Interview: Dodie manager, Josh Edwards

18 January 2018 - Press release

Capitalising on an online audience is now a crucial skill in the music business, and arguably the UK’s most successful so far is Dodie. We speak to her manager, Josh Edwards, about how he got involved and the process that led to her charting higher than any other YouTuber in the official UK album chart.

In just 18 months, Dodie Clark has gone from 100 capacity gigs to selling out the 1,500 cap Koko within 15 minutes. It’s fair to say she had a head start though, having 1.3m subscribers to her YouTube channel, which she’s maintained with original music since 2011. Her candid nature, which sees her discuss her sexuality, depersonalisation, derealisation, depression and anxiety issues, along with catchy tunes, won her 200k subscribers by the time Josh Edwards officially came on board as her manager in mid-2016. Since then, they’ve worked to build a relationship with a distributor, brought on BMG as a publisher, acquired an agent, plugger and lawyer, released two EPs and sold out Shepherd's Bush Empire in half an hour. We speak to Edwards to find out the process of making a YouTube talent a credible pop star. 

How did you get involved?

In September 2015, I watched her YouTube channel as a fan. I always appreciated her music but it was on her second channel, doddlevloggle, where she asked fans on Twitter to ask her anything. One question posed was when she would release music. She said she didn't have a manager or agent so had no idea what to do. By this point she had 200,000 subscribers and I thought 200,000 of anything means she should get a team in place. I sent her a note at 11pm and got a reply two minutes later saying “I guess I am looking for management” and we met a week later.

From there, it was a few months of putting her in a couple of sessions, testing the waters, and then eventually it was getting something ready for the next year.

It was around May 2016 when we looked at live, she'd never done a headline show, she'd only supported her friends. I hadn't seen her, and I didn't know who would come. I didn't want to spend any money and we didn't have a promoter or agent. So, I thought let's find a venue that isn't too far away from her leaving her bedroom, and not a huge venue because I didn't know how many tickets she'd sell. I found the Cereal Killer Cafe in Camden, which is 100 capacity, sold tickets for a fiver and it sold out in seconds. We then added four more shows, with the last one outside Camden Lock, where it went up to 250 capacity, and it sold out in 10 minutes. That was the first time I thought we were on to something.

How did you build from that point?

We tested just her playing acoustically for those shows, and then analysed which songs responded better than others. We had all of the songs from her YouTube channel, plus the songs she performed, and her audience seemed to know the words by the fifth night, even though she’d only performed them for four nights, but fans had been sharing videos online. 

It was amazing, and we started going into the EP recording process over the summer. By June, she said she wanted me to manage her all round, not just her music but her YouTube channel as well.

That summer we recorded with Joseph Wander [Harry and The Gondolas, Lewis Bootle], who'd worked with friends of hers. I think that's what Dodie required, I didn't want to put her in a session with well-seasoned artists and scare her in the process of making music. So, bedroom, then shows that feel like a bedroom, and then a studio that's very relaxed, making sure it was building but at a very slow pace.

By that point we had a track called Sick of Losing Soulmates, which she was happy with and had reached a million views on her YouTube channel. I sent it to a couple of distributors, but didn't really get the response I hoped for. Then I spoke to James Walsh at Ditto, who'd done a lot of grime acts such as Dave, Stormzy etc. I thought ‘I know those names, and I know they are known for being independent’. I said it obviously isn't that genre, but in its own way, it sort of is, it’s a parallel; There's a hugely engaged audience, who'll buy tickets and buy into a personality. Ditto came on board, and I asked how we’d chart with regards to the OCC rules, he explained that we needed six songs at £4.99, so we delivered an EP. 

For Dodie, I think she needed to have something out by the end of 2016, purely because it’s so hard to have that demand and then make the audience wait. Her audience ranges from aged 10-24 and beyond but she has the demand, so do we go with a song she's had for years, or something fresh, and feels more like ‘artist Dodie’, and not YouTube Dodie? Sick of Losing Soulmates was that tune that is a good song for her but also a good song on its own merit.

It was released in the November, so she was up against big artists, and it charted at 35. Big labels started asking who she was and she stopped being ‘just someone from a platform’ to having a good song that people were discovering. She started getting lots of different playlists on Spotify with no radio play. 

Having no radio is interesting. For Radio 1, which reportedly needs to bring its listenership age down, isn’t she an ideal artist?

I’ve always known there’s a whole stigma around someone who's drawn their audience originally from online, it's growing though, and you can't shy away from it. It's getting to the point where we're selling out shows and having all these millions of streams but some people just don't like the music, and I respect that. It’s not all just the numbers, you have to like the music.

