PTN: “More than thinking about the numbers you need to find your own figure”

“I just wanted to be the artist, not having a thousand burnout / and those who thought that it takes a therapist also to treat the soldouts”, Sing Riccardo Zanotti in “Burnout”, a song by “Hello World”, released at the end of 2024. In the meantime, the band has made another tour in the stadiums and live music has become a theme of discussion that goes beyond the experts: it was Selvaggia Lucarelli. To the general attention the question, then delegating the explanation of the phenomenon of nuclear tactical penguins to colleague Michele Monina.
Are the PTN the “underdogs” of the Italian system? Their 2023 tour was actually a surprise for many: initially only one San Siro was scheduled, the requests led them to make 11 dates between stadiums and arenas. But the same can no longer be said today, even if their numbers continue to attract less the attention of those of other colleagues.
It is not only a matter of numbers – but of a figure (stylistic): this explains Riccardo Zanotti, with whom we have made a long conversation to make us tell how the PTN work, how they organize themselves to make their choices, how they relate to colleagues: “I think that of the concerts is not a war in which the game is made to the biggest coriander”, he says responding to a joke of Cesare Cremonini. They have chosen not to do more dates, despite having the opportunity and the request.

Let’s start from the recent numbers of the penguins: 420 thousand tickets sold, multiple appearances of individuals and albums in the mid -year charts. What has changed from your 2023 tour to today and from “Fake News” to “Hello World”?

In qualitative terms, the more difficult you go, the more difficult: it is the golden rule in general of any musician. You have to rediscover the sounds, the ways to arrange, the harmonic sequences because at a certain point they are a little cloying: you have already used them, you must always find new formulas but at the same time without losing your stylistic figure. The listeners are used to one thing and you must always play to destabilize them but also on being understandable and “Relatable”.

In quantitative terms, instead?

We live in a sort of limbo that we have self -employed around, a bit like what the bank around him was drawn in advertising with a circle on earth. We have a border within which the numbers do not enter, there are only people. Then clearly the numbers are also very important, but then they are like guests and like fish: after a few days they always smell. They turn against you. We try to live in a quiet and peaceful way without thinking too much about quantity but more thinking about quality.

Have you made a second tour in the stadiums in a different condition of experience, design and ideas?

At the opening of the second tour we were still there to ask ourselves if it made sense to do this, as it would go: the history of our stadiums is still young, it is made up of two tours, it is not that of Vasco or Ligabue. You are always a little insecure.
But as soon as the sales opened we already had the scent that would go well. We said to each other: we could do other dates. But we preferred to be a little more conservative.
We must also be careful not to saturate and not to saturate: it is a period in which the push of post-covid is over, people still want to go out to see concerts, however, select with great care among those who make quality live. And there are in Italy, thanks to the sky: I think of Cremonini, I think last, of course Vasco. We haven’t touched.

What is the decision -making process and how do you organize yourself, as a band and as a structure compared to these decisions?

There are more nuclei, because there is always talk of a group of us six, which we are a part of the whole. Then there is a team behind. Our manager Gianrico Cuppari who deals with numbers, figures and prospects. With him we confront these parts and with the booking, which having a gigantic amount of data available, has the hint of what the market is. We try to create a very relaxed and very quiet climate in which everyone can say their own, from the last person who joined us this year: in my opinion this thing saves us and preserves us from a lot of problems.

You have the same management from the beginning, worked with Sony for the record part for some time. The only recent change was the passage with Magellano two years ago for concerts. How much does it count to create a trusted chain?

In my opinion, confidence is not necessarily universal quality. Attention, it is fundamental, but first it takes the skill, which then determines the trust. Then of course in our path there were cases where we made the wrong judgment, as in the path of all. The first stadium – at the beginning we thought of a single San Siro – and then the consequent tour: there it took a good courage, we had to find someone who had confidence in us, a company of people who were willing to commit something very out of the patterns at that moment, and this was Magellan. In the last two to three years, more concerts have been seen in this dimension, but when the news of the penguins in the stadiums came out, many have also caught their nose wondering how it was possible.

On the theme of concerts you had already written a song, “Burnout”. What do you think, now that we talk about it no longer just among professionals?

