Bits & Pieces: A Very Indie X-mas
The Lonely Forest finds a home
For those grinding it out to the bitter middle of the month, we have a few signing and artist stocking stuffers for you… CMJ buzz act Freelance Whales have signed to the Q Prime-backed Mom & Pop Records, though it appears there’s another East Coast indie label who will be involved as well. Exact details on the label collaboration are still unclear… Seattle’s The Lonely Forest will be recording with Death Cab For Cutie’s Chris Walla in the new year and it appears the band is signing with Walla’s Atlantic Records-imprint label as well. Indie 2-piece Awesome New Republic are feeling the heat from both labels and publishers, but does one label already have the edge? We hear the Miami-based duo has been making the reverse snowbird flight north to showcase repeatedly. ANR recently released their full-length album Hearts via Honor Roll Music, a newcomer to keep an eye on. You may remember them from the New York Times article on the burgeoning Miami indie scene who said the production house/studio/label “…is like the Brill Building meets Sub Pop.”
In the Mix: Minus the Bear, Randy Sabiston, Joe Purdy
Endless Summer…
The Drums have labels & pubco's marching to their beat
Monday night at Spaceland was like a good ole’ label brew-ha of days past, with A&R posses from around the league filling the room to catch The Drums (those keeping score may remember a couple of the members from former incarnation Elkland, who was signed to Columbia). Those marching to the Brooklyn-via-Florida band’s jangly surf-pop beat included barneys from all major music groups, with a particularly large showing from the bunny… Pubco’s are in the chase as well with Warner/Chappell making a strong play, but word is Sony/ATV may drop-in on the deal at any moment. Just remember, leashes are for pansies…
Elsewhere, some insiders are wondering what the future holds for Shangri-La Music, as the boutique label has been quietly handing back masters to some of its artists. Word on the street is that it will come down to founder Steve Bing’s decision whether or not to continue funding the music component of his larger Shangri-La business group. Recent coups for the label include the release of the highly anticipated Monsters of Folk debut album and a building story for new UK artist Band of Skulls. Stay tuned…
| Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Misty Mountain Hop
Lindsey Ray @ Hotel Cafe Tonight
With names perfect for the makings of a Zeppelin song, a new group of bands come off the heels of CMJ causing a bustle of label action. Leading the pack are Seattle’s Lonely Forest and Brooklyn’s Freelance Whales who both have majors and big indies prime to make a move… More pubco’s join the hunt for Texas’ Scorpion Child, whose brand of blues-riffed rock ala the aforementioned ZOSO gods has had labels taking aim as well. And a name you won’t forget and will be hearing a lot more of soon is Portland’s Baby Monster. The electronic-edged duo received recent nods in NME and just released their new single “Ultra Violence and Beethoven” on London’s rapidly rising 50 Bones label (Little Boots, We Have Band, Rogues)… Finally, tonight in L.A. catch Lindsey Ray, who you’ll recognize as the voice behind “Brand New Day,” the Tim Myers-penned tune used in the recent massive Target campaign. Lindsey performs tonight at the Hotel Café at 9:00PM.
| Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Said Gonna Be A Revival…
Revival Tour @ El Rey Theatre this Saturday, November 7th
The 2nd annual Revival Tour rolls into the El Rey Theatre this Saturday, November 7th. Keeping with its unique genre-defying design, the tour features a diverse group of musicians representing various styles and backgrounds for a night of performances in true revival fashion. This year’s tour includes Chuck Ragan (of Hot Water Music), Jim Ward (of Sparta, Sleepercar), Frank Turner, Joey Cape (of Lagwagon), Jenny Owen Youngs, Audra Mae and many others…
For more details and the full lineup head to www.therevivaltour.com
p.s. – Keep an eye out for alien life forms in the crowd (um also known as agents) to catch tour newbie and SideoneDummy Records artist Audra Mae who continues to win over fans, artists and industry alike. Just recently she was in the studio with the legendary Burt Bacharach and we hear there are more big things on the horizon.
