From Play to Rec

We met in the JUMP European Music Market Accelerator in spring, but for me, your project became clear when I saw your demonstration in The Walrus Record Store in Paris, during the MaMA showcase festival. I love record stores - I used to have a collection of CDs, and my father a collection of vinyl’s. Are record store’s important locations in your project? Do you have a favorite record shop?

It’s actually the first time we made an Open Studio Session in a record shop. And it felt very natural. Record shops are a very important place for me I’m trying to build one, dedicated to independent artists and record labels, in Toulouse, where I live. So, it means a lot to me, that we made this Open Studio Session with Suzanne Belaubre in The Walrus Record shop. The most inspiring record shop I have seen are in London. The one from Erased Tapes, is very small but very special to me.

The other thing I liked a lot about your project is that it brings the attention to the importance of localities, that music ecosystems are usually small geographies. Not all artists have a global fanbase, or can go on an international tour, even if there is no pandemic. How do your project fit into local ecosystems?

As you said, a lot of artists have a local fan base and even when artists are big, they always have a special bond with the audience and the city they come from. The idea behind the Open Studio Sessions is to allow artists to open up in front of a very restricted audience and show themselves from a creative and working perspective. They put themselves in a vulnerable position and the audience gets to be very close to the artists. I believe it’s a way for people to see their local artists from a new perspective.

We both tried to further develop our projects in JUMP. What was the most important learning for you in these 9 months, when you were together with other entrepreneurs, trainers, mentors and visited several music cities?

One of the most important things I’ve learned through this program is to dare. Dare to contact people, dare to ask for help. When you get to meet loads of professionals of the music industry in such a short time, you realize, you’re going to have to be quick, seize the moment to dare talk with them and share your ideas, your ambitions. This program also pushed me to recruit people to work with to become more efficient in my work.

The Open Studio Sessions. started out from a documentary film project. What happened with the film?

That’s true. I started to produce a documentary series. I made a pilot episode and three episodes of that documentary series. Each episode following a new artist through the making of a song. I had been discussing possibilities of diffusion with a production company and a French TV channel. After a few months the TV channel had changed their mind and I was already getting started with the Open Studio Sessions, which were working pretty well. So, I decided to suspend the documentary series. Maybe I’ll get back to it one day. The episodes I made are still available on YouTube.

Do you have any ambitions to extend your project beyond France, to Belgium or even further to us in the the Netherlands?

I would to. I’m currently working on the first Open Studio Session Tour in France. The next step would be to make a European Open Studio Session Tour. I already collaborated with a few Belgium artists when working on the documentary series. It would be an honor to work with them again.

Links

• Suzanne Belaubre
• Jeremy Dunne - JUMP Fellow 2021
• Facebook: From Play to Rec
• YouTube Channel for From Play to Rec
• JUMP European Music Market Accelerator