Season 1 / Episode 1
Maurice Bernstein & Jules Brookes:
Creating community in the music industry
Show Notes
Welcome to the first episode of Sounds Like…Podcast, brought to you by the Horse's Mouth! Today, our host Mike Benson sits down for a transatlantic talk with two heavyweights in the music industry, Maurice Bernstein and Jules Brookes. Tune in as these two experts share their perspectives on creating community in the music industry; new innovative ways of telling a brand’s story; and the importance of authentic and honest communication in the music world.
Maurice is CEO and co-founder of Giant Step in New York, which began as an underground club and morphed into a legendary record label. Now, an award-winning marketing and strategy agency that creates concepts and experiences for brands such as Samsung, Absolut, Levi's, Intel and Marriott around music and culture.
Jules is the managing director of Point Blank Music School and in his former career, a singer and musician for the band Raw Stylus. Point Black Music School meets the higher education sector to bring forth the next generation of talent, introduce students from diverse backgrounds to careers in the music industry and qualifies them up to degree level.
A frank and insightful conversation with two guests at the top of their game. No fluff, no filter - straight from The Horse’s Mouth!
In today’s episode, we cover:
[00:02:39] Jules and Maurice share their 3 decades worth of experiences on nurturing and growing communities in the music industry
[00:10:57] Making people a part of your community; the importance of authentic and honest communication in business
[00:16:17] New innovative ways of telling a brand’s story through music in the Covid-era and overcoming the lack of live events
[00:26:37] Jules and Maurice share their biggest inspirational influences, favorite podcasts and some of their favorite dead people that they would love to chat with
[00:33:29] Maurice’s new projects: How music tells a story for a brand; 30th anniversary launch of Giant Step; Positioning yourself for the new normal
[00.35:10] Jules’ new projects: Point Blank student finance, widening participation; new record label within Point Blank and releasing “Dreams” cover; opening new franchises in China as well as a new franchise in Los Angeles
Notable Quotes:
[00:15:19] When you engage with people, you're not just communicating “at them.” They get to interact with whatever it is you're offering them. The more somebody does something, the more engaged they become with your brand. And then they can find new ways to connect and gain something from it and have a sense of achievement.
[00:15:55] It's not about how many impressions you get, how many people you reach; it's about the actual engagement, people interacting, genuinely interacting…people posting comments, talking about it, sharing. These are the benchmarks that we look for, not impressions because that's B.S.
[00:25:13] What's interesting about this generation compared to us, is they are used to communicating with their network, their friends, virtually anyway. I mean, the amount of times I've seen my kids in the same room as their friends and communicating with them through social media. So, obviously, this has affected people in a lot of ways but I think at least this generation have the tools and the experience to virtually stay in contact with their friends without actually feeling isolated.
Resources:
Point Blank Music School on YouTube
Point Blank Music School on Twitter
Point Blank Music School on Instagram
Point Blank Music School on Soundcloud
The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani
Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin
Tune in to Sounds Like… for authentic and insightful conversations with industry leaders and creators. No fluff, no filter - straight from The Horse's Mouth.
Transcript
Welcome to sounds like the podcast brought to you by the horse's mouth. We explore how brands connect with their audiences through audio hosting conversations between industry leaders and creators who have consistently forged authentic relationships with their clients and communities. No fluff, no filter straight from the horse's mouth.
00:00:29
S2
I'm Mike Benson, and this is the first episode in our series, the music business episode How to Build Community and Culture in the Music Industry. Today, I am delighted to have a conversation with two heavyweights in the music industry and old friends, Maurice Bernstein and Jules Brooks. Morris is CEO and co-founder of Giant Step in New York, which began as an underground club and morphed into a legendary record label and is now an award winning marketing and strategy agency that creates concepts and experiences for brands such as Samsung, Absolut, Levi's, Intel and Marriott around music and culture. He's calling in today from New York. Welcome, Morris. Hello. Hi. And also with us today to join in the conversation is Jules Brooks, working out of London as the managing director of point-Blank Music School. He says EKI head provider, a.k.a. vice chancellor.
00:01:35
S3
That's right. That's right. Pick me up. Pick me up. Good and proper.
