Category: Interviews

English · Interviews

Interview With Ibrahim Lawal aka Skillz YBRL, Media Consultant/Publicist and Channel Manager (NIGEZIE) Part 1

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In our continuing series of interviews with key industry professionals, we welcome Media Consultant/Publicist and Channel Manager (NIGEZIE) Ibrahim Lawal aka Skillz YBRL to the exclusive Industry Executives Interview spotlight feature on Music2Deal Worldwide via Music2Deal Nigeria. Let go on for some quick insight of the process and perspective within the TV industry.

Ibrahim Lawal aka Skillz YBRL of Nigezie is a young media personality with years of experience.Here we have him share his experience with us.

Ibrahim

Music2Deal Nigeria: Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to chat. You’re a channel manager at Nigezie with a slate of projects under you belt also as a media consultant and publicist. How were you introduced to the industry, and what first got you interested, plus how do you cope combining it all together as a channel manager,media consultant and publicist?

Ibrahim Lawal: You’re welcome. Well I’ll say I’ve always been interested in music/entertainment, from childhood to present day. I would sing along to any kind of song I hear more than once without making efforts to learn the lyrics and tune, so I guess the interest just grew. I conceptualized my own TV channel, entertainment magazine, radio show, etc and put in work. While trying to get my show up, I met my present boss and along the line, he had a space in his organization and called me up. I jumped at the opportunity and it’s been great ever since. Combining my job with being a media consultant/publicist is quite easy for me because they’re all related. You can liken it to combining eating and drinking.

Music2Deal Nigeria: How is it like being a channel manager?

Ibrahim Lawal: It’s a lot of responsibility I tell you. You’re the custodian of a brand regarded as a voice to the people, mistakes are not included in your options. You have to always deliver and better your best at every point in time. Ensure your channel remains relevant, change with the trends, set trends too and still retain its originality, it’s more like being the President of a nation!

Music2Deal Nigeria: What are the challenges you come across sometime being the channel manager?

Ibrahim Lawal: Everybody wants to be satisfied but that’s impossible. If your video isn’t up to our standard, I have to reject it no matter who you are, so as much as I have friends, I also have alot of people who don’t like me.

Music2Deal Nigeria: How do you get contents for the programs under your channel?

Ibrahim Lawal: For in-house programs, there is always a plan for at least a quarter (13 weeks) before we commence. That means we already have clear-cut pictures of the content, locations, featured persons, etc before we even start. For syndicated programs, same applies. We need to be sure you’ll be able to hold out for that long and not water-down along the line.

Music2Deal Nigeria: As the Channel manager, how involved in getting content or materials for a project do you get? Are you more involved in the initial development or through out the process?

Ibrahim Lawal: Everything content is my responsibility. So I’m part of it from the scratch till when it berths on air.

Music2Deal Nigeria: For those seeking to submit video content to your station, what advice can you give in terms of submission process and standard requirement?

Ibrahim Lawal: Invest in making a good video, rather than doing substandard video and trying to bribe your way in. If your video is good, a good music channel will play it cos it’s the quality of your video that actually makes the channel fine or wack as the case may be. Investing in making a good video isn’t all about shooting videos for big sums. Invest time, invest ideas, put in work. I’m sure the video for Bruno Mars’ Lazy song is achievable for less than $1000 and it still got awards, cos the idea was great.

English · Interviews

Interview with Fabrice Collette

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Q: Could you tell us a little bit more about your career as an artist? How did you start writing songs and playing guitar? How old were you?

A: Hi! At first let me thank you for this interview and for helping me to spread my music and make it known in the music business. Well, I can’t remember when I started to write songs since it was such a long time ago! I started playing guitar at the age of ten, and I guess I have started to try to make my own songs at the same time. One funny thing is that I stopped writing and singing at about 25, it seemed to me at that time that I had nothing more to say with words. So I started to focus on music and guitar playing. I did it for quite a long time, involving myself into a lot of musical experiences as a musician and a composer, and I then started to write songs and sing again at about the age of 40. I don’t know if it was because I was getting old or because I was going back to my teen’s years!!! The fact is that I didn’t stop since then….

Q: Your songs are at the crossroad of blues, jazz, rock, chanson française and poetry. How would you define your music? And who are your major influences?

A: Well as you say, my music is at the crossroad of a lot of things. I guess it sounds just like my own experience of life and music … in my musical life, I have been through many different experiences. I’ve been a folk fiddler at one time, and then I’ve been a free jazz musician, involved in musical happenings, at some other time I’ve been playing rock music with various bands, I’ve also been into a jazz sextet as a guitarist, and so on…. I guess that through every one of each of those experiences, I was just following my own sound. So, what about my influences? Well I think that some of the non- french speaking people who have written about my music did get the point in calling me the French “Leonard Cohen”; The truth is that I’ve been spending a lot of time with that guy in my ears, and still can remember the very first minute when I heard his music. And at that minute, I felt that his sound

was deeply echoing my own inner music. It’s funny to notice that it is people who do not understand my words and just get the sound of my music who catch this influence. You know that Leonard Cohen  is not really what people call a bluesman, as I am not either, but I think that blues is more about emotion than about a fancy guitar playing style.

