A site for sore ears

A new Irish site, which aims to revolutionise how artists and fans interact, is set to go live over the next few weeks.

Boost The Music’s mission statement is to “offer the best place for fans to show support for the music they like and for artists to gain support. It’s all about promoting music from the ground up and offering artists ways of gaining promotion and making revenue. We have cutting edge, intelligent software that will offer cool new features and ideas.”
Taking care of publicity for Boost The Music is Linda Coogan Byrne whose Meath-based Good Seed PR operation also looks after the likes of The Saw Doctors, The Prodigy, Duran Duran, Suzanne Vega, Underworld, Eleanor McEvoy, Groove Armada, Essential Music Marketing and Marilyn Manson here.
“On a very practical level you can type in, say, Belfast and profiles of all the local bands will pop up along with what releases they have out and gigs they’re playing,” Linda explains. “You can refine the search to age groups and types of music. It’s about building scenes locally and nationally.

“You’ll also be able to buy virtual merchanise like t-shirts and badges with all the money going directly to the bands to help develop their career. It’s combining the best bits of other social networking sites with entirely new elements unique to Boost The Music.”
While others in the Irish music industry talk of impending Armageddon, Coogan Byrne reckons there’s much to be positive about.
“Take airplay for example,” she resumes. “People say, ‘Oh, there’s not enough radio support for Irish artists’ but the likes of Today FM, FM104, Beat, Red, Spin and iRadio all play a lot of Irish music. 2fm have their specialist shows in the evening and live sessions, which I don’t think they’re always properly credited for.
“At the start of any campaign I’ll sit down with an artist and ask them, ‘What genre are you? What demographic do you lie in? ‘ It’s amazing how many of them can’t answer those questions. You have to know who your audience is and how to target them.”

Another area in which Coogan Byrne, a trained luthier, harp and guitar maker, specialises is music syncing.
“I know what the different music supervisors on American shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Rookie Blue are looking for and pitch stuff to them accordingly,” she explains. “Then there are brands like Nissan, Volvo and Samsung who always use music in their adverts. It’s not easy to get any of those, but if you know what desks you need to land on you’re in with a chance. In addition to individual artists, I’m doing a lot of stuff with the Smalltown America label and am in the process of arranging a really good Hollywood sync for an act of theirs, Feldberg. Last year we got the Northern Irish Tourist Board ad for John, Shelly and The Creatures so that side of things is going really, really well.”
Along with her PR, plugging and syncing duties, Linda is also supplying the illustrations for a new magazine.
“It’s all a bit hush-hush, but I can tell you it’ll be launching in the next couple of months, will cover theatre, film and other areas of the arts,” she enthuses. “It’s tough out there but there are opportunities if you know where to go looking for them.”

Linda Coogan Byrne can be contacted at [email protected] or phone 01 6813496/085 1659065.