We have now finished updating the website and are excited to present to you some new features and improvements to the Record Union website. These are largely concerned with making our platform easier for people to use and also making it more flexible. Here is what we have done to accomplish this:

• A new procedure for publishing a release. The old “create a release” page has been removed and been replaced with a version which is more dynamic, attractive and user friendly. This contains a help tool which will provide information about each field helping you add that all-important metadata correctly. We are quite pleased with this and hope you will be to!

• Choose your stores. Thats right! You can now choose exactly which music services you would like your release to become available on. Only want your music on Spotify and iTunes? Select these stores on the “Choose Stores” page. This also means that if you have your release on a few of our partners already you can exclude these from the delivery list.

These are the major points though we have also updated our partners page so that it more clearly display the different kinds of partners we deliver to. We have also made improvements to the settings page which will make it easier to add company information for invoicing purposes.

We have bug tested all the new pages thoroughly, but if you do spot any bugs we have missed or would like to report any problems with this new functionality please email support(at)recordunion(dot)com. Spontaneous thanks, appreciation and positive feedback is also welcome.

Here are a few screenshots of the new pages:

Dear friends. Just a quick note to inform you that the Record Union website will be down for a few hours tomorrow. Our techies have been working on some updates and will be implementing these during this down time.  Once the updates are installed we will revive the website and tell you all about what we have done. Be well!

Artist Mellony is a new rising star here at Record Union. The latest Spotify stats show that his music has been played over 3,000,000 times on Spotify. Yes, that is 3 MILLION times. We are sure you will agree that this is a massive achievement - especially for a young indie artist like himself. With his monthly plays still growing steadily, and a new single being released soon, we are excited to see where this is going.

What can we say about Mellony? Well, his name is Joakim Bergström and he is a Swedish artist releasing music on Record Union via his own label Mellony Music. He first found interest in his music on Youtube - but it was a tour with 100% party combined with a greater availability of his music on other digital channels that saw things really take off.

We took this opportunity to ask Mellony some questions about his journey to where he is now. We post his answers here for your reading.

What were your expectations when you first uploaded your music at Record Union?

None. I noticed a lot of people used Spotify and wanted people to be able to find my music there! It’s a really good service for both musicians and consumers. I found Record Union and they helped me.

And now, how does it feel to get 3 millions plays on Spotify?

Trying not to be a stick in the mud, it’s actually 3 million plays in february! Being June and all, it could be a lot more plays now! Sticking to the subject, it feels super great!

You clearly have a lot of fans – how did this come about?

It all started out with me uploading my songs to youtube, got a modest sum of plays, then I went on a Sweden tour with “100% Party”. That’s what got me started, though I had no idea I would be up in that many fans just by uploading my music to Record Union.  Feels pretty awesome actually! : )

Is there anything else you would like to say?

Record Union got me in the music business, and I am forever grateful for that!

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Thanks Mellony! We wish you the very best in the future and promise to make sure your music continues to become available on all the great digital music services out there.

Dear artists, labels, music people and fellow humans. As a little “we are sorry” for the February reports being delayed this month we have paid out the March reports earlier than scheduled. You can see these payments and stats in your account page right now.

We know that getting your sales reports on time is important to you and hope this initiative will go some way to compensate for the inconvenience caused by the delays in last month’s reports.

From now on its business as usual though and we will return to our regular reporting schedule. If you need reminding of exactly what this involves you can get a full overview under the “Sales reporting” section on our FAQ page.

Dear Record Union users.  We would like to inform you of a new payment routine which is now in effect. This new routine will involve payouts from your account page being temporarily disabled at the end of every month while new royalty reports are being processed.

The reason behind this new routine is a problem that can occur when a user pays out their account balance at the same time as a report is being processed by our reporting system.

To avoid this we will “switch off” payouts while our team work on uploading new batches of sales reports. This means you will see the sales information appear on your account straight away like before, but will have to wait until we have process all the reports before you can pay this money out.

The amount of time payouts will be disabled will depend on how fast we are able to process the new reports, but shouldn’t be more than 2-3 days.

If you have any questions or concerns about this, please get in touch with info(at)recordunion.com.

If you are a Swedish artist, head over to The Next Big thing website…now! They have just launched their biggest competition ever with some truly mind blowing prizes. We aren’t kidding! Here is what is on the line:

- A live performance at Way Out West festival

- The possibility to record a single at Kingsway Studio with Producer Mikael Axelius

- A promotion campaign on Spotify for the recorded single

- A tour organized by Luger / Live Nation

Few, if any, music compeitions can boast these kind of prizes. Take part and start activating your fans!

The are a number of different websites dedicated to sharing Spotify playlists - however, none are quite as  thought through as the newly launched Tunigo. Directed at Swedish listeners right now, this website offers unmatched playlist discovery.

In a nutshell, Tunigo is a platform where everybody can import, share, tag and discover new music on Spotify. It is user generated, and beyond tagging your own playlists you can also sort them by different themes and occasions.

Small details are important - and the creators of Tunigo know this. The fact that you an “drag and drop” playlists from Spotify to import them on your profile is pretty cool - but not as cool as that when you click to play a song it will play directly from the Spotify client (no little pop-up window and “play” button). The tagging feature runs rampant, and once an artist, song or playlist is clicked fresh suggestions are never far away.

Beyond this effective environment from which to share, find and connect with music, Tunigo also offers a range of engaging editorial content from writers and music people. These are often in the form of “retrospectives” and relate music to the life experiences of the writer - a charming idea. You will also be able to keep up with the latest music news and gossip.

If you run an own label or are an indie artist you should definitely add some playlists here, sneaking in a few of your own songs. With the discovery potential Tunigo offers, you may just see the plays rack up.

Dear users. Just a quick note to inform you that our technical team are currently performing some work on our sales reporting system. This has meant we have had to temporarily disable payouts from your account page. The work is expected to be completed by the end of this week, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this will cause. If you have any questions or would like to get in touch with us about this please contact support(at)recordunion.com.

We are proud to announce that we have now added Rdio to our list of distribution partners. We are really excited to add another super cool streaming service to our list of partners, and hope this will create more opportunities for you to reach out to fans and listeners.

About Rdio: Rdio is an unlimited, on-demand social music service created by the founders of Skype. With Rdio, users can listen to as many songs as they want, anytime, anywhere, and discover and share new music with friends and influencers. Rdio is available on a variety of platforms including web, Mac or PC desktop client, mobile devices such as iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile 7,  and in-home devices like Sonos and Roku. Rdio launched in August 2010 and is currently available in the US & Canada.

Record Union will deliver our entire catalog to Rdio on Monday next week - if you for some reason would not like your music available on Rdio please get in touch with content(at)recordunion.com. Happy time!

Today Amazon has announced the US launch of their anticipated new cloud service. Essentially this service enables music listeners to store their music library “in the cloud” (The Amazon Cloud Drive). Once here they can access it from a number of devices, without having to actually transfer the music between the devices themselves using wires and those annoying USB cables. Convenient eh? Whats more is that any purchases made from the Amazon Mp3 store will automatically land in your cloud.

Once uploaded into the Amazon Cloud drive the music can currently be accessed from the web (via the Cloud Player) and on Android devices (via the Cloud Player for Android).

So, what does this mean for your as a music creator? Well, when Cloud Drive users buy your music on Amazon Mp3 it will automatically be accessible from both their computer and their Android devices. They can also buy music from either of these locations without syncing the devices themselves. In a sense they wont be downloading it at all - it will just be made accessible in their cloud. This added convenience (and lets face it, convenience is everything) is expected to drive music sales from the Amazon Store.

You can find the official press release here.