Music Marketing Interview: L.A. Music Manager Michael Haddad (Part 1)

This 7 part interview with Michael Haddad is an astounding look at the state of the music industry today.

Learn about how you can promote your band from this incredibly deep and experienced look at the inner workings of the music industry. Be sure to check out all 7 parts, as the whole interview gets quite intense (especially nearing the end!)

It's a Must-Read/Hear for any band looking to make it in the world of music today!

You can see Michael's Reverbnation here and visit his LA B-roll website here.

Read This Interview Below While You Listen (For The Biggest Impact!)

Andrew:
What is your earliest memory when it comes to music, or music Management?

Michael:
Well, you know I think a lot of people have very similar experiences. A lot of us, it seems like a large percentage at least, were exposed at home at a young age; when they were a little kid.

It's not always the case obviously, but for me it was. I grew up in a house where there was music on constantly and you know, being in the 60's (when I was born), my mom and dad always had great classic stuff like Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Nat King Cole, some really cool Jazz. And then we started progressing into some modern jazz.

I think when I was around 8 or 9 I started discovering a bit of different music. I wasn't really a Beatles fan like my friends were. I think my first concert was, my mom took me to an Elton John concert.

And believe it or not, as completely different as my current musical taste is from that, as far as mainstream pop goes, it was sort of a life-changer in a lot of ways for me.

I was just exposed to some really great roots of music, and my folks were open to a lot of different types of music.

Whatever I wanted to play in my room, as long as I kept the door closed and keep the volume level where windows weren't shattering; they were cool with just about any kind of music that I wanted to listen to.

Those are the sorts of things that you have, just like my kids have now. There is always music on in my house, always. From the time people get up, to when they go to bed. And a lot of exposure to a big variety of music as well.

Andrew:
The variety is super important. Some people just don't even realize that they like this type of music more than the other, until they've heard it.

Michael:
Yeah, it's really fundamental. If you look at some of the greatest bands of musicians that I've worked with, and a lot of them have really similar stories. Sometimes it was a brother, sister, sibling, or a neighbor, but really earlier they were exposed to a lot of different music.

I think that is where kids get that head start, and really loving the music and making it a big part of their life. From that time on, music was a huge part of my life, regardless of whether I was directly involved or not.

Andrew:
How did you get into music management then?

Michael:
I really threw myself into it a few years back. My brother was the manager of the pussycat dolls and they were on tour, and he asked me to work with him in some sort of capacity, although I'm not sure which capacity he wanted me for. Since I had a big marketing and brand development background, we figured somehow I would get involved.

I ended up going and tour and getting to really know the group, and somebody just came to me from a label, from Interscope and asked me "How are you with a Video Camera?" and at first I said "Well, I guess I'm alright with it. I love film and I'm taking some filmmaking. I can't say it's my first passion, but I'll go for it!"

So they gave me an incredibly fantastic video package system, and said "Would you mind just shooting some video?".

I thought I would just shoot them behind the scenes, follow them to different places, follow them on the road in airports and restaurants, and just try and capture their day. And get some real fun stuff in there, make it really cool.

But before I got started with it, it hit me, as I was doing research with other bands behind the scenes stuff, and how Important that video content is for showing the reality of a band.

And really, what it takes to get it done and succeed, to see what that day-to-day activity is like and the challenges they are faced with.

I saw all these videos, I saw some that were really good, and some that were really band. And I just saw it as a huge marketing tool, an opportunity to really drive business.

And since most of my background was in marketing, I just figured; if we can do this right, we can create something where we can drive a lot of revenue through web hits.

The girls [The Pussycat Dolls] already had been on tour with The Black Eyed Pea's, and they were on world tours on their own, and stuff like that. So they were already really well known, they had pretty substantial concert sales and album sales.

So we developed this series called "PCDTV" (Pussy Cat Dolls Television), it was really simple; but it worked. At first I just started following them with the camera on the road, we went to Asia and did some trips, and I shot them in rehearsals; in the recording studio, in really intimate stuff.

I developed a really close relationship with them where there was a lot of trust and I was there constantly.

We drove an awful lot of web activity, we obviously had increases in Merchandise sales, but the blogging was just phenomenal. We would start posting this content, and within a week or two we would get up to 200,000 or 300,000 hits on YouTube.

Then I started to shoot some really good, fun, "Making of" for their music videos. And their music videos were really epic anyway, I mean they had music video's that were shot by some of the best directors. Joseph Kahn shot a couple of them, I worked on that set with him.

They were just tremendous, they were epic in color and size, and the whole magnitude of them was huge. Were would should down whole sections of Hollywood Boulevard in the middle of the day. It was a lot of fun.

So I started doing that with them, for a couple of years, produced a lot of them; did the editing, shot them; [the videos] pretty much did it all.

Sometimes we had some Hollywood editors because we had so much footage out, and we wanted to get it out in a timely manner.

I had a lot of really great editors to help us.

You can see Michael's Reverbnation here and visit his LA B-roll website here.

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Andrew Muller is the Editor of TheRealMusician.com. He lives in Chilliwack, BC, Canada and spends much of his extra time writing articles, playing and writing music, setting up and playing concerts and demolishing video games.

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