Musicadium Blog

This week we just had to show off Omni Anti’s film clip for their track ‘Blackbird’ which had it’s world premiere viewing at the Chiki/Musicadium ‘With Digital Love’ showcase that rocked out at Barsoma on November 25th. Directed by Jasper St Aubyn West, this film clip is visually stunning, and also at times unexpected. The metamorphisis of a blackbird into different band members is awesome! Check out the film clip here, or their debut EP ‘Blackbird’ on

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

Sarah, our Artist Relations Manager, found this great blog about business marketing.

We are a firm believer in your band as a business. The blog is called “In Customer Service, you are always on stage.” If you look at it in terms of your band, your fans can access information about you 24-7, 365.  Read the Article here at Customers Rock!

You can spend a lot of money building up your brand and creating a cool logo. You can market the latest coffee drinks and specials to all your local customers. You can build a fabulous customer loyalty program to reward your best customers.  However, if your employees are not doing their part to support the business, it is all a waste of money.

Sarah and I were thinking about this and how it relates to Musicadium artists. Look at it this way:

Replace “Customer Service” with “Your Band’s online presence” and “Employees” with “Online tools”.

If you aren’t using your online tools well, i.e. never replying to fan comments, not capitalising on friend adds on MySpace, your website contains poor spelling and grammar or generally having a poorly-designed site, people will not return to your site, nor buy your products or come to your shows.  It’s not conducive to a long-lived career in the music industry.

Your online presence is available to the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  When a potential fan goes to your site, your band (aka your business) is on display.  You are on stage.

In the same way that when you are ACTUALLY on stage, you have the chance to wow the audience with a great live show, when a potential fan is sitting in the audience (their computer desk/wherever they surf the net), looking at your website, you have the opportunity to wow them with your site.  Don’t give your MySpace/Facebook/Flickr/Twitter/Website the chance to let you down.

If you want to check out a few ways to make the most of your online presence, download our free e-book!

Musicadium loves it’s Twitter account! 

We wanted to know if anyone else was talking about us on Twitter, and today, HypeBot answered that question for us, now allow us to let you in on the secret.

If you want to know if anyone else is talking about your band or your business, you can use the Twitter Search.

From HypeBot:

Type in your name, band name or keywords and you’ll get a list of the latest mentions on Twitter.  You can even grab an RSS feed of any search and stay up to date with future tweets. Think of it as massive free and unfiltered market research. And if you’re not using Twitter to talk to your time-crunched short attention span fans, you need to be.

Read the original article here at HypeBot.

Musicadium online aficionado, Sarah, found this fantastic article about tips to have a great blog.

We are always looking for great new ways to improve our blog and online presence and we found this immensely helpful and right on the money.

We encourage Musicadium artists to use their blog as a great online tool to update their fans about their happenings!

Chris Brogan wrote the article - it’s called 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Content. Here’s a taste.

You’ve got a chance right now. While everyone else has their eyes on celebrating the holidays and doing all their year end rituals, you can make a commitment. You can make your New Year’s resolution almost a full month early. Here’s what you can commit to for 2009: you’re going to have a killer blog. You’re going to write the kind of blog people post, tweet, link, and even print to stick up on their office wall. Your blog in 2009 is going to be the kind of blog that people use to power their own change. This is your chance to get out there and kick ass.

To read the full 40 tips, go to Chris Brogan’s blog.

We love this in the office.  What an amazing amount of effort this would have taken!

Matt Larsen is one talented teenager. Apart from playing every instrument and singing on his debut EP ‘Undeniable’, he also wrote all tracks with a level of maturity and complexity that belies his years. While most of us were battling pimples and awkward dates at the local cineplex at age 13, Matt was winning awards at the WAMIs and mixing with the likes of Kav from Eskimo Joe and Katy Steele from Little Birdy. We were lucky enough to have a chat with the young lad, who has had the following review of ‘Undeniable’ from Drum Media. “This is the sort of thing that’s going to turn up on e-bay in about 10 years when Matt Larsen is a star. ” I won’t disagree. Check it out for yourself at

Hi Matt! Firstly, congratulations on your wonderful EP. I didn’t realise that you played all of the instruments yourself! Did you get lessons for all of them or did you just pick them up?

