For my group’s artistic development project, we have been working with Leeds and London based artist; “Myer”, stage name for Mya Shaw. Myer is a singer/songwriter who works with a band within Leeds Conservatoire. Knowing we would be undergoing this project, Myer approached our group and requested that we worked with her to develop her brand and artistry. From seeing her play live previously, it stood out to me that she was brought to tears during a performance of her song due to how emotionally invested she was in the track, and it felt quite captivating and cathartic to watch. Because of this, despite her very unusual sound, I could see a potential for her to discover a niche audience of people who connected with her music.
Prior to the start of the project, Myer was regularly uploading fairly low production quality videos of her playing snippets of her original songs, often in settings such as her bedroom or band rooms. Because of this, in our first meeting (October 2025), she expressed that social media was an area she wanted to have support with as it was an area she wanted to continue working on. We also asked Myer to outline her goals for the upcoming academic year, which included the recording and release of an EP and booking support slot gigs in Leeds across as many relevant genres as possible, ideally in line with the release of the EP.
In response to this, we discussed helping her with signing up to PRS, choosing a distributor to release her music through, a release schedule aligned with a live performance schedule, and a social media marketing plan. These roles were delegated between our group, and from this discussion, I was primarily assigned the task of setting Myer up with a producer who could help her with her release schedule ideas, as well as working on her branding through genre, and audience development through funding.
Case Study 1
Following the first meeting, I contacted a Leeds Conservatoire based producer, Charlie Throp. Having previously worked with Charlie with artists on other projects, I knew that he was a very versatile and dedicated producer who wanted to work with as many different styles of artists while studying as he could. I felt that lots of other producers would not be interested in an artist with a sound as unique as Myer’s, whereas Charlie enjoys researching the best ways to record new artists to best fit them. I set up a meeting for them both, and they came to the agreement that Charlie would record all of Myer’s music and master it, but that Myer would do the post-production by herself, because of how specific she wanted her tracks to sound. Myer expressed that ideally, the recording of the EP would be completed by February of 2026, and released around the following April.
We then set up an arrangement for weekly 3 hour studio sessions for Myer’s band and Charlie to work together, as this was the only time Myer’s band had. The first rehearsal took place in late November of last year, and was quite chaotic and disorganised due to lack of rehearsal and studio etiquette from some members of Myer’s band. However, Charlie still managed to produce some great recordings from the session, which Myer and her band were all happy with.
Following this session, Myer had made it apparent that the EP was actually 9 tracks, instead of the predicted standard EP length of 3-4 tracks. Each of these 9 tracks had a play-time of around 5 minutes long, making this EP more adjacent to an album length. This prompted me to do some research on debut releases and how it is effective to do this, as I did not think a 9 track EP was necessarily the right path for Myer.
In the modern era of streaming, it is important to consider how algorithms play into releases as well. Spotify has a “Release Radar” which alerts listeners every Friday of new music. Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” playlists are also more likely to feature artists with consistent and freqent releases, which is much more aligned with a waterfall release strategy, popularised by The Chainsmokers in 2018. This is when an artist releases a series of singles over a few months, and then combines them into an EP or album release. This works by building up momentum and listeners for a larger release, and makes it much lower risk. It has worked perfectly for so many artists that are in the uprise of their careers. In particular, previous Leeds Conservatoire student Ellur released three singles in 2024, an EP in 2025 with all of those songs plus one new one, three more singles, and finally an album in 2026, “At Home In My Mind”. The album has all of these songs with a handful of unreleased ones. This has massively grown her career over the past two years, and has amassed her 81k monthly listeners.
I put this research to Myer, yet she was still confident in her decision to proceed with the original project length. Charlie explained that weekly 3 hour recording sessions would not be enough time to complete a project of this size, with reading weeks and Christmas break considered, especially with the lack of rehearsal and knowledge of the songs that was apparent from within the band. Despite this, Myer was still adamant that there was plenty of time, as she decided to record all the vocals at home. Although Charlie was still not confident in this, he still ran another studio session the following week, which ended up being even less productive than the previous week. He strongly expressed to Myer that this schedule was not going to work and that he could not produce her work to a high enough standard to be proud of it under this time constraint. I agreed with Charlie and supported him with this, but unfortunately, Myer and her band were not willing to compromise with the schedule, so after advice from other producers and Leeds Conservatoire tutors, Charlie stepped down from the role. He still sent Myer everything that they had worked on together, including a track that Charlie had mastered for Myer as a favour outside of this recording project. I have included an example of what they made together.
