Its official! Homegrown Record Union star Nomy has been nominated as “Innovator of the year” in the upcoming Grammy´s which will be held in Stockholm this January. Other nominees include the likes of Johnossi, IAMAMIWHOAMI, Magnus Weideskog and Robyn.

The official motivation behind his nomination is cited as his display of unique entrepreneurship, taking his home produced compositions to a global audience via the innovative use of digital channels. Also highlighted have been his dedicated use of social media to expand and strengthen his loyal fan base, the success of which has landed him on the top lists of major music services around the world.

What is clear is that Nomy has reached a level of success which is almost unheard of for independent artists - a success forged out of a shrewd and innovative use of the digital channels available to the new generation of web savvy musicians. This nomination is a clear indication that his achievements have not gone unnoticed by the more established music industry, and is a well deserved token of this recognition.

Nomy is stunned at this honour, and when we asked how he felt he said the following:

“I guess for bussines people this nomination is just peanuts, but for me this is one of the biggest things that has happened in my life - everything after this is just a bonus. This is unreal.“

From all of us here at Record Union: Congratulations Nomy. You deserve this.

Dear friends. We have recently paid out sales reports for both June and July, which have regrettably been delayed by a number of weeks. The reason behind this delay was a technical error that occurred when we processed the May report for Spotify Sweden a little while back - an error which is important that you know about, as it may have an effect on the royalties you receive from the June and maybe even July Spotify Sweden report.

The technical error that occurred resulted in Record Union paying out  significantly more than the correct amount of royalties for the Spotify Sweden May report. This means that users received more money than they were meant to.  Given to the size of this report the only real option for us was to withdraw this money from the next Spotify report in order to make up this difference.

Rest assured that the result of this will not in any way reduce the total royalties you will receive from Spotify - you will get exactly the correct amount of royalties generated for the streams you accumulated. However, it will influence the amount you get for Spotify Sweden in the June and maybe even the July report.

For example: Artist A was supposed to get $100 for Spotify Sweden in May, when they actually got $250 ($150 too much). In June they were supposed to get $125, however since they got paid an extra $150 in May they will not get any money from Spotify Sweden June. Moving on to the next month, Artist A was supposed get $125 in July but since they still have $25 in extra royalties they receive $100.

We are obviously appalled that this error could have occurred and our development team have been working overtime to investigate and make sure it doesn’t happen again. The reason other reports have been delayed is because we could not process any new reports until the problem had been fully investigated. We are now confident that relevant measures have been taken and sincerely apologize for the delays which were caused during this procedure. We expect to resume our normal reporting schedule for the next batch of reports at the end of this month. For any questions about this please contact content(at)recordunion.com.

That’s right folks! You can now sign up for this years Peoples Music Awards. Last year proved to be bigger and better than ever, with thousands of artist participating in what is becoming an established competition within independent music.

The Peoples Music Awards are the worlds first and only unsigned music awards, and as an artist or band, the benefits are clear . Entering awards gives you an excellent platform to reach out to new fans around the world, with music hungry listeners flocking to the TPMA website to give their verdict on the artists who have entered. You will also receive valuable feedback on the songs you have submitted from an influential panel of industry experts. This combination of a jury panel and the peoples vote is what makes this competition unique.

For more information about the awards and enter into this years competition, head over to The Peoples Music Awards website.

As many of you are aware, iTunes has recently launched Ping - a social network for music. This exciting addition to the iTunes repertoire offers a range of social networking features for both artists and there fans and introduces a whole new dynamic into the iTunes experience. See here for a full overview of these new features.

To get set up with ping requires help from your distributor and we would like to inform you that we will be able to help you get set up with these profiles in the future. Like iTunes our goal is to make it possible for all artists to be part of ping. There is obviously a high demand for these profiles so to express your interest in getting one please send an email to content(at)recordunion.com and we will put you on the list.

We bring sad news. A few days ago we received word from Peoples Music Store that they have made the decision to shut down their service. Since the 31st of August the store has been in a commercially dormant state and will regrettably remain so until the website is archived and made totally unavailable.

