Music Talk : Music Industry Interviews, Advice and tips for DJs & Producers · Grahame Farmer

Music Talk 071 - Spinnin' Records A&R Session with Kody

·50 min·3 clips

Kody says A&Rs get huge volumes of demos and are pulled away into marketing and legal work.

1. Music Talk features Graham Farmer hosting a Twitch A&R session with Kody and the Spinnin' Records demo queue. 2. Graham introduces Kody as an artist and A&R who joined Spinnin' on November 1st and now works across several labels. 3. The episode asks what Kody wants from demos and how he judges tracks for Spinnin' and its related imprints. 4. Kody says Spinnin' covers “all genres” and names Spinnin' D, Sink and Swim, Musical Freedom, Future Rave, Sam Feldt's label, and Alok's label. 5. He says he has already heard “loads of things in the pipeline” during his first weeks in the role. 6. Graham explains that demos arrive through Discord and that the stream format lets him sign tracks based on audience feedback. 7. Kody says A&Rs are often seen as people who “don’t get back,” but he connects that to the amount of music they receive. 8. He says the job also includes “marketing teams” and “legal teams” once a record starts moving. 9. Graham and Kody move quickly through listener tracks, using short feedback windows to hear more demos. 10. Kody repeatedly asks whether vocals are original, sampled, or re-sung, because that changes the clearance path. 11. On DeRoya, he says the vocal is a “great start” and wants to know where the vocal came from. 12. On Blank Copy, he says the record has “something kind of missing” before the break and needs more impact after the drop. 13. On Miss Unicorn, he likes the piano chord progression and says the track would be stronger with original vocals. 14. On Doozy, he calls it a “big groovy monster” and notices the Latin percussion running through the record. 15. On Chroma and Sam Sonda, he points to break design, arpeggiators, and tension-building as the main things to improve. 16. Kody says industry changes have pushed him toward music with “a lot of melancholy in the tone” instead of the older “poppy dance, piano-y stuff.” 17. The session has a live, fast-moving Twitch format with chat reactions, sound effects, and short track playbacks. 18. Graham uses emotes, the “rave one,” the “Hulk Smash,” and the “kick test” as part of the evaluation system. 19. DJs and producers sending demos to Spinnin' or similar labels. 20. Listeners looking for heavy narrative episodes or non-dance music context.

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