We’re now working with Ursula 1000, helping with his self-founded label Insect Queen Music. “Faded Denim Wash” is the first single off Ursula’s upcoming album Voyeur, and it’s fantastic … groovy disco and funk elements abound, with a touch of balearic spaciousness to make for a sophisticated sound. A diverse set of remixes come from a talented set of relative newcomers, including Abelard, Golf Channel’s Payfone, Robot 84, and (our personal favorite) Seahawks. We’ve launched an 8DPromo campaign today.
Search Results for: SoundCloud
The Wild West Days Of The Web Are Over
(Josh Greenberg) had violated the tenets of intellectual property law, of course, but there was precedent for that. Nullsoft’s Justin Frankel had coded Winamp without licensing the underlying mp3 technology; YouTube’s Steve Chen and Chad Hurley had looked the other way as users had uploaded thousands of infringing videos; Napster’s Shawn Fanning had acted as if the entire concept of copyright was obsolete. Greenberg resembled them. He was a scion of middle-class America; he’d attended a state school; he was young, and male, and comfortable with the internet’s culture of appropriation. The template was to move fast and to break things, and to let the lawyers figure out the repercussions once you’d earned your millions.
If Grooveshark had debuted in 2003, or maybe even 2005, he might have gotten away with it. Like a claim-jumper in the 19th century, Grooveshark could perhaps have emerged from the era of digital lawlessness with enough leverage to force the music companies to the negotiating table, and borrowed enough expertise from the venture capitalists to become a functional business. With a little luck, the company might have outmaneuvered Spotify, and Greenberg would have been a business icon.
I had a link to this month-old article hidden in one of my recent posts, but I think it deserves its own place as it’s well worth a read. The author shapes his piece as more of a commentary on changes in the Internet / entrepreneur industry – he believes the days of the budding teenage tech billionaire have passsed – but, of course, it’s all intertwined with developments in the music industry. The required move over the past decade from ‘digital lawlessness’ to legitimacy enlightens a bit about SoundCloud’s recent troubles, as well as how smart Spotify has been from the outset. The article also reminds me how it’s a deep shame that we won’t get to see what Josh Greenberg will come up with next as there was some seriously brilliant idea-making behind Grooveshark.
8D Projects: Chris Forman – Presents ‘Reaching Out To The World’, Part 1 (Them On The Hill)
New Zealand’s Them On The Hill label has charted a path towards a top notch catalog of modern house music tracks in a classic style, often created by criminally unheralded veteran producers. This upcoming release, and our latest project at 8DPromo, continues this string by enlisting New Jersey’s Chris Forman, who has previously worked with renowned imprints like Nite Grooves, Vega Records, and King Street. The single features two terrific tracks, and there are definitely some nods to house music’s celebrated past, especially in the familiar vocal sample in the second.
8D Projects: Christy Love – Internal Waves (Get Up Recordings)
8DPromo is presently working this 43rd release for NYC’s Get Up Recordings, the “Internal Waves” single from label co-proprietor Christy Love. Prime time house music elements abound in the original track, ready-made for an extended strobe light work-out. The remix by Londoners Severino & Hifi Sean lays down the swing and the funky 303, while MissB goes into more traditional territory, peppered with pleasingly spacious highlights.
8D Projects: Venntaur – Just Once (DeepWit Recordings)
Danish label DeepWit Recordings is one of our favorite deep house labels – and we mean ‘deep house’ very much in the traditional, non-diluted sense – so it’s always a pleasure to work with them. This forthcoming release showcases two fine tracks by Finnish producer Venntaur, backed with remixes from Tokyo’s Datakestra and Jason Mitchell, who is the proprietor of another of our client labels, Australia’s Deep House Aficionado. Lush and melodic stuff here, complete with beefy rhythms and dreamy textures throughout. It’s our latest promotions project at 8DPromo.
8D Projects: Urian Hackney – The Box (Cold Busted)
The Los Angeles-based Cold Busted label is another imprint I’ve been working with for a while, since its humble beginnings in Denver, Colorado. Cold Busted has been focused on the funkier, often downtempo, edge of breakbeat music, with a visionary ethos that has allowed it to branch out into cool releases such as this forthcoming single by Urian Hackney.
The Box is a meticulously recorded solo effort from Hackney, whose father and uncles were members of cult Detroit proto-punk band Death, as profiled in the acclaimed documentary A Band Called Death. With The Box – named after his studio in Burlington, Vermont – Urian Hackney presents two songs intended to send the listener back in time to the smooth, funky sonic realm of the ’70s. All instruments were played by Urian, multi-tracked one-by-one to a tape machine through microphones aimed at amplifier cones and drum heads. It comes together sounding like some rare 7” that might be found in DJ Shadow’s record bag.
