House Finesse
House music podcast since 2005
Another five years have passed with our podcast delivering regular house music content to the global audience.
The frequency may have reduced to quarterly mixes but we're still going strong whilst industry heavyweights such as Defected are really owning the house music podcast market (and rightly so).
I wanted to celebrate 10 years of the whole podcast since it's original effort in July 2005 so arranged a series of guest mixes along with some content from the regular hosts, myself and Souljackerz.
It was amazing to get such huge names from around the music industry involved including Hed Kandi's David Dunne, Defected's Sam Divine, J Paul Getto, Jay Santi & Stuart Ojelay plus some good friends of the show, Paul Velocity and DJ Cruze, as well.
New hosts, new format and another new brand to take the podcast in.
By dropping the "Funky" part, it allowed us to extend our repertoire to a wider audience, but still keep to our roots as the podcast evolved.
Souljackerz took the reins for the first 6 months whilst I adjusted to having our second child, inviting along some stellar DJ's along to support the podcast and (ideally) bring new audiences with them
After 3 years of growth, a range of frequencies (fortnightly at it's peak) and 50 episodes, the Funky House Finesse brand was put to rest.
I had my second child due to arrive soon so decided to reach out to some local talent, Souljackers who I'd featured on several occasions. We agreed to collaborate on the podcast with a slightly different brand (dropping the "Funky" part of our name) and use our connections to invite more guest DJ's along to enjoy the audience reach.
Following a (short) break from doing the original podcast, it didn't take long for me to get itchy fingers, desperate to get back behind the decks and share my love for house music.
With a fresh new brand, longer format and plan for wider distribution across internet radio stations, Funky House Finesse was launched.
After 3 years of sharing monthly mixes on the podcast feed, I decided to bring the One Phat DJ podcast to an end (for the timebeing as it turned out).
It was the end of an era with the (CD-friendly) 80 minutes sessions, creative show names with accompanying artwork and monthly commitment and what a journey I'd been on.
Following some analysis of the metrics, I noticed a spike of downloads to the podcast. It was only when I opened up iTunes that I realised the podcast was number 22 in their music podcast charts (despite having a more prominent feature than Defected on the landing page)
You know you're doing something right when Apple decide to feature you centre stage on their Podcasts landing page (https://flic.kr/p/F4Yux)
This was nearly 2 years into producing the podcast with regular (monthly) content gaining great downloads and listener feedback.
I had the taste for some new music podcasts so popped along to the iTunes directory. Low and behold, there I was on the homepage (alongside my good friend DJ Cruze too).
Its pretty cool being in the same league as Defected, Kerrang, Radio 1 and Jarvis Cocker - especially during the early days of podcasts
One of the earliest features on the iTunes Podcast Homepage, alongside some pretty heavyweight names including David Guetta and Defected Records.
This was just a year into making the podcast but demonstrates (a) what can be achieved with a little side project and (b) the power of Apple during the early stages of podcasts.
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