Secret Village releases music through platforms including Beatport and Spotify. It is the record label owned by Perry van de Vrede, founder of Leads to Scale. An internal case study: preparing and promoting releases involved constant searching and manual handovers.
We built one environment in which the same release data is used throughout the process. Rather than speeding up every individual task, we prevented information from having to be gathered all over again.
Artists release music on different labels. Releases scheduled too close together compete for attention. A shifted date also affects preparation: contracts, final audio files, distribution and promotion.
These dependencies were scattered across spreadsheets, Word, Dropbox and Google. People had to compare dates, gather files and set reminders themselves. The individual tools worked, but connecting them remained a manual task.
Artist details, tracks, artwork, files and statuses
Release planning takes artists’ other releases into account.
Promotion uses the data in the catalogue.
Artists receive files and current feedback through a personal link.
The website is updated from the same source.
We brought artist details, tracks, artwork, files and statuses together. The system shows what is missing and where action is needed. Once a release moves into the promotion phase, the same data is used. The label manager checks the content, but no longer has to rebuild the release in another application.
Secret Village and Phone Audio are managed in the same environment.
An available slot in the calendar is not automatically a suitable release date. That is why planning also accounts for blocked dates and submission deadlines. The system suggests dates, creates deadlines and blocks impossible choices according to the configured rules. Dependencies become visible before the release is prepared further.
DJs receive a personal promo link to listen to, download and review music. Feedback is optional: getting the music played matters more than forcing a response. For known contacts, the label can send a prefilled WhatsApp reminder itself.
Not everyone needs to receive the same promo at the same time. Selection and timing can be tailored to the recipient’s role.
The system tracks whether music is played or downloaded and which responses come in. Another deliberate choice is that promo downloads stop once the release is out.
The artist receives a different link: artwork, audio files, social media materials, platform links and incoming DJ feedback together. No collection of attachments that has to be put together again and again.
That feedback is updated while promotion is running. The artist no longer needs a new document each time to see the latest responses.
Distribution stays with Proton. There is no direct integration: we prepare the data in the order Proton asks for it, with copy buttons where possible. The handover remains manual, but without searching through documents. Email delivery also stays with a specialised service: we use Resend for that. We built the connections between processes, rather than rebuilding all the infrastructure.
Published releases are sent from the catalogue to the label website. Changes follow the same route. This removes a separate entry step in a website management system. We built the environment with Lovable and AI as development support; inside the tool, AI remains limited to error detection and small text adjustments. The improvement here comes from connecting the process.
At the time of the follow-up recording, the first four releases had been published through the system.
The system is in use and releases have been published with it. Planning, promotion, artist materials and website publishing work from the same information. Perry experiences time savings because gathering, transferring and rebuilding information is no longer necessary; these savings have not been measured in hours.
The structural change: people collaborate on the same release, instead of maintaining the same information separately.