Konstantinos

Rock The Wall

ROCK THE WALL is a PR company based in Athens Greece, that allows artists of all genres,from all over the world promote their music for free. In today's world as the struggle gets harder, it is nice to see a company that is willing to offer this kind of service for free to the artists without bias. Our very own Steinmetal, has taken the opportunity to speak with Konstantinos about the services they provide, and even illegal downloading in the world today. Kudos to them, and readers enjoy what they had to say. Feel free to spread the word to all the artists in your life.

By Lior "Steinmetal" Stein

• November 6, 2014

Interview - Konstantinos (Rock The Wall) interview

Hello Konstantinos, great to have you for this special interview for Metal Temple magazine, I thank you for your time. How have you been?

Hello Lior from the cold and raining Athens of Greece. I want to truly thank you for giving me such a great opportunity to present our project to metal-temple.com readers. Summer gone, winter came, kids went to school, So, all I can say is Things are fine and I hope to stay that way!

Earlier on you approached Metal Temple regarding a sort of a music community you are representing named Rock The Wall, essentially from Greece. First things first, what can you tell the readers about it?

Rock The Wall music community is a one year old nonprofit platform where bands and/or artists all over the globe may promote their work for free. We've been rocking world since 08 August of 2013 and now counting 1.500 registered bands! Idea is simple, bands setup their profiles and users may dig for great music among 70+ rock and metal subgenres all around the world.

How did you start in this foundation in the first place? Are or were you a musician yourself looking for coverage until you found this platform?

Yes I am thrashing my guitar for 15 years now – I have recorded I have played I have toured I have done almost everything a band mate can do! The taste and the way RTW is developed cannot be achieved by someone who is not into music. Idea came up during a night (as always) while drinking my favorite whiskey and listening to my favorite genre! I imagined of one page website where bands could pin their logos on it and when this page would became full I would share it to every corner of this planet hoping someday that one band, at least, could be heard by a record label or whatever! Leaving my whiskey on the table I started designing a page background. I tried this I tried that and I finally came up with a stone-wall design, a heavy stone-wall texture where bands would pin their logos on it! This story gave me a name too – Rock The Wall. From now on Bands would Rock that wall down!! I uploaded the page I set a ten days countdown for bands to join and I received 221 requests in a few hours … That was the beginning!

What can you tell the readers about what Rock The Wall is offering a band that register onto its veil?

A band builds a profile and all the control of it is done by a private administration panel that we make it better day to day. Our passion for metal and computers makes developing new stuff easier, stuff that according to our feedback bands find it really helpful and easily functioning – that's how we want it. Let me tell you some of them - Exclusive Band page with NO ads related posts or anything 'annoying' else. - A fully customizable profile where a band can even insert a desired image as background - Media Gallery of the band including YouTube Videos and Photos + media player where bands post their mp3s. - Bandline | the place where bands share everything - Merchandise Promotion | Bands show their merch items - Tour Dates | Bands Publish dates and flyers of their events and let the fans informed. - Interactive connections with other bands of the community to share to listen even to play sometime on the same stage - Contests and prizes for our fans and users! - Fresh graphic design to attract more and more! - New services - New Ideas and More promotion for our Bands! - Reviews Section - Release Tree | A chronological tree of releases - Finally a dedicated Development Team that works hard as rock every day @24/7 to make things better! - 10 Record Labels co-corporation with our community - We also offer website development advice to bands and not forget to mention our last giveaway to Enthean band (black metal from Greenville, SC) of a fully FREE website including (Hosting, Development and Domain Name). Please join Enthean @ rockthewall.eu/enthean

Basically since Rock The Wall is Greek, is should have been a promotional form for local bands, yet you guys decided that bands out of the Greek scene should be added as well. What made you open up?

Rock the Wall is Greek but our dream lives worldwide – Yes we started as local scene supporters but a contact I had with the so much loved Tankard asking them to join made me change my mind. After our successful corporation with the band and with no second thought we changed language from Greek to EN_US and opened the registration form for all the bands of the world!

Taking the opportunity, I want to thank Tankard and all the management team of the band from the bottom of my heart because it was the very first international band that joined our wall. This band has tones of metal attitude and deserves my respect.

The whole concept of music community, as it has been displayed on Facebook or other social networks is not a rather new idea as it has been implemented on various of old networks such as MySpace, ReverbNation etc. What is your intake on the matter? What are your thoughts regarding this whole idea.

We adore and respect all these huge networks you talked about before but our philosophy is much different. Each of our bands has been added to our page after hard work and personal contact – This has led to creation of family bonded relationship. We chat, we talk we even hung out with them, we respond in a matter of hours to every request and we love them as we love our brothers. RTW was made by musician for musicians and we will keep it that way.

Do you actually believe that music communities such as Rock The Wall are the answer for the best promotion for bands, at least those on their first steps in the music world wishing to distribute their first recordings, offer demos and sorts?

Yes! Low budget bands have to take advantage of all these cool stuff that communities and social networks provide for Free, at least those on their first steps. On the other hand I can understand this ease of use has led to creation of tons of garbage out there - for example You see a one man band recording a no-tuned guitar in his kitchen while eating a burger and farting his mic – setting up a page and call himself a band, but serious artists who work hard for their dream and respect their fans finally will find their way!

Do you feel that Rock The Wall and others are the next step in the promotional process for music in general, leaving out the magazines and PR companies behind?

The fact is that Internet and Social Networking in general have crashed everything on their way. On the other hand my feeling is that nobody will leave out anybody. The reason is simple, everything is a circle. Bands are depended on PR for sure. PR companies need customers to survive (customer = band). Both of them bands and PR live inside magazines, communities and Internet. All that has to be done is a great healthy network that will join all these forces for a better music experience.

In overall, what is your notion regarding Rock and Metal music nowadays, where do you believe that these old genres are headed as far as the worldwide music scene goes? Is Metal beyond the underground it once was and right into the reality of everyday life?

I believe mainstream metal / rock scene has become more popular and ear friendly than used to be and this is good but the diamonds are buried well in our neighborhood in a local studio or a local live club where bands rehearse their new songs and play their very first live. We have to support that scene because this is the future.

Looking at the music industry nowadays, especially with you being a part of such a vast community, how do you perceive music downloading? Do you think that the illegality behind downloading is still a main issue or rather another means for the promotion of bands, especially those that can finance promotion by companies that specialize in it?

The fact that you can download a whole planet of music by clicking the Download Button in a few minutes, hours etc. does not mean it is right though. You would never enter a café to steel a cup of coffee right? Yeah right! The fact that music is intangible does not give the right to steel the riffs, the solos, the artist's creativity. Bands spend thousands of dollars/euros to record, mix, master a song – spend a bag of dollars/euros to transportation for a gig – spend two bags of dollars/euros for its gear! Illegal downloading is not fair for them and do not deserve it. On the other hand of course I believe there is some purpose behind all this – OK come on we have reached the moon don' t tell me internet companies cannot stop illegal downloading. It's up to us! Support n Buy stuff of your favorite band!

Konstantinos, I wish to thank you for your time for this interview. I truly hope that this music community will flourish as it would seem that plenty of bands would be happily present themselves through this platform.

I want to thank you one more time and wish you best – Keep the flame alive! Check us out:
http://rockthewall.eu
http://wall.pouthapioume.gr/
https://facebook.com/rockthewall.gr
https://twitter.com/pouthapioume

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