As The First Music Label Powered By Social Tastemakers, HEARD WELL Signs New Partnership With RED Distribution! Read As HEARD WELL Co-Founder, Andrew Graham Explains It All!

HEARD WELL, THE FIRST MUSIC LABEL POWERED BY SOCIAL TASTEMAKERS,
INKS UNIQUE PARTNERSHIP WITH RED DISTRIBUTION

Heard Well is the first music label powered by social tastemakers and their communities. They recently joined forces with RED Distribution, a division of Sony Music Entertainment, to intersect each other’s core strengths and generate new, innovative business models around the marketing and distribution of music.

Since its launch in July 2015, Heard Well has seen success in partnering with a roster of top social influencers, including Connor Franta, Amanda Steele, Lohanthony, and Jc Caylen, to create compilation albums which have consistently debuted in the Top 10 on Billboard and iTunes charts. The label has just signed three new influencers to create compilation albums and will begin signing original music acts in the future. Through the new partnership, Heard Well will utilize RED and ‘stache media’s extensive label services including radio promotion, digital sales marketing, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, e-commerce, and fulfillment to supplement Heard Well’s built-in influencer-powered distribution.

“With their expertise in both traditional and digital distribution, RED will ensure our influencers and artist partners get well-rounded support,” said Heard Well co-founder Jeremy Wineberg. “Being able to team up with RED’s top-of-the-line roster of artists is an exciting bonus to this partnership.”

Influencer marketing is one of the newest additions to ‘stache media’s menu of label services. The exciting new partnership with Heard Well will strengthen the agency’s network of influencers who are passionate about elevating emerging musicians and breaking artists in new, digitally native ways. Heard Well’s next generation marketers will super-charge communities around RED’s priority releases and artists.

Bob Morelli, President of RED stated, “The concept for Heard Well has evolved into a team of smart, creative people with impeccable taste who reach millions through their amazing digital marketing strategy. RED and ‘stache media look forward to working with Jeremy, Andrew, Connor, and the entire Heard Well team in developing the best new talent in contemporary music.”

About Heard Well

Headquartered in Los Angeles, Heard Well is the first music label entirely powered by social tastemakers and their communities. At Heard Well, founding partners Connor Franta, Andrew Graham, and Jeremy Wineberg, leaders in the digital media and music spaces, seek out and spotlight emerging talent  and pair them with influencers. Heard Well simultaneously gives influencers a platform to showcase their genuine love of music, while also monetizing the artistry of their music partners. The label has helped to expose some of today’s top artists. Albums released through Heard Well have consistently placed in the Top 10 on the Billboard and iTunes Top Charts. To learn more, please visit www.heardwell.com.

About RED Distribution

RED, an award-winning division of Sony Music Entertainment, headquartered in New York City, is widely recognized as the industry leader in music distribution and artist development. RED specializes in digital and physical sales, digital and retail marketing, DTC, radio promotion and product development for more than 60 independent record labels, as well as artists from Sony owned labels and Sony joint ventures with Descendant Records, Ultra Records, Red Bow Records and RED Associated Labels (RAL). RED’s marketing outreach is unsurpassed in generating consumer awareness for artists, labels and brand partners. In 2009, RED launched ‘stache media, a full service marketing agency specializing in music to support RED releases and artists.  ‘stache media’s expert staff provides marketing services in digital marketing, influencer marketing, advertising, consumer insights, art direction + design, the green room, brand/strategic marketing, publicity, retail marketing, licensing and radio. Sony Music Entertainment’s joint venture with The Orchard has expanded RED’s reach into international as well as domestic markets.

HeardWell Co-Founder, Andrew Graham. Photo Cred- Hennessey Vandheur

Learn more about this partnership in the following All Access interview with Heard Well co-founder, Andrew Graham!

Thank you for the chance to share our story with your readers.Thanks for your time! Can you tell where the idea for Heard Well first came from? 

