The era of the mega hit is gone - niche is the new mainstream. Find your niche and rule it - or better, create one and own it. In this interesting discussion with Ariel Hyatt of Cyber PR, Derek Sivers talks about an important feature of the online music environment vital to understand if one is to make headway marketing music online.
We are excited to announce that Record Union will now be collaborating with The Peoples Music Awards! Together we will work hard to create even more opportunities for independent artists around the world.
For those who don´t know about them, The Peoples Music Awards are the first and only global unsigned music award, and are dedicated to aiding the discovery of new independent music. Record Union are really impressed with the awards, and think it provides a great platform for aspiring independent musicians to grow their fan base and gain the recognition they deserve.
The way the awards works is that independent artists, bands and producers can upload their music on www.thepeoplesmusicawards.com, and the general public and a panel of music industry representatives can listen and vote on their favourites. There are various stages to the voting, but their music player and voting system makes this all very straightforward. The winners are announced in there swanky awards ceremony which is this year held in London, and is broadcast all over the world. Next year, we are excited to announce that the Record Union A&R network will be among those sitting on the judges panel.
If you are determined to achieve success in music, then The Peoples Music Awards may just be that extra push which you need. Signing up is free, so head over to their website and sign up now!
We are pleased to inform you that today 32 new releases from Record Union were added to the Spotify service. We have been extremely impressed by the amount of plays Record Union artists have been pulling in, and we are sure this batch will contribute to these. To find out if your release has been included in this update, check out this spreadsheet. If your release was included, time to go out to your fans a tell them the good news!
We have received feedback recently from artists who would like us to post more articles about how to promote and market music as an independent/DIY musician. Not ones to ignore such feedback, we will put on our promotion hats and post a new promotion related article every Monday. Here is the first of the series!
The importance of a well managed mailing list cannot be understated. Having a strong database of email addresses to fans is very important, and if you are not putting some effort into developing your mailing list it is fair to say you really should be.
A mailing list is your number one way to communicate with your fans about new releases, new videos, upcoming concerts and tours and other news. If used correctly, a mailing list can also help you nurture and solidify new relationships with fans. Asking for feedback on new songs, videos and photos, holding competitions, giveaways and generally engaging fans and making them feel more involved will do alot to strengthen your their ties do you.
We at Record Union love to listen to all of the music which is being released on our service daily. We also admire those artists who have put in that extra effort to accompany their release with some impressive album artwork. So much so, that we thought we would post a few of our favourites here on the blog.
Great news! Oholics and Cresendolls have been selected to perform at the Jack Rock´s final in Stockholm in 3 weeks time. Jack Rocks is an unsigned competition where the bands pit themselves against the scrutiny of a panel of heavy duty judges. From the hundreds of bands who entered the competition, the panel select 30 to go through to the next stage, then 8 go to the semifinals and play live in 2 seperate events. The 4 who impress the judges the most are invited to perform at the finals, to be held in Stockholm at Skyddsrummet on the 26th November. Both Oholics and Crescendolls will be taking the stage and Record Union will be there to support them in full force.
The winner of this years competition will get the chance to record a 3 track EP at Aldeheim studios, play 2 major festivals (Sweden Rock festival and another as yet to be announced), recieve a gift voucher at JAM worth 30,000 SEK and be provided with a selection of m
erchandise as well as 100 proffesionally designed and printed CDs.
Hans Selander a.k.a “Hasse”, the Record Union A&R who is responsible for recruiting both bands, is ecstatic and confident both Oholics (who have a reputation for their raucous live performances) and Crescendolls will give the judges something they will never forget. Its going to be wild.
Listen to:
People are quite clearly nuts about Nomy. In the past few months he has been receiving serious playtime on Spotify, in total achieving over 100,000 listens. His hit “Cocaine” has more plays that Eric Clapton´s song of the same title.
So who is Nomy? some of you may ask. An impossible question to question to answer, clearly. But to give you some idea we can tell you that Nomy is an self producing musician from Sweden who has built his following from the grass roots up. He creates much of his music via his own computer, which gives him the artist freedom and control he requires for his creativity reach its musical potential. The feeling and meaning contained within his music is surely a testament to this. His songs change from moving ballads to awesome thrashing hard rock refrains. Within each one one can feel the underlying genius which one can identify as Nomy.
By his own volition, much of his music can be found on his website and floating the Internet for free. With such an interest in his music the availability on streaming services and music stores has made his music more omnipresent than ever. Keep on rockin, Nomy. The world is ready.
You can stream Nomy´s music here (Spotify, Deezer ) and find his music on iTunes, Amazon Mp3, Tunetribe and most other music stores. Otherwise head over to his official website.
Digital explosion is a perfectly suited name for the dance/electronic/trance outfit hailing out of Turku, Finland. Their music is digital, and most definitely explosive! With catchy electronic hooks, rapid beats and soaring fast paced synth, the tunes will be buzzing through your head long after you have ceased listening.
The element of Digital also carries another relevance for the band, who first met their success selling MP3s on MP3.com in 2000. They hope to fuel this success and feed their loyal fanbase with their last 2 releases, one called “Electronic Revolution”, and the other a selection of their previously released material (adequtely entitled “Selection“). Find them on Spotify here.
This really is dance music at its highest quality, and one can only imagine what kind of havoc it reaps when unleashed on the dancefloor. Give them a listen on the player in the sidebar to find out what what we mean. “Summer in Belize” is simply nuts.
Twaang metal is a Swedish experimental metal group led by Roland Billberg, an internationally renowned Swedish music maker and producer working in variety of genres. Roland won the The Effigy Award for best Electronica in 2008 and was nominated for “Songwriter of the year” in the US.
The direction of the Twaang metal project is an extravagant and violent brand of heavy metal designed to shock and awe. Drawing influences from Dance, ambient and Rock, Twang Metal creates an audio and stage show experience designed to shake the masses. The bands recent international success have enabled them to develop a more impressive, elaborate image and live performance, making them extremely popular at venues across the world. This raw and uncompromising metal sound is expressed in their recently release album “Dark Angel” which will soon be available online.
Check out the video for Deliverance below to hear a sample of what Dark Angel has to offer.
Another face of Roland can be seen in an independent solo project, in which Twaang takes on a slightly different sound - losing some of the violent thrash metal flourishes and embracing a more straightforward dance/ambient sound. Like Twaang Metal, this sound draws on a range of influences, including artist as diverse as Gary Moore, Steve Vai, Mike Oldfield, Enya and AC/DC. This sound exemplified in album “The Third Dimension” which is currently available on most online music stores, and can be streamed on Spotify here. To sample this side of Twaang, check out the video for “Moondance” below.
Hello friends, hope you are well. Just a quick post to let you know that earlier today Spotify added a further 52 Record Union releases to their catalogue. Thats 400 tracks! This batch inlcludes Manon Dave´s remix of Nelly Furtado “Say it Right”. For a full list of the releases which were added, you can check out this spreadsheet. Needless to say, we have more releases than any other european indpendent distributor. Happy time!
