Amsterdam, here we come...
In Concert Competition now officially closed
Cubworld, The Fakes and Second Person will play live in Amsterdam on January 7 2007. This is the official result of the competition we called: Heineken Presents... SellaBand In Concert.
And so the second competition (number one being the SellaBand Presents... Part 1 CD, remember) came and went and to be blatantly honest, it never really became a really exciting race. The Top 3 at noon (CET) on December 5 would get to play the Amsterdam Paradiso to celebrate the New Year with SellaBand and a couple of hundred of our Believers. When we launched the competition the Top 3 was Cubworld / The Fakes / Second Person, and when we framed the shot of our Artist pages at precisely 12 o’clock today, the ranking still was and is: Cubworld / The Fakes / Second Person. That is not to say, that these three have not been working really hard over the past three weeks, to increase their numbers, convince new and existing Believers to ‘up’ their number of Parts and stay in the race for Amsterdam.
Believer get-together
Well. Now it is official. We are pleased to announce the line-up of the first ever SellaBand In Concert. It will be Nemesea (performing a special acoustic set), Cubworld, The Fakes and Second Person. The exact running order and the number of songs that will be played have yet to be decided, but the plane tickets will be booked (and yes, Jake will bring his lovely wife Mandy!) and hotel reservations can be made. All of you who have applied for tickets will get an official e-mail from SellaBand later this week, confirming the status of your request. If needed, we can also give you some tips and advice on hotel-accommodation in Amsterdam. There will probably also be an official Believer get-together prior to the show, and we will inform you about this in due time. Oh and one more thing: we have officially invited Uncle Ben from Muaw Dibe & The Awakening to come to Amsterdam and be our official reporter for the SellaBand Tribune.
Weekly Update
To back our chart analysis, you can now also use our official Charts. From now on they will be updated weekly, on Tuesday at noon CET.
New features
Some new features have been added this week. The Gift Part is now in operation, potentially enlightening your
X-mas worries about what to give to your loved ones this year;-) Also, from now on you will always be able to see the name of the Believer (indicated in light blue) who bought the most recent Part(s) on all Artist's profile pages. And lastly, we are happy to inform you that the SellaBand Jukebox now offers a third play-mode option: ’My Jukebox’. This application enables you to select your own playlist, defining the music you want to hear by Genre, Country and Budget. Have fun with it, we’ve tried it here at SellaBand HQ and it really works.
Discussion Forum
The SellaBand Tribune is also meant to tell you about initiatives and updates from Artists and Believers. Let’s start with Lucretia, one of our more vocal and active Believers, who has created her own SellaBand Forum. It may take some time before our own Discussion Platform is ready (it’s currently being designed) and we appreciate the fact that people may still want to find a place to talk and discuss all kinds of SellaBand-matters. Go to: http://sellaband.proboards79.com and see what Lucretia has created. Our advice: go there and have fun, but please behave nicely;-)
Artist initiatives
First of all, hats off to Maitreya, for not only confirming his position in the Top 10 this past week, but he has also posted his first SellaBand Video Diary. It’s not only fun to watch, but also a very creative and original way to communicate with your Believers and give them more insight on who you are and what makes you tick. Check Maitreya’s diary here...
Lily (Lovely Lily as we fondly call her at SellaBand HQ) has told us about a special collaboration she has lined up with fellow New Yorkers IGT. Together they are putting the finishing touches to a new song that will be posted on their profile pages later this week. We can’t wait to hear it. What will it sound like? Latino hiphop? Rapping salsa? Soon we will find out...
And then there is our very special friend from down under, Brian Taylor. His band Vegas Dragons is not only very exciting to listen to, his almost uncontrollable enthusiasm is also great fun to watch. Did we say almost uncontrollable? Well, what do you think of this?
Mr. Taylor has found a special way to immortalize his dedication to SellaBand. And yes you see that right, the empty box will hopefully one day show the date on which the mighty Australians have raised the full 50k. We are so humbled by this initiative that we may personally fly over to Sydney to add that date to the tattoo, once the $50.000 is in!