Heard Well is an evolved version of what our co-founder, Jeremy Wineberg, was doing with Perez Hilton through Opus Label for the last few years. Jeremy has been very successful curating music and selling compilations around Perez and other significant bloggers.

When Jeremy teamed up with my client, and now co-founder of Heard Well, Connor Franta, about a year ago, the result of their first release, CROWN, was astonishing. Connor was able to move product and tracks at an amazing rate. It was immediately evident that there was room for a whole new business around this new class of creator/influencer. Between Jeremy’s licensing and music industry savvy, Connor’s marketing expertise and golden reputation in digital and my roster of talent and relationships, we believed we could really shakeup how music is discovered and exploited.

How did the partnership between Heard Well and RED Distribution come about? Why do you think they work so well together? 

RED approached us around September of last year and over the subsequent 5 months of communication we found them an incredibly nimble, curious and competent partner. They understood our business and how our goals differed from that of a typical label. Now as we look toward signing acts and scaling the traditional services side of our business, they’re able to activate a la carte services for Heard Well (e.g. radio, print, physical manufacturing, etc.) as well as feed our on-going licensing/compilation business with emerging musicians. RED also gets the ability to place priority titles into our compilation series, providing their label partners a powerful and one-of-a-kind marketing service.

What exactly were you two doing before creating this company? How do you think your varied past professional experiences have helped form this company? 

Prior to Heard Well and my work at Big Frame, I founded the talent management division of a company called Fullscreen. This was before all of the New York Times Best Sellers, 7 figure endorsement deals, feature films and consumer product lines. This was at a time when few people recognized that influencers merited management at all.

At Fullscreen and now at Big Frame and Heard Well, I continue to find, cultivate and represented some of the world’s most influential digital native talent. I’ve been fortunate enough to grow up with many of the talent I represent and the tsunami of change they’ve brought with them. I believe the confluence of my experiences navigating the startup world at Fullscreen (and successful exit there) and the unpredictable nature of talent management has positioned me uniquely to scale a company built with talent that own their own distribution and communities.

It’s a relatively new company so how have the past 9 months been going? What has surprised you about it all? What have been some unexpected challenges? 

We’ve been on a rocket ship for the last 9 months, inking partnerships and album deals every week; it’s been a fantastic period of growth for us. We’ve been surprised by the outpouring of interest from the management world. There is clearly a hunger from reps to develop and support their acts outside of the traditional label ecosystem and many are looking to us to help figure that out with them.

As far as unexpected challenges, we’re still encountering some intransigent rights holders who don’t see the value in licensing a song to us. You’d imagine having your artists song on a Billboard top-10 compilation would be valuable but some folks still don’t see it that way.

How did you go about selecting Connor Franta, Amanda Steele, Lohanthony and Jc Caylen to work on compilation albums? How have their social media followings translated over to Heard Well’s albums? 

All four of these influencers care deeply about music and have very engaged fan-bases that share that passion as well. There is a bit of a metric-driven formula with regard to how we choose our partners and define engagement but that’s our secret sauce.

Why do you think their albums have been so successful? What attracts them to audiences? 

It all comes down to the communities around these influencers and how the project is presented to them. It works best when there’s a natural hook (e.g. “This is the music I was listening to on tour”). While we pass along best practices, we’re careful to not dictate the marketing rollout to the talent, we give them the autonomy to promote titles how they see fit. What works for Connor will not work for Amanda. This is essentially niche programming and specific to each group.

What other artists do you plan on working with soon? 

We will have an announcement very soon addressing a few of these. One is a powerful personality duo and the other is an extremely well known gamer.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with our readers about Heard Well or the upcoming batch of albums that you release? 

If you’re a musician or rep a musician looking for a new way to distribute and develop your craft, drop us a note at Contact@Heardwell.com. Additionally, if you’re looking to incorporate music in a new way, like what we’re doing with SUPERGRAVITY Pictures and Gayby Baby, please get in touch.