Peoples Music Store offer a unique way for listeners to purchase and explore music, and because of this provides some great promotion opportunities for artists. Today we will have a look at a few of them.

Unlike other stores, everyone can become a shopkeeper on Peoples Music Store - it is truly democratic. As a label, promoter, manager or just plain old music enthusiast you can (free of charge) create and design your own storefront and stock music existing on the service. If you have distributed music with Record Union, your music will be available in the stockroom. When people buy music from your store, you earn points which you can use towards buying more music.

As an artist, the trick is to find storekeepers who would be interested in stocking and even promoting your music. This shouldn’t be too difficult, as the store search function enables you to sort stores by genre and the diversity of stores is impressive. Most members of the storekeeper community are also passionate about music and generally open to listening to and adding new music to their store. Once you have contacted the store owner and introduced yourself, they may even write a review of your music or list it as a featured release. Like with bloggers, podcasts etc. its all about building relationships.

If you run your own label, you have the opportunity to build your own storefront and attract buyers to check out artists you are releasing. Directing fans from individual artists to your store is a good tactic, because there is every chance they will check music from other artists you have in your stockroom.

The truly wonderful thing about Peoples Music Store is that one quickly notices that it has a strong community behind it and really is effective in introducing listeners to new music, while also providing music enthusiasts an output for their passion. Listeners flock to stores they trust to find new sounds, and the storekeepers are eager to list the best music within their genre which may just as well be from indie/unsigned artists.

If Peoples Music Store is new to you then you should have a closer look. Whether an artist or label, we think it is definitely a channel you should consider utilizing in your promotion campaign. Peoples Music Store also have a number of social networking tools to increase the viral effectiveness of your efforts.

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!

Dear friends, we are pleased to inform that 184 Record Union releases have just now been added to the Spotify catalog (a total of over 1200 tracks). We know that many of you have been waiting for this update, and that some may be waiting still. We assure you that both Record Union and Spotify are doing our utmost to get your music on this popular service as efficiently as possible. We have put all the new releases into the following spreadsheet.

Among the many gems in the new release, here are few we have selected to highlight:

Babylon´s Burning by Babylon Bombs
Dark Dont Smile by The Swiines
Malmö Kallar by Trevolt
Powertrio Proudly Presents Ten Out Of Ten by Crescendolls
Moving on by Trippy Wicked and the Cosmic Children of the night

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.

We thought we would try something new here on the blog today and post a Record Union Spotify playlist. Contained in the list is a selection of tracks from Record Union artists which we think captures the spirit of the weekend! Maybe something to put on before you head out and see you friends? or something to keep the festivities going and the end of the night? Well, you decide! You can find the playlist HERE. Let us know what you think!

Next week, we will post a playlist of music selected by our A&Rs, so watch out for this too. You can find all the playlist created by Record Union and rate them on Share My Playlists. From the all of the Record Union team, have a super weekend!

Since he started as a DJ 14 years ago, Alex Sayz has relentlessly devoted himself to his music. Arranging events from a young age, he is a 2000 gig veteran and has made the dance floor crucial to his own artistic survival. Now producer and co-creator (with Niklas Bergwall) of Top DJ Records, he is using his reputation as an innovative world class DJ to create and produce cutting edge music which is causing havoc on dance floors around the world. His last release “Shame on You” (feat. Lawrence Alexander) recently reached #16 on the Billboard dance airplay chart. Record Union caught up with Alex and talked to him about his current projects.

For those who don’t know about Top DJ records, can you tell us a little about what you are up to over there?
TopDJ Records is part of TopDJ Music Sweden where we also have TopDJ publishing and TopDJ management. Me and my colleague started TopDJ Music because we wanted to control our releases. We don’t want to blame anyone else if we don’t success. Since Im first of all a DJ everything we do have to be for the dancefloor. When we sign artists or when we produce music we only have to ask us a simple question: would I play this out on the nightclubs?

Your release “Shame on Me” recently achieved #16 on the Billboard dance air charts. Was this success expected?
No I couldn’t expect any Billboard chart in my dreams. Everything took off when I visited the Winter Music Conference in Miami this year. I handed out some demo CD’s and received some calls when I got back home. Some major labels and some minor. I fell for a label called Parker Recordings. Mr. Parker is well known in the business and previously released acts like Lasgo and Ian van Dahl for a bigger label. I had a feeling that Parker Recordings would work hardest for “Shame On Me” so we chose them. Luckily it paid off.

(more…)

Mother Popcorn makes you wiggle, it is true. Their infectious upbeat 70s funk Motown influenced pop is just too much for your body to handle. It is party music, through and through.

But it´s not necessarily the kind of party music which has people jumping around banging their heads, more a lounged back, sophisticated party music – imagine a party of well dressed people drinking refined cocktails celebrating life and having a good time. Live, however, im sure its a completely different story. However, regardless of what setting one plays Mother Popcorn, alone in your room, or at a party, the effect of their music is undoubtedly uplfiting.

So what of Mother Popcorn themselves? Well, they are based in Swedish coastal city of Gothenburg, there are 6 members and they are all skiled musicians. The music is well thought out, technically precise and superbly executed - the elements of Vocals, Trumpet, Saxophone, Guitar, Bass and Drums coming together to produce a clean, seamless concoction of musical goodness.

Mother Popcorn have released a self entitled debut EP on Record Union. The 4 songs it contains are just enough to satisfy, but like their growing fan base, we are looking forward to hearing more!

Why not head over to Spotify and give them a listen? If you get really hooked, you will find their music on most online stores, such as Amazon MP3, iTunes and emusic.

Record Union are excited to announce a partnership with Deezer, one of the most popular streaming services in the world.  With 9 million users and as many unique visitors a month, Deezer is a streaming giant, offering browser based on demand streaming from a vast catalogue. And now it´s time for Record Union artists to get in on the action!

The concept behind Deezer is simple: to offer free and legal on demand streaming to all kinds of music, from rock to hip hop, as well as jazz, electro and world music, while respecting artist rights and offering all a share in advertising revenue generated on the service.

Beyond a dynamic and highly developed streaming platform, Deezer boasts a range of functionality which enables users to share, listen and discover new music. These include genre categorised online radio, smart radios, an album download option, playlist sharing and a large social network of “deezernautes” actively sharing their musical tastes with friends and fellow listeners. Deezer also offers an application for the iPhone and Blackberry, which gives users the chance to enjoy over 35 web radios and their own “smart radio”, which bases its track choices on user listening preferences.

Being one of the only services of our kind to distribute music to Deezer, the Record Union team are celebrating. Our mission is to have the largest and most diverse selection of distribution partners in the world, and this is a step forward in this goal. We will soon send our full catalogue to Deezer for listing.

If any of you would not like to have your music on Deezer for some reason, please let us know before Sunday 30th August 2am Pacific time.