Bullet Music

Atlanta Music News and Reviews Website Keeps the Band Together with RingCentral Glip™

Industry
Travel and
Hospitality
Hq
Atlanta, Georgia
Year founded
-

Employees
20
Bullet Music logo
Industry
Travel and
Hospitality
Hq
Atlanta, Georgia
Year founded
-

Employees
20
Every time I jump on the dashboard, I get a nice calendar view at the top, where I can see where we are on everything and what tasks I have to worry about.
Sam Lawrence
Editor-in-Chief, Bullet Music
At Atlanta’s Bullet Music, Editor-in-Chief Sam Lawrence makes and tracks assignments with RingCentral Glip. The startup website publishes concert reviews, artist interviews, videos, and a bi-monthly podcast, covering a wide range of music styles including electronic, rock, hip hop, and funk.
Glip is RingCentral’s team messaging platform, which includes collaboration and productivity tools like file sharing, task management, and a shared calendar. Photographers and writers typically use the Glip mobile apps for iPhone and Android to monitor team conversations. When they get a Glip alert, they know it’s Bullet Music business and to reply quickly if they want an assignment, Lawrence says.
A typical function for Glip is group messaging a team of photographers to find out who is available to shoot a concert, Lawrence says. “Being able to jump into a chat with the three or four people I need—without having to bombard the whole list—is a critical use case for us.” The rapid pace of team chat messaging is also a better match than email for immediate troubleshooting if, for example, a writer or photographer has issues getting a concert venue to honor their press credentials, he says.

A startup’s challenge

Bullet Music was founded in early 2016 by Liz Turcotte, a digital marketing professional who wanted to boost Atlanta’s underground music scene. The site is staffed by a small but dedicated team of about 20 people. Because Bullet Music runs on a tight budget, Glip’s offer of free accounts, which can be upgraded as needed, was of “monumental value,” Lawrence says.

Lawrence works in the software industry but has been writing about music, producing music, and working as a DJ since college. “I jumped in as a writer and quickly found I loved being part of the core team,” he says. As the website begins to attract advertising, he looks forward to the opportunity to “quit everything else and do this,” he says. Meanwhile, it is a labor of love.

Creating a professional-quality publication means publishing news while it is still relevant, like getting interviews with musicians online before their concerts. Early on, the editorial team tried communicating through a Facebook group but found the mix of work and personal messages too confusing.
Their creative director introduced them to Glip, and Lawrence was impressed by the way it combines messaging with Glip Tasks for structured collaboration. “Every time I jump on the dashboard, I get a nice calendar view at the top, where I can see where we are on everything and what tasks I have to worry about,” Lawrence says.

Other team chat tools he has used in his day job require the addition of third-party software for project management. “This is nice and lightweight,” he says.

How Bullet Music uses Glip

Turcotte takes the lead on confirming assignments, while Lawrence does the copyediting. For each story, they create a task assigned to multiple people, each of whom must check off that they have done their work. For example, a feature interview might be assigned to a writer, a photographer, and a multimedia producer. If a story has been written and edited but is missing a photograph or a video clip, Lawrence can see that at a glance and message the person responsible for the missing element.

“It’s tasks and conversation for us all day, especially because the work is so deadline driven,” Lawrence says. “It’s really, really tough to get stuff in on time. We wouldn’t be able to do it if we didn’t have a central place where we can see everything on a calendar.”
Because Bullet Music runs on a tight budget, Glip’s offer of free accounts, which can be upgraded as needed, was of “monumental value.
Sam Lawrence
Editor-in-Chief, Bullet Music
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