Today we’d like to introduce you to Christian Ort & Daniel Lohmann.
Hi Christian & Daniel, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Daniel and I started our studies in 2017 at the university Popakademie in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. There we both studied music business. Music has always been an integral part of our lives, as we were both musically active as producers as well as musicians in bands and orchestras. With the many opportunities to release music digitally ourselves, it was a big challenge to stand out from the crowd of songs and be heard. Every day more than 60.000 new songs are published on Spotify, YouTube and co. Our challenge was to make ourselves and our songs heard at all. To do this, we focused entirely on music streaming and on the music streaming platform Spotify. Especially through playlists, musicians can reach many people in music streaming and be discovered by new listeners. During our studies we asked ourselves how we could place our songs in playlists and thus give them a wider reach. For this reason we built up a network and communicated with many playlist owners. In doing so, we learned about the needs of the playlist owners and built close relationships with them internationally. Through our network, we promoted our music first and then our friends’ music. After a short time, word of our work got around, so we started getting our first orders. The demand for our work was so great that we quickly had to found a company for our work. And so our marketing agency BEFORE EIGHT was born. BEFORE EIGHT’s work in music streaming and music marketing spoke for itself and so we never had to advertise our service. To this day, we have never actively advertised our service because our results speak for themselves and we are recommended by many.
Through our experience in Spotify playlist promotion, we were also able to found a successful music label. With CHAPTER EIGHT, we have created a world that supports artists in the long term through its own large playlist and helps build their careers.
In our work, efficient processes are very important to us so that we can concentrate on the interpersonal exchange with musicians and the branding of us and the musicians.
In addition to our marketing agency BEFORE EIGHT, we are also developing an app for influencers and musicians, but more about that later…
All in all, Daniel and I can be described as digital entrepreneurs who live out their love for music, their creativity and their inventiveness on their way as founders.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In itself, one thing is very important to us: there are no problems with us, only challenges. Being a music promoter is sometimes very challenging. On the one hand, clients invest a lot of time and money in creating their music and the content for it, on the other hand, the time and budget for promoting the music is often neglected accordingly. This then in turn leads to tensions to a high expectation of the artist to the promoter. The artist wants success for his music, where the promoter is in last place and is held responsible for the success of the music and often has to work with limited resources.
Furthermore, the music streaming market is very competitive and there are a lot of providers that use unfair practices (so-called bots and fake streams). These providers let computer programs click on the music and thus artificially generate a large number of streams.
Since we only work organically and want to present the musicians of our artists to real people, we can not offer the low prices like the fake providers. Unfortunately, not all musicians understand the difference, but we are gradually trying to provide clarification here.
For us it has turned out that this is exactly our advantage over the fake providers. We are usually approached by artists who are not blinded by numbers but who appreciate organic work. For this reason, we can fortunately also count very large artists from major labels among our customers.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
BEFORE EIGHT is known as one of the best music promotion agencies in Germany and Europe. We focus entirely on the marketing of music on streaming platforms such as Spotify, YouTube or Deezer. Due to our specialization on these important platforms, we have a great knowledge advantage over other marketing agencies and can provide musicians with completely individual support.
Having been musicians and music producers ourselves, music is our great passion and in everything we do, we are fully focused on the music industry and the marketing of music. With the growth of music streaming, we fully focused on Spotify and how to market your music through music streaming (specifically Spotify).
We quickly realized that playlists are hugely important and music is mainly consumed through playlists these days. For this reason, we focused on the topic of playlists and built up a large network of playlist owners. We are in close contact with these playlist owners and regularly suggest new music or work together with them.
In the meantime, we have been able to position ourselves with BEFORE EIGHT as a well-known agency for music and playlist marketing and are known for our reliable and effective work. Our clients include small musicians who are just starting their career as well as big known musicians who have already released international hits.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
A big thank you goes to our family and friends. They always support us on our way. Also, of course, to our entire team at BEFORE EIGHT and especially to our long-time helper Sebastian, who has been working with us almost since the beginning.
Contact Info:
- Email: mail@beforeeight.com
- Website: www.beforeeight.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beforeeightgroup
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4BCuGKY49CIHbr8PifPCUW
Image Credits
Yannick Stolp
