With Sam Eastgate’s (aka LA Priest) hand turning to his handmade analogue drum machine for new album GENE (named after the machine Sam built and composed most of the album on) as much to the music itself, we worked with designers and developers Amy Elizabeth and Jen Hingley to bring GENE to digital life to tease new music and help build his social and streaming audiences.

Enter the GENE Machine. Through analysis of his audience built since debut album Inji and collaborative album with Connan Mockasin under the Soft Hair alias, and powered by Sam’s own analogue visions, we gave fans the opportunity to preview new music in the lead up to the album by using manipulated audio stems to unveil material before it was officially released.

By fans and new users entering via either Spotify and Apple Music pre-save/pre-add mechanisms or email sign-up, we helped drive over 1,000 sign-ups to use the GENE Machine which both sent new music to user accounts on release as well as helped build a greater mailing list size, helping to drive physical album and ticket sales.

Complimenting the GENE Machine’s fan usage, we presented the build to new tech leaning audiences through digital advertising, which helped build both highly engaged remarketing audiences for album release as well as helped grow LA Priest’s fanbase with a new wealth of (ahem) Gear Geeks who could enter into his mad Wizard of Oz world.