During our recent Artist Ally event, British-Asian singer/songwriter Saloni won our Artist Ally Emerging Artist award, having seen impressive growth over the two years of her career so far.
In a follow-up to that award, Artist Ally has interviewed Saloni about some of the lessons she’s learned, including the importance of registering with a collecting society early on, and playing the long game with radio promo.
She also talked about outsourcing tasks. “Emailers. Outreach for shows or outreach to labels, pitching my songs, PR-wise. ‘Cause I definitely learnt the hard way about PR,” she said.
“We spent thousands on a PR company, and as an independent artist, that’s really not realistic. I would never spend that much again. But at least from that, I was able to collect all the PR contacts.”
She also offered some evergreen advice to her fellow emerging artists on the importance of mailing lists.
“Early on, whenever you do a show, back then I used to take a piece of paper and get people to write their emails down. Take your iPad, get people to sign up on a spreadsheet, because that data that you get is invaluable,” said Saloni.
“One person you see will probably be someone that will buy your merch a few years down the line. I regret not collecting – I collected those, but then I think those papers are thrown away somewhere ‘cause I didn’t log it digitally anywhere. So definitely get all those emails early on, and at every show that you go to…”
You can read the full interview here.