Chart analysis
Second Person are this week's biggest gainers. As you can see in our weekly chart, the UK three-piece did not only make the biggest jump on the SellaBand-chart, they are also on number 1 as far as the absolute number of Parts sold, this past week. Cubworld is not far behind and so are The Fakes. Behind our usual Top 3, we see relative newcomers such as Vegas Dragons, Slim Void and Sasha Vella do well, but it is also worth mentioning that we have a number of new entries in the weekly Top 20: JapJap (NL), Erik Bakk (Norway), Erotic Death (USA) and Upstanding Youth (USA). Once again, we invite you to check our weekly Charts, which are updated every Tuesday at noon, Central European Time.
Introducing...
Slim Void
Scandinavia has a great reputation for delivering top class pop and rockacts, so it was only a matter of time before the first top class acts would join SellaBand. Meet Slim Void, who combine the words pop, rock and class like they were invented especially for them...
Who are Slim Void?
“We're a band from Norway that was formed in 2002 for the purpose of playing our own music. Everyone had been playing covers for years, but our own songs started to pop out in larger numbers, getting better and better all the time. And that's what it's all about of course; writing your own songs and expressing our own emotions. Not just plunking away on all those other already overplayed hits. There have been some ups and downs, of course. During those years we had to exchange both our drummer and our bass player due to different reasons. That slowed us down for sure, but now we're on track again. Stronger, tighter and better than ever! Slim Void isn’t a band about image and package. There's little glamour and glitz. We can't afford those things anyway. Slim Void is all about the songs and the music, and being a good live band which we finally have become after 4 years of playing concerts and rehearsing. A common conception in the music business seems to be that great songs and a good band isn't enough. We have to disagree firmly! Everything we ever liked was because of the songs, how they were sung and played, the music and the words. The important thing is how it makes you feel.”
How did you find out about SellaBand?
“A friend forwarded me an article from a Norwegian newspaper. It turned out to be about Sellaband. After some reading and thinking we found it very interesting and got convinced that this was the thing to do for us.”
Q + A
Sasha Vella
Good to see that in recent weeks so many new and talented artists from all over the globe have joined SellaBand. Among them is a bright shining star from Malta, named Sasha Vella. With her beautiful voice, ditto songs and a piano-player who is worth your money alone, it seems like only a matter of time before she enters the Top 10. Currently residing in Belgium, Sasha explains how she intends to conquer the world...
Who is Sasha Vella?
”Ever since I could sit down on my own, my parents would take me into the sitting room and I would always crawl infront of the speaker and hear music by the Mamas and the Papas, Jose Feliciano or Pink Floyd. I remember them saying 'Listen to this guitar' or 'Listen to her voice Sash' The likes of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, my mum having been a dj for a while, and my dad being an avid Beatles fan lead me to being surrounded by music all the time. Then at the age of 16, I started playing guitar thanks to this german guy who were staying in a hotel where I was working for a while. One night he showed me a couple of notes, then I carried on experimenting with different tunings and notes and my first songs were created. Since then I always spent time, any free time I had, writing and playing, trying to bring out as much as I could the simplicity of powerful lyrics and simple melodies. I used to play in different bars for a while, in the meantime working as a graphic designer. You see in Malta, which is a beautiful island, there is not that much of a chance to write music as a living, so in a way I was always hoping that some day I could actually do something. I then left Graphic Design and opened a bar, which was successful for a while, however the hours I had to work were so hard that after 3 years I decided to leave that behind me. But in those 3 years, I met Sam and together we added his piano to my songs and played in my bar every week and it was so brilliant to see that people were actually looking forward to the day we played.”
How did a Maltese girl end up in Belgium?
”Believe me I ask myself that question too. Very pure and simple really, love and music. I met someone, and that was it. I went to Belgium. Apart from it being a much better place for music than Malta, I must say I love it here. I feel more free in the way that there are so many more opportunities to do other things, creative things, hence, this friend who is advising me on music showed me Sellaband.”
How did you come to join SellaBand
”A friend of mine showed me the site one day, and I just couldn't believe the great concept. I then heard a couple of people on the site and I was even more drawn in.”
What appeals you to the concept?