00:01:40
S2
Absolutely. Black Music School occupies the space with a professional music scene, meets the higher education sector to bring forth the next generation of talent, introduce students from diverse backgrounds to careers in the music industry and qualifies them up to degree level. And I'd also have to add that in a previous successful career, Chew's was COO founding member of six and lead singer, which was a lead
00:02:07
S3
singer on some of it. I was lead on some co lead singer lead
00:02:12
S2
singer of successful band Rock Stylez. Suffice to say both of these outstanding gentlemen have successfully nurtured community and used the universal language of music to connect with their audiences through entertainment, through education and communication for many years. Guys, thanks so much for joining today for this cozy little transatlantic chit chat and pleasure. You both worked in the world of music. You've connected with audiences and fans for, dare I say, over three decades. What are your experiences of nurturing and growing communities through the work that you do? Morris, should we start with you?
00:02:56
S4
I think it's important to always have your North Star and your North Star will then be the thing that's going to attract other people. So in order to really nurture and and build a community, you have to have something to build upon that people can connect to. So I think that is the most important foundation first and then everything else will then come from that, because you have to have something that's going to attract people and make it different to other communities.
00:03:30
S2
Sure. And with with giants. That was the North Star team. Has it been one thing or has it shifted throughout time?
00:03:38
S4
Well, it's interesting because, I mean, we're celebrating our 30th anniversary this year. And obviously the company has has evolved and changed, as you mentioned, in, you know, in the introduction. But a lot of this stuff is also the philosophy has remained the same, that being championing great music and culture, trying to work outside of the norms and the box, allow a unique and different path and bring together a lot of different genres and types of people and sounds. So we continue to do that. It's just really about creating that unique voice and and staying with it in whatever you do.
00:04:24
S2
Some of the artists that you've that you've marketed like Daft Punk, massive attack, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, you know, these are huge brands and bands and themselves. And I imagine they come along with their own communities, too. But when you're introducing them to your community, this is a whole new sound, right?
00:04:45
S4
Well, no. When I started working with those artists, they pretty much had no community. So we were involved with helping to launch these artists, especially in the United States. So we had to find those kindred spirits in order to connect the dots and then help grow a foundation base and and take it to the next level from there. So it's really about looking at the brands that you're going to work with, whether it's an artist or or a product, and see how you're going to authentically make the connections with the right communities. We were lucky in the fact that we built our own unique community in giant step through to our club and then to our record label. And we were able to tap into that. But, you know, you also need to go broader as well.
00:05:40
S2
Sure. And choose your experience of growing community, either through fans with your band or growing the community for your four point blank as an independent school. Or what of your experience has been what of your success has been? How do you find these things coming up?
00:05:59
S3
I think if you go back to around 2006, 07, I would say that was the period where we started to take social media a bit more seriously. We had a rival at the time were a music production and deejay school, and we had a rival at the time who was set up on a foundation of social media marketing. So they put a lot of stock in that recognized the value of gaining an audience right from the get go. And we had started as a kind of recording school and having a competition always in gender's a better quality. So, you know, it kind of got we thought we're as good as these guys were. Where's our audience? So we started looking at the various platforms that were available there. And so you got YouTube, Facebook with the principal ones, Twitter coming up after it. And we started working with the platforms, understanding what content means and how to service our audience. Providing regular quality content that would appeal to our specific audience is quite niche. You talking about a lot of tutorials and yes, there's masterclasses and there's interviews and things of that nature. But we found that our product matched really well with, say, a YouTube where you're showing short videos. You can give a little insight into the experience that they'd get at the school. And, you know, we went through the whole journey thinking, right, we're putting all this free noise out. What's next? Then we monetized it. That's still not the main spur behind why we we've done it, though. We've got, say, half a million. I think we got for 400. 450 K subscribers on YouTube, and these are people that are fairly concentrated and, you know, it's like the kernel of of the sort of person we're looking for. They want to learn how to produce music. So we've got a really concentrated core of ambassadors there.
00:08:15
S2
And that's your social media. And just out of interest was, you know, we're SoundCloud or Mixcloud or any of the music sharing platforms. Were they part of that strategy as well?
