Andy Irvine, CEO and Co-founder, and Vivienne Mellish, CMO and Co-founder, discussed their almost seven years in operation and the new additions to their business with AIR CEO, Maria Amato.

Read the interview below.

Tell us the GYROstream story. How did it all begin and how did you two meet?

Andy Irvine: I had been working in the distribution space for a good ten years at the time, and I’d met Andrew, who is the other business partner alongside Viv and myself, in the course of doing that while working at Create/Control and Dew Process. We had started the conversation about the fact there were not any, or many, Australian-based independent distribution companies. And they (the band he was managing) were finding that a little bit hard to navigate the independent sector, navigate the streaming market, and understanding how royalties flow and things like that. So we started talking about that and we identified an opportunity that there were not any real opportunities for independent music that wasn’t signed to either an independent label or major label, or something like that. Most Australian artists in that very DIY, independent space were using overseas distribution companies to get their music out. So, we started putting together spreadsheets and looking at the viability of the business and doing all the business plans and stuff like that. As part of that journey over a number of months, we came across Viv who was working for a local PR company, and we wanted not to just be a distributor but to also offer other services to artists as well, and we could see that this was a great opportunity to get someone of her experience into the business as well. The three of us essentially started building the technology, the site, and putting our product offering together and we launched to the public as initially a very DIY distribution company, back in June of 2018 which is getting on almost six years ago now.

So that’s how you met and that was your initial offering, but now you’re global. How did that happen?

Vivienne Mellish: Yeah, just in the last week, I think we’ve clocked over forty team members. We’ve got about twenty-four here in Australia and then thirteen or fourteen overseas. Just in the last month, we’ve made about six hires, so I need to do another tally.

How did you first get overseas? That’s where you are now, but what began and how did you do it?

Vivienne Mellish: I mean for the first couple of years we really focused on offering excellent service to the Australian/New Zealand market, which had been neglected in that DIY space up until then. Customer service was what really helped build that. We were about to open up a GYROstream office in Germany, and then COVID happened, and we decided to pivot a little bit because we assessed the overseas markets and thought it was probably not the right time to be taking GYROstream as a product overseas. But what we tried to emulate with our pivot, what we noticed was that people were trusting GYROStream as a business because we knew the local market here and we tried to think about how we could do that but create a product where we are engaging those music businesses and labels that really know their home market, and empowering them to scale their business through distribution. So, we built DistroDirect, which is our sister company and white label product, which is essentially what we call our export product, however, we do have a few partners within Australia and New Zealand who do use the platform. But it’s essentially a platform that is able to be integrated into any label, music studio, management company, a producer who wants to release some artists, basically, they can set up a distribution platform under their own brand and they can help those early career artists or those established artists; whoever they’ve got in their artist network, to distribute through that platform. It’s extremely customisable, the most customisable platform we’ve seen on the market in terms of how you can structure it if it’s a paid upfront model, a royalty-only model. Really where we’re seeing the success in that, with those small to medium labels that are looking to double down on their catalogue and have an easier way of managing multiple artists at once, and also just those people who are really tapped into their local community. Our team here process all the deliveries, and they do all the customer service as the brand, and what we’re finding is that it’s really paying dividends for some of our partners. We’ve got over 400 partners now in about 40 markets worldwide with DistroDirect. It’s definitely the fastest-growing area of our business and we’re just about to have a showcase at SXSW, showcasing some of the partners and some of the artists that we work with on that platform.

And what were some of the challenges you had getting DistroDirect and yourselves to go global?

Andy Irvine: It’s a very competitive landscape in distribution, internationally. And I think we underestimated just how competitive it was and it wasn’t until we started venturing overseas that we realized just how many other companies are in that space. And so we really needed to come up with something with a really unique selling point and that was a little bit different, which is why the DistroDirect product offers that unique proposition for a specific, niche subset of the music business that didn’t previously exist. For us, you know there’s a lot of talk over the years of distribution being monetised and we wanted to flip that on its head and provide a solution that goes back to how we built the business at GYROStream which is through customer support and connection, and building communities, and that drives the best outcomes for artists. And that’s the product that we built, that tries to deliver that for those key businesses in the local market. The idea of premium, boutique micro-distribution rather than the really big players in that space that just hoover up as much content as possible, who are great at doing that sort of thing, but at the same time the artists are struggling to cut through the amount of noise and don’t really get the help they need to be able to do that. For us, the challenge is obviously with anything in a crowded market like that, is just being heard and cutting above the noise of the competition and stuff like that. That’s an ongoing process, I mean that’s not something we’ve not necessarily cracked yet or anything. Every time you go to an overseas conference, or you get a new client, the music business still operates at that level in a networking sense, really about who you know and word of mouth. Because it’s a B2B product, just going out and doing blanket marketing and digital marketing, and the traditional forms of marketing don’t really work. It really is a different – getting that particular brand out globally is a different proposition than had we just launched GYROstream overseas or something like that. So those are the sort of things that we’ve been tweaking over the past couple of years and trying to refine and we have people on the ground promoting that product and selling it in the UK, USA, Brazil, and India at the moment. Having people on the ground in those markets and being able to have those conversations is important as well.

And now you’re going to launch an international marketing and artist services company. Tell us all about that!