”SellaBand is a revolutionary website, as apart from helping artists toward their goal, artists can also interact with other like minded people, and I am sure everybody has noticed, that even though their is a 'race' if I can call it that, a race to sell parts of our songs, wanting to get somewhere, competition, there is still such a good feeling between everyone, you can feel it reading messages that have been posted, from Believers and from one musician to another. This site has put me in touch with some beautiful people and some brilliant artists, and I also like the fact that it leaves it up to the public, fans, Believers, it really is up to them in the end, and with SellaBand everyone has a voice and everyone has a chance to get to their dream.”
What are your ambitions?
”As everybody on Sellaband, it is to be able to get up in the morning and write music for a living, nothing grand or anything like that, but just the chance to do something I love for the rest of my life. Apart from that, my ambitions are to be the best that I can, with myself and with others, to understand that we are all coming from somewhere, each one of us with a different story to tell, hence why SellaBand is such a great idea.”
What inspires you to write songs?
”As you can see from the 3 songs I have on Sellaband, love is definitely one of the things that inspires me to write, though I do have a few songs that are about issues in the world, like freedom of expression, drugs, poverty, basically my views and feelings wrapped up into poetry. Other artists inspire me too, with the way they write, my favourite being Roger Waters, and that song he has 'The tide is Turning'.”
Are there any other acts on SellaBand you particularly like?
”I think I would definitely say Cubworld. Something about the feeling Jake gives out when he sings, it means something, first of all to him then to those who hear him. His voice is soft yet has that raw sound that just takes you places deep inside. It's a sound you can listen too, learn from and feel with. Wonderful stuff! Having said that I also would like to mention Kane Sole, Beach, as they too touched me in a certain way.”
Why should people Believe in Sasha Vella?
”I cannot think of doing anything else for the rest of my life other than writing and singing. I just can’t. Before I discovered the guitar, I was writing poetry, trying as much as I could to convey a feeling, an instant in my life that meant or means so much to me. I guess I am at my happiest, more real if you like, and I can see no other way of spending my time, yes alot of hard work, but I feel so full with music that it is very much worth it. It is who I am.”
Any special tactics to raise the 50k?
“We have been sending e-mail and sms’s for weeks now trying to make close and distant friends, fans and relatives to check out Sellaband and support our project here. We have also been using our website and MySpace to sell the merry message.”
What are your ambitions?
“Our ambitions is to record a great CD full of great songs in a top quality studio with the best engineers and producers to fit Slim Void. It’s a dream to go on tour. Everything will go really well, and we will be a happy little band of gypsies. :) Of course we want to live of our music. Slim Void is what we want to do in the future!”
Why should people Believe in Slim Void?
“We're a good band with good songs, and we have a very good singer. How could you not believe in us? hehe. Cheers!”
Any other SellaBand acts you like?
“The Fakes had a very interesting sound on ‘Glory Times’. Second Person has a great atmosphere. We also enjoy the 90’s sound of The Super Dead.”
www.slimvoid.comSellaBand launches: The Road To 50k
Free demo-mastering at Sony Music Studios
Edition 13 of the Tribune and it might very well turn out to be the lucky number for artists on SellaBand. We are extremely proud and happy to be able to introduce to you a program we dubbed ‘The Road To 50k’. And by way of an introduction we have a special offer from our friends at the world famous recording studio Sony Music Studios in New York. Read on...
SellaBand is not just about raising $50,000, record an album and then leave again. Don’t worry, you can still leave whenever you want before the 50k are in, but we feel very strongly about making the road to 50.000 special and worthwile. It should be useful and meaningful at the same time, so we have been working very hard at an incentive program for all our artists as they climb the ladder to the top of SellaBand.
Unique partnership
In a serious attempt to kickstart this program with a very useful tool to active artists on SellaBand, we are proud to announce a unique partnership with Sony Music Studios in New York. This legendary recording studio (superstars like Jay Z and Beyonce practically call it their home away from home) has developed a new online mastering system. To celebrate the launch of this revolutionairy device, Sony Music Studios offers professional, digital demo-mastering for artists on SellaBand as a first step on their way to raising $50.000. The offer is as follows: Sony Music Studios will exclusively reward every artist with 1000$ on their SellaBand acocunt a free of charge mastering of one of their songs. On their proflie page, these songs will be indicated as 'Mastered by Sony Music Studios'. The cut off date for this special offer is December 31, 2006. Any artist with at least $1,000 on his/her/their SellaBand account will get the opportunity to have one of their trakcs mastered for free by Sony Music Studios. And this also includes the 25 or so acts who are already over $1,000 in budget at the moment.
