Robin Kester: This Is Not Democracy

Listen Local interview

Stef Koenis

Nov 11, 2020 3 min read

Photographer: Lisa Brammer

Robin Kester is a rising star of the Dutch music scene. She released her first mini-album This is Not a Democracy on 11 September 2020 and received many positive reviews from the press. Despite the pandemic she managed to play several concerts throughout the country, although concerts abroad were cancelled.

The Utrecht-based musician is planning her first full-length album to be released next year. How is a newly recorded artist handling the Covid-crisis? How is she palnning hear career?

Where are you heading to? What would be a city or city-based scene where you would like to play after COVID and start building your local fan base, e.g. Vienna, Antwerpen, Zürich, or other cities. Why? What attracts you there professionally or personally?

Not sure where I’m heading. I’d like to tour internationally with my music. (But who doesn’t?) I find it very difficult to pinpoint one exact place to start building a fan base. I have always loved travelling in the UK and Ireland and I admire a lot of artists from those countries, but I can’t narrow it down to one specific location.

Where do you come from? What would you recommend to visit in your hometown for a fan who is coming to see your show? And are there other artists in your area/city that you would like to recommend?

I’m from the Netherlands and I’m currently living in Utrecht. I’d advise you to go for a nice walk around the city centre, follow the Catharijnesingel and go to a movie during the day in Springhaver or Louis Hartlooper Complex. There are plenty of other artists I’d recommend. Moon Moon Moon for instance.

Could you recommend one of your videos from YouTube or Vimeo?

Sure, I like this one:

Robin Kester - Live at 3voor12 Radio

A longer interview in Dutch: Robin Kester: ‘Ik ben niet dat meisje met die gitaar’ I am not that girl with that guitar.

The idea of our Listen Local Initiative to create transparent, well-documented recommendations in various apps, music education games, and to make new personal and radio that work differently from the current streaming algorithms. We do not try to find yet another similar song to user, but we would like to find audience to a song. We want to avoid that new artists are ending up on the Forgetify list, or among hundreds of thousands of artists that the streaming platform algorithms recommend to no-one.

If you are an independent artist, band, label, or publisher, we encourage you to add your very short bio into our database (form here, if you want to add several bands/artists, get in touch with us and we’ll provide you a spreadsheet), and try out our demo application. Our system will be transparent: we try to make big data algorithms work for you, not against you. We want to help you find your audience in the UK or Ireland, like for Robin, or anywhere you want to go after the pandemic.