Setting The Tone with Isabelle Andrès

Before joining Believe in 2019, Isabelle Andrès spent a significant part of her career in the media and digital entertainment sectors. She was notably General Secretary & Director of Subsidiaries of Europe 2 radio (Lagardère Group), Administrative and Financial Director of Le Mouv’ Radio (Radio France Group). Isabelle was also Managing Director of the BetClic group from 2013 to 2017. At Believe, she previously held the position of Deputy General Manager in charge of operations.

What is your mission at Believe?

I am in charge of managing the Technology, Product and Operations teams. My role is to ensure that we design, develop, maintain and operate the best products and services to help our artists and labels grow in the digital music distribution world. We're also responsible for providing our internal sales and marketing teams with the right products to run their business.

What is the role of technology at Believe and what is its contribution in supporting artists?

In a digital world, technology is essential to help artists distribute, promote and monetize their content. To this end, we are developing a set of products to allow artists to free themselves from technical tasks to better focus on the artistic side and the development of their career.

Believe provides artists and labels with all-in-one content distribution solutions (from proper encoding to metadata enrichment to distribution on multiple platforms); content promotion and marketing products; data-driven analytics products that allow our artists to better understand how their content is being listened to and consumed. And of course, products for managing and collecting royalties generated by the consumption of content. All of our technologies are designed to make life easier for artists, allowing them to express their creativity.

Which challenges Believe must face to continue to provide the best service to artists?

Believe operates in a fast-growing international market. This means that we must constantly innovate to continue to provide our artists with the best technology. And we also need to be careful to offer products and technological solutions adapted to each of the territories we serve.

In this context, the role of data and machine learning is essential to make our products evolve as close as possible to the needs of artists and labels, but also to provide clients and internal teams with data-driven products that will amplify artists development and promotion actions.

Finally, we must also be able to provide digital distribution platforms with all the elements - including the much-vaunted metadata - that will enable them to enhance and promote our artists' content to increase the number of listeners.

What are the Tech profiles Believe will need to get through this new stage?

We are hiring in every sector: a wide range of developers, both back and front, especially in Java, React, etc. We are seeking profiles of data scientists and data engineers. And we regularly reinforce our product teams with product managers and product owners... As you can see, our recruitment options are broad!

How do you organize the day-to-day collaboration between the tech teams, the product teams and the operations teams?

Our teams are organized in tribes and squads, in which the Product and Engineering teams work together on a daily basis. These squads and tribes work autonomously on their priorities by implementing the AGILE method.

Of course, management also works very closely together: all the directors meet at least once a week to jointly agree on priority projects and ensure that roadmaps are followed. The Operations teams are also closely involved in the product design process since they use a large part of the products we build every day.

And because we believe it is vital to share information with all employees, we host a monthly Technology/Operations/Product webcast to share the latest news from the various departments.

How do you collaborate with artists to improve the tools you provide them?

When designing and developing our products, our Product teams attach a great deal of importance to the "Product Discovery" phase. We systematically involve labels and artists in this process, asking them about their needs, and we regularly conduct competitive analyses to better position ourselves on the market. Finally, we regularly carry out satisfaction surveys on each of our products: users' feedback is very valuable in identifying expectations and areas for improvement.

Believe is committed to greater diversity, can you say why this is important to your teams?

Diversity is a key performance factor: the diversity of experience and opinions allows us to challenge ourselves continuously without resting on our achievements. And diversity is also a major factor in the balance of the teams and the work atmosphere.

What is it about Believe that makes you want to get up in the morning?

Each day there are new challenges to face, new things to learn, inspiring people to meet at all levels of the organization. There is never a dull moment!

Join us on Welcome To The Jungle's Believe space to learn more about our business and our environment. You'll find a wide range of information about our team, the tech tools we work with on a daily basis and, of course, a list of all the current job openings.