Tommy has always been around music and he developed a love for it at an early age. His father was always blasting out soulful house music at home which piqued his interest and got him hooked.
At the age of 14, Tommy started his DJ journey after his sister, who was also DJing sometimes, gave her decks to him as a gift and that’s where the obsession began.
After starting to perform live shows at university to completing seasons out in Zante, Tommy has quickly established himself as one of the hottest names in the electronic dance genre on the back of his debut EP, ‘Let’s Just’.
The two-song EP received high praise from critics and notable names in the industry for its unique melodic sound and went on to receive radio plays from BBC Radio One. This positive feedback is something he is looking to replicate with his latest release ‘Colours of Love’.
However, despite his early success, Tommy has seen the industry change due to the rise of streaming services like Spotify. This has left fans wanting more accessible, commercial music rather than unique, conceptual sounds.
He says: “Before ‘Colours of Love’ came out and done well, I was just getting really disheartened because release days weren’t feeling like release days because I just wasn’t getting on any playlists and that meant no streams.
“My manager said: ‘Well, if it's streams that you want, maybe we just need to write more accessible music, you know?’ I thought, ‘Oh God, that's not what I want to hear.’ I don't want to be pushed to write music that I don't actually want to write.
“I like just making music based on how I feel in a day and I don't like being too commercial. I don't want to write music for streams. I don't think any artist wants to unless you're like a big commercial pop star. It's all about how you feel on a day when you write music.
“I always try to include so much emotion in my music and sometimes, that doesn't really get all the streams. I feel like most of the time on Spotify what I see in the big playlists is just upbeat dance and house music. There is not really any emotion in anything I'm hearing. So it's hard to get the big playlist streams and you have to compromise a little bit if you want to do that.”
According to one independent label owner quoted by Liz Pelly on The Baffler, artists and independent record companies struggle to gain access to prime playlists, because the more vanilla the release, the better it works for Spotify.
The emotionless music that Tommy refers to has been criticised for several years now with a New York Times critic Joe Coscarelli defining the music as: 'vaguely electronic, usually female vocals, glitchy effects.’
His fellow NYT critic Jon Caramanica elaborates: ‘It’s slow, galloping BPM, sort of dance music alluding, but not actual dance music’ in the New York Times back in 2018.
While discovering new music has never been easier due to these platforms, the algorithms that come with them have created the blueprint for a monotonous listening experience.
Still Listening Magazine has noted that a song will only receive a stream once it has been listened to for at least 30 seconds on Spotify. In turn, this has led to songs becoming predictable, shorter and lacking any real meaning.
Even the ‘Discovery Playlists’ feature on Spotify has forced more of the same style of music on listeners rather than a mix of different genres they have never heard before.
Tommy says: “If I had to give advice to artists who don’t want to play into the commercial side of streaming but still want to get their music heard, I’d say it's all about the quality at the end of the day. The most important thing is the music.
“If your music's good, and it sounds great then it's just a case of working relentlessly behind the scenes and just making sure you're known to everyone. You have to be messaging people and meeting people in person, going to events. If you don’t want to make bland music just for streams then it's all about networking.
“For example, I think getting plays on radio stations like Radio One is a great alternative way to get big as an artist. Usually, there are some tracks with around 15,000 streams, but they've had Radio One plays across all free producers and broadcasters. A lot of promoters look at Radio One and see it as a big thing for sure.”
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