Seeking interview advice (Classical music marketing)

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I have an interview coming up for a paid internship with a fairly large classical label. The position includes a variety of roles depending on the applicants interests and abilities, for me this is recording/ production/ editing/ mastering, but they have asked me to give my thoughts on a marketing scenario in the interview. This isn’t really my strongest area and could do with some advice.


Essentially the label is planning on setting up a marketing agency with the aim of getting more concerts for their artists in order to facilitate increased CD sales. They intend to charge artists £50 per month for this service. The main aspects of their plan are:

• A list of concert promoters, venues, orchestras, festivals and concert clubs which the artist will access in various ways.

• An artist page on the label’s website with biographies, mp3s, a calendar displaying their availability, reviews etc.

• A “virtual office” service. Basically just acting as a 3rd party between artists and promoters by handling emails and phone calls.

• The option to submit articles to a monthly e-newsletter for free.

• The option to be featured in a quarterly printed newsletter with a sampler CD at a cost of £85 per half page with 3 minutes on the sampler.

• Other services such as contract negotiation, invoicing etc are available at additional cost.

• They also intend to offer an expenses calculator based on the artist’s location prior to the performance.

• They propose that artists and ensembles are paid a negotiated percentage of the box office takings in order to remove the risk from the promoters point of view (would musicians be happy taking all of the risk like this? seems unfair to me)

They have asked me to present my thoughts at the interview, so I was thinking that I’d print a couple of booklets out that contain a breakdown of my thoughts on it. I’ve got a few observations/ criticisms but I’ve yet to really think of anything new to suggest to add to their existing plan and I really feel like that is what they’ll be looking for.


If anyone reading this has experience in this area and can offer any thoughts at all. I’d love to land this internship but being asked to interview based around the aspect I’m least comfortable with is making things difficult.


Thanks.

[Boswell]

I'm not surprised you feel uncomfortable about this proposal. You have to question the ethics of a company that makes their interview candidates do for free a substantial amount of the homework that the company would otherwise have to pay consultants to do. Added to which, they are proposing to charge their artists a not inconsiderable amount per month for promotional work that labels are supposed to do anyway out of their cut from CD sales and concert fees. The box office percentage is just ridiculous - I think the MU would take a very dim view of that clause.

I would not want to put you off this employment opportunity, but I would tread carefully.

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Maybe since I've got so few ideas to present I'll just tear their plan apart and hope it's all part of some trick to weed out sycophants who will praise every last detail of it.

As this is an entry level internship wouldn't they be a little optimistic to assume that the standard of work from interviewees is going to match that of professionals?

I did think that charging £50 a month plus additional expenses for advertising space etc was a little odd. Though I'm unsure if the artists this scheme is aimed at are under contract with the label or if it's handled on a release by release basis. The draft brief is quite badly worded and at times their intention isn't quite clear. It's suspiciously amateur but this is an established and long running label.

Thanks for your reply, it's certainly given me something to think about.

[Arqen]

You should watch this video by Ramit Sethi (and read his stuff). He's a persuasion expert.

He covers something called "The Briefcase Technique" that will help you dominate the interview.

You won't regret it