While streaming, sharing and recommending our favourite artists and their viral tracks, it is easy to forget the agents behind the action. In the world of multimedia - where over 11 million songs are released every month - we often fail to recognise the meticulous strategy, social media expertise and marketing wisdom that turns a cut into a critically-acclaimed effort.
With fifteen years of experience and over a trillion views under their belt, there is arguably no one better to bring the artistry of marketing to light quite like the MPT Agency — spearheaded by the world-renowned Raffi Keuhnelian and Anto Dotcom. Viewing music as a form of mind control as opposed to just entertainment, the duo entered the fierce market in the late 2000s— with a unique perspective of social media and growth at the helm of their game plan.
So what brings a prospective artist into the limelight of the adoring crowds? According to Raffi and Anto, the formula relies on one simple trifecta: narrative, creativity and technology. While finding the artist might be an arduous and mentally challenging process at first, through the duo’s unwavering formula, the road to establishing stardom is almost smooth sailing.
“Does the story represent the music? Is it something relatable? Is it authentic?” Asks Raffi Keuhnelian, co-founder of MPT Agency and INexxus. “If the answer to even one of these is no, then your chances at making it have been cut in half. It's harsh, but making up a persona out of thin air is a broken model.” Prioritising tangible authenticity over surface-level streams, both Raffi and Anto sort through hundreds of emails to find the sweet spot between sound and story. Getting to the grit of the talents they choose to represent, Raffi and Anto have proved that while artistry is often perceived through star-studded goggles — it is something that must be nurtured and mastered to gain any longevity.
But when platforms like TikTok and Instagram increasingly promote a swipe-through culture, it begs the question: how do you keep people on your sound? For the MPT Agency, creating a trend is about building a spell for mass consumption. To do so, we must turn to technology. From scouting to platform scanning, users and artists alike must be able to identify a gap in the stream of trends, dig into it, innovate it and annihilate it — all before another does the same. “It’s funny to say that creativity only works with the right technology behind it, but in the end, I help every artist within the scope of their ambitions and because of my technical background, I overdeliver their expectations. So when they reach further than they had dreamt, what we did looks like nothing short of magic,” says Anto.
Though the rest of the universe might be catching up to the increased demand in technology to further an artist's career, this has also seen the rise of bot technology, viewer pools and pay-to-view incentives — achieving more harm than good. Unsurprisingly, yet luckily, Raffi drops a secretive solution: “There is a “little something” we have been working on for the last few years that might help artists bridge this gap, without saying too much, it may even dismantle all those leeches dumping garbage promo packages to confused artists.”
Spread across three continents and five countries, the Dynamic Duo of Dotcom and Keuhnelian have manifested beyond the trillion view marker, and have amassed a pool of knowledge that is direct, transparent and avidly shared with their clients. MusicPromoToday does not simply pick up where a brand left off, they tailor, sharpen, polish, and execute with impunity what the client needs. No more shadowy labels, no more invisible promoters, welcome to the new age of music promotion, where the artist comes first.
