CHARLIE
ALLEN
What started as an exciting journey on national TV,
playing to sell out arena crowds and an EP going
top 10 in five countries, quickly fizzled out within six
months and became the often repeated Wembley to
Butlin’s to splitting up story. Once the band “came
to their logical conclusion” it was back to interning
for me.
Unpaid internships are something of a contentious
issue within all industries. In my case, it was actually
really worth it. So yes, I did earn in three months
what I previously would have in one and a half days,
but this time I was actually working for credible and
notable artists which, for a brief period at least, felt
quite good! The job was in a London based music
PR firm. It was my job to search for daily online
coverage for their roster of forty artists, ranging from
A-listers to unknowns. I had to become the resident
Google expert and would occasionally sit online all
day staring at pictures of our clients in compromising
positions and forward them on to the record
companies. There were other tasks of course though:
envelope stuffing, and tea making. Occasionally
I’d even be allowed to nip into Whole Foods to
pick up some sushi for a particularly fussy singer.
CO-FOUNDER OF LIVE VIDEO
CHANNEL ‘NAKED NOISE’
TELLS US ABOUT HIS CAREER
HIGHS AND LOWS, LEADING UP
TO WHERE HE IS NOW.
My career in music started at the age of
sixteen when I, along with three schoolfriends decided to take jamming in our local
rehearsal rooms to a more serious level, and
formally declare ourselves a band. After
taking an indefinite gap-year, we somewhat
naively signed with a label funded by a venture
capital firm, which, on the surface seemed
like a fantastic opportunity, but in reality
turned out to be something of a disaster. Our
teenage fantasy was, in effect, being used as
a means for the super-wealthy to avoid tax in
a horrifically immoral legal black hole, the
sort of which has recently been disgraced
in the British media. The people involved
really didn’t know what they were doing.
Looking back it’s all pretty hilarious really
and would definitely make for a good sit-com.
I know that’s sort of how major labels work
but at least they know how to exploit dreams
professionally and make money in the process.
The thing was, at the time we truly believed
that we were God’s gift to music and that
everything we were doing was right. We
worked eighteen hour days: stuffing our
CDs into envelopes, pestering booking
agents, harassing PR companies, radio
pluggers, festival promoters, the list goes on.
One thing we failed to notice, was the
blindingly obvious fact that the reason we were
stuck on a basically fictitious label, was that we
weren’t actually very good. We could play our
instruments very competently, I looked after
my voice and trained it daily but as hard as we
worked, nothing really happened. Our music
was just, well, a bit rubbish, the songs were
anyway, which is the most important part. You
can go to the gym, style your hair and do daily
ridiculous vocal exercises all you want, but if
the songs aren’t good, you may as well give up.
In the short term though, being in a band
was amazing. Gigging until I could barely
speak, meeting people all over th e country
and getting a first hand taste of the brutality
of the music industry, were all things that I
could never learn at university and made
for invaluable experience. Despite having
a bad time, it was totally addictive. I guess
it’s a bit like eating fiery-hot chili, even
though it’s utter, utter agony for the first
moments, the endorphin rush outweighs
the pain and you keep going back for more.
Safe to say, although at times this was pretty tedious,
it was such extraordinary experience and a great
insight into a very secretive industry. Sadly, after
nearly three months it was over and once again, back
to the drawing board. At this point, I had already
dabbled a bit in working with my friend Joe on his
project “Secret TV”. This was a content driven
website specialising in filming acoustic sessions with
emerging artists. As I had engineering experience,
I came along to a few of his sessions to record
the sound. One thing eventually led to another
and we decided to go into partnership together
and relaunch the company as “Naked Noise”.
I decided to go and study audio engineering
at London’s SAE institute. It was a bit bizarre
going back to education after three years of
musical nonsense and a bit of a shock to the
system to wake up and commute every day,
but it certainly paid off as after it all finished
in late 2012, I got my first proper job in
music, as a “music consultant” for an artist
management company. It was a mix of social
media, content creation, artist management
and A&R. This was hardly as glamorous as it
sounds as the band in question were finalists
from the 2012 series of the X Factor and
riding the short-lived crest of success that
often comes with appearing on a reality show.
position ourselves as a YouTube channel that films
fantastic emerging artists in the highest quality, but
critically outsource our production services to fund
the business.
Upon studying our competitors, it became clear that
unsigned artists were prepared to pay between £150
and £800 for live session recordings. If we could
somehow, through a balance of cost and quality
undercut these competitors, we could become a
viable business. One other major factor was that
if we managed to gather a portfolio of well-known
artists on our YouTube channel, potential clients
would be more inclined to use our services in order
to be showcased alongside them.
By January 2014, we had amassed a team of
freelance cameramen and editors and took on our
first paid gigs. It’s only been four months and we’ve
now had three Major Label commissions. To be
honest, this sounds better than the reality, as people
don’t really like paying very much for stuff but we’re
getting there, I promise! There’s probably a lesson in
here somewhere, basically, you have to work really,
really hard and deal with a lot of awful people, BUT
one day it will all pay off. You will get to work with
some amazing people and hopefully make some
money in the process... you might even be lucky
enough to make Jessie J a cup of herbal tea!
Since I had a bit of time on my hands and Joe’s shifts
on a commercial radio station ended at 11am daily,
we took it upon ourselves to thoroughly examine
the current crop of websites offering live sessions,
and find ourselves a niche. The area, which we
discovered was rather lacking, was production
quality. Whilst a few websites offered decent enough
production values, the quality of artists really varied
from decent to God-awful. Using my audio recording
skills, Joe’s year long experience of filming artists
and both of our industry connections, we decided to
Naked Noise session with Elyar Fox
Written by Charlie Allen
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