Marco Danelli was a guest of SPOT – The Podcastthe program that Michele Monina And Massimiliano Longo they record live at the Spot Music Fest in Bareggio, in front of the audience of the young artists of the festival. Today Editorial Marketing Partnership Lead by Believe Italyafter seventeen years spent in MTV as a music programmer, Danelli is someone who has had the system cut through him from both sides. And he repeats only one thing to his university students: personal taste should be put in the farthest drawer.
Marco Danelli: “Your taste should be put in the farthest drawer”
It is the first sentence he utters when entering the classroom at the Catholic music master's degree, where he has taught for years, and it is also the answer to the question that Monina asks him halfway through the episode: where does the taste of those who decide what passes and what does not end? Danelli does not deny the contradiction. When he planned for MTVhe admits, a lot of the music he played wasn't in line with what he listened to.
The point is knowing how to read the context of the music industry, not only what it wants now but what it will want in two months. However, the drawer remains there, it cannot be thrown away: this is where self-confidence comes from when you bet on an artist with very low numbers.
MTV, seven channels and the housewife from Voghera
Danelli talks about a job that today is called music editor but which is not the same thing: the music programmer also decided on the repetition of a video clip on air, what he calls the temporal routine of the video, while a streaming playlist does not think in terms of repetition.
Arrived at MTV in 2006, in a year and a half he became a programmer of MTV Brand Newthe alternative music channel born from the program of Massimo Coppola. But there were seven channels, with very different targets: MTV Pulse for Italian and international emo, from Dari to Good Charlotte, MTV Gold and MTV Classic for the Eighties and Nineties, and one specifically designed for the housewife from Voghera. Come on Finleywho will be guests of the Spot Music Festthe reasoning was precise: they were perfect for a target that MTV wanted to hit.
MTV New Generation and the bets on Dardust, Levante and Truppi
With two colleagues, Danelli creates MTV New Generationa platform for emerging people with a weekly web window: those who made the leap were then scheduled on a par with the big international names.
The case he cites first is Dardustat a time when neoclassical instrumental music in Italy was still struggling. Then Levantat the beginning, and Giovanni Truppiwhich he defines as one of the most courageous bets: seeing him then arrive on the Sanremo stage, he says, remains an incredible ride, because he was an artist in total discomfort zone up there.
“What do you do with this stuff here?”: MTV and the YouTube mistake
The most self-critical passage concerns YouTube. There was a moment, he says, when inside MTV we wondered what to do with that site that would never work anyway. An error of evaluation that Danelli extends to the entire discography, unable to understand in time how important it was to be present in a new world.
The reflection becomes more general: when technology surpasses you, you can try to force the system to move backwards, but the system moves forward anyway. Monina connects us to the present of television, which is losing audiences to other formats while continuing to be caught unprepared.
The music video isn't dead, and Spotify has noticed
On one point Danelli distances himself from pessimism: the video clip is not disappearing, it is changing its function. It becomes material to be separated into Shorts and Reel, and serves to build the imagination of an artist, which is what really stands out in a market where it's not enough to sing well.
Hence his defense of video directors, who today work with budgets denied or diverted elsewhere, forced to make safe choices when they would like creative freedom. And some news that went unnoticed: Spotify opened the platform to the uploading of video clips, no small feat for the most popular service in Europe.
From MTV to Believe: sixty-two releases launched in one week
After seventeen years, the change of side. In Believe Danelli does similar editorial work but on the other side of the fence: he skims everything that comes out every week and identifies the priorities suitable for each store, because Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music have different logics. In the week he talks about, his team pitched sixty-two, all running for very limited spaces.
Coca Puma, from very low numbers to Spotify Radar
The example he gives is that of Coca Pumafirst listened to when it had very few monthly listeners. Working together with Underground Discs and by communicating the project well to Spotify, within a year it ended up among the selections Spotify Radar.
When asked what he would do if an artist of that profile brought him a declared hit, the answer is honest: the most difficult part of the job would begin, the diplomatic one. He would try to understand if it is an isolated madness or a real repositioning, knowing that he has seen many repositionings, both successful and unsuccessful. But as a distributor, he specifies, his role is the last mile, not the musical product.
Last, the coherence that cannot be blunted
On LastThat Believe distributes, Danelli uses clear words: a person who challenged the system alone, with very difficult choices made every day. His coherence defines it as devastating, sometimes unnerving for those who work there, because there is nothing to smooth out in that artist. And it is exactly there, he adds, that its power lies.
The episode is also available on Spotifyalong with all the other episodes of SPOT – The Podcast.
