Three years ago Declan Cosgrove walked away from a highly paid career as a corporate insurance broker to pursue his dream of writing music. Working from his bedroom in Bamford, he started creating websites to earn some money and to help market his music globally. Now he's leading the field with a unique e-mail marketing product after forming two highly successful companies in Manchester and Dublin.
Naming Virgin and EMI among his clients, in the last nine months Declan has transformed his life and this week Granada Television has been filming his company for a new series based on lifestyles of the future and how they will be affected by technology.
Declan is the co-director of two companies, Bite IT Ltd, which designs web sites, and m3m Media Group, which is an online marketing service specialising in the music industry.
But it is his latest marketing tool that Declan's company has created, the 'eSingle', which sets him apart from his competitors. Although similar companies are able to create and send e-mails using audio, graphics, web links, and information to help to promote bands, the m3m Media Group is the only one able to include video footage, without the need for any special programs or 'plug-ins'. This is done with the aid of a compression program, which was pioneered by his cousin and co-founder of m3m Media. This and enables bands to send out a powerful multimedia preview of their video and music, to a global fan base and to collect feedback from them.
Bite IT Ltd are also one of the main sponsors, and designers of the official website for the annual UK music industry conference 'In The City', which is being held in Manchester in September.
Having already signed most of the major record companies, Declan's now aiming to sign hundreds of independent labels and is planning to spend a great deal of money marketing his own product. He said "This is the new way to market music and that includes smaller labels and unsigned bands as well as the big names. It's only recently that we've actually launched the eSingle and it's amazing how quickly it has taken off. Leaving a job where I'd been for eight years may seem like a bit of a risk, but it was the best decision I ever made. As well as the financial success, I'm also making more contacts in the music industry than I ever did when I was trying to write music, so as my management team grows, I will be able to spend more and more time writing music, which is where this all began."
Presented by Coronation Street's Chris Bisson, alias Vikram, Wired World is a five part series and will be on Thursdays at 7:30pm, starting from 28 September, and Declan will be featured at the end of October.