The obvious consequences of this is that Record Union will no longer be able to offer distribution to Peoples Music Store and have been forced to remove them from our list of retail partners. The good news, if one can call it that, is the closure of the Peoples Music Store has not jeopardize the remaining royalties which are due to Record Union artists. These will be transferred to you during the next round of payouts.

Amazon have recently launched a new service called Artist Central which is designed to help artists and labels promote their music on the Amazon store. As an artist or label you are now able to add extra content to your artist page(s), such as a biography, pictures and even upload MP3s to offer as free downloads and full length streaming. Other cool features include customizable store banners, a twitter feed and a space to embed your videos. Check the profile for Band of Horses for to see these in action.

Getting set up is pretty straightforward. It just a matter of claiming your profile, which you can do by signing in to Artist Central with your Amazon account. If you don’t already have an Amazon account, you can go ahead and create one for free. Claims are usually approved within a matter of days. Once the claim has gone through you can go ahead and use these new features to jazz up your profile. All in all, we think Amazon have provided a valuable set of tools which help you connect to listeners in a more dimensional way, ultimately helping you increase your sales and exposure via the Amazon Store. We wish you the best of luck.

We are pleased to inform you that we have just added some new features to the Record Union website. These are a few of many features that we have in mind to improve the Record Union experience which we will be adding in the near future. So, what is contained in this update?

Add links to your releases! - You can now add links which direct visitors to where your music is currently available for purchase/streaming online. These then show up on a brand new “Find music on…” menu under each release. These links can be added on “Manage content” page. Here´s one we made earlier.

Link to Twitter and YouTube - You can now add links to Twitter and YouTube on your profile.

Manage content -As requested it is now possible to see exactly what information you added to published tracks. This info will be displayed when you click on a published track on the “Submit Content” page.

These new links are another step towards making Record Union a useful place to direct fans and those interested in your music. Not satisfied with song previews, they can now select to find your music on their favourite stores and services, head over to YouTube to check your videos and Twitter to keep updated.

We always like to hear input from people using Record Union, so if you would like to suggest new features and functionality for us to look at, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

The Next Big Thing has been a roller-coaster of a competition so far, with 2200 artists and jurors pitting their musical prowess and expertise to earn their place in the finals. The battle has been fought online, with point hungry bands mobilising the force of their fans and musical appeal to win precious points, and offline, with live on stage clashes which have left audiences in cities around Sweden in a state of shock and awe.

10 bands and 10 jurors will reach the finals held in Stockholm (at Kungsträdgården) on the 10th and 11th of September, but with the last day of point gathering on Wednesday who will be there is still an open question. You can contribute to the hype by heading over to Snowfish and exploring the great music which is on offer, and if you are in Stockholm in the coming weeks, be sure to attend the finals!

Spotisfaction
[spot-is-fak-shuhn]
–noun

1. An act of musical satiation; fulfillment; gratification.

Since the birth of Spotify all manner of community based web environments have been set up to gratify that undying urge to please other people with music you have generously sculpted into something called a playlist. We love them all, of course. However, there is one we love a little bit more than others (can we say that? - we just did) and its called Spotisfaction.

Spotisfaction is not so much a Spotify social networking site as a community driven spotify-music-wiki. A community of slightly eccentric but very knowledgeable music connoisseurs, we might add. Free of playlists created by corporate brands, it brings together in true web 3.0 style the collective wisdom of the people in a lovely kaleidoscope of news, reviews, articles and of course Spotisfaction playlists. All this combined with that slightly militant “we wont sell your stuff” attitude that we love from bloggers.

Anyways, do check it out - and why not submit your own news and reviews of your favourite independent bands while your at it?

We have recently added new functionality which enables users on Record Union to set their own release date for their upcoming release. A release date is simply the date that you would would like your release to become available to fans, and means that your upcoming release should become available simultaneously on all of our partners. Release dates are a useful marketing tool as they enable you to better coordinate promotion activities and generate hype for your upcoming release.

You can set your release date on the “create a release” page, but please note that in order to make sure that our partners can list your release on time, a release date must be set at least 7 weeks in advance of publication on Record Union. If you would like our partners to list your music as soon as possible, then you still have the option of choosing “immediate delivery”.  If you have any questions about setting a release date, feel free to contact content(at)recordunion.com.