Musicadium Blog

Last thursday night, in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, an electro storm brewed. The results: Bar Soma was rocked by Musicadium artists Foxx on Fire and The Cityscape riot and soon-to-be Musicadium artists Spider8!

Spider8 were first on the bill for the evening - an early technical glitch in the set was quickly overcome and Seal, Cam and Justyn went on to rock 6 of their bangin’ tunes, interspersed and beatmatched with fantastic tracks by the Presets, Daft Punk and Mr Oizo. Numerous fans in the crowd were spotted wearing shirts that said - “SUPREME LISTENING - SPIDER8 IS HERE TO AUDIO”.  Nice! Check them out on MySpace and Facebook.

Joseph from the CityScape Riot was going solo last night, his drummer unable to play - but he rocked out by himself, drawing comparisons to Cut Copy. It was amazing to see one person making so many different noises and sounds! Check out The Cityscape Riot on MySpace, Facebook and

Then, on came the headliner, the main attraction for the evening, Foxx on Fire.  The crowd moved on the stage and suddenly, the entire dancefloor was filled with moving bodies!  Foxx on Fire belted out tracks such as Polizia & No Love in the City and finished with our favourite, Mission Abort. Thank you Paul, Geno, James and Eddie for making the trip up from Melbourne.  We loved having you!!  Check out Foxx on Fire on MySpace, Facebook and on

It’s only one day away till our fantastic Musicadium Electro showcase at Brisbane’s BarSoma!

We have two more dates booked in at BarSoma for now, (with most definitely more to come after that!) so we are on the hunt for artists to play at our future showcases!

The next two showcases are on Thursday nights as well - May 21st and 23rd July 2009.

If you would like to be considered for these showcase nights in the future, (remembering that we try to theme our showcases, so it may be subject to appropriateness for the night!).  We will keep a database of artists who are interested in playing, so register your interest for the future!  We cannot promise a gig to you, but we will definitely put you in our ‘interested’ database, which puts you on deck for sure!

Send an email with the subject line “We want to play at a Musicadium showcase!” to info@musicadium.com along with a bio to be considered for future gigs.

Our lovely director, Michaela, has been profiled by SNOBs, Social Network for Opportunistic Businesswomen!

The Lady in Charge: Michaela Tilse (Director of Marketing & Artist Relations)
Business name: Musicadium
Location: Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
Launched: February 2008
Website: www.musicadium.com

Hit us with your elevator pitch:
Musicadium work directly with independent music labels and self-released artists, enabling them to sell their music to a global audience via the world’s leading digital outlets such as iTunes, eMusic and Amazon MP3.
In industry terms we are an “aggregator” - contracted directly by the outlets to distribute to their online stores a constant supply of music albums and music videos.

What drove you to go it alone?
Musicadium is headed by three directors, including myself, and an incredible team of full and part-time staff and interns. We need to be at the forefront of the ever evolving, new digital music and internet industries so - as a team - we’re constantly learning and trying new things.
When you “go it alone” you get to be very innovative and experiment with fresh ideas, which we see as a luxury.

Fill in this sentence: “If I had a dollar for every time someone said…….. I wouldn’t need to be in business!”
We’re often asked, “How cool is it to work in the music business? Do you hang out with rock stars, trash hotel rooms and get back stage passes?”
We do get to meet and speak with some amazing people and get to see some great gigs but day-to-day it’s a lot of online work; blogging, answering emails, business strategy meetings, etc.
It’s a very small industry and everyone gets to know each other so trashing hotel rooms won’t necessarily help if trying to do a big deal with a large label or business!

This article was originally published on the SNOBs website.

If you’d like to grab a little bit of the spotlight for your new business [and you're a woman, in business in Australia] send SNOBs an email.

Brisbane’s own Digital Music Distributor, Musicadium and Bar Soma are teaming up for another WITH DIGITAL LOVE industry showcase - on Thursday 19th March at 7:30PM 2009.

It’s all because Musicadium are turning one!  Musicadium has been operating for just over a year and they are want to celebrating their first year’s signups including Gotye, Kisschasy, Clare Bowditch, Ellington and more, as well as establishing a great market position as Australia’s leading digital distributor.

Headlining the night is Melbourne’s Foxx on Fire (http://www.myspace.com/foxxonfire), described by Inpress magazine as …the big label A&R’s wet dream.” They have supported acts such as John Foxx (UK), Midnight Juggernauts, Felix Cartal (France), Lost Valentinos, Mercy Arms, Grafton Primary, Damn Arms, Sweet Machine (Germany) and Dukes of Windsor. Their video clip for their new single, ‘Mission Abort’ was recently indie clip of the week on ABC TV’s Rage.

Supporting Foxx on Fire is brand-new Brisbane electro act Spider8 (http://www.spider8.com.au) and Gold Coast’s own dance duo The Cityscape Riot (http://www.myspace.com/thecityscaperiot).

The Cityscape Riot’s music has been described as being “Inside a computer game where you’re dressed in a fluoro suit, driving a fast car and fighting for your life”.  They were featured in the February 08 J-Mag as one of the most exciting up and coming electro bands in Australia. The Cityscape Riot released their debut E.P ‘Technodome Nights’ in July 2008.

