Interview: Alex Day Talks YouTube, Lady Godiva & Staying Independent

CRAVE ONLINE: For those who are unaware of your YouTube channel, how would you describe it?

 

ALEX DAY: It’s a place for fun and silliness and music and really whatever I feel like, at least once a week!

I really don’t know. I make videos regularly, I chat to people, I care about what my audience is interested in and I’m fortunate that enough people are still interested in what I do. I think it’s more about what I don’t do – I don’t use annotations or really long pre-video ads that you have to sit through without skipping and I make an effort not to talk about my music all the time.

Yes, I definitely feel I’m a musician first and a YouTuber second. YouTube is essential to my music career but – even before Forever Yours – making music is the thing I most love to do, and if I had to pick I’d always pick music first. Fortunately I don’t have to pick and continue to enjoy both things!

Ha – confusion. Ignorance. Nobody seemed to understand what I was doing, and they all dismissed it because it was only in the charts for one week. But that’s alright. I wasn’t trying to get a record deal anyway, so I don’t mind.

No, any problems are outweighed by positives I think. It’s harder to get in print and on radio when you’re an unsigned artist, but it means I care more about it because I’m doing it myself and not just taking those things for granted. I send hand-written postcards to anyone who plays my song on the radio to say thank-you: I can’t imagine Nicki Minaj doing that.

I’m not against it at all, so long as they’re happy to continue allowing me the freedom I’m used to in terms of choosing my own songs, producing and performing myself, figuring out my own release dates and campaigns, and just plugging me with money to make me better at doing all that. But in terms of record deals that’s a pretty unreasonable ask, so it’s not one I’m expecting any time soon, and I’ll continue working under the assumption that they’re not interested.

My cousin Danny is acting as my manager, helping deal with stuff like invoices and going through contracts for me. My good friend Jonathan acts as a mentor of mine and we’ll always sit around listening to songs I’ve recorded, deciding together which we think are strongest for the next single release as I tend to trust his judgment. Then I pay for a small PR team to help get the word out to press, run by a woman called Sue who’s just lovely, and a radio plugger called Jo who gets the song to radio stations and keeps them updated on developments with the song. Other than that it’s all me, making videos and sending emails and postcards and emailing journalists and plugging away, fighting the good fight. And then there’s the biggest part of the team, my audience, without which I wouldn’t get anywhere because nobody would have any interest in me at all.

With each single release I think “what’s the best thing I can do right now?” – I hadn’t written any songs since Forever Yours that I thought were strong enough to be released as a single, so I decided to take the opportunity to refresh an older song and introduce it to my audience who were mostly unfamiliar with it.

I wouldn’t say they’re in the Nermie Army, but I’ve had tweets of encouragement from Stephen Fry, Felicia Day, Arthur Darvill, Scott Mills, Kevin Smith and most recently Tom Fletcher.

Yeah, sure, but you can’t please everyone! I’m doing what makes me happy and if they’re not into it, they don’t have to be.

I asked some of my friends on YouTube to provide remixes of the song, which is nice for me because buying a remix also helps towards the UK charts, but also allows me to showcase musicians my audience might not be familiar with. Carrie Hope Fletcher gave me one this time around, as well as Michael Aranda, Eddplant and Alex Carpenter – all great musicians with stuff out on iTunes.