00:08:27
S3
They come later and that that we're now across. Yeah, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, SoundCloud. And dare I say it and I'm excited about this at the moment, recognizing Tick-Tock for the value that that brings to the table as well, because all of our show, our Love Tick-Tock has
00:08:51
S2
you know, there's so many achievements that point blank has made you become, you know, recognized as best independent university in the world. Usually awards 2013. You've got a huge percentage of student satisfaction. You're getting recognized by TJ Maxx for best music production and deejay school, the community that you find online. Surely can't compare to the community that you have coming through your school and having, you know, your actual students, alumni, teachers and, you know, producers that come through. Well, there's
00:09:27
S3
a lot of nuances here because we do have an online school as well. And with the covid pandemic, we've also had to kind of move to a blended form of delivery for the on campus stuff, too. So we got half the students in the class room for the on campus delivery and half watching online and then they rotate. So the reason I bring this up is that the whole experience that we've come out of 20/20 is leading much more down the online pathway anyway. So is there a difference between taking a B.A. degree course online or in this blended learning environment and becoming a fan of our YouTube channel and watching random videos? Yes, there is. But the connection is we lead people to the longer, more thought out qualifications as a result of allowing them the taster. You know, we give a lot of stuff away and they have a great time. You want to learn sideline compression, just go on the channel. They'll put it in and it'll come up. You'll you'll be able to learn it, but you won't get a Beyond's qualification at the end of a three year period. So people still want that. They want to be a student. They want to come out with a qualification and having spent time and money on something that they can get their teeth into, in addition to learning all the practical techniques. Sure.
00:10:56
S2
And that actually connects very well to that almost. What's the difference between a customer and, you know, how would you get somebody to go from being a customer or a guest or a visitor or a student to being part of a community? What are the threads that bring people in either to the school or most with your communities that you're building for, either for brands or for giants?
00:11:21
S4
They're creating engagement, and there are multiple ways to do that as in-person engagement. And then obviously there's digital engagement through contact and also social media. So it's really about creating sticky and viral, compelling, authentic communications that bring people together.
00:11:45
S2
These two words, authentic communications, seems to be so important in cities, particularly in today's online isolated set up that we have in 2020, finding, you know, honesty, empathy and authenticity have become more important than ever as we're not able to see each other face to face. How do you generate that?
00:12:09
S4
Should be honest with you. We're not really doing anything any different to what we've always been doing. We've never really followed the Zygi and I have a very, very low tolerance. So which is kind of. Being the same as we always were, I just think other companies or brands are now coming to that same conclusion because they realize people want honesty, you know, they want to do you want you to tell it as it is? Because, you know, it is hard to his heart to polish, as I say, the term these days.
00:12:44
S3
Maurice, do you find that you have different approaches for that you work with a lot of different brands on different campaigns, change your approach for different products and audiences?
00:12:54
S4
Yeah, I mean, if it's a global campaign, then you see that various social media is work better in different regions, obviously. It really depends on what the brand is trying to achieve. And then you you build your your campaign around that. So it's really different. But again, you know, we approach it with the same lens where it has to be authentic. It has to be compelling and unique because there's more than nobody needs anymore social media content out there. That's already enough. It's like nobody really needs more music. You know, there's more than enough music. You just got to go.
00:13:33
S3
I beg to differ. I beg to differ.
00:13:36
S4
Unless, you know, unless it's good. Unless it's compelling.
00:13:40
S3
We need more good music. That's what we need.
00:13:43
S4
That's what I'm saying. But we don't need more. Just like mediocre content. We don't need in whatever format that is.
00:13:51
S3
So I think what you're saying about you guys, what you're saying about the authenticity of the content, translates for us to who we're using because we're in the unique position of nurturing the same campaign over quite a long time, longer than I care to remember. So we're sort of we're moving with the current trends in music, but the way we're putting them out there is the same. You know, we're doing competitions, we're offering stems for remix, getting people involved, getting them creative. That sticky thing that you were talking about for us, you know, there's certain things that work best. They prefer a tutorial that's on an up to date piece of software, obviously, to what was happening last year. So that's our currency. That's how we keep ahead of the game. We've got relationships with the manufacturers. So we get the, you know, the new products and software versions before the general populace so we can do videos about them. And what we're doing by showing that is the we're showing that we've got authenticity in the school, that we do know what's happening, that we're not like a traditional university walking around with corduroy jackets, with leather arm patches and whatever else, you know, whatever it was that we went through in our university experience.
