Our work at WARM is focused on transparency, development, and growth. And one of the things that make us the happiest (and proudest) is to see that our customers and team are on the same page. Indeed, it turns out that many of our users share the same beliefs as us! Rick Palin, from the PR company Skyfire, is one of them. He strives for transparency in all his business endeavours. Continue reading to find out how his company and him use WARM to grow their business and stand for their values on a daily basis.
I am Rick Palin, Managing Director of UK based PR company Skyfire Promotions Ltd. Now entering our 14th year in the music business, we have been responsible for getting lots of bands the airplay and press reviews they deserve for their singles and albums on a global basis. I established Skyfire to be somewhat different to standard PR companies by ranging our services from PR solutions to Manufacturing and Distribution, making us one of the only complete one-stop shop solutions for artists and bands.
Our clients range from bands from Australia, Europe, the US and, of course, the UK, all the way to classically trained musicians that have played for royalty at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Moreover, we work with a great diversity of music genres, Rock, Metal, Blues, Indie, and Electronic. However, at Skyfire we are thorough with the projects we embark on. We prioritise quality when promoting a song, artist or band. Its origins and genre represent no issue to us, we’d rather focus on evaluating the project based on its quality which for us determines its potential. In that sense, at Skyfire we keep transparency overall, we are selective with our projects because of the basic reasoning behind: if you don't believe in something, you won’t be able to sell (promote) it.
The biggest time-consuming headache that is guaranteed to destroy your workload in a company such as ours is chasing radio stations for feedback on whether our artists’ tracks have been aired. The bigger the radio station, the less likely it is to get feedback and that makes sense, the sheer number of submissions they receive is huge. I owned the Internet station Firebrand Radio up until last year and our average influx of new releases was 300 per week, so as you can see it is a monumental task for a radio station and a PR company to keep on top of.
One of the services we introduced last year to help musicians out as the Covid pandemic took over is the Skyfire VCD. This is a product we created based on the concept of a magazine cover disc, the VCD delivers tracks to press and radios worldwide through a budgeted PR solution. Side note: accurate reporting on this project is possible by using WARM.
How valuable WARM can’t be overstated. For example, say you are promoting an album where every track is excellent. By uploading the tracks to WARM you can discover which tracks are being played most by the radio hosts which gives great analytic feedback for the bands and enables them to plan their direction based on these stats. It is also fantastic to know where in the world and at what time of day the music is being aired- this has to be my favourite feature. If you are serious about PR and running a professional business, I suggest you need WARM in your arsenal of tools, it is probably the most indispensable tool you can use.
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This is the fun bit. Since joining WARM last year my productivity has increased by at least 50%. The number of hours saved by utilising their dashboard makes a big difference. I have saved myself an average of 20 working hours per week. Obviously, it is vital to stay in touch with the stations but now it’s a quick hello and how are things going rather than the usual chasing emails as WARM provides me with the stats I need to relay to my client.
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"WARM couldn’t be easier to use." - James Marsh, Head of Specialist Radio & Club Promotions at Listen Up.
Discover Listen Up's full WARM Story here.
