Q&A With Angela Dorgan of First Music Contact/Hard Working Class Heroes

Dav

Hello all,

Angela Dorgan, CEO of First Music Contact, who run the annual Hard Working Class Heroes music showcase and conference will be with us from 6pm-9pm on Wednesday 27th of August to answer questions about this years' event. She’ll also be giving advice to new bands about what they can do to promote their music in Ireland and internationally. Aside from HWCH, First Music Contact runs BreakingTunes.com, the FMC Tour and Music from Ireland. Recently FMC has also been organising a series of ‘in the city’ gigs linked to existing key Dublin events, for example Pride In The City, Stetson In The City, Bloom In The City and New Years Eve In The City.

Taking place 2-4 October 2014, the Hard Working Class Heroes festival and convention, which is sponsored by HMV Ireland, announced its line-up last week. HWCH made the annual call for bands to apply in June and were overwhelmed with the response. Over 500 artists applied via First Music Contact’s self-built platform BreakingTunes.com and 104 acts were chosen independently by the top Irish and international music industry professionals.

Now in its twelfth year it has showcased many of Ireland’s best known acts including Delorentos, The Coronas, Fight Like Apes, Villagers, Lisa O’Neill and 2013′s breakthrough act Hozier.

The Hard Working Class Heroes’ showcase and convention continues its high level of events and activities with conferences, mentor sessions, band-tips and more for artists. For more information please see http://www.hwch.net

If you have any questions for Angela about her work overall or about Hard Working Class Heroes, please post them here for her to answer.

First Music Contact: Angela

Hi all. Here now and ready to answer your questions

ripotose

Hi Angela,

Just want to get in ahead of the crowd! I've applied for a few FMC events through Breaking Tunes and never got picked. What are the selection criteria for FMC events and is there anything different we should be doing to get picked up? I notice a lot of the bands you choose are very indy pop. We're a straight up rock band, is there are particular style you go for. Or do we just not cut the mustard?

First Music Contact: Angela

Hi riptose . we have three events that you apply to us for. The HMV. Instores, HWCH and the opening gigs for the FMC tour. For HMV you need to have an EP or album for release and for the other two we have a judging panel of at home and international industry folk who all have real life jobs in the industry. some other events like Castlepalooza and Indiependence run their applications through us but they have their own judging criteria.

Sharktopus

Can you tell us about the HWCH conference - can anyone head up to it or is it just the bands?

First Music Contact: Angela

Hi
All of the elements of the conference are free for anyone to attend. We have panels workshops interviews and speed sessions lined up and all of these will be up on the site the week of Sept 8th www.hwch.net

irishmusicfeed

Hi Angela,

I was wondering would it be possible that First Contact Music would release specialised CDs or downloadable tracks on iTunes like Iceland Music Export? each year Iceland Music Export gathers up and coming acts and releases a special compilation on iTunes, Vinyl and CD? Also they have their own Spotify page etc which makes it more user friendly and can draw attention to more Icelandic bands (icelandmusic.is)

Thanks

First Music Contact: Angela

Each year our international programme Music From. Ireland, which we deliver with Culture Ireland, presents at Eurosonic, SXSW Canadian Music Week, The Great Escape and CMJ? We produce samplers for all of these ( different line up of acts each time depending on the tastes if the territory) the difference between doing that and what IME do is they are an export body with commercial agendas. I would love to do it but it comes down to selection and curation I guess. We might look into getting permissions from our acts to do a saleable sampler on iTunes for each event but we are only two people in the office and that would be a big job

irishmusicfeed

First Music Contact: Angela wrote: »

Each year our international programme Music From. Ireland, which we deliver with Culture Ireland, presents at Eurosonic, SXSW Canadian Music Week, The Great Escape and CMJ? We produce samplers for all of these ( different line up of acts each time depending on the tastes if the territory) the difference between doing that and what IME do is they are an export body with commercial agendas. I would love to do it but it comes down to selection and curation I guess. We might look into getting permissions from our acts to do a saleable sampler on iTunes for each event but we are only two people in the office and that would be a big job

Okay cool thanks for answering my question... hopefully more investment will be given to FCM in the future or maybe crowd funding could help to produce better awareness of Irish acts.

girlrock1

Hey Angela,

Every year HWCH (the festival is great) pick 100 acts but between 30%-44% of the acts picked are the same acts that played the year before.

To make it fair for all the acts that do not get selected why not intro a new condition where you can't play two year is a row?

Sam

First Music Contact: Angela

Hi Sam. the idea is that bands get the chance to develop and grow and get to play bigger venues and rise to that occasion . It's all about learning. This year 37 have played before

@ irishmusicfeed I would really like if that happened . We have loads of ideas but need more staff to get even better than we are

First Music Contact: Angela

Thanks for having me guys

girlrock1

With respect as the festival is great and it means so much for acts to get on the billing, but there's acts that keep getting picked and to say bands get a chance to develop is a fair comment but there is loads of acts that have more press coverage bigger audiences and even more radio play than so many that are selected but they never get picked. They get disheartened and stop applying.

How about to get selected two years in a row you must hit some basic targets! Example...you have sold out a headline show, sold a min of 300 EP or albums received day time radio play and actually have industry approved potential.

Sam

Wamba

Hi Angela,

Just wondering when the schedule and venue info will be published? As in which bands are playing where.

Wamba

Also what advice would you have for a band playing this year, to maximise their chances of being noticed by journalists, and A&R?

unclebill98

Question 1:

What support to you give to the bands afterwards that do play?

I understand most would just be doing the show and then afterwards do their own thing. However I am sure there are plenty that would love some after care type of support?

Its just I work with a few acts that have gone through Irish TV shows and it like they no longer have contact or support from the machine they just went through.

Question 2:

Do you pay the acts that do play?

Question 3:

What sort of PR do you apply to the acts to promote the shows?