Win-win situation
The groundbreaking, new service from Sony Music Studios is called Sony Music Studios Internet Mastering, in short: SIM: "Having personally trained many of the younger engineers on our staff, I know that they can bring tremendous value to the projects submitted through SIM," explains Vlado Meller, Senior Mastering Engineer, Sony Music Studios. "I'm extremely excited about the debut of SIM services. It gives the team a chance to work with fresh talent, and provides a wide range of fascinating new challenges and opportunities to our engineers. At the same time it gives unsigned musicians access to the talented engineers here at the Studios they otherwise would never have access to - it’s a win-win situation."
Sound optimisation
With over 1,000 active bands on SellaBand, from over 20 different countries and varying in genre from ambient to death metal and from classical to electronica, there is a lot of music to choose from on this platform. Says Dagmar Heijmans, Music Director of SellaBand: "The sound quality of the songs offer a wide variation. From humble home recordings to ready-to-be-released digital tracks, and everything in between, you can find it all on our website. We are extremely pleased that Sony Music Studios now offers bands the opportunity to optimise the sound quality of their demo's."
More incentives
The Road to 50k is an official initiative from SellaBand to help artists further in their career. SellaBand Managing Director Johan Vosmeijer explains: "It is our aim to create as many incentives for bands as we possibly can. This is just the beginning. We want bands to realise that it is not only the 50.000$ on their account that matters, but that the journey to get there should be interesting and helpful as well." In other words there are more incentives for artists on SellaBand in the works. More details will be unveiled in the SellaBand Tribune in due time.
I’m a Believer
When we wrote about his initiative to get SellaBands on national radio in his native Belgium, we already knew that Funfile had the words “I’m a Believer” written all over him. This week he tells a bit more about himself and why SellaBand is the best invention since sliced bread. Well, sort of...
Tell us a bit about yourself, please?
”My name is Rudi, I'm 34 years old and I live in a village called Molenbeersel in Belgium. It's situated in Limburg in Belgium. The Netherlands are only a mile away. I work for Punch Metals, a factory in the automotive branch. My job is Accounts Payable administration. My family and friends are very important to me. We like to enjoy movies and music together. And ofcourse a nice barbecue during Summer.”
How did you find out about SellaBand and why did you join?
”Almost every day I check out the Dutch website Tweakers.net. They provide a lot of information about electronics, computers, internet and everything more or less related to it. A few weeks ago, on Monday November 13th, I read about SellaBand on their newspage. Of course I checked out the SellaBand site, starting to read what is was all about. I listened to a few artists, and started buying my first Parts. I really like to have personal contact with the artists, and that’s why I signed up.”
What does an artist need to draw your attention?
”Artists should put a selection of their songs on the website and give some info about themselves. I’ve found artists without this information. Why would they expect people to sign up without knowing anything about them ? And of course it helps if their music is my taste. I’ve found a lot of good artists browsing other Believers profiles.”
How do you see the role of the Believer?
”Don’t think about buying Parts as investments, but as a show of support to the bands. One Part is about the price the band would actually charge you if you bought their CD on one of their gigs. And you will get a very exclusive CD (only 5000 of them available) if they make it to the studio.”
Who is you absolute favorite on SellaBand, and why?
”I have more than one favorite – you can see this in my supported artists list – but Cope made a very good impression on me. Their song ‘A Tune’ is definitely one of my favorites. I like their other songs too.”
Is there anything you'd like to change about the website?
”Yes, I’d like to extend the profile pages, like dividing them in tabs or more pages. My profile page became real long already and I have to scroll down to read my messages. And I’m just a member for less than one month. I would also change the home page. You have the section "What people are saying". I would add a Believers’ review on a band just below this section. This review could be randomly chosen from different members.”