Musicadium Blog

Local Brissy and Musicadium artist Birrallee Voices Inc have just scored themselves a swift $9600 after receiving a grant from Q150’s (Queensland’s 150th anniversary celebrations) community funding. The grant will fund a project where young Brisbane performers in seven regional areas encourage the development and creation of new choral works inspired by South Sea Islander Stories. More than $1.2 million was announced for local celebrations.
To keep up to date with all Birrallee Voices news head to http://www.birralee.org/

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Musicadium artist Here Come The Birds, have earnt a spot in the Tooheys Extra Dry UncharTED grand final. The Newcastle band, along with Melbourne band Pressure Radio, will play their hearts out at Sydney’s Oxford Art Factory for the chance to win a spot at Splendour In The Grass.

Chris Stanton from Here Come The Birds, is stoked, admitting that “most of my friends and family have hardly slept over the last month. I had old mates call me up from school that I hadn’t spoken to in ages, telling me they’ve got all their family voting every hour for us. It’s fantastic! I think just about everyone from Newcastle has rallied behind us.”

And so they should! The winner not only gets to play on Splendour’s main stage, they also score a wicked indie music package that includes everything from managment advice to studio time.

To vote, go here.

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Weezer’s new clip for ‘Pork and Beans’ has out-memed the entire history of the internet by reliving the best memes of the last few years.

From the classic Numa Numa video, to Tay Zonday and the Daft Dancers, it’s a clip that brings back memories of much time and download quota wasted.

It’s also been a monster smash.  Everyone is talking and writing and blogging about it.  At almost 7 million views and counting, it won’t do any harm to the album’s sales.

Everyone’s trying to go viral.  Every band wants 7 million views of their song.  But it took the gusto of Weezer to do the clip right and set the bar for other bands trying to generate similar interest.

Watch the clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muP9eH2p2PI

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As of this week, Musicadium is introducing a new pricing structure for all future album uploads to accommodate the addition of Amazon mp3 to our partnered outlets.

The good news is, you are still going to get 100% of your royalties. And Amazon mp3 is projected to be a major iTunes competitor. Given Amazon’s reputation as a trusted music source, the Amazon mp3 store is going to be a great tool for independent artists.

Within Musicadium’s new pricing structure, you now have the choice. If you would like your album sent to just one outlet, the cost will be $39. If you would like your album sent to two outlets, the cost will be $69. If you would like your album sent to all of our partnered outlets (that is, iTunes, emusic and Amazon mp3), the cost is just $79. (For Australian artists, those prices are GST exclusive…)

Once all that is done, all you need to do to keep things ticking over is pay the annual, album renewal fee of $20 per album.

And pretty soon, you’ll see in the member’s area a little button that says ‘Pay Me Now’. That’s your button for any time you want to cash in your royalties.

So, just to recap, that’s worldwide distribution - to Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, Europe, UK and the US - via the three major online music outlets, for the cost of a couple of DVDs… And you are getting 100% of your royalties!

If you have any questions, just send us an email - info at musicadium dot com - we’ll be happy to help you out.

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Email databases are a musician’s best friend.

As the database grows, so does the artist.  The more people you can contact, the more people you can get to your shows, the more people who buy your album.

At least that’s how it’s supposed to work.

By giving away their latest single - Coldplay did a nice swap.

They gave away their first single for free.  This will generate buzz. it gets people excited about the new album and it gets people debating the new Coldplay sound.

Best of all, in exchange, they got an email address.

All in all, they grew their database by hundreds of thousands.

It was a swift, smart move and when they need to get their new music, merch and tickets out there, they have hundreds of thousands more fans than before.

It’s all yellow.

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Anyone who has a myspace page needs to make sure they are getting the most out of it.

With that in mind, click here to find out some neat myspace tricks to get the most out of what you have.

Thanks to wired.com for this one.

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Musicadium is proud to announce its support for the annual Q Song Awards.

Dedicated to finding Queensland’s best songwriters, the Q Song Awards received almost 1600 entries in 2007!

Musicadium is sponsoring one of this year’s new categories -The Musicadium New/Experimental Music Category.

At Musicadium, we are a key link in the chain for emerging musicians. Musicadium’s distribution model allows independent artists to prosper without needing a record label. For $39 you can get your album distributed worldwide. Just a few short years ago, that kind of thing was unheard of. Now it is possible and Musicadium is getting behind Q Song as a way of showing our support for Queensland’s independent artists.

Winners of this year’s Q Song get a chance to share in the $25,000 in cash and prizes on offer.

Entries opened March 20 and the deadline for entries is May 2, 2008. The Winners will be announced at the Q Song Awards Ceremony on August 12, 2008 at The Tivoli, Fortitude Valley.

Entry forms are available online from www.qmusic.com.au/qsong. Online entries will be accepted through www.sonicbids.com/2008qsongawards.

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Musicadium is very happy to introduce our newest team member: the lovely Sarah.

With a background in Music and Media, a diploma of music performance at the Southbank Institute of TAFE in Brisbane and management experience with the National Institute of Youth Performing Arts Australia, Sarah is a perfect fit.

As Musicadium’s Artist Relations Manager, Sarah will be the first point of call for our growing artist and label roster. When you call, email, myspace or knock down our door you’ll see Sarah’s smiling face.

When you need uploads rushed through, have queries about your myspace or want to know if iTunes will make you single of the week - yep, you guessed it - Sarah will be there too.

Welcome to Musicadium Sarah!

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I want to tell you about a fantastic tool to get your music heard.

imeem allows you to build playlists of your favourite music and stream them as you please.

There is an amazing amount of music available to stream and you can upload songs that aren’t available.

Artists like Avril Lavigne have been making the most of imeem by offering a video exclusive through the site as well as allowing her entire new album to be streamed for free at her imeem page. The video exclusive comes with embed codes to make the video viral.

For an independent artist, imeem is a great addition to your online repertoire. Like a myspace page it allows your music to be easily discovered. Even better, you can build playlists with songs from artists you sound like. That way, fans of other bands can discover your music through your very own playlists.

It’s free and easy.

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So iTunes is the digital downloads industry. That much is certain.

There has been much speculation recently about who holds the No.2 spot.

USA Today’s announcement that “Amazon is No. 2 in digital music sales since opening nearly six months ago.”

emusic CEO David Pakman immediately shot back claiming emusic was “selling more than 7,000,000 songs a month” and that with respect to Amazon mp3, emusic was “still on top, and will continue to be so”.

Now, SpiralFrog has staked its claim to the No. 3 spot on the basis of its 850,000 registered users. Other players like Rhapsody, Napster, Yahoo Music and Amie St have not yet weighed into the debate.

With Amazon mp3 refusing to release figures and no independent arbiter, there is little certainty beyond the fact that iTunes dominates.

For artists, the message is clear - so long as you are on iTunes, emusic and Amazon mp3, you can be confident you covering the most important digital ground.

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