Vivienne Mellish: There’s a few reasons for doing this. We find that we’re getting really great success for GYROStream artists within the Australian market. We have had some really good success overseas in terms of DSPs and playlisting and opportunities, however, we just wanted to accelerate that, and we also would like to service our DistroDirect partners a little better when they do have priorities come through. So, we have recruited someone who was a senior artist and labels partnerships manager, Adrian Burke who was at Spotify Canada. He’s got a solid background of networks within the DSP community, but also knowledge about the way that music is increasingly being promoted through the algorithmic channels that are through different DSPs and also how to influence all the data so that we can get some really good success globally. We’ve also made some key hires back here in Australia. We’ve hired a new head of artist marketing strategy, her name is Alison Bremner, and she has worked primarily with creators in the TikTok creators’ space and also in brand partnerships, anything from Gucci to Red Bull, she previously managed Australia’s most followed TikToker with 18m followers. Her background is really on content ideation and strategic partnerships so the artists can leverage their brand equity, but also create those moments that will hopefully help influence streaming. We’ve also expanded the marketing team as well.

With those kinds of expansions, we’re really looking to create a way of working with some people who have never sort of been assembled before. Someone’s calling them the Avengers, I heard in our office the other day. But I’m hoping that by launching that, that will give us the ability to kind of elevate those artist careers, both in an export sense with the GYROstream artists, but also with a DistroDirect sense. GROUP SPEED is the name of the company, and it will also have the ability to work with artists directly. If they’re, say a North American artist and they don’t quite fit within the GYROStream mould or they’re not currently with a DistroDirect partner, they will also be able to distribute those artists directly and work on the marketing campaign for them. We’re just kind of refining the offering at the moment and how it’s all going to work but we will be doing a big launch, hopefully just before South By [sic SXSW] to tell everyone about it, and we’ve got already some key artists we’re to elevate through those channels and we’re excited to see where it all goes.

Andy Irvine: I think if you’d said, you know, a couple of years ago that we were going to have a label services company based out of North America we would have thought that person would be crazy telling us that, but you know, as the business develops organically you know we want to find these opportunities. Yeah, we’re taking on one of the biggest music industry markets in the world, the most competitive, but also the dream for us as an Australian business and the way the industry talks around export at the moment, we feel like that if we build the infrastructure over there we will be one of the few Australian music businesses that can genuinely provide opportunities for Australian artists in that market and being able to upstream through those channels as well.

VM: Yep!

AI: That’s really, hugely exciting for us, as a business.

Maria Amato: Totally, feels like a perfect marriage! So, you’re saying you’re actually setting up the business in America?

AI: Not from an operational point of view.

VM: Not quite yet!

AI: Not quite yet but building out the staff and teams. Obviously, it’s an important part of our growth of our DistroDirect product but as a byproduct of that we’re going to have this great business out there that we can put great Australian music out there as well once the brand is established.

VM: Yeah, and I think we’re seeing all of this stuff about the ARIA charts not having any Australian artists on them and all that kind of thing. There was a piece released, I think it was late last year, on the top most streamed songs on Spotify internationally from Australia and we had two artists on that list who have never made it into the ARIA charts but are streaming – Australian artists – who are streaming crazy numbers overseas, and so I think there’s so much potential for us to be looking at those pockets of where we can be taking those artist’s careers and jumping on them.

MA: Fantastic!

VM: The other thing I didn’t mention, is that we’ve also made another key hire in Harry Young, who is an A&R at Dew Process. As you may know, I think we probably had three or four AIR nominees, and we also had three or four ARIA nominees, we won the Best Children’s Album with Emma Memma which was completely independent. Harry’s got a very good track record of success with Australian Artists, so we’re really excited to have him on board to help develop our current catalogue but also to find new opportunities for us to be able to help artist’s careers and find new artists to work with who we can help share in their success so we’re excited to have him coming onboard as well as a senior member of our A&R team.

What advice would you give someone who wants to expand globally? Thinking of that from an artist’s point of view.

Vivienne Mellish: From an artist’s point of view. I would say follow the data and if you don’t have data do some testing and see where you might fit and look at similar artists and what strategies they’ve employed. I mean, we work with a partner who has a couple of artists who are doing extremely well in Southeast Asia, and they’ve been able to kind of just follow where the success is and they’re seeing incredible numbers just by employing similar strategies and creating a framework for how they promote their artists in that territory. It just happens over time.

Andy Irvine: And I will say, just going in with a global mindset right from the beginning as well. It’s important that you’re really understanding, as an artist, where you think you fit into that. Every market is different. Try and identify the other artists that you align yourself with that may be in many different countries around the world, but really try and hone in on what they’re doing in those markets, what’s resonating, what’s having success and try and be able to understand and activate that at the same time. What we tend to find is that for many independent artists, their biggest territories are not Australia, and the ones that are able to identify that and then exploit that from a social media point of view, and also a streaming point of view, have seen some great results.

VM: Following international trade publications, that’s where I’ve found so much information. Like the Music Ally’s Sandbox that they put out every year, with case studies on the biggest global music marketing campaigns and how they’ve executed them. It just shows a whole different bunch of territories and what’s worked. I think that that’s so helpful just to have a top-down view as well.

What’s Gyrostream’s plan for the future? What does it look like?

Andy Irvine: We’ve covered a little bit of that, but this year in particular for us is really focused on opening up pathways internationally, firstly through our new Group Speed business and continuing to evolve our DistroDirect product. In Australia, obviously investing into, as we said, A&R here in Australia and working with artists at our much closer level in terms of building their careers locally in Australia and then looking for those pathways internationally export opportunities as well. Continuing the great stuff that we do on the DIY front, like community engagement, with the artists that we have we’re kicking up a notch this year as well. We feel like we’re in a really interesting place now where we have the resources to be able to have a crack at the global market. I think as a business, we’re all extremely energised and excited about being able to legitimately look at breaking some artists overseas as we build out the rest of the global team as well. We’re in a business that changes all the time, we don’t necessarily have a crystal ball of what’s going to happen over the next couple of years. We are quite flexible, and we move quite quickly. At the start of this year, we put our biggest resource into people this year, and so we’re really excited about what that will bring over the next 24 months.

Maria Amato: Fantastic! Well, I wish you every success.

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