Meet THOBY, the Danish DJ & producer, well known amongst his fans for energetic sets. We had the chance to chat with THOBY about his influences, experiences he made in the music business and much more.
We also got a special treat for you: Read the whole interview for a sneak peek of his upcoming official remix!
Tell us about your artist project THOBY.
First of all thank you for having me! My THOBY project started as a fun idea and a dream which I never thought would get me to where I am now. Since I started in the whole EDM scene back in 2015 everything has been a journey from being all alone with my music in my bedroom to having a good team of professional people behind me in the form of my Record Label Quattro Music and my Booking agency PRIME.
I started out producing a bunch of different genres like Melbourne bounce & Trap until I found a love for Bigroom house which I stuck to for a year or something until I wanted to try something new. After 2 years of only making hard music I wanted to try and produce something that was out of my comfort zone and a little bit more chill: Future bass!
I made a track called “All Of Your Love” back in july 2018, which was the start of a whole new side of THOBY. 4 months later I released my tropical track called “You Are The One” which went on to be my biggest hit with more than 700.000 plays in total on all platforms in only a few months! In December 2018 I signed a deal with Quattro Music / Warner Music Denmark and since then everything changed! The last 10 months have been unbelievable, I went from 5.000 Spotify plays to 600.000 and a total of 1.500.000+ plays overall! I signed a deal with the danish booking agency PRIME which has always been a dream for me! I Got SO many big things coming soon and I can’t wait to share everything with you all!
Side note: Not many people know this but I actually had a dream of being a professional singer before i got into DJ’ing.
What made you get into producing music? Who are your influences?
I actually never knew what EDM was before 2015 when I saw a video and heard a track called “Himalaya” by MORTEN: I was blown away by the sounds in the drop and the whole atmosphere and began to search around on SoundCloud and found different songs like “Animals” by Martin Garrix and “Apollo” by the Danish trio called Nonsens.
I remember I was sitting afterwards and thought that I wanted to create something like this, so I found FL Studio and I started to watch a lot of tutorials about how to produce. Some of my major influences are: MORTEN, Nonsens, Hardwell, Skrillex & Snavs.
In your experience: When making the first deals as a newcomer – what are the most important things to have an eye on?
I would say that the most important thing as a newcomer is to pick the right labels which can also provide you & your track with some good promotion, and NEVER be afraid of sending your demos to big labels.
Could you sum up some personal milestones in your artist development?
Since I started 4.5 years ago everything has been absolutely unbelievable. I started as a 16 year old boy with a dream and now I have played festivals, a lot of clubs and got more than 1.500.000 plays and meet some incredible human beings through music. I wake up everyday and feel SO blessed and thankful for everything.
As you’re doing a lot of live shows, can you tell us: What’s the secret of a smooth live show?
The mixing is quite important I would say haha, but your stage presence, microphone skills and your choice of music is really important too. I always start my sets with an intro that hopefully catches people and after that I build up my sets from 126-128 bpm and then I usually end up in 170 BPM. (Yeah i go hard)
Your tracks get featured on great playlists, including Spotify’s Bass Explosion. How do you manage to get your music added to successful playlists?
I acutally don’t know. In the beginning I just submitted my tracks through the Spotify playlist submission and suddenly one day they added some of my tracks to some of their official playlists, and since then they have almost added all my releases to one or two of their playlists.
After I signed with Quattro Music / Warner Music Denmark the playlist adding has been absolutely insane! I got my first New Music Friday with my latest single “Everyday” and ALOT of other official playlist adds by Spotify, Topsify and many others.
What can we expect from THOBY in the future?
A LOT of new music, collabs & gigs and right now me and my team are working on getting some international gigs in 2020.
How important are data insights for your decision making?
That’s really important! Without that I couldn’t see how many or where people are listening to my music and then I wouldn’t know what people like or not like.
Here’s a special treat from THOBY – a sneak peek of his upcoming official remix “ELIDA”:
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