Audra’s new EP Haunt was just released digitally and you can check out her Revival tour blog HERE
10.27.09Take Notice: Nations Afire + Tuesday Tidbits
Nation Afire @ Viper Room tomorrow night (10/28)
Nations Afire is a new band comprised of former members of Rise Against, Ignite and Death By Stereo. Forming in early in 2009, the band recorded their debut EP The Uprising in a mere two-weeks and then hightailed it to Europe, touring with bands such as NOFX and The Get Up Kids. They’ve been featured in Alternative Press as their Unsigned Band of the Month, and we hear one label has already put paper on the table while others are scrambling. Nations Afire hit the stage at midnight tomorrow night (10/28) at the Viper Room. For more info and list requests, hit up jimmulhearn@freezemanagement.com
http://www.myspace.com/nationsafire
In other updates and tidbits… San Diego’s Allstar have signed to Hollywood Records, indie-wunderkind Avi Buffalo lands at Sub Pop Records and Lucas Keller joins management powerhouse The Collective. Keller’s roster includes TV/TV who recently signed to Q-Prime-backed Mom & Pop Records.
| Posted in Take Notice, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Bands, booze, industry schmoozing and other things that happened that stays in Vegas…
VMS 2010 will feature Pedro the singing monkey...
The Vegas Music Summit 2009 is in the books. We’d like to thank all the industry folks who attended and all the artists who performed. It was a fun and wild ride in Downtown LV. Big thanks to event sponsors: Miller Lite, Smash Magazine, ASCAP, BMI, SESAC and our host hotel the El Cortez Casino and Cabana Suites. The conference’s formula of mixing headlining acts with local Las Vegas talent and a select group of artists from out of town allowed for LV music fans to see new talent and for artists with no LV following playing to a packed house of music fans. For those who didn’t attend, here’s a list of the selected acts on the bill: Imagine Dragons, One Pin Short, Links, Saint Motel, Love It or Leave It, the Study Band, Air Raid Anthem and Cursive. We hear some of the acts above have already been getting calls from industry folks as well as invites to play SXSW. Meanwhile, planning for VMS 2010 is in the works for September next year. Hope to see you again in Sin City next year…
| Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Call the Cops Rock the Space, Local Natives get Infectious…
Rock the Space Winners, Call the Cops
Long Beach-based Call The Cops have emerged as the grand-prize winners of the MySpace and Toyota-sponsored Rock the Space contest. As part of the prize, the winning act gets a recording contract with MySpace Records and the band’s single “Room 410” will be featured and made available for download on the MySpace Music homepage. Meanwhile, CTC band members are asking…where’s our Prius?
L.A. local natives, the Local Natives have signed with Korda Marshall’s relaunched Infectious Records after much speculation as to when and where the SXSW ’09 buzz-band would land. We previously reported the band’s signing with Universal Music Publishing back in July. The band is the 1,025,561st featured RM 64 act to get signed! Haha…
Both major labels and indies appear to be sniffing around Nashville act The Rust. They are currently on tour with Secondhand Serenade and getting some hometown radio love for their song “Missing You.” The band performs tonight (Wed, Sept. 23) at Gramercy Theatre in NYC and on Oct. 15th at The Roxy in L.A.
09.21.09Wake Up Wake Up with MeTalkPretty @ Viper Room 9/22
MeTalkPretty @ Viper Room Tomorrow Night
Before RM 64 hightails it to the desert for the Vegas Music Summit this week, we’ll be hitting up the Viper Room tomorrow night (9/22) at 9:00PM to see MeTalkPretty. Fresh off the heels of winning MTV’s VMA for Best Breakout Artist in NYC, the band continues their North American tour with dates up the west-coast through the rest of September. Expect to see publishers and agents on the scene… To get on the list send your RSVP to: Muzikmgmt@gmail.com
09.1.09Back to Sin City…
baby, we'll be up five-hundy by midnight!
The RM 64 crew is closing out the summer of ‘09 by heading to that magical place in the desert where dreams, marriages and a month’s salary could all be lost or won in a matter of minutes. The Vegas Music Summit will take place on Sept 23 – 24, 2009. The mini-confab will host 2 nights of showcases at the Beauty Bar and 1 day of panels at the El Cortez Hotel & Casino in beautiful Downtown Las Vegas. Showcasing acts are currently on the A&R tip sheet and have been handpicked by LA talent/event promoters A&R Knights, Hell Ya! and RM 64. We’ll be hosting cocktail mixers in between sets at our lounge in The Griffin two doors down from the Beauty Bar. Event sponsors include Miller Lite, SESAC, ASCAP, Smash Magazine and BMI. Daytime panels and industry badges are FREEEEE!!! (“You’re killing me Larry!”) Panels will feature Major and Indie label A&R execs, Producers, Managers, Attorneys and Music Publishers. So come on down, cause just like the boys in the Hangover, you too could party ’till the early morn and wake up to find a tiger sleeping in your hotel bathroom. Stay tuned to this space for showcase and panel updates. For more info and to be on our comp industry badge list, email us at info@RM64.com
| Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Inside MySpace Record’s Artist Development Program; Q&A with Jason Reynolds
MySpace Records has been busy behind the scenes establishing a new unsigned artist development program called the Friends & Family Network. The initiative provides marketing for all participating artists across the MySpace Music platform to promote releases, tours and videos.