She charted higher than any other YouTuber in the official UK album chart, reaching No. 6 in August 2017, did you have physical sales, given the audience?

Yes, I get asked all the time when we’re making more vinyl or CDs. Vinyl is obviously difficult and expensive to make so we want to make sure we do sell those out. The CDs are always interesting, people are asking for them at the live shows, despite there not being a CD player in most cars or laptops these days. At the same time, it's a collectors’ item, and sometimes they do genuinely want it to play in their parents’ car.  

So, yes we had sales, it felt like it was a community really trying to push forward. The pay-off for her audience was the historic achievement, I suppose.

How did you push the release?

That EP and campaign was extremely exciting. We used so many different methods to try and encourage streaming and sales, because her audience know me through her, I was able to update them about the numbers via social media, which they loved. I said if Dodie got Top 5 then I'd set up my own YouTube channel and I'd do a video every day in October. She got to No. 6, so I did a video every other day instead. It was harrowing and amazing at the same time but it was also good insight. 

What is it about Dodie that has connected with her audience?

We've put no marketing spend behind her yet for the entire tour. We're in a position at the moment where Dodie, myself or when Kilimanjaro put the poster up on their home page - that seems to be enough to acquire the tickets we put on sale. Dodie, and others in that circle, are not just an act their audiences want to see, they have to see them, there's a need to, a desire to. It’s because she started from YouTube in 2011, when she was 16, and it's always just been original songs, her writing songs and putting them up on her channel. YouTube was a medium some people were using but Dodie’s style sees her play with her sister, or just her with a ukulele, it's very relatable, it allowed audiences to think ‘we can be like that’ and ‘Dodie's my friend’. Her approach avoids the hierarchy, it is ‘I'm here because of you’ and ‘thank you so much’, and that doesn't change as she gets larger. 

Is her YouTube channel, and style of content, going to be sustainable as she gets larger?

It varies. YouTube was her main outlet of creativity, there was no recorded music or book [she released her debut book in November 2017], she has all of these different streams where she can put things out now, but I’m sure the channel will continue. It's like Troye Sivan, he's a pop star now, but he'll go back to YouTube for a little update every now and then. With Dodie, she knows where she's from and that is something she'll always hold to her heart. However, it’s also something we want to divide her from in the way that she’s a musician.

She has over 65m streams on Spotify and I don't think that just comes from her YouTube audience, that comes from genuine fans. Even people who don’t know where she came from can listen to a song and think ‘that it’s a good song’. Coming from YouTube success has never been a real hurdle to get over but it is a sort of hurdle.

With the radio plays from Phil Taggart and Annie Mac, there's been no mention of YouTube at all, because there's a stigma attached. It’s tough because there have been people with a large audience, larger than Dodie's, that have had huge uplifts in sales and then a dip because the quality's not there. Whereas I feel like there's a consistency with Dodie. As people say to me, the real showcase that it's working is the ticket sales. You see that problem a lot, someone with hundreds or millions of streams online but they can’t sell out XOYO, whereas Dodie is able to do that. I think she’s achieving it because it's DIY, there's no smoke and mirrors. It's just me, working with a distributor, and Dodie.  

She’s seen US success on Spotify and with live shows, is she getting any radio interest over there?

It's very interesting to work out radio in the States compared to here. It's very formulaic over here, it's a spider web there. She was 55 in a Billboard chart so obviously, that’s a strong placement for a UK act. This year they'll be an east and west coast tour, which is properly heading out on tour.

Do you think her younger fans know or care if she’s signed to a label or has a 'machine' behind her?

It's interesting. It's more to do with what the label do with the act and how that has a response to the audience. For instance, if you take an act that's been really prominent on YouTube and then goes away and doesn't update their fans, or isn't allowed to, and then comes back after two years, then those people have grown up and discovered other artists. If they haven't been updated, or the sound is different, that's when an audience becomes not as interested.

Have you had help from YouTube?

It's not that they haven't offered support, but it's always been from a channel perspective, rather than a music one. When you get a certain number of subscribers, you get a channel manager, which helps in terms of obtaining building it from there but that’s not what the aim is. We’ve filmed and edited videos in the YouTube space, although she edits her own videos.

Presumably there comes a point when she won't have the time to edit?

She's happy doing it, it's a bit like telling someone that they can't produce their own record.

That's what her channel has always been about, it’s just been her doing it all. Going back to what we said earlier about a label being involved, if there's any sort of shift in how content looks or feels, the audience will notice, and might not take to it.

Is she ready to sign to a label now?

It’s more so that if there's a proposition from a label that matches what we need, we'll see. We've done a lot of things on our own but we’ll see.