#018 Melissa Taylor

Musicians often view the public relations side of the industry with a degree of suspicion. Sometimes outright hostility. This is occasionally the result of misinformation, or perhaps just a poor level of understanding of what can be a crucial cog in the wheel of an artist's career.

But like most things in music there can be a slightly unsavoury side to the construction of narrative and crafting of messages of the sort that PRs get up to which justifies a certain level of cynicism.

Melissa Taylor, we can rest assured, is not one of the bad ones. The owner of Tailored Communication, her day job as a PR guru(!) also involves management, and music consultancy. She was formerly press officer at Fabric in London, and is a current board member of the streaming co-operative Resonate.

She is also an engaging and witty conversationalist, and someone who is unafraid to be disagreed with - which is fortunate as we did have some points of departure in the course of this episode. But that's what a free exchange of ideas is all about, right? And in woefully short supply in the music conversation generally.

We cover topics including the problems of the streaming model, the role of co-operatives in a potential improvement, what it was like promoting a record in the early 2000s, the inability of the industry to deal with diversity issues, the Berlin club scene, the death of music reviews, and much else besides.

A great episode, you'll love it.

On Hotflush-affiliated labels this week we welcome Jayson Wynters to Rhythm Nation, and check Etapp Kyle's remix of Glaskin's Slim Line monster.

Some links from Melissa:

https://resonate.is/pricing/

https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/library-music-liz-pelly

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