying to hit every radio station in the U.K. So really trying to think target first and kind of build backwards from there. And the third thing I come up with is try to avoid falling into kind of the paint-by-numbers strategy that I think all of us can get sucked into, especially if you have a lot of projects going on at once. It would be really easy for us to be like, all right, we run ads in this territory and it goes well, so let's now target those ads here, and then we'll do this because it worked over here. And I think that leads to, you might still find some success that way, but I think you can probably find a lot more and honestly probably have a more enjoyable time if you try to take a little more out of the box and stay interested and keep learning and try to be something unique. That's awesome. That's awesome. Thank you so much for your time today, Al. I really appreciate what you brought to the table here. Hopefully the folks listening to the show get a ton out of it as well. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Consulting Trap. If you have suggestions for future episodes or would like to be a guest on our show, please send me an email at brian at podcastchef.com. That's B-R-I-A-N at P-O-D-C-I-S-T-C-H-E-F dot com. 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