Page 24 - Zone Magazine Issue 008

feature interview - ireland
From music production in Ibiza to banging out the beats in the city that never sleeps New York, LKM music & media founder Eoin Long, has lived the dream as a younger man, which moulded his path in the direction he is currently now commanding. Sharp, humorous, dynamic, passionate, professional, and with a zest and drive for success, like a Branson, he carries an immense depth and knowledge for music in all its entirety, encompassing all genres which he brings in bucket loads to his finely crafted enterprise that’s based in his hometown of Dublin.
Specializing in supplying in-store digital music systems for the retail, hospitality and banking sectors, and designing music strategies for global brands, both in Ireland and now Stateside with a huge number of high profile clients now under his belt, nothing it seems, is out of his reach, as he sets the benchmark in cutting edge sound profiling. I wanted to know more, so Keith and I bounced down to his office in Dublin for a beer and a chat....
Thank you Eoin for taking the time out of your very busy schedule to talk to at Zone, so how did it all start, what attracted you to the Dance music scene, what gave you the itch to mix?
I got my first set of decks around the time I went to the love is energy dance boat party, with a couple of Irish DJ's Ronan O and Tommy Steward at a time when house and dance music culture was becoming more prominent with a younger generation, I was hooked.
How did you transit from being a successful DJ / Producer to a successful business man?
The first idea I got from it was mix cds which I was doing lots of at the time and one Dublin hotel offered to pay me really really good money to use mixes I'd already made so in my mind I was thinking if one hotel was willing to pay this kind of money for a couple of mix cds, then all the hotels might, so I started selling mix cds to loads of different hotels and then I came up with idea, that if I used a machine that could just sit there and automate it all.
I carried out a lot of research and found out about after my extensive research that C- burn a UK company had already built the most flawless music player there is, and that is used
all over the world. I then ended up securing the rights to sell their hardware over in Ireland. I found that what I'd acquired was far superior on a technical level and the editor-ability to achieve better music than my competitors to tailor and bespoke it more because I was coming from a DJ / Producer point of view, I knew what the crowd wanted right down to the individual.
It kind of just went from there with one client then it trickled out, it’s all about timing.
As we know music reaches out to us in many ways, it creates atmosphere, mood, harmony and wellbeing in some cases. Would you say then that it can instil a deliberate emotional response, and how this is reflected in your products your business, what’s behind ‘The Secret DJ?
We can definitely choose music that can influence peoples mood and state of mind for sure, because people categorize and relate specific songs from different moments they've had in their lives, it might be a good song or a bad song but I guarantee you that if you hear that specific song it'll bring you back right to that moment and all those memories come flooding back, nostalgia.
The key then is to learn about all styles of music and genres, and this would be big to me
as I would want to know when the first instrument was made and the first jazz song was played, so if you research and do your homework and study properly you'll build up a bigger data base of music and what will work with a crowd and what won’t work like. In terms of something like jazz for instance there are nearly different 30 sub genres of Jazz so knowing this can enable you to create and tailor to every demographic that little bit better than just giving them a generic one size fits all.
Regarding the Secret DJ, the customer buys the hardware with content already uploaded to it and we design a schedule for the client. So if your open at 7 O’clock in the morning and close 10 O’clock at night the machine will turn on at 6AM and switch off at 11PM its knows your footfall and trading pattern so the music is never targeted to the wrong demographic you know what I mean, Wednesday lunch times are different to Friday lunch times as the mood and energy is different, so therefore there shouldn't be a generic lunch time play list, it should be music exactly for this time and this date. That's the difference between our service and any competitor services, so research is key, you've got to know your clients and cannot just design music without ever visiting the venue or not talking to the management to get a feel for the dynamic, and acquiring knowledge!