00:15:15
S2
Sure. And the other thing it sounds like, which is massive for you guys, is when you engage with people, you're not just communicating at them. They get to interact with whatever it is you're offering them. So they you know, the more somebody does something, the more engaged the become with your brand. And then they can find new ways to connect and and gain something from it and have a sense of achievement.
00:15:38
S4
You're actually right, because, you know, when we're doing campaigns, you know, like we'll sit there and you look at, you know, buying media within your digital campaign and the brand say, well, how many engagements are we going to get? It's not about how many engagements. It's already how many how many impressions you get, how many people you reach. It's about the actual engagement, people interacting, genuinely interacting, people posting comments, talking about sharing. These are the the benchmarks that we look for, not impressions, because that's B.S. Anybody can that these days
00:16:17
S2
to, I hope, giants that manage in the year 2020, having so much such a foothold and producing live events, obviously that's been either curtailed or or certainly reduced a huge amount. What are what are some of the things that giant steps up to at the moment while their lack of live events?
00:16:41
S4
As you said, we started off putting on concerts and and doing clubs, but we've evolved and changed into a marketing agency. So strategy is a big part of what we do. And the live events became a lot less, you know, but in saying that, you know, for example, we just did a virtual premier for Blumhouse and Amazon Prime. And that was there was a live component in that the virtual life component. And we had talent do stuff, you know, virtually. So it worked out quite well. But, you know, as far as where we're going. As an agency, it's really about how music and culture can work in telling your brand story authentically to your existing consumer base or to attract a bigger consumer base. So as far as what we're what we're up to at the moment as a brand, so timing was quite interesting because we're celebrating our 30th anniversary and I've never really taken the time to look back at 30 years of giants that I've always had the philosophy of were all about what is next, not what date, but with the fact that we had a pause with with covid. I actually took the time to look at our history and I've spent time digitizing it. And we're about to launch a website where we're relaunching our giant, that website, which shows who we are as a company today. But we've also digitized a lot of old DJ sets from 20, 30 years ago. Every flyer. So every show we've ever done has now been digitized. So so that's been good. And also, you know, and I actually for the first time put a discography together of our record label. I'd actually forgotten the records we put out. So that was interesting. But also the other thing we were doing as an agency is really looking at unique ways of music, helping to tell that brand story. So we've come up with some very, very interesting ways to do that that we're talking to brands about. So it's exciting times.
00:19:03
S2
And you guys have also you've been doing some exciting interviews on TV. I've seen a couple of them.
00:19:08
S4
So that was really just for me to get used to doing IJI live because I've never done it before, because with our 30th anniversary, I'm going to be doing a few of those and I just didn't want it to be, you know, I wanted to at least get that under my belt. And we also launched a podcast as well called This, in fact. And that's where we go into an in depth analysis of some of the worst songs ever recorded. I felt that that was enough about great music, but nobody talks about the worst songs and what it says to us culturally as well. I think they have as an important place in our musical lexicon, as the best music to we. The first season was on covers, so we launched with Paul Young's absolutely terrible cover of Joy Division's Love Will Tear US Apart. And we did Madonna's terrible cover of Don McLean's American Pie. We've was to get people like Moby and Arthur Baker and William Orbit and people like that to contribute as well. It's like I said, it's interesting getting a just thinking about where those songs sit within our cultural lexicon as well.
00:20:24
S2
For sure. Jews on your side. But keeping the culture and connection going through this weird covid period know much as we're hearing about Morrison innovating your way through a crazy time, you guys have ignited and reinvigorated so many careers in the industry. I know that you've you've got into this category recently, which has kind of been a bit of a game changer for the school. Anything else that you've been working through? I know you did mentioned earlier about the online and the blended learning.
