Apr 09, 2021

Music First: Insights Into the Work of An A&R Manager

 

A&R (Artist & Repertoire) managers are the talent scouts of record labels. They find new projects to sign for their company and supervise the content and music of those artists. If you impress them, they can help you a great deal to get ahead with your career.

We talked to Luke Burrowes, who is part of the booking team across both Liverpool Sound City and the online live-streaming platform Guesthouse. Alongside that, he also co-founded Snide Records last year, which has a growing and eclectic label and management roster. In our interview, he gave us an insight into his work as an A&R and how gigmit helped him discover his new favourite acts.

gigmit: Hi Luke! What’s your personal approach and the essence of the work of an A&R representative?

Luke Burrowes
Luke Burrowes: Co-Founder and A&R, Snide Records

Luke Burrowes: Personally, it’s always the music first. That’s always the most important thing, but of course the visual/live performance aspect is something that really excites me as well. For me, that’s the great thing about a platform like gigmit, you can get a really good idea of what an artist is all about from a well put together application/profile. We don’t necessarily have the time to do a deep search on each artist so having somewhere where you can view an artist’s best tracks and videos really easily is incredibly helpful when it comes to scouting.

You have recently signed a gigmit artist. How did you find this act on gigmit and what it was that excited you about them?

That’s right yeah, we signed GEISTE last year and have been working on her second EP, Retrogrades, which will be released in the next couple of months. It was a funny one really, I came across her application for Liverpool Sound City 2020 at the end of a very long day. I was probably reaching my limit (we had over 5000 applications that year so it took a while haha) – but I remember hearing “Anthems” and just being blown away and having that great feeling of when you’ve found your new favourite artists. We luckily got to see her at BBC Introducing Live a few months later. I knew I wanted to sign her anyway just off the strength of her songs, but after seeing her live and how impressive and innovative her live set was, we just knew we had to work with her, and luckily we’ve been able to.

Geiste is part of the INES#talent 2021 pool. You can watch her performance at the Festival of Streams here:

Are there any other artists that you have discovered on gigmit and would like to recommend? 

Yeah there’s been so many that I’ve come across whilst using gigmit! It can be really difficult when you have so many applications for so few festival slots but off the top of my head some artists I could recommend are

Michael Aldag

Seazoo

Safiyyah

WAX WORKS

Runrummer

and The Anahit

They’re all boss!

Thank you very much, Luke!

Use the new Artist Search to find the best gigmit acts!