Luca Stante

How did you get started with your job?
I wrote my dissertation on the Italian discographic industry, in particular on the marketing. I was graduating in Economics and Business, and had fallen in love with marketing, while music was already my passion, then I combined these two passions. As there was no book to be found on this topic, I had to travel around Italy to interview several directors of major labels; then I kept in contact with many of them and, after I took my degree and a Master in marketing, I started to work at Warner’s.

How has your job changed, since then?
Practically, it has revolutionized. I started at Warner’s as a junior, but I was working with the market of traditional discography, radio, press and retailing, while the digital industry was seen as an enemy. I’ve been a pioneer at Warner’s, as I run the first web marketing projects in Italy. But it was all very complicated, you always had to ask the mother house in London for authorisation, and the music tracks were allowed for a max. 15 seconds’ listening – while now you can listen to the entire track, also thanks to the streaming. Now I am general manager of a multinational company dealing with digital music, operating not only in Italy but also in Greece, Turkey and soon I hope in Spain; and here I run a working team. My job, from the marketing has now become rather a management one, and I like it very much because it’s more motivating and it makes you deal with people.

What are the strong points of Believe, as compared to other companies in the digital music industry?
For sure, we are the ones that are actually born with the digital, and are pioneer of the digital, and then we have a special approach; we work with passion, beside having the technical know-how. We follow the projects through several stages of the product life cycle – not only on the launch phase but also later, to extend the product life cycle itself.
We also work with analytics, which help us a lot in monitoring the effects of the various marketing actions; these are data that other competitors do not have.

Are these data made known to the artists?
Yes, our artists are provided with a “control board”, where they can enter and see their sales and analytics data – also daily, therefore this is very useful for marketing purposes. By means of example, an artist makes a promotion through Facebook and can immediately see the effects of this promotion on sales, or goes on the radio or on tv and the day after he/she can understand what repercussion this has had on the audience.

Have you got projects for the future?
We don’t have the word “resting” or the thought of “being there” in our DNA. Every day is for us a new stop and a new re-start. Today we are the fourth player behind the majors; tomorrow we surely want to rise in the chart.

What would you recommend to an artist to have his/her disc come from the recording studio to his/her fans?
Today, thanks to social media, an artist has got a direct contact with fans; we recommend to preannounce the release of a disc already on Instagram,, then to upload some videoclip trailer on Youtube. These are the best practices we have already experiences with acknowledged artists. For example on Youtube you have the Discussion tool, which is recommended to be animated by the artist itself; Youtube usually rewards this kind of actions.

How does an artist get to be “chased”? How can they emerge from the vast sea of Youtube?
The recommendations I can give right now are: be original, choose a genre that guarantees authenticity, upload the most you can on Youtube – at least two videos a week, as Youtube has an algorithm that favours and signals those who upload many contents; and the same is true for the other social media. Use TicToc, which has become very influencing on the young target. These recommendations are the basic ones, then it’s good to choose a valid partner as a discographic label and a good booking agency. Live shows nowadays are absolutely able to transform an artist’s career.

This post is also available in: Italian