00:21:02
S3
The obvious problem with the lockdown was people not being able to attend in person. And the obvious advantage to us is that we've been running an online school since 2007. So for us, it was a question of transferring people, put very simply, transferring them online. So the question was not can we do it was convincing the students that they would get a decent experience. So I think some of the innovations that we've had to make have been to ensure that we give them as much fun and as much of a great student experience online or virtually as if lockdown hadn't happened. I mean, nobody wants it locked down. So you don't want to have that take a toll on the students more than it has to for us. We've got four intakes a year. So it wasn't like we just closed down and said, see you next September. We had the hope of the next intake. So for them to join in, basically our message was this could go on for a very long time. Let's not just sit at home and get depressed. Let's get out and do as much as we can under the circumstances. So what we did was we offered virtually all the stuff that they would have got in the. So, for example, wellbeing being counselling is like quite a big one, we've got a wellbeing counselor at the school, so we made him available online and it's been more popular online than it was face to face with attending lectures where we had to convince people that the lecture is going to be a good learning experience for you. You're going to be able to learn how to make beats and all the normal stuff. They found that it's so convenient. They actually now want to do the lecture part online because they can just be in their bedroom. They've got a laptop. It's kind of easier to hit the tube. They don't have to commute. And that part of it, we've discovered is actually the most easily delivered thing. The learning is all the stuff around it. The challenge comes. And so guest lecturers, yeah, you can have a guest lecture online. You can ask him questions, but people feel a lack. You know, they want to meet the guy in person. So that's an obstacle we're trying to get over. So you can have used the various social media platforms to try and get more of a Two-Way engagement going. Yeah. Interviews with, you know, big name artists, things like that. It would all be better if they were able to come in. But we had a wider audience with having it all online is a bit of one and half a dozen of the other. It's not so bad. We've learned loads of stuff. We've made our systems a lot better. Lots of the students are opting for the virtual version of the lectures. And the next thing we're working on is when you were a student, guys, what what were you why were you a student? What were you most into
00:24:09
S4
having long holidays?
00:24:11
S3
What about you may.
00:24:13
S2
Yeah, meeting people, learning new stuff, hanging out, discovering yourself and, you know, having a bit of a riot, you know, some fairly independent timers, you know, 18 to 21 to start, but where you start becoming who you are.
00:24:27
S3
He certainly didn't go to uni to sit in your bedroom learning, did you? And all the time. No, that's the virtual reality that we're facing. So what they're missing is that networking and we're redacting a lot of obvious things that you enjoyed about going to university for in your social life. I mean, that's kind of the main driver. You want to grow as a person. You've left school, you want to learn stuff, but you want to have fun. So those are the challenges moving forward. However long it lasts, I don't think we'll ever go back. As everyone's saying, it's becoming a cliche. We'll never go back exactly to what we were before. But maybe that's a good thing because lots of lots of good shit happened this year.
00:25:13
S4
But what's interesting about this generation compared to us is they are used to communicating with their network, their friends, virtually anyway. I mean, the amount of times I've seen my kids in the same room as their friends and communicating with them through social media. So it's I mean, it's affected. Obviously, this has affected people in a lot of ways. But I think at least this generation have the tools and the experience to virtually stay in contact with their friends without actually feeling isolated.
00:25:54
S2
I think the human connection is the part you're talking about, Julian, and to a certain extent, the human connection that our generation might expect to be in person. I think a younger generation right now is more prepared to be doing that virtually and online anyway.
00:26:12
S3
Yes, my generation in my day.
00:26:17
S4
Exactly.
00:26:18
S3
I think we only had a telephone. We had to ring him up and that was that.
00:26:24
S2
I might. Bensen And today I'm excited and delighted to have a conversation with two heavyweights of the music industry and old friends, Morris Bernstein and Jules Brooks. Moving all a little bit from the culture and, you know, the community building the community and the culture more, maybe you can talk a bit about some of these inspirational influences, the storytellers and the great inspiring influences in your life.
00:26:55
S4
I think I'm inspired by people who have gone against the grain, created their own path and and and become successful doing it that way. You know, I've fought for my benefit and my yea and disadvantage sometimes. I've always tried to apply my own path. So, you know, you know, for me, it's somebody like Miles Davis who created his own voice and multiple times really reinvented his music career and led each time he did that. So that's something that I really admire, you know, not resting on your laurels. You know, another person who is a big influence on me just by the fact that, you know, creating success, staying with success and being ruthless with success is Alex Ferguson, who was a long time manager of Manchester United. Harbord actually do a business course with him just on his management skills, which can be used for anything. So, again, it's not always around music who you look at. It's just people who created their own path, made their own voice and and become successful from that.
