Music to your cruise
DJ and music consultant Natalie Earp’s company Sound Purpose provides a bespoke music compilation service tailored to clients’ tastes, settings and activities. Now she’s partnered with Y.CO to offer an enhanced music service that lasts long after the charter ends…
DJ and music consultant Natalie Earp’s company Sound Purpose provides a bespoke music compilation service tailored to clients’ tastes, settings and activities. Now she’s partnered with Y.CO to offer an enhanced music service that lasts long after the charter ends
Natalie Earp
“It’s amazing how a song can bring back memories,” says Natalie Earp, music consultant and owner of Sound Purpose. Earp has joined brokerage house Y.CO and has launched Y.PLAY, a bespoke service designed to deliver music tailored to each client and cruise.
While plenty of yachts already seek out DJs to play parties aboard, what Earp is proposing is something far more personalised, tailored and ultimately, memorable. “I was in Formentera recently and a song came on that I hadn’t heard in probably ten years,” she says. “I was so excited to hear it and get it back in my collection. You can just sit there and hear it and remember exactly how you felt, what you were doing and who you were with when you heard it the first time. That’s part of what we’re doing for Y.CO yachting clients.”
Last year at the Monaco Yacht Show, to introduce Sound Purpose to the yachting market, Earp played a live set on the stand of Dutch audio-visual experts VBH. “Almost everyone I met there said, ‘you’ve got to meet Charlie Birkett, CEO of Y.CO,” Earp says. “When we finally met a few months later, there was an immediate click. He got what I was proposing and we set about launching Y.PLAY.”
Y.PLAY is a highly tuned bespoke music service that also understands the power of music-evoked memory and aims to enhance the yachting experience long after the voyage has ended. Upon boarding, clients receive an iPad loaded with 500 songs across 10 to 15 compilations—Earp doesn’t like the word playlist—plus 30 albums that match their tastes and preferences. Earp has had clients request compilations specifically for the tender, boxing workouts, power breakfasts and compilations specific to areas of the yacht like the bar, spa and dining room. She also offers a live DJ service aboard for late night parties or afternoons up on the sundeck, for instance.
By gifting the iPad and complete set of custom compilations to the owners and charter clients, Y.PLAY also provides a music trigger for the memories of the yachting experience that can be enjoyed and treasured and shared and updated. It’s rather ingenious and meshes perfectly with the Y.CO approach to all-round yachting experience.
The daughter of a superyacht broker, Earp was exposed to the yachting lifestyle from a young age. Over the course of her career, she’s DJed at some of the biggest clubs in the world. Lately, her passion for music and the power it wields over people’s sense of place and memory led to her launching Sound Purpose. The work, she says, is diverse, and challenging.
“Y.PLAY compilations are tailor-made and really are a labour of love,” she says. “One of my clients wanted me to consolidate all his music from lots of different sources. He’s looking for compilations that suit what he does: Fishing trips with clients, music for his private jet, dining music in his various homes. He wants the same selection wherever he is because of course he had different devices in various locations.”
For the Y.CO blog, Earp is producing “one yacht, one destination, one song,” a taste of her approach to the intersection of yachting and music. Currently, visitors to the website can experience Earp’s selections for Y.CO yachts Big Fish in New Caledonia (Chris Malinchak – Stranger); Panthalassa in Turkey (Mr Probz – Waves Robin Schulz Remix); and Alibi in Portofino (Banks – Warm Water Snakeships Remix).
“What's great, and what's challenging is that access to all music now is infinite,” Earp says. “I had a client request Persian music for a cocktail party, which I’m not an expert in. But they provided me with some initial tracks they loved and it gave me the opportunity to research and explore this wonderful world I knew little about and apply my skills to develop a compilation that they were overjoyed with.”
Yacht Initiative mix by Sound Purpose on Mixcloud
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