I have had lessons for guitar and drums but the rest I picked up mostly myself. I like playing them all but guitar is definitely my favourite.

At age 12, you won a prestigious WAMI award for the primary school category. Was everyone at school completely jealous that you got to hang out with rock stars all night?

Yeah it was really cool to win the award! It was awesome meeting Kav Temperley from Eskimo Joe and Katy Steele from Little Birdy! Until I mentioned those bands, I don’t think they were that jealous… lol

What has been your favourite gig that you’ve played and why?

My favourite gig so far has to be when my band and I played at my old school. The kids went nuts! We even had most of the teachers rockin’ along. On the last song, everyone stormed the stage and sang along with us… it was great.

Who is one of your musical idols and why?

Chris Cheney is definitely my idol. He’s such a brilliant & dynamic guitar player. He incorporates different styles of music into his songs, but still maintains his rockabilly/rock sound which I think is great. He’s also very good at improvising, like one time, he got chucked a beer bottle so he picked it up and started playing his guitar with it!!

What direction would you like your music to take?

I want to get better and better at performing and song writing, and I hope to one day be able to make it my full time career!

Finally, what are your plans for the 2009? Coming to sunny Brisbane anytime soon? If so you will have to come and hang out on the Musicadium couches and play a game of fusball with us!

I’m gonna keep gigin’ in & around Perth, and I hope to record some new songs that I’ve been working on. I hope to be able to make it over to the eastern states later in 09, so be ready for that fusball game!

This week’s best Musicadium album covers is an intriguing one with great fonts and an intricate triangle design, which matches the motif of their myspace site - http://www.myspace.com/thebeautifulburn.

This is the Album Cover Art for their release, “Bombs and Arrows.”

We love the design here in the office - do you agree?

If you think you should be in the running for the hottest album cover, shoot us an email with your details including the cover art and why you think it is hot.

Leave a comment below about The Beautiful Burn’s cover art!

Ellington are a band from Queensland, Australia who are consistently in the top 10 independent musicians on Australian MySpace.  Their massive efforts in gaining a myspace fan following has resulted in them being picked up by boutique management agency, Billy Blue Music and touring extensively as major support for Something with Numbers.

Tim from Musicadium has known the Ellington boys Jake Bosci (vocal/guitar) and Michael Beatson (guitar) for a few years now, having booked them in their early days in Rockhampton and Gladstone, Queensland.

Their latest release, More Like A Movie, Less Like Real Life,  was recorded during a self-funded trip to Atlanta USA with legendary producer Mat Malpass (Copeland, Lydia).

Already the EP has captured the imagination of a new generation of fans, with their website and MySpace (800,000+ total plays, 500,000+ profile views) gaining a torrent of attention from fans all over the world.

Hailing from the small town of Tannum Sands in Central Queensland, the Ellington story began when songwriting duo Jake
and Michael began playing together in high school. After the underground sensation that was their debut EP, 2006’s The Joy We Keep In and the bands two-month long journey to Atlanta in April this year, last month saw the duo ink a publishing deal with Sony BMG Australia.

“Mick and I saved up and went to the States on a gut feeling,” Jake explains.

“We set our little minds on getting over there and finding an awesome producer and studio to expand our
minds and skills and music to the next level,” Michael continues.

The six-track EP has catapulted Ellington to international attention, thousands of people smitten by their sweet harmonies and honest lyrics. Jake Bosci’s warm and inviting vocals barely register a whisper above the atmospheric, dream-like guitar work. “She said it’s not hard to fall in love / The hardest part is proving that love is what you wanted / and what you’ll need for the rest of your life,” sings Bosci on Wide Awake and Smiling, glimmering with sentiment and optimism.

More Like A Movie, Less Like Real Life is out now through iTunes, MySpace, and available at shows.

To celebrate the release of the new EP and the first single lifted from it for radio Wide Awake and Smiling, Ellington are about to depart on The Summer Love Tour. Jake and Michael will be accompanied by their newly assembled touring band, consisting of Stevie West on drums, Lloyd Budd on bass and Anita Goldsworth on piano and backing vocals.

If you like their music, buy them on