Giandomenico & Paul Sparxx talk WABE Network and running Soundcloud Promotions

Giandomenico & Paul Sparxx Talk WABE Network and Running Soundcloud Promotions

8/8/2018

Could you start off by introducing yourselves and talking about how you both get into music in the first place?
Giandomenico: My name is Giandomenico D'Alterio and I’m an eighteen year old guy from Naples, Italy. I just graduated high school this year and will be attending Informatics University in the fall. I joined the music world around six years ago and I have been addicted ever since. Eventually I got to the point where I wanted to DJ and make my own music so I have done so under two projects with totally different genres: “Giandomenico” and “GNDO.”

PAUL SPARXX: I’m Paolo Santanicchia and I’m a sixteen year old attending high school in Perugia. I started to make music when I was thirteen. My passion was born when Martin Garrix released “Animals” when he was only seventeen. During those days, I thought that if I got into production, maybe I could become like him one day. For now, it’s still a dream.

Giandomenico, tell us how you came to create “GNDO.”
That’s a really good question! Over the years, I’ve been influenced by so many different producers, singers, and styles. The music has evolved so much and so many people have been doing great work to push EDM forward. I wanted to push myself to create something really different, and most importantly, something new and fresh to my ears. GNDO is all about the emotions I feel while I’m producing the tracks. Each track has a different meaning for me which truly represent different phases of my existence. It's not for marketing, money, or popularity. Just making music for music’s sake.

Paolo, walk us through the creation of your latest release on Ensis Records.
Joe Nevix came up with the idea and he sent me a draft with the stems of the project. He found a copyright free vocal and made a draft of the melody. I cleaned up the melody, added more layers to give more body to the sound, and tried to make it sound as clear as possible. Then I made the breakdown by making a bassline and adding the arps and chords in the second part. To make the track stand out, I added more details like delay automations clips for the first seconds of the second breakdown and a low passed build up. It was simply amazing to work on this track and if wasn’t for Joe, the track wouldn’t have existed. I am very satisfied and proud of this one.

How did you guys come together to form the WABE Network and WABE Promotions?
Giandomenico: We met a few years ago when Paolo contacted me on Facebook to tell me that he liked one of my tracks, I think it was “Once Again.” We started talking about productions, networks, and so much more. Some time later, he invited me to join his Whatsapp group and be a part of the #WABESquad. At the time, we were about five or six guys. I accepted his invite and then we started working and focusing about the growing our Soundcloud channels. At the moment, we have just over fifteen thousand followers on the main account and we’re planning on continuing our growth by releasing some exclusive WABE tracks on the other streaming services like Spotify. We also opened our brand new website.

How did you go about gathering SoundCloud followers?
We gained our followers thanks to our passion and dedication about our exclusive releases and utilizing download gates. In addition to original tracks, we also put out exclusive remixes, bootlegs, mashups, edits, packs and much more! Quality stuff equals quality followers.

A post shared by WABE Network (@wabenetwork) on Jan 30, 2018 at 9:59am PST

Do you think that there is some overestimation of your advertised SoundCloud network size based on the tactic of using download gates which force one user to follow multiple accounts?
The follow-to-download gate services are used by everyone. We use them to make sure that users follow our entire network when downloading our contents. This is where the vast majority of our followers come from in addition to just organic growth. Our followers are not fake, and not generated randomly by gates. You can check them out on our accounts or in our comment section!

How did you come up with the pricing for the services you offer? How did you determine the value of your product?
For us, it’s not all about the money; this isn’t our primary source of income, at least not yet. For this reason, our prices are very low. We’re just reposting tracks throughout our network so that they get seen, played, and reacted to by our followers. Our services are serious and cheap and this combination is a great way to get known in the music industry. We’re not in a position to judge how others price their product, for us, we priced our product to be accessible but still reflect the value of our service.

What would you say to those who are skeptical of your business to reassure them that they are spending their promotional dollars wisely? Why should people turn to you instead of the countless other music promotion sites and networks?
When we started producing, we were skeptical about paying for promotion. We didn’t want o spend a single dollar on that kind of stuff. Eventually, we broke down and started paying for promotions on our tracks and we discovered how exactly these sort of networks worked. We thought that we could do something like that so we began building our network. Coming from the same place that our clients come from helps us understand what people need because we use WABE ourselves! Now we’re here to help our artists by offering promotions at a third of the price of what we used to pay. All of this is why we recommend our services!