Myer was quite disappointed in Charlie’s decision on this, which led me to wanting to find out more about handling difficulties in relationships during recording projects.
I contacted some other working producers from local studios to query about how they would have handled this scenario in a professional setting.
I reached out to Tim Malkin from Green Room Studios in Leeds, and explained the situation to him, without mentioning any names. I asked him how he would handle this situation if it was an artist he was working with in his studio, and his first notable point was that if he would have suggested that the artist did a single instead of an EP, so that the artist can see the producer’s “work process” before deciding to commit to a larger project. This is something that Charlie did do, but as mentioned, he tried to explain multiple times that the project was too large, but Myer did not want to slow it down.
Tim also suggested that he would have “insisted” on going to a rehearsal to help arrange pieces for pre-production before getting into the studio. This is also something that Charlie did, and something he does with every artist he works with. Charlie also takes a lot of time to listen to the demos and research new ways of recording different styles and instruments, so that he can be as informed and prepared as possible for any artist he works with. The amount of effort he put in was a contributing factor as to why he stepped down, as he felt that his level of commitment was not being met by Myer and her band, despite Charlie being the one to offer to help them out.
In terms of the apparent lack of rehearsal from Myer’s band, Tim mentioned that he has often ended up stepping in and playing the parts for the band and recording himself playing them. He explained that “by them teaching you the songs they kind of learn it better themselves”. I am not sure whether Charlie tried this or not, but I do know that Myer is extremely protective over her work and I am not confident that she would have allowed Charlie to step in instrumentally.
The most interesting thing I took from this conversation is that Tim said “It depends how much work you’re willing to do to fulfil what the artist has in their mind, and you have to set a limit on that otherwise you’d just be working forever for no money. There’s definitely a balance”.
From this conversation, it became clear that Charlie did everything he could to make this project work. Ultimately, Charlie is also a student working on lots of other projects and assignments which means that he simply did not have the capacity to keep pouring his time into Myer’s project with no reward. Charlie has said that he is still grateful for the opportunity and that he has learned a lot from it, such as not taking on more projects than he can manage, in case of the outcome that they are much more demanding than anticipated, such as in this instance.
I offered to find Myer another producer to continue recording with, but she decided to continue the recordings by herself at home, with help from a producer external from Leeds Conservatoire. After the Christmas break, I checked back in with Myer on how she was doing with this side of her project, and she informed me that she was working by herself on the production side of her music.
Case Study 2
Alongside the recording of the EP, I had planned to create some social media posts to promote it in the lead up to its release. This would have included snippets of the tracks, behind the scenes footage, and deep-dives into some of the more complex lyrics on the tracks. However, as our partnership with Myer progressed, it became clear that Myer had changed her stance on how she wanted to present herself as an artist. She has now almost fully rejected social media based promotion, and has gone down a much more traditional approach of trying to grow her audience just by playing live.
From this, I realised that a much better route for her to sustain her career financially is through applying for funding and grants from organisations such as the arts council. This kind of financial support would give Myer the time to focus on refining her art and creating more of a show than just a gig, and give her the opportunity to fund performances, as a result growing her audience in a more traditional way, without worrying about having a massive social media presence.
At first, I was sceptical about how this would work in the modern era of social media. So, I looked into artists that are both similar in genre and style to Myer, but also went down the more traditional route of promotion. Although Bjork began to massively grow in the 90s, she has managed to sustain her career without using social media as much of a marketing tool as most other artists. Although Bjork has now amassed 2.5 million followers on Instagram, her content is not the much more personal lifestyle content that upcoming musicians are encouraged to post. Bjork’s content is sparse and consists of political statements and commentary, as well as avant garde fashion and art content. It is mostly a journal of traditional media posted digitally.
