A few members of the Record Union team were recently discussing some of the gigs they had been to the last few weeks, and an important marketing point came up which will serve as the basis of today’s advice. The point is that if you are playing live in front of an audience, make sure they leave knowing who they saw!

Here is the story. There was an open mic at one of the local rock bars here in Stockholm and a band were playing who were seriously good. The crowd was engaged, the lead singer was doing all the right moves and they were quite honestly tearing the place apart. They played a great set, said their thanks and left the stage. However, at no point did they give their name. When they arrived, they said hello, began their opening song - when they closed they left with not so much as a hint at what they were called -let alone where people could find them online. Not only is this a real shame, but quite frankly, it is bad marketing. In desperation fellow gig goers were consulted, and yet again, a dead end - they didn’t know their name either.

So, please, if you are playing live do not make this mistake yourself - introduce the name of your band clearly, as many times as possible. Make it stick. A band who is good at this is Allout (pictured above) whose members include Record Union´s head designer. During gigs, Peter will scream variants of “Allout, Allout, we are Allout, dont forget it, Allout, no spaces, just Allout” before the opening song, in between songs, and even during songs - amusing the crowd but also providing a few memorable moments. People  wont forget their name in a hurry.

Furthermore, if you are getting a good vibes from the audience, why not drop some more information? A MySpace address, a quick note that people can find you on certain popular streaming services. If you are feeling ambitious, you can even print some cheap flyers to hand out at the end of the gig.

People love to talk about “this amazing band they say the other night” but how can they market you if they don´t know your name?

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.

Fantastic news! Record Union has now secured a distribution deal with yet another major music service. Lime Wire, maker of the popular peer to peer client, launched LimeWire Store in the spring of 2008, selling fully licensed content from an array of artists and labels. Listeners can pay for music in a number of different ways, including monthly subscription models which enable them to download a certain ammount of songs, or a standard pay as you go model. All of their songs are offered in 256kbps MP3, DRM free. LimeWire Store’s music team is committed to providing participating artists and labels unique promotional opportunities with exclusive releases, targeted marketing and events.

Record Union will soon send our entire catalog to Limewire Music Store. If for some reason you would not like your music to become available on this service, please contact content@recordunion.com before Friday the 18th December 16:00 CET.

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!

Fantastic news! Crescendolls are the official winners of Jack Rocks Sweden 2009. They made it through three rounds of tough voting by a panel of respected judges to make it to the finals held in Stockholm last night. Four bands battled it out onstage in front of a select audience, but in the end it was Crescendolls who clinched it. Inside sources tell us that it was a close run thing between Crescendolls and Oholics, both bands currently distributing their music with Record Union. For you Swedish speakers, you can read more about Crescendolls and the Jack Rocks competition here.

Record Union would like to congratulate Crescendolls on this impressive feat, and wish them the best of success in their bright future.

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 Mailing List

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.

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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.

Dear ladies, gentlemen, friends, comrades and fellow human beings. Yesterday, another 60 tracks from Record Union artists were added to Spotify. This was a small update compared to the thousands of tracks added last week, but as usual we have put them into a little spreadsheet for you. From all of us here at Record Union, including of course Hefner, have a great weekend!

We are pleased to announce that Meteli.net have now made the relevent modifications to their website and our promotion partnership with them will soon be in full force. A week or two ago we announced that we would be working with Meteli.net (on of the leading Finnish download stores) to support independent artists in Finland and around the world, and this is the first step towards it. Among other promotion opportunities, the Meteli.net website will contain a feed of all the new music making its way onto their store from Record Union, introducing it to the thousands of listeners which frequent their store everyday. You can see how the feed looks here.

This is one of many partnerships we are working on to ensure that listeners discover the fantastic independent and unsigned music being released on Record Union. Stay tuned for more!