LABELLED WITH LOVE: Interview with Kent DJ & producer Bobby Harvey
Canterbury’s Bobby Harvey on Heartstrings, connecting with listeners, Island Records and social media sounds…
In August 2017, ‘cene Magazine featured Never Gonna Stop by Canterbury artist and producer Bobby Harvey as its Tune of The Day. Now, seven years on, and off the back of Bobby’s viral hit Heartstrings, we caught up with the DJ during a music-writing trip to LA.
Hey Bobby, firstly, your monthly listenership has grown to more than 130k. Congratulations!
Cheers! It’s a gradual thing because I’ve been putting out music as this project since 2016. A lot of the songs have been independent, where I’ve just distributed them myself. But recently labels have started getting involved. I’ve learned more about the industry and you just naturally meet more people through networking – I guess more labels have been willing to sign my music, which has been cool.
Your latest track Heartstrings was released on Island Records, right?
Yeah, the labels have increased incrementally in size. This one is the first time I’ve ever released as an artist on a major label. I’ve released on a major label with stuff I’ve written and produced for other people but never as an artist. And it kind of happened by accident, really.
OK, how?
It’s the TikTok and SoundCloud moment right now. A lot of labels sign stuff off the back of what’s doing well on social media. Back in the day, labels would send their AnRs to gigs and sign artists that way. But now they look at Tiktok and what’s happening online, and the analytics. They can just sweep in and make an offer and sign these tunes. If your track is buzzing a little bit, they’ll sign it and see how it does, and if it does well, then bonus. If not, then at least they didn’t miss a trick.
But if you post it and it’s already out there, how does a label then go about signing it?
Say someone uploads a song, it becomes a sound and then people can use that sound in their videos. And if it’s not already signed, whatever label swoops in there first gets it.
With mine, I think it was about the usage of the track in a short period of time. I made the tune in the afternoon and on my way to work and just uploaded it alongside this random video of me on the tube. People started using the sound almost immediately. It wasn’t mega, but more than 3,000 people used the song in their videos. Two days later, I had labels reaching out.
Right. So what does the label do next?
They’ll help you get it ‘release ready’, so if you need to get it mixed and mastered, and get the artwork done, and then they look at distributing it. Then there’s standard promo stuff, like getting it on the radio and getting it out to tastemaker DJs, and all of that sort of stuff.
It’s all been a learning curve. You can’t just sign something to a major label and magically all of your dreams will be achieved. The song has still got to connect with people. I don’t think it matters what label you sign to and how much money they throw at it, you can’t manipulate how the song’s going to do organically.
You’ve a history of writing tracks anyway for other people, so you’re more of a safe bet than a lot of other artists.
Yeah, and I’m in it for the long haul. I started producing tunes at 17, so I feel like it would be a good investment because I’m a person who is going to stick it out. As soon as this track was signed, I was working on new music straight away.
Heartstrings has had a lot of love, 500k on Spotify alone, that must feel great!
I’ve been lucky with this record that as soon as I uploaded it, it started connecting with people. Radio One, Kiss Dance and Capital Dance have all been super-supportive. Say it gets a radio play on a Friday, then straight away you’ll see loads of Shazam support. It’s been in the top 200 Shazams of the UK and I think at one point it was like the number 15. It just shows that it’s connecting with people. I’m really happy people are taking the time out of their day to listen to my song. So, yeah, I do feel positive about it, but I know the reality is I’m still essentially an unknown artist… I need to keep adding to the story.
Let’s go back to your roots: you used to own a shop in Canterbury, right?
Yeah, it was called Vintage Warehouse – it was a little kind of retro clothes shop. I was having a break from music and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I’d got money from a song that was used on a Nissan Micra advert and used it to buy loads of old clothes and then start selling them. I managed to set the shop up but didn’t know how to manage it. I would be showing up late for work hungover and spend all the money straight away down The Penny Theatre, so it just never worked out. I was originally from Lydd, and Folkestone, and then moved to Canterbury to study music at the college, and then went to West London uni in Ealing and studied music.
You had music on a Nissan advert that early in your career?
Yeah, I was at uni making the most random music and I just uploaded it to SoundCloud and said ‘If anybody wants to use my music, reach out and let me know’. And this publisher reached out and said they wanted to use it in an advertisement. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and I really got my pants pulled down. The guy was a bit of a shark, really, because he’d commissioned the song to be used on a Nissan advert – I think he got paid something like £20k for it, and I didn’t get anywhere near that. But I wouldn’t have done anything with it anyway – it was probably one of the worst things I’ve ever made, so really it wasn’t that much of a loss. That was the first time I’d ever made money from music.
You DJ on the side to supplement the music now?
I’ll DJ every Thursday, Friday and Saturday in London. I’ve got a residency at a chain and I’ll do six or seven hours a night. They’ve looked after me because I’ve got a constant stream of DJ sets. That allows me to do what I need to do in music.
How would you describe your style to people who haven’t heard your music yet?
I’d say my style is UK house and dance genres in and around that. I was making more tech house stuff, but then I’ve always found myself drawn towards having a vocal on it, like a proper song. So rather than just having a little sample of a vocal, I’d have a proper chorus and that’s singalongable. Heartstrings is 140 BPM, with a donk bass line in there – it’s more like a northern sound because I really like that style of music. It’s influenced by what happened back in the early to mid-noughties.
We saw Andy C played your track Last Summer at Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas. When did you find out about that?
Last Summer was quite like a piano house-influenced old tune – it had an old sample in it. There was a drum ’n’ bass remix made of it and it got given to Andy C, and he started supporting it and played it at a few festivals, and one of them was EDC and it just looked mega.
It was quite a big sample, Sweet Harmony by Liquid, so everyone kind of knows that, too. That was an amazing moment.