Q: You already released two albums, the first one is “Ballades de nulle part” and the second one is “rouge & blues”. You even worked on your last album with the famous “Mister Blues”, Patrick Verbeke, your friend, who popularized Blues in France. Where can we get a copy of your creations?

A: My music is produced by Adima which has a partnership with an online retailer. So even if we have dropped down physical media like CD, you can get my music from all of the major online music sellers: iTunes, virgin, fnac … And of course you can go to my website www.fabricecollette.com

Q: You registered on Music2Deal to offer some of your most beautiful songs for licensing. What do you think about Music2Deal?

A: I found very interesting the idea of connecting people from the music business. The Music2Deal’s team seems to be very motivated to run the website and to help people connecting with each other. That’s why I decided to register some of my songs. I already told people from my label that I uploaded my songs to this site and they are interested to see what happens next. Adima is a very small label which helps me to make my music known here in France. But one of the reasons why I came to Music2Deal is that we need more contacts to make music known abroad. As they are some countries like Japan, China or even the US as well as some other European countries where you get a public for French singing, it would be great if Music2Deal helped us to find any partners to promote my music out there. I also would appreciate very much if my songs would be taken into movies. As I have a lot of images in my head when I write them, it would be great to see how some other people would use my songs for their own images…

Q: It might be a final surprise to our readers, but besides being a singer/author/songwriter and the father of two daughters, you also work as the founder and CEO of an online social game company, a consultant and a professor! How are you able to handle all these activities in only one life? :)

A: Well I am not :) We started the social game company a few months ago and I already dropped my consulting activity. I am now about to drop my teaching activity as well. You know, being an artist or running a company is the same thing, it’s just about creation and bringing to reality things that didn’t exist before. For now, I am focused on two major projects, which is already a lot! First one is Humanaweb, which is the name of the company we have started, and second one is my new live music project. We spend a lot of time rehearsing and working on new arrangements to make my songs sound in a different formula that they have been written for. Two days ago, we were busy recording a video of two songs live in studio while rehearsing. We will be able to release them in a few days I think. And I guess we will start to have some gigs at the beginning of next year. All of this is very time consuming and I surely couldn’t do more :). And there are of course my daughters, but this is the story of all the parents around the world :)

Interviewed by Guillaume Mariani

English · Interviews · This & That

Mathew Knowles Talks Sync, Deals, and Why Gospel Doesn’t Get Its Fair Share (Article by Mark Frieser)

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Mathew Knowles is best known as manager of Destiny’s Child and, of course the father of Beyonce and Solange. Over the past two decades, his Houston-based label and management company Music World Entertainment has overseen the careers of those artists as well as From Above, Andrea Helms and Bryan Courtney Wilson — and a label that includes works from Earth Wind and Fire, The O’Jays, Chaka Khan, Kool and the Gang, and Johnny Cash.

Mathew Knowles is best known as manager of Destiny’s Child and, of course the father of Beyonce and Solange. Over the past two decades, his Houston-based label and management company Music World Entertainment has overseen the careers of those artists as well as From Above, Andrea Helms and Bryan Courtney Wilson — and a label that includes works from Earth Wind and Fire, The O’Jays, Chaka Khan, Kool and the Gang, and Johnny Cash.

He no longer manages Beyonce but continues to oversee Destiny’s Child, who are currently inactive but dropped a new compilation, “Playlist,” last month, with a DVD to follow in February 2013.

As a manager, executive and songwriter and a 20-year career as a corporate exec (including recognition as one of the top salesmen at Xerox), Mathew has a unique perspective on the value of sync, placement and licensing in building an artist’s audience and contributing to the bottom line. He talked with us about licensing challenges and opportunities — both as a creator and seller — the evolving market, and sync’s importance in artist development, marketing, discovery, breaking an artist, branding and revenue-generation.

Q: How does sync licensing, as a business line and revenue source, play into your strategic thinking as a record executive, manager, songwriter and publisher, and how has it changed over the years?

Traditionally, sync was an ancillary revenue source, and to some degree a brand-building tool. But as a market channel for the artist, it took a backseat to radio, videos and touring. [Today] it has become much more important. It’s a strategic way to expose potential fans to new music, and really one of the primary methods to gain exposure, promotions and discovery for artists.

 

Click here to read the rest of the interview at www.disconic.com