Pro Interview Series: The Vault

Mathieu Deranlot & Alexandra Idiart-Benavides :
Label Founders | Publishing | Artist Services | Music Consulting

Nothing is more insightful than music and audio pros talking about what they do, and how they do it. This is what we offer with our Pro Interview Series.
This month we’re very happy to introduce Alexandra Idiart-Benavides and Mathieu Deranlot from the label The Vault. They tell us about past, current, and future projects. Of course, they also mention the new tool they adopted to improve their workflow 😉

Hello, could you both introduce yourselves ?

Mathieu: My name is Mathieu Deranlot. I co-founded with Alexandra the label, publisher and artist services company The Vault. We co-created in 2019 a music and audiovisual production company called Plaza Atlantic through which we also sub-publish several catalogs like the 23 000 tracks from Plaza Mayor Company Ltd.

Alexandra: I’m Alexandra Idiart-Benavides. Although I have dual citizenship (Canada and France), Montreal is my hometown. As Mathieu said, we launched The Vault and Plaza Atlantic. It is still a young and exciting adventure. On my side, I’m also a consultant for Wagram Stories in North-America. I’m passionate about artist development and management.

Like many people in the creative industries, I understand both of you juggle between multiple professional activities?

Alexandra: Yes indeed! At the moment, at The Vault we have a little team that helps with developing the careers of Hansom Ēli and JaRon Marshall on all fronts; providing artist and label services (radio tracking, press relations, digital marketing, pitching to DSPs, etc) in Canada for acts signed or managed by other companies.

I like to say that we have our tentacles in different networks and markets, always looking for the next relevant opportunities for our artists’ music… We juggle between distinct professional activities that require distinct organizations and processes.
Truth be told, wearing several hats is something truly enjoyable and never boring.

Mathieu: Before The Vault and Plaza Atlantic, I had an artistic career as a professional cello player. I studied old and new music for many years, and toured quite extensively. My focus was Baroque cello and the viola da gamba.

Following those musical years, I had the need to explore other activities in less rigid environments, so I worked for French television production companies as a technical director, and eventually got involved in documentary film projects. I’m lucky to have had the opportunity to explore both sides of the medal (as an artist and behind the scenes as a manager) before we launched The Vault & Plaza Atlantic.

Lastly, we also started working on a tech project, as we’re really into new technologies especially when it comes to productivity tools for the music industry. This is why I closely follow Bridge.audio’s progress. We are currently working on a blockchain solution that would ensure, in part, full traceability of copyrighted audio files.

Can you tell us about your most recent projects?

Mathieu: The Vault is our new venture. We launched the label in February 2021. Our first two signings are Hansom Ēli and JaRon Marshall.

Alexandra: Hansom Ēli is a talented Canadian sibling duo, that has been flourishing regardless of the pandemic and that keeps on defying their comfort zones. Singing in French, English and sometimes Spanish, they got a lot of love from the Montreal community in the last year, from radio stations to DSPs.

JaRon Marshall is an American solo producer and pianist from Louisiana. He’s known as one of the members of Grammy-nominated band Black Pumas. He has an extensive knowledge of music and the history of music, especially in the US. He’s such a creative soul, instilling profound thoughts in his artistic process, while being very eloquent on social matters. His music is “the marriage between funk, jazz, R&B, neo-soul and hip-hop.” His latest EP is called The Prequel

What tools were you using so far to store and share your music with other professionals?

Mathieu: Well you know, the old “classics” : WeTransfer, Dropbox, and Soundcloud for private links. We enjoy Bridge.audio because it gathers storage and sharing features with the focus on audio files, and because we have many options available for our custom links.

What did you gain by switching to Bridge.audio? Could you give us a concrete example?

Alexandra: At The Vault, we use Bridge to generate promotional links, playlists for partners, artists and their teams… I’ve noticed Mathieu being very thorough with the links we generate, especially in terms of branding! Hansom Ēli’s latest release (EP Fièvre) is proving very successful, so we also use Bridge links to share their work with digital streaming providers, music supervisors, music directors at radio stations, booking agencies, etc. We generate links filled with all the extra media needed to go alongside the audio: pictures, videos, PDFs…

We invited the artists themselves on our Bridge workspace. That allows for increased productivity on upcoming releases.

Mathieu: We really enjoy having this Bridge.audio workspace to store all the productions of our two main artists at The Vault. For example JaRon is a very prolific writer, sometimes sending us 60 new songs or beats all at once! Bridge.audio offers a great solution to store and sort out all this work in progress. We can then process these new productions, filling all the relevant metadata, adding tags, enriching new release projects, etc.

Another key advantage is that we invited the artists themselves on our Bridge workspace. That allows for increased productivity on upcoming releases. We also use Bridge to exchange files with our sound engineers and mixers.

Alexandra: We curated an exclusive playlist “The Vault” on Bridge.audio with a mix of tracks from Hansom Ēli and JaRon Marshall ! A great way to discover those amazing talents that Mathieu and I are so proud to represent.