The label has also begun a new series of live shows in Los Angeles called Online [Offline], which features artists from the Friends and Family Network.
We recently sat down with MySpace Records’ Jason Reynolds to get the details.
—
MSR's Jason Reynolds in signature shades
RM64: To start off can you tell us a little about your background?
JR: I’m originally from Australia where I used to run a record label putting out a bunch of indie rock records. Later I was worked for Shock Records in Australia, which also distributed Sub Pop, so I got to know a bunch of people there. When I lost my job at Shock, I got a call the day after from Jonathan at Sub Pop and he said, ‘What are you going to do now?’ And I said I don’t know, and he said ‘Come work for me in America.’ So I moved to Seattle in the 90’s, started the publishing company for Sub Pop, and then sort of migrated into working in A&R and doing product management. I signed a bunch of artists like Damien Jurado, Saint Etienne and The Jesus and Mary Chain.
In the late 90’s after leaving Sub Pop I did a stack of stuff like writing for the NME, music supervision as well as some musicology jobs, and then ended up in management.
I never really intended to become an artist manager, but I was always helping out the artists I knew; anytime there was a problem they kept calling me in to fix it. The first real client that I had was this kid Patrick Park. He was just a singer songwriter that I found at Genghis Cohen but he totally blew me away. He was like a modern day soul singer. So I ended up managing him and developing it from the ground up and subsequently sort of became the artist development-management guy.
Some of the other artists I worked with were The Belles from Lawrence, KS, Forward Russia! from the UK (on Mute), Every Move A Picture from San Francisco who got signed to V2, and then one of the biggest artists I managed was Isobel Campbell – who was previously in Belle and Sebastian. The first project that we did together was the record that she made with Mark Lanegan, Ballad of the Broken Seas. Crazily enough it took her from selling 10,000 records, which is what her previous record had done, to having a UK Top 40 album, getting nominated for a Mercury Music Prize and selling 150,000 copies of that record.
A little after that I dropped out of the music business for a couple years to become Mr. Mom.
RM64: So how did you end up at MySpace Records?
JR: I had been helping out the GM of MySpace Records J. Scavo. Every time he had a question, often times it related to international issues, I answered it. So he called me out of the blue one day and asked, ‘What are you plans?’ and I said ‘I don’t know’ and he said, ‘I’ve got a job for you.’ A large part of my position was to do international stuff for MySpace Records, but the main reason I got brought in was to run the artist development program that we have which is called the Friends and Family Network.
And that’s what I do on a daily basis. We have 130 artists signed-up, and what I do is I build marketing campaigns for unsigned artists on MySpace. The logic behind it being that we could have the next Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys or whatever in the program and we help build them from their 300 friends to 30,000 friends or their 250 plays a day to 70,000 plays a day. And it’s great. Now I do artist development and somebody pays me a salary for it.
RM64: So could you give us a little overview how of the MySpace Friends and Family program works?
JR: So the way that it works is that we dig around on MySpace Music to find unsigned bands that appeal to us, from the charts as well as traditional A&R and various ways you find out about bands through a friend, musician or whatever it is, and we sign them up to the program. The concept is we give them a set of marketing tools, so when they’re releasing an EP or have a tour or a video, I help them market their band on Myspace. So say an artist has a record coming out in the next couple months, I’ll build a marketing campaign with them. From there we have various tools to help them really hyper-target their marketing and get in front of users who we, collectively, think might like their music.
We also aid in getting editorial coverage. So if they have a video we will give them a music video feature. If they have an EP or album coming out, we’ll approach the editorial team at MySpace Music to try and find the right “look” for them, or if they have a video we will help with coverage on the music video page, which are amazing opportunities for unsigned artists. And then we have this one particular music ad that runs on the main music page where we promote tours and things like that as well. So really what we do is give them a tool kit to say ‘here you go, this is what you get allocated in a year –go crazy’. And it’s good. We have this particular artist from Long Beach that when I started my job they had 3,000 to maybe 5,000 plays a day. I would run marketing and see it go to maybe 10,000 plays a day. And now nine months later I run marketing, and they get 70,000 plays a day. That’s what the concept of it is, you’re building an artist from a small level to a big level.
| Posted in Interviews, RM64 Features, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
| Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »