March 2017… Founded in 2014, Play Too Much nurtures emerging artists and helps them reach audiences via several areas of content on their site: with in-studio sessions and interviews, artist-curated playlists, reviews, features, podcasts and more. Play Too Much also sponsors popup shows to help build exposure for artists.
For their newest podcast series: How Hits Made, Play Too Much equipped New York City band Great Caesar with a TASCAM DR-40 handheld 4-track digital recorder so the band could document its effort to craft and market a hit song over the course of a year. “We shared Great Caesar’s story about what it’s like to try and make it as a band; how hard it is to write a hit song, and make a career out of music,” recalls Play Too Much cofounder Chris Pizzolo. “If you’re capturing a year of someone’s life, you’re not going to be there the entire time, so we got them up to speed on how to use the DR-40, and were able to get really beautiful audio for the podcast,” which debuted on iTunes’ Top 30 podcast charts.
Pizzolo found much to love about the DR-40, as well: “Let’s say I’m doing a run-and-gun kind of shoot at Mercury Lounge or Brooklyn Bowl in New York City. With the DR-40, I have four tracks, so I can take a stereo board feed and two mic feeds. It’s quick and easy to use, and the next thing you know, we have a beautiful recording of a really big performance.”
Pizzolo and fellow Play Too Much cofounder Sara Waber have big plans to continue to expand their content. “We’re creating opportunities for new content creators,”Pizzolo explains. “The editors and videographers could be in Washington, D.C., or upstate New York, or Seattle. We’re giving them tools to create content that will live on our platform.”
Play Too Much is also working on original Facebook Live content. “We’re giving artists the opportunity to do their own 30-minute show each week,” he offers, “and we’ll give them a TASCAM MiNiSTUDIO Creator US-42 for their broadcast. The MiNiSTUDIO Creator US-42 provides a lot of podcasting and production tools, and it’s easy to use. It has a pair of mic/line/instrument inputs, so the artist can connect an instrument to one input and a microphone to the other. It sounds great and can record at up to 24-bit, 96 kHz, which means we can provide a high-quality stream of the artist playing a couple of songs and talking to you live from their house.”
You’ll have to listen to “How Hits Made” on Play Too Much’s site to find out how Great Caesar fared in its quest for a hit.
