Freddy is co-founder of Keep Hush, a music platform known for broadcasting streams of bleeding-edge line-ups curated by its members.
What was the business problem/opportunity you were trying to solve when you started Keep Hush?
Since record stores and small venues have been steadily pushed out of London, we felt that the underground dance music scene lacked community. We wanted to create a space for the dance music community to connect, and to discover truly underground artists outside of the nightclub setting (which can be more about getting mashed on a Friday night).
At the same time it made sense for us to broadcast and archive artists’ performances - we wanted to give the artists the biggest platform possible.
How did you do this? What would you recommend to others in your position?
Our weekly, live streamed events were the core of what we were doing before coronavirus hit.
We are definitely known for the great crowd and sense of community at our events, so in that sense we have started to achieve our goals. Just before the virus, we ran our own venue for a month called Secret Location, where all the events were proposed to us (and mostly run) by our members. That’s what really showed us that we’ve created an amazing community.
Being in touch with and catering for a smaller audience is definitely recommended. I think a lot of brands are chasing maximum reach whereas we have a really engaged community, some of whom come to our broadcasts almost every week.
We’re about to change up how we operate quite significantly, but our community that supports underground music will always be at the core of what we do.
What struggles/setbacks did you face when you were first trying to start your career in the music industry?
It was really hard to break through without doing free internships which aren’t possible for a lot of people, and even getting those is super competitive. The independent music world is very small and very cliquey, which is partly why we knew we had to break in ourselves.
What has it been liking working with young people? What advice would you have for other organisations looking to do the same?
We were under 25 when we started, and our team and audience are all pretty much under 25, so: instrumental. Young people are most likely to try something new - in our case we had no experience going into starting Keep Hush, which has been a blessing when building our model exactly how we want it.
If you want real change, you need people with a fresh mindset, who aren’t yet ingrained in an industry or ways of doing things.
It’s hard to imagine running something as dynamic as Keep Hush without a young team. We’re out consuming the same things as our audience and customers, and we’re always ready to pivot.