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.

Some fresh new tunes from the Union have been gathering up plays on Spotify these past weeks. Impressed with the quality of what we are hearing we thought we would share a few of these here on the blog.  Keep the music coming in peeps, we love it!

Six Litte Eggs by Otis (Genre:Hip Hop/Electronic)

Pick me up by Isak Strand & The Resin Band (Genre: Pop/Reggae)

Misunderstanding by Club Skills (Electronic/Dance)

Dissa Ipred by Mellony (Genre: Hip Hop/Reggae)

The bigger picture; Hope by Aim for the sunrise  (Rock/Hardcore/??)

Remember you can check out the top Record Union plays on Spotify via their label search. Type label:”record union” in the search bar and you will see a list of results.

Getting signed to a serious record label is the aim of many musicians, and for good reason. Labels can offer unparalleled support, resources and experience in producing and releasing music. Many also have established media contacts and have a deal of promotional clout which can help you increase your listener base and music sales. They will also take care of many of the time consuming day to day management of you or your band, and let you get on with what you do best - creating music.

Now, Record Labels don´t do all of this just for the fun of it. Rather, they do it as an investment. Record Labels are a business, and just like all businesses they make risk calculations. To make yourself attractive to Record Labels they must see you are an attractive investment; that once they invest money in you they will at least get it back.

It is undeniable that the onset of the digital music revolution has created amazing new possibilities for independents, both when it comes to distribution and promotion. However, it is also an environment which has made it harder for many Record Labels to sell music. The traditional marketing machinery has lost traction, and the diffuse Internet music environment has made the access and consumption of music far more diversified. Even with money to throw around, the chance and scale of success has become smaller. Once the traditional music industry adapts, or we see the rise of more influential and innovative digilabels, they will have a hard time making the same kind of money as they once did.

In this climate of uncertainty, risk calculations become all the more prevalent. So, to get signed you must make yourself as attractive as possible. Raw talent won´t hack it anymore, not by itself. They don’t have the time, resources or money to nurture you from infancy. If you are looking to get signed, the Internet is a great place to develop your art and show the labels you got what they want.

A decent track record of digital sales is a strong plus factor, and nothing illustrates an active and engaged fan base like having thousands of plays on streaming services. Focusing on improving the scale and force of your live performances, selling merchandise and playing festivals are also plus factors when looking to gain label interest. The bottom line is that a Record Label is a business. A good business makes money. In an uncertain environment risk becomes more prevalent. So if you want a Record Deal, a wise thing would be touse the great possibilities in the online environment to make yourself into an irresistible investment.

Yes, it can’t be said enough. Playing live is promotion, teambuilding and a whole lot of fun for bands. It’s very important, both for enterainment and as an expression of culture. For us at Record Union, except distributing music and doing our best to support up and coming artists and bands, we love going to see live music (in my case also play). Today something cool happened. As we were discussing how and where to spend the evening two alternatives emerged and we realised that the two options both had distributed via Record Union. Kilroy and Lissi Dancfloor Disaster. Our heart just melted a little. There are probably a lot more bands that use our service playing tonight all over the world. The Record Union movement is growing. Our thoughts this Friday goes out to everyone who mail, call and book their own gigs. To those who rent a van and go on tour with the hopes of getting home without having lost ALL of their savings. They are all our friends.

And yes, I know, we may only be a distribution company, but the most of you who distribute though us are up and coming. Hungry. That’s good. Record Union may well be the springboard you need. More about that some other time.

Is it friday? Yes. Let the music play.

//P.

Dear artists, we are happy to inform you that the server issues we were experiencing yesterday afternoon and this morning have now been resolved and the website is running normally again. However, the releases published during this time were affected and we can unfortunately not distribute them as they are. For this reason, we have removed them.

Consequently, we regret to say that those of you who published releases during this time will have to publish them again. Fear not, the UPC´s that you pruchased are still valid, and can be found on the “create an album” page, as can the audio files you uploaded and edited. All which is required is that you create a new album and publish it on the website.

This is the first time we have experienced a problem of this nature, and we will do our utmost to prevent it happening in the future. As said, the website is now running as usual, so there should no longer be any problem distributing your music.

If you have questions concerning your release, please get in touch with: content(at)recordunion.com and our content team would be happy to answer them.

Record Union are excited to announce that another new partner has been added to our ever growing distribution portal, it´s called Thumbplay!

Thumbplay are a major player on the US market and the fastest-growing provider of mobile content in the US. They feature licensed music, video and games from some of the world’s largest entertainment companies, as well as several independent labels. For those who would like to gain entry into the mobile market in the US, this is a perfect digital service provider. For you who are already focused on the US market, this provides an excellent opportunity to make your music mobile and for your fans purchase your music via their phone.

Record Union will send our entire catalog to Thumbplay later this week. If any of you would not like to have your music delivered to this excellent obile provider, please email content@recordunion.com before Sunday 20th December, 16:00 CET.

Dear friends. This is just a quick post to inform you that we are currently performing important updates on some areas of our website, and you may experience problems while using the service. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope to have this completed soon.

Update: We have now completed the website maintenence and the website should now be running as smoothly as ever.