Artist Success Story – Made On The Road

Built and founded by songwriter George Holliday, Made On The Road is a creative hub on wheels. Starting in 2017, George purchased an old ex-library bus and quickly began a renovation project to transform it into something entirely unique.

George and his van recently worked in collaboration with Music Gateway, on a Spotify, Radio & Press campaign for Made On The Road single ‘Young & Free’. We caught up with George to discuss the success of the campaign & what the future holds for Made On The Road.

First of all, tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into music?

“Hi, my name is George and I’ve been playing the piano since the age of 7. Did a lot of classical training intensely for the first few years up to grade 8 and then my teacher introduced me to Jazz exams. In jazz exams there’s 3 pages of music, let’s say, and the middle page is blank so you have to improvise and essentially write your own music. My teacher clocked on that it was an expression I loved a lot so we soon began learning pop songs so I could understand structures etc. I got my first job at 15 playing the piano and singing down at a marina bar every Sunday which put £50 in my pocket and up until 27 (my current age) I’ve been living off music in some way shape and form.”

Was this your first time working with Music Gateway for Promotions & had you worked with any other PR companies prior to working with us?

“It was yes. I’d heard about Music Gateway through previous research of online sync platforms that I could submit my music through so MG was already on the radar but I hadn’t committed to anything yet. I hadn’t worked with a PR company no, nobody I had previously spoken with I felt really understood the vision of my company and music so I never made the leap and was insistent on learning the marketing ways myself, which have done me a lot of good!”

Which of your tracks was promoted & which package did you opt for?

“We promoted ‘Young & Free’ and the package was an amalgamation of a few offers because of my more unique position. We actually promoted my music Production company – Made On The Road – to blogs, and used ‘Young & Free’ as our timeline. The idea being that if we got blog posts to talk about the company and how travelling around in my music studio bus was the story behind the music, the blogs could link ‘Young & Free’ as an example of the music we’re making. A double whammy for promotion.”

What were your initial aims going into the campaign & do you feel as though these were achieved?

“Aims were to get as many eyes on the project as possible and with landing some of the biggest travel and lifestyle blogs out there like ‘Lonely Planet’ and ’The Insider’ I think we achieved amazing things. Building the campaign together and content to go with was so fun and it was great working out the best angle to attack the content. It’s hard to measure the success of the campaign in the fact that the goal wasn’t streams, it was to get eyes on the project and with over 16m+ followers of blogs potentially able to see the content we achieved a lot! I haven’t seen huge numbers come through off the back of it, but this is a small part of brand awareness and sometimes you simply don’t see the return on something like that instantly.”

What was the highlight of your campaign?

“The highlight for me was speaking to so many bloggers and being able to tell my story. It really helped me refine my story and I wanted to give each blogger something slightly different so my followers were still interested in each story and didn’t feel it was simply repeated!”

What would be your top tip to anyone looking to promote their music?

“Top tip would be to FIND THE STORY. It’s THE most engaging way your current and new audience will find mutual ground to understand your goals. If your goals align with theirs you can do amazing things with your music beyond just a good song. The greatest artists in the world connect with their fans on a deeper level in the lyrics and connections made, find out what that common goal is and enjoy the ride with likeminded people aka your fans!”

What are your plans for the near future?

“My near future plans are to get the album out, and enjoy the feeling of completing that project. Following that I’m going to be beginning plans in the new year for my next trip into Europe and how that can include bringing artists out to the bus for a road trip.”

“Following that I plan to continue connecting and strengthening relationships within the independent artist world to produce more music for people. I just love writing and producing music on the bus and sharing that experience with people, so that’s my continued goal.”

How did you find working with our Promotions team?

“Super fun! The team were great, always on hand for a quick response email and the whole process felt very friendly. I felt there was mutual excitement and a willingness to engage when there were questions or content that needed following up on with blogs.”

Will you be working with Music Gateway again in the future?

“I hope so! I’m always keen to make sure there’s a clear defined project to promote so as soon as that comes together I’ll be knocking on the Music Gateway door!”

What have you learnt from your campaign with Music Gateway?

“I’ve learnt how hard it is to get people to cross from one platform to another. It’s something I’ve always been aware of but this campaign really brought to my attention the importance of multiple campaigns to slowly gain awareness of a brand. It’s the long game that’s the strong game! “

What Advice would you give someone in a similar position to you or someone trying to achieve what you have?

“I guess if you want to travel more I highly recommend establishing your systems for time management, efficiency and effectiveness of everything you do. To be able to travel and create music requires a lot of discipline to keep up with the daily workload and also allow for creative space. I’ve just created a course on exactly this to share what I learnt and adapted about my daily routine to essentially setup the life I wanted to live as a working musician. If your journey doesn’t look like travelling, but looks like lots of gigs or writing sessions or single releases, you just need a strategy and a plan to stick to. Once you’ve got that nailed and are constantly giving yourself time to evaluate the results, the rest will fall into place and you’ll be prepared when results start coming your way.”

Anything else you’d like to add? Feel Free!

“I just want to thank the team for all the hard work and helping me feel supported not only in the campaign, but in my vision. It can be very easy to feel alone in the music industry and finding a good team works wonders. It’s the thing we take pride in the most at Made On the Road so to find a likeminded company feels great! Thank you Music Gateway, it’s been a pleasure and certainly won’t be the last! “

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