In 2022 I wrote “I am not cool” that ended saying “but St. Peter did not open in a San Siro Sold out”. It is not that large numbers can then allow you to reach a phantom paradise of musicians …
It is easy to say when the numbers are from yours, but you must also have the courage to say banality: guys, these things count up to a certain point. I say it above all by speaking to other artists, because then these things come to the public up to a certain point.
We have a study here in Milan South and every day we go to this bar where there is a boy who wants to be a singer but is working there to support himself. I have done it for years, I know very well what that stuff means there … Here, it is above all to him that I say: fucking a little more than these spotify numbers. Before numbers it is even more important to find your figure.

What is your figure then?

That song is a manifesto in which I declared that we were not looking for the coolnesswe didn’t look for easy listening, we didn’t want to be part of a subculture like Pop Indies, but we followed different ideas, those of a band. I don’t think we have ever been seen as an extremely transgressive project, we found our way …

But then the numbers tell each other, and how. Cesare Cremonini, presenting his tour, made an indirect joke about you saying that telling the numbers of the kilos of confetti can also be avoided …

With Cesare we feel, there is no controversy, it was more an inspiration that made me laugh. I am super fans of these jokes between artists: it is a little irony, it puts a little pepper in the relationship …
He is a person who has to teach a lot: he told his path remembering that at a certain point, in early 2000, he didn’t go to see him anyone, but then he retired. The most absurd thing for me is that he also did it with songs that belong to that period: he had already before people’s ears were ready to listen to them.

There is no competition between artists, then?

I think that that of concerts is not a war in which the biggest coriander race is made, but it must be a moment of joy, sharing. We have a different idea of what must be a concert compared to Cremonini, compared to Vasco, compared to many others who now have tours in the stadiums.

What is your idea of a concert in the stadiums different?

Look, for a very simple and intrinsic reason: we are a band. These other great artists are soloists: when you go to see Caesar you want to see Caesar, because it is a frontman, that stage holds him alone.
I say with great tranquility: we do not hold the stage alone, we are strong because we handle each other with each other. The bands are an extinction species, Vasco is very different from Caesar, just as Ligabue is very different from the two of them, and therefore each has its own particularity.

You as a spectator did you go to the concerts in the stadiums or to very big concerts? Do you still like them?

Yes, I’m going to see them, I like them very much and I don’t even know how to tell you how many concerts I went to my life because I totally lost the bill. At a certain point I kept tickets like Talisman in a sort of small box and then I stopped because it no longer contained them.
But I really like going to small places. I like the big ones, but I go more often to concerts of small bands or small artists, I also like to discover new stuff. And there maybe today is more difficult because they stop you, they ask you for photos, sometimes it can also be embarrassing because you find yourself in the midst of a big confusion, you can’t enjoy the show. But I must say that my locals in which I am completely unnoticed I have them and I go there very often …

Three years ago you, Gianrico Cuppari and Nina Selvini have opened Nigiri, with whom you produce artists and young artists: how is this project going?

For me it is very fun and it is above all right: a lot of new trends, of new sounds, new influences, the interception also thanks to these young people: they are 20 years old, I start to have 30 and therefore start in fact to be excluded from certain trends. Trivially because I’m not always updated on everything …

So is therefore a source of inspiration, but on an entrepreneurial level it works?

It works to the extent that you work on new artists without having large budgets behind. We must not think that disproportionate figures are earned, that is not the intent with which we do it. Then if one day someone will have a huge success, we wish it and we would miss it. But even just being able to make a job is already a result. The penguins hoped for that until 2018, then things were gradually improving. I think the maximum goal is to live in music.

Do you still feel “underdogs”?

It depends on what you take into consideration. If you consider only the present, that is always a little disfigured in music. In music and discography we look at the past, the catalog, and to the future, to the new trends.
We in the present have an important place in some way. But as far as the past is concerned it is too early: we started together in 2010, but in fact this formation came in 2013-14. For the future you have to see: we have not yet shown that we are people who can stay in the history of Italian music, we are still very far away.
The songs must survive at the decades, not to the half -yearly rankings of Fimi, as have done those of artists such as Max Pezzali, Vasco and all those I mentioned before. Our goal at this moment is to demonstrate that they can remain standing: everyone has had ups and downs.

What happens to the penguins now?

For the next moves, we haven’t thought about it yet. We certainly want to do something that is a next step, a Next Step, something different and you have to study it well.
But there is a word that has entered arrogance lately in our dressing rooms, and it is “travel”. The one made in Iceland brought us well: traveling together can give us a lot. Elio is now in Madagascar: every now and then they stop you, sometimes Italians, and ask you where the others are, as if we were to be inseparable from each other – which always makes us laugh. But now we really want to try to travel around the world and see what they give us.