An Interview w/ &FriendsNYC
Words: Noah Segal
December 8, 2023
The year is 2023 and you live in constant fear. Everywhere you go millennials with microphones ask you what you’re listening to. ‘Excuse me, what are you listening to?’ You try to tell them that you're not interested but they just won’t listen. ‘Excuse me, what are you listening to?’ they repeat. You try to run but they keep chasing. You open up your phone and try to seem busy; maybe they'll leave you alone. But you open Instagram, and they’re there too. You’re surrounded. You don’t know what to do.
&FriendsNYC offers an escape.
Created in early 2022, the stylized, aesthetically assembled music media platform has around 90 thousand followers and 7.5 million views on Instagram and over 2.5 million likes on TikTok. More importantly, &Friends has no videos asking pedestrians what they are listening to. Initially utilized as a platform for music suggestions, &Friends creates content focused on identifying new exciting musicians and providing short-form, intimate exposure to these artists through interviews, behind-the-scenes access, and recommendations. Something about the account feels overwhelmingly 2023. It could be the staticky skater-inspired visuals. It could be the consistent highlighting of emerging genres like Nightcore and Dance-Hip-Hop. It could also just be the medium. &FriendsNYC exists almost exclusively in short form content. From these videos, &Friends founder Danny Serebrennikov has curated an aesthetic, and with it, a successful brand identity. After leaving college without finding a job in the music industry, Serebrennikov first worked as a pharmaceutical marketer. He eventually moved to AEG where he gained experience as a tour accountant before realizing that he wanted to be closer to the artist. Without an obvious linear pathway, Serebrennikov saw a music media platform as the route. After gaining a rapid following in the first four months, Serebrennikov started posting daily short-form content to TikTok and Instagram. He hopes to expand &Friends out of its current music blog-esque state into a media-driven music label where he can sign artists, and develop them from a content perspective. Below is a transcript reflecting upon what &Friends finds exciting in 2023, and the current state of music media.
( The interview has been edited for clarity and length)
Noah Segal: What do you look for in the artist you promote? What excites you right now?
Danny Serebrennikov: Yeah, I think I've been saying this for like the last year, but I'm really obsessed with the crossover of dance music and hip hop. When I think of the festival world, it's like, you know, you have like the Rolling Loud crowd and you have like the Coachella crowd and I feel — especially after Drake dropped the dance album and Beyonce dropped a dance album and there are artists like TyriqueOrDie and like Rio Vaz, starting to pop up — there's a really interesting lane for rap and hip hop-esque things and dance music to cross over and bridge the gap between these two for audiences, in a fun way that brings like a hip hop edge to the dance floor.
NS: And outside of the intersection between hip hop and dance music, are there any movements or artists or sounds that you think are really gonna blow up in this upcoming year or that 2023 has been a really big year for?
DS: Yeah, I think the whole like night core wave of guys like Odetari, I think that's the beginning of a very long wave of artists coming up right now just because if you go look at Odetari’s discography and then you go to a Spotify similar artists and you look around and look at what these artists in that lane are doing, they're doing an insane number of streams.Then you go to TikTok and Instagram, and every post is just like crushing it, going to hundreds of thousands and millions of views on their post. And I think it's really interesting because it's so native to the internet and these crazy fan bases are developing and it's like very much like the pipeline of what like 2020 to 2021 like hyper pop was, you know, like all those internet kids are now listening to Odetari type music. And it's interesting too because Odetari is somewhat a dance artist. Are you familiar with him at all?
NS: (*shakes head in embarrassment*)
DS: Yeah. But you should, you should check him out. He lives in the hip hop world, but a lot of his beats are super futuristic and dance, I think everything about it is really interesting, that it does blend hip hop with dance music. It's crushing it. Just on TikTok and Instagram, there are multiple artists who are in his lane that are also crushing it. And it just seems like there's something really bubbling there that hasn't hit the mainstream yet, but it just seems like prime to explode.
NS: Cool. Thank you. So to shift back a little bit more to the platform: what would you say the biggest challenge you faced in establishing &Friends was? And what advice would you give someone who isn't necessarily on the most obvious path but wants to get involved in music?
DS: Yeah, I think one of the biggest challenges is constantly evolving, the need to adapt to the platforms. When I started on TikTok, I could go on and be like, ‘Yo, if you're going to the club tonight, here's this new song,’ and as long as there were likes and engagement, it would work.
And I feel when I started, it was very much like the Wild West. Like anything goes, like I said before. But now it's a lot more of how do you hone in on the niche. Like, are you using the right keywords to filter your post to the rap community, or the dance music community? How are you structuring your post? So TikTok really knows where to push it. And I think just in general it's gotten a lot harder to go viral. And so always having to think of new concepts and new ideas to introduce to the platform that hopefully the platform likes and so you can continue to like have to reach.
My formula on TikTok specifically has evolved so much. You know, at the beginning, it was, one song music recommendation, and then over the summer, I realized that trending sounds were working and then longer videos were working. But then the algorithm changed again and I had to revert back to the original formula.
And so it's just like making sure that you're staying in tune with whatever the platform is, really looking for and evolving so that your brand doesn't fade away.
And then in terms of advice, I would give to like up-and-coming people in music media, it's just trying something different. Like if you're gonna do a man-on-the-street interview or if you're gonna do talking head interviews, find at least one thing that really makes it unique because no one needs the basic interview format anymore. There's so much of it out there. No one wants to see your content if that's how it's gonna be.
NS: Yeah. Thank you. OK. I have some rapid-fire questions. Then I'll let you go. All right. How much money to only listen to logic for the rest of your life?
DS: Infinity Money.
NS: What's the album of the year for you?
DS: Jam City presents EFM.
NS: Artist of the Year for you?
DS: DJ.Heartstring.
NS: Word. Separation of church or state or nah?
DS: Yes, definitely.
NS: Track of the year?
DS: Cast Out by Moses Zadecka.
NS: Words to live by?
DS: Keep it moving, keep it moving.
NS: You rocking with Jorts?
DS: I'm not rocking with jorts. No word.