Spider8 are a local Brisbane trio, Justyn O’Sullivan, Cam Mackay and Seal Chong Wa, along with their synthesisers and live drummer, Tim Price.  Spider8 are most easily described as a mix of The Presets and a ‘dirtier’ version of Sneaky Sound System.

Musicadium are a digital aggregator, the vital link between artists and digital outlets such as iTunes.
Musicadium sponsored the new/digital music category in the 2008 QMusic QSong awards, held at the iconic Tivoli Theatre.

The bands will kick off at BarSoma on Constance St, 8:00PM, with doors at 7:30PM. 19th March.  Entry is $8.00 and it is an 18+ Event.

Check out the FACEBOOK Event Invite and invite your mates!!

One of our talented Musicadium Artists, Pluto Goneski has won himself a performance at Sydney’s Tropfest this Sunday at 6.20pm in The Domain!

The reason for this is that a one of his songs, “Same Perfume” has been announced as the winner of Tropscore 2009. Tropscore is a sub-competition of Tropfest this year, open to anyone around the country, where you had to write music to a silent short film you downloaded from online. You can check out the score at:
http://www.maxtv.com.au/tropscore/finalists_top_3.php?show=1343.

As the winner, he gets to play the score LIVE with a string quartet (in addition to his usual 3-piece band) on Tropfest night in Sydney in front of an expected 150,000 people!! He will be performing at least one other Pluto Goneski song besides the Tropscore song! Remember, get a good spot with the picnic rug early because Pluto Goneski starts playing before the films at 6.20pm in The Domain.

Go to myspace.com/plutogoneski if you’d like to hear more or check out his music on

We love our new MySpace profile page!

Our MySpace page is one of the best marketing tools we have.  We are proud to show you the new and improved page, with our embedded Flickr and Twitter feed, as well as RSS Feed from this very blog!

Check it out here at http://www.myspace.com/musicadium

We hope you love it as much as we do!

New Matilda is a website focusing on News analysis.  If you aren’t sure exactly what it is, their About Us section contains the following.

newmatilda.com provides intelligent coverage of Australian politics, business, consumerism, civil society, international affairs, media and culture for a global audience. As well as offering an understanding of current events against a broad historical and political backdrop, it features issues and ideas often left untouched by the mainstream media.

A few days ago, Ben Gook wrote this article about the internet and the way that people are consuming music.  More to the point, it is about how music will be consumed in the future.  Ben’s profile on the site reads that he is also a “…contributing editor at Rolling Stone, and has written for Mess + Noise, The Vine and The Big Issue. He is also a musician.”

Musicadium gets a mention alongside IODA and Tunecore, as examples of “Centralised” Digital Music Aggregators helping independent artists get their music onto iTunes and other online stores.

We are proud to be considered to be a leading body in the digital music distribution industry, so we thank you, Ben Gook and New Matilda for the mention.

It’s no secret that we’re massive fans of Mr. Wally de Backer (a.k.a. Gotye) here at the Musicadium office and were very excited when the talented Belgium joined our esteemed ranks. So, we were beyond excited when we heard the news that his release, ‘Like Drawing Blood’ had been named as one of the best albums of 2008 at the iTunes UK Store! Well-deserved Wally, we congratulate you whole-heartedly! We’re already starting to babble about what will be next for the man of many talents, but we all agree that it will be something spectaular. Check it out at

Two of our favourite artists (and previous featured artists on this very blog!) have had a major success today.

They have managed to secure themselves a spot on Australia’s premier summer festival, Big Day Out (BDO), through Australia’s youth radio network, Triple J and their Unearthed Competition.

Brisbane’s Hungry Kids of Hungary will play at the Gold Coast BDO and Adelaide’s The Shiny Brights will take the stage alongside international greats Neil Young, The Arctic Monkeys, My Morning Jacket, Serj Tankian, The Ting Tings and The Prodigy, as well as prominent Australian artists The Living End, Cog, Birds of Tokyo, Sparkadia and The Grates.

Both of these artists are bands who use their online presence well (The Shiny Brights are also in the Tooheys Extra Dry UncharTED competition, which also secures artists a spot on the Big Day Out).  They both make use of e-mail marketing, use their social media profiles well, utilise street teams and have fantastic live shows.

Hungry Kids of Hungary are currently on tour with The Boat People and The Shiny Brights are gearing up for their Southbound Festival appearance on January 3rd in South Australia.

We would like to congratulate these artists and wish them well on the day!  Hopefully we will be there at the Gold Coast Big Day Out to report back on how the Hungry Kids went!

Musicadium artist (and all-round lovely lass) Francesca de Valence was recently awarded the 2008 International Songwriter Award at the Los Angeles Music Awards in Hollywood following the release of her debut EP From the Outside In. Since the May 2008 release of From The Outside In, which was recorded and produced in Brisbane, Francesca has also received AC Song Of The Year in the 2008 Independent Singer Songwriter Awards, Runner Up in the ‘We Are Listening’ 2008 Singer/Songwriter Awards and was Semi-Finalist in the 2008 UK Songwriting Contest. Wow!

Francesca got to perform at the awards in LA and also played at iconic Ghengis Cohen before catching a live Aretha Franklin show! Jealous at all?

Pick up a copy of ‘From the Outside In’ for yourself at