Bjork’s career is described as “redrawing the boundaries between music, art and technology” (Paul Nichols, PRS, 2011). This is a very similar route that Myer wants to go down, with her musical artistry leaning heavily on visual art. This is exactly how Bjork grew her platform, by creating an alternative way of branding herself. Instead of relying on social media to promote her albums, she creates a digital realm to support them. This meant that she could easily create a distinct visual narrative to use as artwork both during her live shows and in photoshoots and art.
Although this seems irrelevant in the modern age of social media, she has been able to make this accessible to younger audiences by using the marketing tool of gamification (Nick Pelling, 2003). Her 2011 album “Biophilia” was released in the form of a series of apps the listeners could experiment with the sounds and techniques that are playing in the songs. By taking this step to innovate new ways of consuming music, it has kept Bjork relevant and successful within her niche. It is a clear example that there are ways for Myer to find her own audience by using unconventional methods and that there is definitely a market for it. However, it takes much longer and much more money than the social media route which is why funding is a great option.
After researching the different options that the Art Council provide, I think the best option would be the “Developing Your Creative Practise” grant. This grant offers funding from £2000 – £12,000, and is for “individual creative and cultural practitioners to focus on their development and take them to the next stage of their practice” (Arts Council England, 2019). I believe this is the best option for Myer, as it covers all realms of creative practise, not just music, which will allow her to venture into all the different avenues that could help to grow her career, such as digital art and fashion. I also think that this route eliminates the need for Myer to have a clear, defined name for her genre, as this is much more of an all-round creative project, rather than just a musical project.
Case Study 3
Until Myer can potentially get this funding or start this angle of the project, she is still actively trying to participate in the Leeds grassroots music scene. While she is performing as just a musical artist, there is a lot of debate about whether artists should be able to clearly define her genre or not. I found that this was a slight struggle throughout the project, as I could not communicate to external parties, such as Charlie Throp, what exactly her music is. Instead of having a clear label to her genre, she describes herself as “jazz-grunge”, with influences from soul , RnB and punk, though she still rejects having to describe her music by describing other genres.
This raised the question as to whether or not it is still important to be able to define an artist’s genre in an age where all music seems to blend and crossover genre borders. In terms of streaming music, there seems to be much more of a rise in “vibe over genre” (Kezia McCann, 2024), but I still think that being able to define your genre is an important tool in knowing how to promote your music to a certain target audience. Myer explained that her way of getting around this is to play support slots for bands of any genre, in the hope that their audience will find something they like within her music, because of how many different genres her music blends. I have yet to see this method in action, but I am interested to see how this works.
Most of Myer’s gigging history in Leeds has been through the promotion company “Not A Thing”. Dan Akers, founder of the company, puts on a multitude of events covering a huge variety of genres around the centre of Leeds.
His events have been a great platform for emerging artists to play and meet other artists, and because of the amount of variety in the acts that he books (including Myer), I decided to reach out to him to gain some insight on the relevance of genres in the current live scene in Leeds.
He opened by describing himself as an “open genre promoter”, which is he expresses is not necessarily the best business model to go for, as having a specific brand or theme to then build a crowd requires consistency. This means that it is harder to promote events when there is no clear genre due to the lack of consistency from night to night. From an audience perspective however, he said that the audience buy tickets for nights for a “particular style or expectation” rather than a genre and that overall, customers are “less bothered about genre than promoters are”.
From this, I decided that it is more important to have a clear brand or genre from a promotional and marketing perspective, rather than an audience development perspective. This means that it is crucial for Myer to be able to convey her artistry through means aside from her sound, with strong visual elements such as her album covers, photoshoots and fashion. I had previously put Myer in contact with a band photographer, Max Morton, and together they produced the following images, which I believe do a great job of helping the audience to know what to expect.
Reflection
Looking at this project from a more reflective lens, I believe this project had the potential to be much more successful and productive than it was. This is for a number of reasons, in particular the level of engagement we were getting back from Myer compared to what we put in, and the lack of cohesion in the group itself. I also recognise that I could have done more to encourage Myer to work with us more, especially as I was the main point of contact from our group to her.
Speaking more specifically on the group dynamic, I felt that this project could have been a lot more productive if there was a more equal involvement from each member. There was a significant absence of two members of our group throughout the entire academic year, which hindered the amount of work we could cover between the remaining three of us. When the roles were delegated at the beginning of the year, we gave ourselves quite a lot of tasks to complete with Myer, which could not all be fulfilled due to the decline in participation.