00:28:20
S2
Sure. And so if you could have a conversation with anyone living or dead, past or present historical, who would you choose to have a chat with and what would you want to talk about?
00:28:34
S3
I would very much enjoy meeting Yuval Noah Harari, the eminent author who writes Sapience. He's written a few other books as well since and they're all good humored
00:28:49
S2
this
00:28:49
S3
holiday orce. And so anyone questions for the 21st century might be blown out, but the guy is just an observer. What I love about him is his dispassionate observation. It's scientific and it's kind of alienation. It's like he's a guy sitting on the moon observing us, observing the planet, observing our animal species, which is what we are.
00:29:17
S2
Maurice, can I put you on the spot?
00:29:19
S4
I would take advantage of meeting someone who's dead. Obviously, there's thousands of people I'd like to talk to who were dead. But I think if I was to pick one would probably be Leonardo da Vinci and really just sit down and try and get into the mind of somebody like that, because obviously the guy was an absolute genius. And, you know, from art to science to invent to everything. I mean, so just trying to pick that guy's brain for however long you let me talk to him would just be just so unique and valuable with a good translator. Oh, no. I would be able to speak he would speak English perfectly because he's a genius. So I would need the translator.
00:30:08
S3
OK, if you're going that I have to throw Salmen. I want to meet Moses. I want to meet Jesus. I want to be Oliver Cromwell
00:30:19
S2
up with Cromwell.
00:30:20
S3
I would just because I study that a lot and I'd love to know what was going on during the interregnum. Get it from the horse's mouth.
00:30:28
S2
Exactly. That's what you need to hear about this. We obviously believe in the power of audio to connect the brands with their fans. And are you guys listening for any podcast you guys are listening to at the moment that you find that really connecting with you? Apart from the Disinfects podcast? Of course.
00:30:50
S3
Yeah, I love podcasts, but, you know, one of my listen to I like Joe Rogan. I like below the bow. I listen to a lot of combat stuff, you know, I like that. I like the bands banter, Aryal, Helwan. I listen to him, the famous Jewish male journalist. And I do dip into Sam Harris. I find that, OK, the guests are quite diverse and interesting.
00:31:16
S2
Is it kind of wellness meditation go right? Yeah. He's a
00:31:20
S4
philosopher.
00:31:21
S3
Yeah, kind of a philosophy, quite political. But I don't agree with this whole, you know, 360 of what his opinions are. But I like the way he discusses things. He's into giving platforms to different people. And letting them say their piece and then debating in a sort of constructive way, and I think that's something that's lacking in the current climate. That's one of the bad sides of social media. You know, if you get involved in the comments, I don't think anyone ever solved the debate on Facebook, did they? I mean, it just seems to be a, you know, five comments and you're talking about hatred and Nazis and God knows what. So I don't like debating on social media, but I don't mind listening to people that know their subject on a good podcast.
00:32:12
S2
Absolutely. Yes, I know what you're saying. Debates, the disagreements can escalate pretty quickly on Ritson and social media. But you, Maurice, are you what are you listening to at the moment?
00:32:23
S4
I like Laren. I like his podcast. I find that very, very amusing. A big influence for my guest. In fact, podcast was the series dissect. I listen to a lot of music podcasts. I'm a I'm a like a music history junkie and I love hearing from the horse's mouth. So there's Bob Lefsetz, who's an American music journalist. He has a lot of great guests I like. Here's the thing, which is Alec Baldwin's podcast, where he has a lot of great guests, the New York Radio Hour, which has, you know, like a lot of sort of great arts from music to literature. There's an amazing podcast series. And for some reason, the name is just slipping out. But it's all about the 9/11, the build up to 9/11. An in-depth look at that and how that happened. That's incredible. For some reason, like I said, I'm forgetting the name of it.
00:33:24
S2
That's a pretty good list. You got to get yourself a nice dog to work, guys. 60 seconds to plug your latest projects. And if and if not anything else tickles your fancy to tell us about that we should be paying attention to right now.
00:33:39
S4
As I was saying earlier, we're doing some very exciting things around how music tells the story for a brand. So we're very excited about that. Obviously, our 30th anniversary launch is exciting because for the first time we digitized not everything because it's just too much to do that, but a good part of our story. And then I
00:34:04
S2
find that jumping stand. We don't nets don't start again.
