Where are you based?
Charlottesville, VA
Where do you work? What do you do?
Soundwave Consulting – I’m the President & Founder. We provide comprehensive digital strategy, marketing, and advertising services to the music industry.
What are you listening to?
I’ve been loving Billy String’s new album, Renewal!
How do you discover new music?
Algorithmic playlisting! I love Release Radar and Discover Weekly on Spotify, to name a few. I also love discovering new music/artists from music festivals, concerts, and album releases that Soundwave works on.
What formats do you usually listen to? LP, CD, Cassette, Digital, Streaming Services? Why?
Streaming is my main source of consumption – but nothing beats a good vinyl listening session! We’ve got a great collection building at our office.
“Streaming is my main source of consumption – but nothing beats a good vinyl listening session!”
Where do you do most of your music listening?
Everywhere. If I’m awake, there’s music playing!
How do you find and listen to pre-release music?
Given our position in the music industry, I have the luxury of listening to a lot of new music before it’s released. We maintain several “tastemaker” lists for our clients and send early listens out via Byta.
What are your frustrations with listening to music digitally? Any benefits?
My biggest frustration about listening to music digitally is that when I hear something I love that hasn’t been released yet, there’s not a great cloud-based streaming service like Spotify where I can keep listening as I move around from my house to my car, to my office.
Having come of age during the Limewire/Napster era, it’s like I’ve been teleported back to 1997 and have to deal with transferring MP3s from device to device.
How do you keep track of everything you are listening to?
My library categorization method isn’t exactly refined:
right click > add to playlist > starred > pray I can find it again later!
Do you tip other people off to new music? How?
All the time! I love sending friends and family new music I’ve discovered that I think they’ll enjoy. I always particularly enjoy finding stuff that my parents will like.
Anything you want to “promote”?
Our 100th album release advertising campaign just won a Grammy for Best Reggae Album! Check out our longtime client and good friends SOJA out of Arlington, VA.