Because of this, it was very hard to meet up with the entire group, and we only actually managed to have two in person meetings with the full group. I think that the three of us still did a very good job considering this. However, this led to me unintentionally taking on more of a leading role and I felt as though I was carrying the responsibility of making sure we still delivered a good end result. I found this quite stressful as I would have appreciated further input and support from the rest of the group, especially coming up to the time of the presentation.
Reflection on Case Study 1
As mentioned, I faced a few challenges in the production side of this project. I have already covered Charlie’s perspective, but from my role in this group, I think the whole scenario could have been dealt with much more smoothly. Charlie did come to me for advice on whether or not he should step away from the project or not, but as I am not too familiar with the production process, I left the decision in his hands and trusted his opinion. Myer did contact our group after Charlie stepped down (see below), but upon reflection, I should have attended some of the studio sessions myself, so that I could better understand the reality of the situation.
I think the lack of input from me in this instance may have made Myer lose faith in us slightly for this project, as she then declined my offer to find her another producer to work with, and as a group, we started having a significant decline in communication from her.
I managed to get contact from her in February 2026, and she informed me that she was not able to finish the recording project due to a lack of time and band availability. This confirmed to me that Charlie was correct in his thoughts on the project and his choice to step down, as even by just recording in her bedroom by herself, she did not have enough time. She has now entirely put this EP aside for the time being, and instead, she is working on a solo EP for her assessed songwriting project at the end of this academic year.
I believe that if Myer had allowed us to find her an alternative producer, I could have been a lot more hands-on and successful with the recording side of this project. Following the scenario with Charlie, I had planned to attend recording sessions and rehearsals, but I was instead left in the dark about how the project was progressing. If I could have been more involved on behalf of the group, I believe we could have got an EP recorded and on the way to release by cutting down the number of tracks and focusing on quality over quantity. From my research and own prior knowledge, I had always believed that a single would be much more effective, and I wanted to continue to encourage Myer to release a single first. This would have been much more achievable than a 9 track EP. Despite this, based on the way she responded to Charlie and our advice on the matter, I do not think I could ever have been successful in encouraging her to do this. This is because of how passionate and protective Myer is over her work, and this was not going to change from the words of me or Charlie.
As this all happened relatively early in the process of this project, it delayed the progression greatly. I was unsure on how to move forward with my role in the group due to this being the area I was planning to focus most on.
Reflection on Case Study 2 and 3
As well as this rejection of assistance with Myer’s EP production, she also rejected our original agreement of providing her with assistance with her social media. This meant I had to find alternative ways to grow her audience through funding. It would have been a lot more beneficial to establish what Myer really wanted to work on much earlier in the project, as instead it seemed as though she was just agreeing to whatever we suggested without much intention behind it.
Going forward, when working with an artist I would have more of a formal interview style conversation with them from the beginning of the partnership. I found that having a more casual, friendly working relationship with Myer meant that there was no clear commitment from either end to deliver a specific result, and more that she was making artistic decisions and changing things about her brand as we went along. This made it quite hard to keep up, and I think a clear outlined, contracted plan would have made it much easier to see some real results in her artistic development.
At the beginning of this project, I thought that the issue of Myer’s unclear genre definition would be a much larger issue than it was. Following my research, I do think that having this definition is a lot less crucial than it once was and that within the avant-garde, alternative approach to live performance that Myer is aiming for, the question of what her music is becomes somewhat irrelevant. Working with an artist who is progressing in this way has made me a lot more open minded to the possibilities of what it actually means to be an artist, and that she does not have to fit clearly into the ideas of what music is. I am also interested in the idea that rejecting genre is a genre within itself.
Conclusion
Although there is not much tangible evidence of what Myer has achieved because of this project, I feel that it has still been successful, despite knowing I would do a lot of things differently. Overall, I learnt a lot from working as an external party between an artist and a producer. I now know how to better handle this dynamic to make it be as productive as possible. I have presented Myer with my ideas and research on applying for funding instead of relying on social media, but I am unsure whether she will take this forward or not. Myer’s lack of genre has recently landed her a slot at Liverpool Sound City through Leeds Conservatoire, so I am interested to see how she continues to market and brand herself without this clear label.
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