00:34:08
S4
Start launching in the next couple of weeks, next few weeks.
00:34:13
S2
So superb, OK, towards the end of 2020.
00:34:17
S4
And then really it's about positioning yourself for the the new normal. And I find that quite exciting in the fact that. With age comes some sort of experience, and we've lived through multiple crises, we've lived through recessions, we've lived, you know, through wars, and we always actually do bounce back. So exciting times, disruption. I've always wanted I've always been a big believer in disruption. So I'm excited about what the future holds. I do think a couple of things need to change. And hopefully on November the 3rd in the United States, we will make one major change.
00:35:05
S2
We all have our fingers crossed for that across the ocean. So I hope you, Jules, give us gives a little plug of your projects that are happening right now,
00:35:16
S3
based mainly around, you know, point blank. If you want to be a point blank, you can access 100 percent of your fees through student finance. So that makes it possible for a much wider and more diverse audience to be able to take our courses. Basically, only one can as long as the entry requirements. And that's a new occurrence. So that's very exciting. It's called widening participation if you want the proper term within point blank. We've set up a record label recently and we released Track Dreams about three months ago, which is the cover of Fleetwood Mac done in a sort of housey now style. And it's got three houses, over 300000 streams at this point, which is pretty good. And also it's coincided with the tick tock trend for the original of dreams guy called Dogface Films himself, skateboarding down the freeway, drinking cranberry juice, singing dreams. So of course, there's a connection there. We jumped on that trend and we get more life with that. And the point of the record labels is to get our students work out there because these are students tracks that we're releasing and we get all the students to remix them. And having some tangible success like this is definitely a hook for getting more students involved and giving them an avenue into the music business.
00:36:46
S2
You've got stuff happening in China, too, right?
00:36:48
S3
Yeah, just about to mention we're open in China, in the Hangzhou, and we've got other cities also opening those franchises that we teamed up with a big giant Chinese corporation. They're like an Internet company called Nettie's Fever. And there are partners over there. And they've they've opened this incredible school in a place called Hangzhou, which is just outside of Shanghai. And it looks a bit like point blank looks in Shoreditch, in London, but kind of a lot better. A lot, yeah. It looks it's just enormous, this place. I mean, there's no expense spared on it. So we've got Chinese people learning how to make beats now and spreading the word of dance music and other types of music. We're trying to do a thing now with marrying traditional Chinese traditional instruments with electronica. That seems to be the big thing that they're getting into. And then the last one to mention is Alé. You know, if we've got American listeners here, we've got point blank Los Angeles open for business delivering blended learning and are doing really well, like delivering to the L.A. community. It's a very exciting prospect that's growing very fast.
00:38:10
S2
Amazing. Thanks, both of you, so much for getting together to be with all the information that you've talked about on the show. But just for anybody listening there, more people will find you mentioned the Giants that dot nets. And also your Instagram is Myles Isaac. Jules, you've got a whole list of ways to connect with point blank.
00:38:32
S3
Yeah, point blank online on YouTube. I got online and Twitter and point underscore blank Instagram Music School and on SoundCloud, point hyphen blank. And I'm not quite ready with the tick tock that that's coming soon.
00:38:51
S2
Oh, we're very excited to see what happens next. Guys, thank you so much again for joining us. Today has been brilliant and that is it.
00:39:01
S3
Thank you very much.
00:39:02
S4
Thank you for having us. Hope everyone stay safe.
00:39:04
S2
Yeah, you too.
00:39:06
UU
Well, all the best.
00:39:14
S2
Sounds like as a podcast
00:39:16
S1
brought to you by the horse's mouth, sound loving brand building conversation, starting audio evangelists on a mission to help brands build deeper relationships with the people who matter most, their team's fans and customers. Thanks to our amazing audio producer Alex Canning Tech and everything in between Jazz Gooden, the show's theme music was written and produced by the magnificent flipbook advisors to the horse's mouth on all things marketing and content. Eliahu and Steve Kinney. And I'm Mike Pence, and thanks for listening. Find us at the horse's mouth, COO or wherever you listen to podcasts and the world's listening. Start the conversation.