“You Don’t Own Your Fanbase. You Rent Them.”
It’s been said that we live in an era of “access” – a kind of golden age of artist communications and marketing. Rather than rely upon the faulty medium of the journalist or the tabloid, artists can now talk “directly” to their fans without any intermediary. Well, except for SoundCloud, or Twitter, or Facebook, or…
The reality is that you don’t own your fanbase. You just “access” them. You rent them in exchange for your data. And at moments like this – when you want to end your lease and move to another block – it becomes incredibly clear what the distinction is.
The important thing to realize is that these barriers between fan and artist are entirely artificial. There’s really no reason why they need to exist, other than to impede you from doing exactly what SoundCloud’s frustrated producers want to do: leave.
Terry Matthew’s insightful piece could almost serve as a thesis statement for our blog here. Musicians now live in an incredible time, when autonomous promotion, presentation, and distribution are all completely attainable. But why are so few artists choosing this? As I’ve opined here before, these tools (Facebook, SoundCloud, etc.) are useful, but should compliment the artist’s subservient infrastructure rather than serving as that infrastructure.
Music Break: Law Of Fives
The first installment in a continuing series, each spotlighting five interesting new tracks discovered while navigating the Internet machine. Inspired by Malaclypse the Younger.
Data To Date: The Rapid Rise Of Social And Streaming
Next Big Sound has released a fascinating industry report on the current state of social media and streaming:
Streaming is fast becoming the primary way we consume music, whether that be through the more interactive on-demand services, algorithmically-driven lean-back experiences, the increasingly popular format of human curation and playlists (think Beats One radio or Spotify’s discovery feature), or some combination of the above.
What really blew our minds when tallying these totals was that the number of online plays in just the first six months of the year far exceeds what we tracked in all of 2014, even before the addition of Pandora’s data. Let’s take a moment to consider what impact this could have on the music industry at large. For musicians, their piece of the streaming pie will only continue to grow.
It would seem streaming is here to stay. Is this the final step in the format wars? I mean, what could possibly come after streaming as a music delivery format? Honestly, I’m sort of open to the idea of a combination of streaming, downloads (if you gotta have it), and vinyl or deluxe physical packages as our musical diet from here on out.
The Next Big Sound report also has some news about SoundCloud that would normally be encouraging for them. Instead, it will probably just add to the pressure they are receiving from the majors:
SoundCloud’s play counts continue to climb at a steady rate year over year. Next Big Sound tracked close to 5 billion plays on the service in May 2015, which is twice that of the same month a year before, and five-fold the year prior. At the same time, unless you’re living under said rock, you know that the social streaming service has long been in ongoing negotiations with labels for direct licensing deals, reportedly with the intention of launching a subscription service.
If slow and steady wins the race, SoundCloud could plausibly compete with more mainstream platforms such as Spotify or Rdio. However, SoundCloud provides a valuable niche service in that it is optimized for content such as mix tapes and DJ sets. If striking direct deals with rights holders – integral to legitimizing the service and monetizing content – means they are essentially strong-armed into charging users for a service they were once offered at no cost, they’ll want to see that growth rate remain as stable as it has been.
I sincerely wish them the best of luck with that.
There’s some further dissection of Next Big Sound’s report from Forbes:
You read that right: one trillion streams. That’s the number tracked by Next Big Sound in the first half of 2015 across YouTube, Vevo, Spotify, Rdio, SoundCloud, Vimeo and Pandora. In other words, the average Earthling has streamed more than 140 songs over the past six months. There should be no doubt not only that streaming is here to stay, but that it offers the music industry a level of reach never previously seen in human history.
8D Projects: Kartech – Larrisa (Wind Horse Records)
We’ve been working with the New Delhi-based deep house label Wind Horse Records since the early days of 8DPromo and are excited to be involved in the continuing growth of this ambitious imprint. As Wind Horse moves into its twenty-fifth release, there is more of a global feel, with the Indian talent that label-founder Hamza works hard to expose rubbing shoulders with renowned producers outside of South Asia.
This latest single from Thakur Kartik AKA Kartech exhibits the exotic musicality and expressive range of dynamics that set Wind Horse apart from other house music labels. Indian producers Llewellyn Hilt and Aaryan are on hand to remix, as are Alvaro Hylander, a prolific DJ and label owner (DeepWit Recordings) from Denmark-via-Spain, and UK duo City Soul Project. It’s our latest promotions project here at 8DPromo … here’s a preview of the “Larrisa” single:
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